Human produced what? Will everyone become a skilled craftsman capable of making handicrafts that are better than those churned out by machines? There's a homemade, rustic charm, but there's a line between rustic and primitive. Particularly when you add the "individualized rustic look" filter to your just-in-time manufacturing processes. Literary and auditory arts will have similar pressures.

That's an argumentum ad consequentiam. I think there is a substantial fraction of people that won't be competitive with automated solutions in the future. Training can help people learn new things, but I doubt that it make everyone work on the creative level necessary to exceed emerging AI technologies.

What counts as something productive? What is your basis for that assumption? What will all the teamsters, assembly line workers, and various other people whose job is "follow this pretty well-defined procedure indefinitely" do?

No, but what's the alternative? Just what should low-skill workers be doing? Automation won't stop feeding at the bottom of the barrel. There fortunately aren't that many people that actually top out between ditch digger and backhoe operator, so that transition went OK, without too many people being knocked out of useful existence. But there are plenty between "basic procedure following job" (line cooks, packers, etc.) and genuinely creative ones (research, engineering, art). And a lot of people are going to find their capabilities insufficient for what the world needs from humans.

There is no way to create an effective used marketplace without onerous DRM. We're better off preventing resale and making sure that selling unencumbered files is a practical option for copyright holders.

Why is it that these tight corporate tie-ins are permitted for education? I certainly would hope that the schools wouldn't allow "Luke Skywalker and Belle teach American History", so why is the equivalent permitted for CS? Is it the fact that this is a "new" educational subject, where they're seizing the uncharted void of curriculum to get us warmed up to the idea?

Smashing with a rock looks suspicious, and almost anyone that sees you do it will call the police. If you've got a fully-wired home, and an attacker compromises it, they can find out exactly when you're not home (from automated lights and climate control settings), unlock the door, and walk out with whatever high-value items they think they can get away with.

I'm not sure I understand your first point. Lego sells interesting models, and the pieces necessary to build them. For castles, this means a lot of blocks that are rectangular, and some special ones for things like gargoyles and drawbridge winches. For spaceships, this means a lot of angles and greebly-bits that you can make look like engines and weapons and exhaust ports. There's not some sort of "trick" where Lego is forcing you to buy high-margin specialty pieces; people want those pieces because they let you make things that look better. And, sure, if you try to take the pieces from a castle and make a spaceship, you'll end up with a blocky-looking spaceship. But I fail to see how providing the option of sleek pieces (which you could also use to make a sleek, elven-looking castle?) somehow degrades the experience. There are very few pieces in modern Lego sets that are genuinely single-purpose; a spaceship control surface could easily be an angel wing, a ship's rudder, or the fairing of a racecar.

Minecraft supplements, not replaces, Lego in the minds of creative kids. Minecraft is neat, and it lets you do a lot, but there's something special about being physically engaged with what you're building. You can't take your Minecraft creation out back to play by the stream (unless you recreate it with Legos?).

There was a time when this was true, but not so much within the past ~5 years. Can you give me a definition of what you'd call an "ordinary" brick, and what percentage of a set needs to be ordinary bricks (it's easier by piece count, but I suppose a by-volume comparison could be made) before you can classify it as general purpose? Or is there some other definition you'd prefer? Whatever it is, please make it quantitative; there are plenty of meticulously-maintained online resources we can use to determine exactly how many bricks of what types are in pretty much every Lego set ever made.

All sets produced via LEGO Ideas are limited edition. Though in truth, all sets are; you'll find great difficulty getting just sets older than a year, perhaps a year and a half, from the primary market.

The trailer appears to show the people on Earth forced to work for scraps in factories (presumably making things the people on the station want), with order being enforced by autonomous/remotely-controlled humanoid drones.

It's neither; it's factually inaccurate. GOES-R is alive and well, and likely to deliver on schedule (launch and operations in the 2015-2017 timeframe). The reason the article listed the expectated lifetime of the satellite was 2015 is that it should be replaced around then.

Factually incorrect. Project organizers have a legal obligation to deliver what they promise, or refund the money. I recall at least one case where the organizer did not deliver, and was successfully sued and forced to declare bankruptcy.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "gaming by the numbers" studios and publishers move that way. But I can guarantee that the people pouring millions of dollars into independent Kickstarter and greenlight games, and getting DRM-free software written by devs who care in return, will still be doing it in five years.

Prosecutors have discretion. They are not required to prioritize every case and put forward the largest number of possible charges.