If only it was actually a new party..

I want my phone to download MY purchases automatically. What this stunt did is it reduced the value of that option. What should have been put in place was a free voucher for U2 on iTunes. But then, the album wouldn't have found its way onto everyone's phone, reducing its value as an advertisement. That's what spam marketers found out long ago -- it's fine to push their spam to 95% percent of the people who didn't want it as long as they can get a payoff from that 5%. The 5% may like the product being sold, the annoyance from the others is worth it to the person trying to push his product. Not so much for the other 95% though.

And you prove my point above. Yes, the incredible generosity Apple showed using my phone as an advertising platform. Boy, I should just be so thankful that they're pushing that to my phone.

I don't give a shit. That's not even the point.

I really enjoyed Firefly. Sad it got cancelled. Have mixed feelings about how the film wrapped things up. However, I don't think airing it out of order killed it. I think fans like to tell themselves that so they could blame "dumb executives" rather than the series itself, which was expensive, quirky, and just not mainstream enough to get the sort of audience for it to pay for itself.

Good heavens, I knew that Keanu was sad, but I didn't realize that the sandwich incident was a suicide attempt.

The -entire- point of a patent is to stop (or otherwise receive compensation for) "legitimate competition." A patent means "I invented this, only I can use it or lease/sell it."

The patent system is the cold war. Most of the time, large companies have a patent war chest potent enough to discourage patent lawsuits. No one wants mutually-assured destruction. The ones who get screwed are the smaller companies (Latin America/Eastern Europe) who don't have a war chest they can use to fend off the bigger companies. So they get pushed around a lot. The exception would be the patent trolls. Like a terrorist cell that just got their hands on a nuke, the patent troll doesn't have anything other than the patent, so they don't particularly care about retaliation.

This is not a Slashdot-friendly sentiment, and I'm feeling dirty for just suggesting it, but why isn't a patent troll entitled to patent enforcement? The original patent filer sold it. They got compensated. Why is it better if the original patent holder sues another company rather than they sell it to someone else, and that person/company does the suing? The original filer sold the patent and received the value of it, including the value of settlements if another company infringed.

It's unfair that this was nominated down. I love insults that are totally nonsensical, yet brilliant.

Google is not going to care overly what problems go on beyond Google. You can yammer on about common public spaces, but if a private entity doesn't want to host content, forcing them to would be a great violation of their rights -- certainly a greater rights violation than that of the blogs losing their home.

I think we've seen, over and over again throughout history, that that is not the case. Humanity will recover, there is nothing that can irreversibly throw it into the Dark Ages.

The stock market is interested in success, nothing more, nothing less. Your definition and my definition of a "good company" might include something about social responsibility or not committing evil actions, but the stock market is in favor of those only so far as it doesn't threaten earnings, as most investors are not interested in the company or its employees or the stories behind them. Those companies are investments to them and are treated as such.

Non-shareholders have no stake, and the company is not set up to benefit them. The company won't try to harm them... as long as doing so does not harm the bottom line of the only people who matter -- the shareholders (and regulators... and law enforcement, the only folks who make the system not entirely Darwinian).

That's not unusual, the top 25 is often skewed by very recent releases. By default, it should probably edit out any film released in the last year; over time, the rankings get more accurate, while shortly after release it's skewed by fan boy votes.

"Reasonable prices" has never really been an Apple selling point.

Pretty much all modern cars work that way already. To do any real work inside the car, you need access to the electronic system which is only accessible through special machines controlled by the manufacturer. The amount of work that independent mechanics can accomplish without becoming manufacturer-certified is pretty slim.

Oh, the hood opens... to reveal another hood that doesn't. Or more accurately, it would feature a flat metallic mass that you can't really do anything with (like a "black box"). Which is pretty much how modern cars work where it's expected the user will not do any maintenance beyond changing the oil and inflating the tires.

But isn't the employee still bound to the contract he signed in Massachusetts? California can't invalidate other states' contract laws.