At least my reading of this was that the author was obviously just having fun with the idea that "Hey from just 4 points of data we can extract that the kindle

At least my reading of this was that the author was obviously just having fun with the idea that "Hey from just 4 points of data we can extract that the kindle will be free in nov 2011", however Jeff Bezos' reaction of "Oh you noticed", even if also somewhat in jest, was interesting enough for the author to ask in what ways would a free kindle be possible. Even if Arrington's idea is a year and not a week old it certainly would seem to make sense, especially with Amazon adding free video to free 2day shipping with Prime.