Yup. It is. I use it everyday to surf on my unlocked Nook Simple Touch and/or my Stylistic tablet and I have never been hit with an extra charge.

I'm on a prepaid plan and my phone is a stock Samsung Dart.

I suppose they THINK they are developing for touch screen devices. But they are fooling themselves. I ran into the problems I described within the first 2 minutes of using Gnome 3 on a touch-screen-only device.

That tells me that not one gnome shell developer runs Gnome 3 on a touch-screen-only device. Not one. Seriously. Because if there was such a developer, he or she would have run across the same problem within the first two minutes of use. Connect to encrypted WiFi? Can't be done without a keyboard. Resume from suspend? Again, can't be done without a keyboard. Type a tilda? Can't do it without a keyboard or a third-party on-screen keyboard program.

These aren't subtle little use-cases hiding in the corners. These are major problems that ANYONE attempting to use Gnome 3 on a touch-screen device will run into within the first couple of MINUTES of use. These are problems that the Gnome developers know about (because I have reported them) and that they have refused to address. They don't even comment on the bugs. They just let them sit. For years.

"shall not deny, limit, or restrict the ability of their customers to use the devices and applications of their choice on the licensee's C Block network, subject to narrow exceptions"

T-Mobile lets me tether for no additional cost. In fact, tethering came preinstalled on my phone.

There is no way Gnome 3 is designed for touch screens. Or at least, not for touchscreen-only computers. I use Fedora 17 on a pen-based computer (fujitsu stylistic) and I can tell you that if it were not for the fingerprint reader on it, Fedora would be *UNUSABLE*. Whenever Gnome 3 needs a password to connect to WiFi or to unlock the screen or unlock following suspend, THERE IS NO WAY TO ENTER THE PASSWORD! The password windows captures all mouse input so it is NOT possible to bring up an onscreen keyboard.

So lets stop pretending Gnome 3 shell is for tablet-type computers. It CANNOT BE USED ON A COMPUTER WITHOUT A KEYBOARD.

Oh, and when one IS able to use the on-screen keyboard, it has is no tilda (~) character. Not that you would ever need to type a tilda on a unix-like operating system.

I've filed bugs on all these complaints, but there has been no action.

Are you listening Gnome team?

It was never about the artists. Stop pretending it's about the artists.

Oddly, I've had a lot of bad ideas in my life and yet I can't recall ever feeling bad about it.

I get a good one once in a while too though.

I have wondered for years why game-makers haven't already started working on writing games for Linux so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system.

To me it seems so obvious. Now you don't have to worry about which version of what a user has on their computer and the user doesn't need to install the game.

Why hasn't this already been done?

Tablets could be really useful in a variety of ways.
They could allow students to give live feedback to questions during a lecture so a lecturer can see if most students understand the concepts presented.
They could allow students to use video-curriculum at their own pace.
They could replace heavy textbooks.
They could be used to provide assignments and even grade them automatically in some cases.
They could be used to enter lab results.
They could be used to help with collaboration projects.

Some of things would require specialized software and perhaps specialized hardware (I think a pen-based tablet might make more sense than an iPad), but they certainly could improve the state of education.

What probably won't make a difference is to just to toss an iPad at each student and hope for the best.

I also think that if Microsoft manages to grab a significant chunk of the tablet market, Bill Gates will change his tune.

Like really, really, really BIG baby steps.

It's called a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and they have been in use on spacecraft since 1961.

It's not rocket science.

Well, it IS rocket science, but it's not the hard kind.

Still Illegal. (in the U.S.)

Oh man! Someone mod this guy up!

Ubiquitous brand recognition is only useful if people don't think the brand stinks. I remember a well-known brand back in the 80s called the "Yugo".