I still think that for most office uses, a mouse is better than a touch screen. If I'm spending a lot of time entering data, a all-in-one touch screen device is miles behind a monitor at eye level several feet away, a good tactile keyboard flat on my desk, and a mouse a few inches away. Maybe I'm constrained by what I already know, but I can't picture a touch device being better.
I don't know if it is necessarily bad for them to do this. If they don't what is to stop someone else from filing a similar patent and suing them. It seems like this is the best way for them to protect themselves.
If, on the other hand, they start using this patent to sue others: that would be very bad indeed.
EVERYBODY will have health problems and use their health insurance. Very few people will have their house burn down and use their fire insurance. Therefore, there is a massive difference in price.
I had a friend in college who went everywhere with two tupperware containers. When he was asked whether or not he wanted left overs he would feign a no, but as soon as he was asked a second time he would say "I guess so" and pull out his tupperware.
"An adult or a teen celebrity might twitter but most regular kids see what they are communicating as too private to share with anyone other than the person for whom it is intended, much less any old creep who chooses to subscribe."
That doesn't jive with me- just look at wall postings on facebook (I'm a youth worker, so I have 100+ teens on my friends list- it is amazing the details that they post for anyone, including old aunt Agnes, to read)
My understanding is that it is not supposed to be a business phone. It is supposed to be a middle-of-the-road phone, excellent for both your business life (like a black berry) and personal life (like an iphone). So these being in the same breath makes perfect sense.
With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you. So, for example, if you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it is more expensive to give you power than if you live in the city (you need dedicated infrastructure to get the power to you, and chances are you are further away from the power plant which means more power gets lost in transmission). Yet you pay the same per kw/h as if you lived in the city. Where you start paying more is if you use more power. (at least, this is the case where I live. Sorry if it is different in the US)
Postage works exactly the same way. No matter how expensive it is to get a package to you, you pay a fixed rate for it. However, you also pay proportional to the cost you impose on the system is that you pay per package.
I've played Catan with cards instead of dice- you have 36 cards, each with a number that can be attained by rolling two dice. How many times a number appears in the deck is its odds of being rolled. Statistically, you will roll 7 6/36 times, so there are 6 sevens in the deck. There is only one 2 and one 12 because their odds are 1/36. You shuffle the deck, and draw a card instead of rolling (once you go through the deck, you just reshuffle). This means that luck plays into when you will get a resource, but not if you will.
If they are able to offer the service for free to some, why is this a bad thing again? I'm Canadian, so am a little bit sad that I won't be enjoying last.fm for free (or, in my case, at all) anymore. However, I'm not mad that others will be able to.
And why is it a bad thing if you offer your service for free at first?
A sort of related anecdote: one time I was on a plane where there was some sort of medical emergency in the back, so we had to wait to let paramedics get on. Eventually they had the patient stabilized but needed to do more work before he could be moved, so they allowed the plane to be unloaded as long as the aisles could be cleared quickly if they needed to get through. In order to allow this, the crew only let one row at a time to stand up. I wish I would've timed how long it took, but it was definitely much shorter than the time it usually takes to get off when there is no organization.