Balloons - 121 deaths in Canada and US between 1973 and 1988.
Buckeyballs - 0 deaths.

I think that is called natural selection.

Paper and pencil require no calibration, and pretty much everyone can put an X. Easy and quick to count too.

And there is the all important "non-discriminatory" part that you need to pay attention to as well.

If Motorolla didn't want to license things for a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory rate then they should not have made the patent part of the standard. They chose to have it as part of the standard so it is subject to FRAND licensing.

Apple didn't make "rounded corners" part of a standard (nor did they actually sue over them). They are under no obligation to license that IP at all, let alone at a reasonable rate.

As I said "To be fair this was changed recently, but on the other hand Microsoft has had plenty of time to change the default setting."

Or Microsoft isn't following the spec, so people are ignoring the setting for them: http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/drafts/tracking-dnt.html#determining

They do 100% the opposite of what the draft "standard" says...

http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/drafts/tracking-dnt.html#determining

"A user agent must have a default tracking preference of unset (not enabled) unless a specific tracking preference is implied by the decision to use that agent. For example, use of a general-purpose browser would not imply a tracking preference when invoked normally as "SuperFred", but might imply a preference if invoked as 'SuperDoNotTrack' or 'UltraPrivacyFred'."

IE 10 does not imply a tracking preference.

To be fair this was changed recently, but on the other hand Microsoft has had plenty of time to change the default setting. The could have the browser start the first time on a page that let's the user change the setting and be complaint.

Bigger screen? I'd lay them out side by side and eyeball it.
Faster chips? I'd run the same apps side by side and wall time them, or I would use a benchmark tool (subject to gaming by companies though).
New camera? I'd take the a number of pictures with both and compare them,

Nothing too hard... how would you fail to tell?

Odd... I am posting this on my MacBook Pro (a Mac laptop), and it has a delete button on it...

Yet I now have to code differently for the screen sizes, to the point that apps look differently on the different phones. Look at the iPad -vs- iPhone calendar for example. I am not sure that people will design apps for 4S and earlier different than 5 and later, but it is possible. Of course developers can always cheap out and just let the letter boxing happen. Until we start seeing how developers react to the new screen size we won't know for sure.

Fragmentation is really only with API calls, not things like "Face Time over Cellular" or the availability of "iPhoto"...

Screen resolution is fragmentation.

"The US population is not that dense."

are you sure about that?

Which is why you should always put the URL with the QR code. Even better - put an NFC tag behind the QR code as well and all bases are covered.

Neither a 9 month old or a 2 year old should have access to them. Someone got me a set recently, my child would have been 8 or 9 at the time. I wasn't really happy about having them after reading the warning on the box. I played with them, he watched. He was allowed to play with them under supervision. Once they were forgotten about they went away and haven't come out since (except just now to check the warning on the box).

They are not sold as kids toys, go and read the website. I don't know where you would find them, I haven't seen them in Toys R Us for example.

If a parent chooses to buy a toy, marketed as an adult desktop toy, and they leave them where a young child has access to them it is clearly not the fault of the manufacturer.

It is too bad the manufacturer or the government cannot sue stupid people.

Also, how is it that an adult toy can get banned, but when a child of, say 5 years old, finds a loaded gun in their house and takes it to school and shoots another 5 year old with it there isn't a banning of guns? Neither the toy or the gun are marketed to children, and both can cause injury if used improperly.