My 6 year old girl had struck a balance between creating things and consuming at the computer. She draws, writes and build things in Minecraft. Internet is used to mostly go to youtube and learn new stuff she then applies to making things. This is something i think is very important and what will differ the kids when they get older. Some kids will just use the computer as a media hub to make the hours go away between sleep sessions, some will use them to create things.

Unless the child is steered towards creating on the computer it will be better off without one at all. Nobody is going to get a job because they can chat, play games, surf 4-chan or make badly spelled comments on Facebook. The ones getting the jobs are the ones that has learnt to use the computer as just a tool to get a task done. The other ones will have lost much of their younger years of development to mindless drooling and as a side effect, have a complete lack of concentration, focus and patience.

The latency problem i can understand, but that will be a problem regardless of compression or not.
Encoding and decoding will not add that much cost compared to the network.
Compressing/uncompressing only destroys the pic if its lossy. There are numerous lossless codecs that should do the trick and save tons of money in the process.

Unless you have a straight feed to your provider, your HD footage is pretty lousy compared to whats at the station. Just as we looked and awed at Zelda when it came out and had such impressive graphics, we dont see the difference until we have something to compare to.

Im sorry but i fail to see any reason to throw around uncompressed footage. Considering the abysmal quality of HD content once it reaches the viewer it seems overkill. Until we get a lot better signals out to the homes its just wanking because a normal HD picture is compressed around 96 times. That the footage at the broadcast is uncompressed does not help one tiny bit.

Someone has to pay for all the bailout money and we sure cant have the banks and their wealthy owners doing that can we?

You would be surprised of just how different taste beers can have. And getting the right recipe is not an easy feat, it takes many brews before you have something drinkable. Just a different strain of yeast can affect the taste to a large degree. If you start mixing in other ingredients than malt, yeast, water and hops it becomes n hard.

Its still slow as molasses and craves memory like a zombie craves brains. If i wanted something to really tax my spare cycles i would install Windows.

Had it been fast and slick i could have taken the asinine interface but when its slow and unworkable its a no go for me.

Sadly probably not a single dime. Sweden's politicians are starstruck whenever they meet an American politician. They will happily bend over and take it. This is pretty strange considering Sweden being on the socialist side of the scale and the US on the fascist side. You would think atleast the Social democrats would have objections but no, as shown in the wikileaks cables, they cant wait to get that Uncle Sam schlong deep into their ass.

"Were there ANY mono applications EVER developed?"

Novell did their network client in .net on the Windows side and it sucked so much it was not even funny. Novell lost countless of customers because of that decision. The server side was made in Mono and it was the slowest hog ever to have touched a server of mine except Exchange.

I have yet to see a good app written in .net or Mono. They all suck.

"In the Windows world, just like in the *Nix universe, there are a million and one ways to do the same thing."

And while there are millions of ways to do stuff in Windows, its rarely more than a couple that works IRL. The standard methods that gets a routine bug check works but as soon as you stray from the narrow path you are in for a world of hurt from all the bugs.

Seriously, you do not want a Windows fan at all in any position ever. What you want is a pragmatic person that knows to use the best tool for the best job, not someone running around with a hammer using it like a drill or a shovel. And believe me, the Windows fans are the absolute worst in that regard. Anything not from Microsoft is heretic to some of them.

Imho the best Windows administrators are the ones that has used and worked with multiple systems in the same place. They know each systems strength and also have knowledge of how to interconnect them. Trying to get that Windows fanatic to connect to your *nix system is not going to be fun when they just tell you its impossible, but fails to tell you its impossible using the way he is used to connect a network of only Windows machines and Microsoft services.

The system is broken but its on purpose. The idea is to hoard patents in the US and get agreements with the rest of the world honoring the patents. The downside is that this seems to hurt the US a lot more than the rest of the world.

You are right that it did not have a capacitive touchscreen, it had a pressure based touchscreen. I would not call it tiny compared to other phones at the time. as it covered the whole phone. There was a cover that you could take off that had physical buttons for those who prefered them. When it was closed the screen was tiny, but taken off it was not small at all.

As for speed, it was as fast as any other phone at the time. You could very well install software from all over the net, no problem, as could most other similar phones of that era. I bought and installed tons of software, i still have some receipts left.

When i first saw the iPhone the first thing i thought was that it was so similar to the phone i already had, but without things i took for granted like multitasking and stuff.

Unlike Apple, everyone having patents on things Apple do infringe upon has not yet started to sue them. There are thousands of patent owners who has not sued Apple that has patents that Apple do infringe upon. This is not disputable, its a fact.

Apple only license Nokias patents, there are countless others that pertain to a mobile phone that Apple do not pay for. Nokia has patents on much of the radio parts of a specific implementation of a mobile phone, others have a lot of the other bits and pieces. That they have not sued Apple is in no way a sign that Apple does not infringe.

The SE 990i had a cover with physical buttons that was detachable. Without the cover my phone worked and looked very similar to iPhone did later, as did a bunch of other phones before iPhone. The wizard is dead, its time you let go of the reality distortion field.

I know! But it is extremely expensive and that's a bit sad.

"the OP's point still stands... if you use a little creativity it's no problem to skirt these patents. and it will make for a more vibrant marketplace."

The problem is that almost whatever you do, someone has a patent that you will infringe upon because they are so vague and broad. You skirt one patent and step right on top of another one. Slide to unlock was among others implemented on the Neonode but still granted a patent. Multiply that with a couple of thousand overlapping patents and step right out on the minefield. Good luck!