I just gave my 12 year old a Windows Phone. Needed to create a Live/Hotmail account (for Skydrive file syncing, Xbox avatar, purchases, etc). When entering her real birthday it prompted for parents email address. I received the email and needed to prove that I was over 18 by letting them charge 50 cents to a credit card. Total time involved -- maybe a couple of minutes. Of course this is not foolproof -- no way to prove that the 18 year old is really the responsible guardian but I bet this is enough to protect Microsoft from COPPA violations.

Why use a $500+ tablet when a $500 Windows or Linux laptop can actually be the development server for true mobile development. I am a Windows developer so in my case it is VS2010 + IIS + SQL Server on the laptop. With this, I can do everything I need to do to maintain a huge line-of-business application.

Here is another way to think about it.

What if the company disappeared over night? How "important" are these companies?

If Apple disappeared, people wouldn't have their toys and music anymore and people who actually get work done with Apple products (like designers or movie editors) would have to migrate to other platforms like Linux or Windows.

If Exxon disappeared, the world would have a temporarily huge reduction in the available oil until competitors could pick up the slack which could take a long time in which case the whole world will fall apart (only slightly exaggerating).

So I say that Exxon is way more important than Apple.

By that metric, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle are also way more important than Apple.

I generally love FIOS but have had freezes requiring power down.

The solutions for the channel lineup issue is to make a favorites list with just the channels you get/want to see and then hit the little heart button on the remote instead of the Guide button.

I believe the cause of recorded reruns when you told it not too is a guide data problem -- the guide data has to specify it is a rerun and it often times does not.

Don't be such a moron. In what way is using a web site to help track school progress not "being a parent"?

Way to innovate open source community.

I'm sure you realize that even lowly MFC is still being advanced in VS2008 and VS2010.