Disclosure: I am in no way associated with Emotiv

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the upcoming Emotiv EPOC:
http://emotiv.com/corporate/2_0/2_2.htm.
This is a sophisticated interface which reads both facial expressions and EEG waves. It enables simple control by thought and is able to measure the intensity of three emotions (boredom, arousal, and frustration I think). It looks amazing. It seems possible that this device could have therapeutic use, or could be used as an aid in, say, meditation. It would also be fun to do experiments on yourself (and if you are an academic on a larger sample) such as watching the emotion readings when viewing pornography or masturbating or playing video games etc.

Maybe if the market were more competitive, we would have more developed infrastructure and pay less (as is the case in Korea, Japan, much of Europe, among other places). Fact is, few locations in the United States have more than one or two viable broadband options: DSL or Cable (Cellular data is slow and expensive). Furthermore, when telecommunications operators own the infrastructure, this is a natural monopoly and there are high barriers to entry into the broadband market. Thus the service providers will act either as monopolies or "competitive monopolies" (where a small number of firms will compete for customers, but not on prices or quality of service). Bandwidth is more expensive than it would be in a competitive market, and the result is deadweight loss. Deregulation clearly hasn't worked. Perhaps if owners of infrastructure were forced to act as "common carriers" (where both cable providers and telephone providers are forced to allow competitors to offer service through their infrastructure), but received government subsidies for the development of infrastructure, we would have a better system. While critics may be skeptical of further government spending, telecommunications infrastructure has positive externalities, and will positively affect the entire economy. Moreover, investment in telecommunications infrastructure would provide immediate economic stimulus by providing jobs. But government subsidies will not work without regulation.

Beyond the debate of "the media companies are abusive and use DRM" verses "You are stealing the livelihood of hard working content creators", I would like to present an alternative way of looking at copyrights and piracy. While most p2p users most likely primarily use p2p because it's convenient and free; using p2p to infringe on copyrights can also be seen as a rejection of the institution of copyrights. The institution of property is one approach for allocating scarce resources. Property attempts to avoid the "tragedy of the commons" by utilizing markets to ensure the property ends in the hands of the highest value user. Applying property rights to intangible goods, however, is highly dubious. The assumption is that many of these goods will not be produced absent the ability to extract monopoly rent for a prolonged period of time. However, in an age where marginal cost of copying is close to zero, applying property rights is actually creating scarcity where it wouldn't otherwise exist. The claim that, without the ability to extract monopoly rent, many copyrighted works would never be produced, bears only limited merit. Some types of copyrighted works, with production budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, may not be produced without some method of funding. Yet large scale collaborative projects, such as Linux or Wikipedia, demonstrate that large scale production can take place without exercising property rights to create scarcity. Thus, my argument is that production of culture and information will not cease, and has the potential to thrive absent intellectual property rights.

I will use this as an opportunity for self promotion. I have a published book about the topic of FOSS games (it was also my masters thesis). You can purchase the book at http://www.amazon.com/Can-Open-Source-Games-Compete/dp/3639100603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230920840&sr=8-1 or read it for free at http://etda.libraries.psu.edu/theses/approved/WorldWideFiles/ETD-3146/Thesis_Final.pdf