10. Closed source technology
"Open source" means that the software code used to create the product is made available for computer-savvy individuals to tinker with, modify and improve to their heart's content, while closed source software, on the other hand, comes with restrictions on copying and modifying. The open source philosophy has resulted in the creation of some ingenious modifications that have only served to strengthen the overall product, with two shining examples being the Firefox web browser and Linux operating system, while their closed source counterparts, Internet Explorer and Windows, have been criticized for seeming stagnant and slower to address issues.

8. Fanboys
The definition of fanboy (or fangirl) is an individual who harbours a fanatic devotion to something without logical reason. In the case of consumer technology, it can be applied to a situation where a person's self-esteem and sense of self-worth is attached the success of a particular product or brand. Whatever happened to just buying the best product? Instead, consumer technology buyers are broken into hostile camps: Apple vs. Windows, PlayStation vs. Xbox, iPod vs. everything else. Read an article about a Windows product and you can count on a few Mac users showing up and leaving snarky comments about how much they love OS X. Why do people feel such fierce loyalty to a corporation? You can rest assured the corporation doesn't feel the same level of loyalty towards you.

7. Region encoding
Technical advances like the Internet are making our world smaller and smaller, which is why it makes no sense for manufacturers to divide the world up into little self-contained sections. Historically, if you bought a video game in Japan, it wouldn't always work in your North American console. Similarly, a North American DVD collection wouldn't work on a European DVD player. Add to the fact that not all movies and games are released world-wide, the only chance a North American gamer might have to play certain Japanese titles is to import them.

It seems strange that companies would rather deny consumers the right to experience games or movies altogether simply because they haven't been officially released in that consumer's country. In the digital age of online shopping, it's so easy to order something from another country and have it shipped, which seems to be a solid argument as any for the abolishment of region encoding. Thankfully, some video game console and home entertainment manufacturers have started to change their policies. Sony's PlayStation Portable, for example, will play games from anywhere - but region encoding still applies to UMD movies.

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1. DRM
This is a no-brainer. DRM (aka digital rights management), the industry's answer to piracy, has probably incited more consumers to pirate content than anything else in the history of consumer electronics. In a typical example, a song with DRM applied to it can only be transferred to a certain number of devices, including being burned to CD, before it stops working. "Why should I pay for a song that I can only copy three times," the software pirate's argument goes, "when I can simply download the same thing through a file-sharing program and have it forever?" The most tragic thing about DRM is that it's alienating ethical people who would otherwise pay to download songs, but who resent the restrictions that these songs come with.