If the laws of the land are too onerous, the correct solutions are either to change the laws or else go somewhere else.

It'll send text messages, voice, video chat, etc. over your data plan to any other BBM user. That way it burns through your data allotment rather than your voice/text allotment.

It'll be particularly handy if you have, say, a 3G tablet that doesn't do voice, or if you have access to a cheap data plan but your voice calls and texts are relatively expensive.

Barnes and Noble have already won against Microsoft on these patents, so they can't be all that great.

As has been mentioned already, B&N already won against Microsoft regarding these patents so clearly they're not exactly paragons of validity.

The other players don't want to upset Microsoft because they sell Microsoft products on their hardware.

If you're stretched for cash, consider either Photoshop Elements or one of the other competitors like Corel PaintShop Pro.

smokers and the obese are actually *cheaper* in the long run, because they die earlier and thus save money in health care in their declining years.

Old people are expensive due to chronic issues.

I have a WebOS tablet running the linux kernel with an alternate userspace that can run Ubuntu as an app in a chroot.

I can run Android emulation on top of a "regular" desktop linux distribution.

And any given full linux distro is far more than just the linux kernel and GNU stuff on top.

I have no problem with a woman that gave birth getting some time to rest up and recuperate...especially after a C-section.

That said, the bigger problem in the USA is that you *only* get 8/16 weeks. Up here in Canada we get a year of partially paid leave, some of which is reserved for the mother but most of which can be taken by either parent.

I only took 3 weeks off work for each of my kids, but I work from home so I'm also available if needed during the day.

Realistically women need some physical recovery time that men do not, especially if they have a C-section.

That said, I'm *so* happy to be in Canada where we can take up to a year of parental leave, most of which can be taken by either parent.

Since we are producing more and more energy, the absolute amounts of pollution emitted each year is still increasing.

Basically all the "green" energy is offsetting the increase in "dirty" energy.

As long as he didn't do anything but push the standard control buttons, I think he's entitled to whatever he can get.

If the casino thinks they're paying out too much, they can sue the maker of the video poker machine.

textplus and textme are both free, both use your data plan, and both give you a separate real phone number so that your friends just see regular SMS messages--though coming from a different number than your "real" number.

technically, LKML is a mailing list that happens to be mirrored to one or more newsgroups

Being able to patent a communications protocol is actually worse than being able to patent a specific implementation of that protocol.

The last mile to the house is a natural monopoly. Once you get to some sort of switching station then you could have real competition with physical hardware from different competing ISPs colocated in the same offices and using separate upstream bandwidth. That's more than just "competing bill-printing services".

I have no idea if this is what they do in the UK, but it's *possible*.