Yes, thank you. Somehow even Ted Stevens is coming off as significantly better informed about the Internet than these guys.

Agreed. Any Congress-critter that calls one of his constituents a "thief and scofflaw" should be outed (and consequently never voted for again). At least that's how it should work...

So let me get this straight. Samsung is designing a device that specifically doesn't infringe on another company's patents. And this is news? Isn't that generally the goal of patents (at least when they're not terribly broken like they are)?

Also, they seem to have been ABLE to produce a phone that didn't rip off Apple's design (it looks pretty good actually), what was all this about "it's impossible not to make a phone exactly like Apple's" stuff that was floating around in their defense earlier?

Gah! Well now that you mention it, yes! And now I can't unsee it!

Good thing I won't be reading the whole article =P

You obviously never played catch, or three-flys-up as a kid. The point being, and I haven't read the article but this is what it sounds like they're going for, is that dogs are more social and do things like playing with their owners. Cats on the other hand just kinda do whatever they feel like without the capacity for as much social interaction.

Excellent summary; I sadly have no mod points to give you, only kudos in the form of a comment.

From my experience working at a Windows/Mac school district and messing with linux in my spare time, I would say that it's generally easier to get Mac or Linux boxes to integrate into an existing Windows environment, than to try to get Windows to cooperate with non-Microsoft tools. Just my two cents.

Safari, Chrome, and IE 9 (sorta) support AAC, as does Flash. (http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html)

That said, you bring up an excellent distinction that I'd missed; I was speaking more of formats in general as opposed to in web standards. With that in mind, I think you're probably right. Web standards do tend to have a way of just hanging around in the stone ages. I mean, look how long HTML4 has lasted. And look at the GIF format, still fairly popular after all these years.

Doesn't mean we can't be optimistic though and hope that in the coming years the web can start to adopt some new, better standards.

While this is definitely true, Google might just have enough force to push WebP into common use. Look at mp4's: mp3 was the de facto standard for a while because "everything supports it and it's good enough". Apple comes along with this iTunes music store and starts pushing their mp4-wares and support for the format actually started to increase.

I'm totally with you on the distinction between heights / falling. The Sears Tower (or whatever it's called these days) was fine, and a wonderful sightseeing opportunity. The steps on Quarter Dome (on the way to Half Dome in Yosemite), were absolutely terrifying. Even Half Dome wasn't as bad since there were hand rails (cables) to hold onto.

And this is exactly why MP4 is a good idea. Also, I may be mistaken, but I believe everything on YouTube is stored as MP4.

Actually it seems more likely to become standardized. I mean, since there's no weird connectors to deal with, the only real variable would appear to be to be the frequency, and maybe the power. And Inductive-charger-mat manufacturers are going to want that standardized so their mat will work with the maximum number of devices.

Also, for one device this is equally as easy. If I could put multiple devices on one mat, this is much more convenient than trying to fit a bunch of wall-warts onto a power strip to charge multiple devices.

It's almost certainly going to be less efficient though, I agree with you there.

I think generally for titles: "important" words are capitalized by convention, and non-important words are optionally capitalized. For Slashdot, it looks like the 'a' does not get capitalized, but 'To' does. Which is a little weird looking in stories like: Fun To Be Had With a 10 Foot Satellite Dish

Google Voice does indeed allow you to dial "traditional" phone numbers, as well a providing your account with a "traditional" phone number that people can reach you at.