Absolutely sure. My wife's 3G runs like a /dog/ with iOS 4 on it. 4.1 is better than 4.0, which was painful, but is still far slower than iOS 3 ever was. She is unimpressed.

But are you okay with paying for MobileMe, which has had so many issues and failings that it's bordering on laughable to define it as "a good service"?

I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Google saying something like "yawn, 50TB" and saying that they have PETABYTE versions already out there.

Yeah, because at $1MM for 50TB, a $20MM investment by a publicly owned company in such a thing would entirely fly under the radar...

Alternatively, you can presume that, since I am responding to another commenter, I am in fact responding to his claim, rather than hitting reply to the article, and bitching about the issue of not being comped cell phone usage, which is an entirely separate fucking issue.

Or you can choose not to.

I've never seen a mobile phone with a built-in feature to count used minutes, other than a prepaid one.

Though not built-in, per se, I've not seen a phone in several years that won't respond with an informative system message when you type "#MIN#" on the keypad.

I know - it's fucking horrible. Like AT&T for example, their interface to do this is a disaster. I have to go to "www.att.com/myWireless", off a button on the front page of AT&T's site, no less, then, get this, they ask for my cell number and a password. Once I enter that in, it's this onerous, convoluted situation where I am forced to let my eyes wander roughly four inches from the top of the page to this tiny graphic that occupies, hmmm, no more than a third of the page width, and has all this legalistic jargon like:

As of October 13, 2010, you have 3 days left in your billing cycle.

And then, under the graphic that purports to show the same data, it tries to bamboozle you with phrases like:

Anytime Minutes: 253 of 550 used.

and

Rollover Minutes: 0 of 2325 used.

This is the kind of shit we shouldn't stand for.

I recently added a global data plan (at a rate of about $1 per day over my regular data plan) for an overseas trip and was shocked to see a $130 data charge that didn't show up until a couple of weeks after the trip.

Maybe you should read more carefully. On all the carriers I've activated global roaming (T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon - I can't imagine Sprint being different), when activating, you are expressly advised that billing reconciliation with international providers may take several weeks and "charges may not be reflected until a later bill".

Perl is actually one of the few languages (perhaps even the only one, but I can't be sure) that try to make sense to someone who's not already well-versed in the field

Hmmm, yeah, I can see exactly what you mean ...

The parent sued and got a small part of the settlement as part of a suit or the parents didn't sue and got nothing. Unless you have a lawyer, you're not getting anywhere.

Yeah, I think that's part of people's problem. "You got nothin'. We'll do it for you - what with our monopoly on such things - but we're taking the vast majority of the win. Don't like it? Well, you're just shit outta luck, huh?"

On average, lawyers make between 50-100K

Ehhh, not really. In 2006, the middle 50% of lawyers made between $82,000 and $168,000.

The clients themselves can dispute the costs if they wish. Again, the lawyers have to detail their bills.

That's great. And if they say "Phone calls: $2/min in telephony charges, plus standard rate for attorney, plus $30/hr for dictation", the issue isn't in the itemization.

This would be a serious ethical breach opening the door to a legal malpractice suit, disciplinary action, and potentially disbarment for the attorney.

It would be a serious ethical breach. It's also a highly subjective area, and lawyers and bar associations are notoriously difficult to persuade to sanction a lawyer, possibly from fear that they, one day, might be subject to sanctions for such a claim.

Legal malpractice is no joke. About the same amount is paid out in legal malpractice each year as medical malpractice.

Great soundbite. Then you realize that while there are 700,000 physicians in the US (not all practicing), there are 1.7 million active lawyers.