If you have ever worked in a research lab (in my case, gub-mint), I claim that you cannot read the above without cracking a wry smile. Absolutely spot on (and hilarious).

Amen, brother. The fog of hypocrisy and duplicity in this campaign is so thick, the candidates can't see past the end of their super PAC's.

Pity they didn't name it Rightcraven -- that would have been much more appropriate considering that they have turned tale and crawled away. What a pathetic waste of resources this whole farce was, not to mention torturing people who did not infringe a single copyright. I agree that this must not go unpunished. The lawyers should at least be brought before the bar, even if the corporate bankruptcy shields them from paying what they owe.

I totally agree. It is ludicrous to me that I cannot go out and purchase a DVR of my choice that works with my choice of television service. CableCard is a joke: one way only (no On Demand) and the cable companies seem to fumble the billing and logistics to the point that even they can't claim it is simple incompetence. And how about tru2way, which was going to solve all the problems? DOA! The one Panasonic TV that supported it has been discontinued. No DVR that supported tru2way was every commercially available (just a technology demo). I can't imagine why that failed... The cable companies came up with the idea to appease the FCC's desire for an open platform. Then they bungled the whole thing to ensure it did not impinge on the revenue stream the derive from forcing customers to rent crappy set top boxes and DVR's.

There have been attempts to "fix" this problem, but they have all been half-baked and as far as I can tell, intentionally neglected (or even sabotaged) by the cable companies. The latest, tru2way, promised that you could use any TV/DVR/etc for interactive features (CableCard is one way, no On Demand -- and even CableCard, although it works for some, is a mess in terms of billing, etc). Of course, only one TV by Panasonic ever supported tru2way, and it has been discontinued. No DVR's were ever commercially available.

This is not a difficult technical problem. This is a game being played between the FCC and cable companies. The FCC mandates that cable companies open up, the cable companies come up with something that looks good on paper, and the whole thing goes down in flames because the cable companies have no incentive to follow through. Cable companies don't want to give up the revenue generated by forcing customers to rent absolute crap set-top boxes and DVR's. And the FCC just can figure out why this isn't working...

Dumpster: the new service for cleaning up after a mess like Qwikster.

I agree with others who compare the Fire to a game console, such that the manufacturer is willing to lose money on the device in exchange for an almost guaranteed revenue stream via future content purchase. I had this reaction almost immediately once I learned that the Fire is very locked down running the default firmware. This is nothing close to a "cheap" iPad competitor, the way that the HP TouchPad turned out to be. It is all well and good for Amazon to say they will do nothing to prevent rooting the device right now. I don't recall Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo making much noise about that when they released their consoles either, but they have steadily increased the countermeasures over time (as the consoles have aged).

This is a political farce. The majority of people choose Google over Bing and Coke over Pepsi, there are plenty of alternatives.

People are becoming increasingly irrelevant. The machines can just fight each other, while we get fat and die.