This should make it easier to convince people to swallow balloons...

If you cut the power to a bulb, it's obviously not going to know what you are doing with the app. The tap allows you to never cut power to the bulb. Yes the tap itself is one way but it is only intended to toggle on/off and select a few presets. It does not interfere with the two-way nature of the rest of the system including the bridge, apps, api clients, etc...

Dimming/hueing individual bulbs may be a luxury but there are situations when it comes in handy (leave one overhead light on for reading, leave lights at the back of the room dimmed for movies, light only every other bulb in a long hallway). The costs of a smart (white) bulb will fall to within a few dollars of a standard LED bulb. The additional complexity & components will improve the overall build quality of the bulb. There are lots of problems with cheap LED bulbs now, especially dimmable ones (flickering, humming, power supply failures). It isn't very ideal to use a dimmer to adjust the voltage waveform of a device that has to then rectify it and use PWM to do its own dimming. So smart bulbs do solve some very annoying problems in that area. The fact that switches will also need to be replaced with smart versions for best results and the additional "vampire" power consumption of smart bulbs when not illuminated are drawbacks.

The point of trademarks is to prevent consumer confusion so that a company can't trick you into buying their product instead of the one you intended to buy. But in a world of thousands of brands and in particular this type of product which is mostly distinguished by make and model, color should not qualify as a source of consumer confusion as long as the product features a clearly distinct make and model.

The Simpsons: Season 25, Episode 9: Steal This Episode (5 Jan. 2014) parodied this situation showing an FBI with the majority of its resources focused on copyright enforcement.

The only soft wear they got in New Jersey are them velour track suits.

After you finish the course, you'll be able to purchase the big data generated by THE COURSE!!

Big data, giving snake oil a run for its money.

Meanwhile... on a planet trillions of miles away, the secret Chinese-American War rages on.

Introducing... Instagerm

What do you mean? There are published comments from private citizens (and they are some real gems).

I'm sure you could get a token revoked with an e-mail to Tesla. The API is not intended for use by third parties so really the only valid criticism here is "Tesla does not have a 3rd party API".

Is there a client that can be instructed to download randomly selected non-sequential pieces up to a user-determined size limit? Then store those pieces along with the torrent file and wait until there is a call for them to be reassembled to seed?

Server side encryption is only potentially beneficial for limited data breaches where the attacker gains access to the data but not the keys. In the case of government requests, they have the same rights to ask for the keys as for the data. Perhaps if there is a seizure of entire disks then having encryption may oblige them to ask for specific keys and therefore protect your data from snooping when you are not the target. It is also unclear exactly how unique/granular the keys are.

http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/06/21/003220/sound-based-system-promises-chipless-phone-payment

Content distribution should not be part of a modern business model. Like it or not, you have to compete in distribution with piracy. The question should be: Can I distribute my content for free and still generate revenue? The answer lies in some of the following possibilities:
1. Subsidize the creation of the content through syndication, sponsorship
2. Monetize the consumption of the content (ads)
3. Value added products/services which are hard to copy
4. Add intangible value through community, zeitgeist

You still have to compete on the content itself and there is not much scarcity in that market. As some other comments mentioned, format is increasingly important. A 50+ page magazine can psychologically daunting compared to a stream of content which can be check and "finished" several times a day. The latter also results in repeat engagement opportunities. Something like ESPN insider may be good to examine.

The fact that the content industry is evolving and requires innovation for survival is a good thing.