And when you try to break the FRAND rules by overcharging your competitor, you get legally ass-fucked.

That's what's happening to Motorola, samsung, et al.

If you actually took a few minutes to read the lawsuits you'd see that Apple is the good guy here, and Motorola/Samsung/Google and the patent office (for giving Apple the handful of silly patents in the first place) are the bad guys.

I'll preface this with: I have little doubt that they're charging $5 because they can, and it goes no further than that.

However! They might be using this as an insurance policy of sorts, follow with me:

- Your number is no different than a celebrities to look at/in their database/etc.
- You pay the same for non-listing as does said celebrity
- Unlike you, the celebrity could possibly win a lawsuit for a decent chunk of money if the company (through negligence) publishes their number.

So given that accidents happen, humans are prone to error, etc. etc. It is just possible that you're paying $0.50 a month for the actual service, and $4.50 a month for their eventual legal costs due to a fuckup.

As I said above though, when phone companies charge thousands of times reasonable rates for SMS and such I hardly expect that it goes any further than "because they can".

Yeah, you're of course right. Line of sight is a big problem (though not a problem you entirely avoid with their current method either).

There really isn't any shortage of reasons that lasers aren't a good choice (yet). If we can someday get perfect columnization of the light and have no dispersion at all then lasers will be entirely ideal even with the LOS problem, the throughput could be insane and the power requirements very low.

If only that applied to the first comment.

Being a dumbass is being a dumbass... Pretending you didn't mean it later just makes it look even worse.

Good readers show you the URL before you click through.

And TinyURL is just as bad, FYI... If anything QRCodes allow for *more* transparency.

You're using a poor scanner then, or a crap phone (that wouldn't have NFC anyways).

My phone takes maybe half a second to scan a QR code, to the point that I don't even have to actually hold it still... I can *nearly* just wave it in front of the code and have it work, I do have to pause for the half second. By far the limiting time factor is finding the icon and launching the scanner, which would not change with NFC.

Your teenage brother can type things faster than he can read (hint: no)? Because if not, he may get the tinyurl.com out quickly, but the rest he still has to transcribe.

Long story short: stop being a dumbass.

I think you meant invasions, there has to be an opposition for there to be a war...

Two reasons:

1 - the bands they're using aren't stopped by clouds. lasers (as in light) are.

2 - A 50-kW laser shooting a drone out of the sky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hs9vmlEd-A

Interesting given that iOS has a far greater number of apps, and nearly all of them are of better quality.

It's good that there are still a few intelligent people that post on slashdot...

It's getting less common by the day it seems.

What, exactly, is a non data-fed monitoring system? What exactly would it monitor if not data?

a) that doesn't mean they aren't a shit company. Microsoft labs creates amazing tech (kinect anyone?).

b) You'll notice I said consumer, not commercial. Their displays are fine, their TVs are shit.

Apple could sell a lot more phones if they didn't bother making money too.

You must be an idiot.

Sitting on the board of Directors of another company while developing a competing project of your own. That's wrong, him (Google) not being legally punished with a fine for every cent he ever had or will make is what is wrong with intellectual property.

Apple fighting samsung completely legally within the confines of the system (and trouncing them because Samsung is a shit company that can't create anything in the consumer space worth owning) is not what is wrong with intellectual property.