Full Disclosure: I'm a bit of an Android enthusiast though I'm not sure if I rise to the level of fanboy as I don't own any android themed toys, stickers or clothing :)

Regardless of the merits of this case (or any of the other cases) one can only hope that these lawsuits call attention to the huge flaws in our patent system and how they stifle innovation. Of course realistic me knows that lobbyists will prevent any real reform from happening but anything that slows the tide of stupid patents being issued would be a good thing.

Too bad anybody who was warning us at the time when it could have been avoided was promptly labeled a "Micro$oft Shill"

Dunno, I've tried speed tests at various places in 4 different regions, Los Angeles County (where I live), San Diego, San Francisco Bay area and Las Vegas area and not gotten more than ~5.2MBPS even with 5 bars of HSPA+.

On the LTE phone it's rare I can pull an LTE signal and where it's stuck on HSPA+ it's quite a bit slower than the T-Mobile HSPA+ (usually 2-3 MBPS)

Not talking about data cap but data speeds, I rounded the numbers to the closest MB.

Faster theoretically maybe but not in reality, I've got a "4G" HSPA+ T-Mobile phone (which is the fastest of all the fake "4G" networks) and an AT&T LTE phone and where I can get an LTE signal it destroys the HSPA+ network. The fastest I've ever seen on the HSPA+ network was 5MB, the slowest LTE I;ve seen was 10MB.

In any case IMO the blame does indeed fall with the ITU, they set the "4G" barrier artificially high so that LTE let alone WiMax wouldn't get there, which invited the carriers to say fuck it and start slapping the "4G" label on their existing 3G networks. If the ITU had just said that LTE and WiMax were 4G we wouldn't have this problem.

Sounds good (and hillarious) but I think it would be harder to pull off than one would think, even for Google.

How would Google identify which tickets were scalped? I guess they could make the tickets non-transferrable but that would affect people who bought tickets with the intention of going but later found out they couldn't and would give their tickets to someone else (or sell them at cost).

The ever increasing "stuff" that attendees get, a few years ago everyone got a Nexus One, a couple years ago I forget but last year people got a XOOM tablet and some other multi-hundred-dollar gizmo.

I've always wondered with I/O how much people want to go because of whatever new technology is being introduced or discussed there or because the expectation being set that all attendees will get a full featured Android device (phone or tablet or STB).

The developer of the dominant alternative recovery for MANY android devices wasn't able to get a ticket this year (though he may well get one via back-channels) due to the mobs of people who snatched up the tickets like it was a Queen concert complete with zombie Freddie Mercury.

Also as TFS pointed out I suspect there are a fair number of people who got tickets with the intention of reselling them at a profit.

SPOT has had the ability to post to Twitter or Facebook via satellite for a while now with their SPOT Connect product.

http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=116