Hopefully it won't result in Intel pointing out that there is no cake...
Or saying there is cake when there really isn't.
TFA says:
More than 500,000 donations averaging $22 apiece were made to the Wikimedia Foundation, while local Wikipedia chapters generated another 130,000 gifts worldwide.
The summary is incorrect.
Based on my own experience, I don't think laptops in classrooms should be banned. I've had several profs state that laptops are only for class-related use and will be allowed only as long as that is all they're used for. That tends to work pretty well as students who use laptops for quick note-taking and don't want to lose that luxury, like myself, are eager to let the professor know which students are problematic and the issues with those particular students can then be addressed.
Granted, I do attend a small private school where the largest GenEd classes are usually no more than 50 students, so I don't know what problems are faced by profs with large class sizes. Still, I think banning laptops hurts a lot of good students more than it helps the lazy ones.
A free market is not totally free from regulation. Rather, it is totally free from external regulation. Internal regulation still exists within a free market.
While companies are certainly free to add fees to their services in a free market system, customers are as free to leave those service providers and move to another provider. The system we have in the United States, especially with utilities, is not something that's easily converted from corporatism to laissez-faire. That's why certain "deregulation" efforts result in horrible failures. Big government and big business share the same bed. Do you not think they'll scratch each other's back?
There definitely needs to be a set standard. I suspect IEEE or another such organization will eventually step up and figure out an agreeable standard.
However, the technology hasn't advanced to the point where it's exactly realistic for most people, or even truly usable. Unless there is a significant breakthrough in the near future, such standardization will probably not happen anytime soon.
That need still exists today, and the principle behind it is still solid -- so solid in fact, that it's written into our Constitution as a specific right granted to the government. And you might recall, our founding fathers were quite stingy about giving the federal government much power at all even after the failure known as the Articles of Confederation. That speaks clearly to the need for patents and copyright.
Actually, not all the Founding Fathers were in fervent agreement about patents and copyright. In particular, Thomas Jefferson himself was very particular about giving any "dibs" on ideas. He believed that ideas cannot be owned, and still stated that it is not the right of any man to own an idea as far as it is without himself. It's hard to tell precisely from his letter, but it seems like he was not greatly fond of the idea of patents in any form.
Just because something is written into the Constitution does not mean every one of the signers agreed wholly with it. The US Constitution is an imperfect document formed by many imperfect men of different beliefs and opinions.
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.