How can it be payback? The lawsuit is being brought by a private law firm and it was certified as a class-action case by a Reagan appointee.

iPod Touchs run iOS (how else would they be able to run most of the same apps as the iPhone?)

Plenty of financial collapses have preceded the current one without the benefit of Black-Scholes. What did they, and the current collapse, all have in common? Excess credit.

How do you know how many times you've been exposed to BSE contaminated meat? How do you know how many times people throughout the world have been exposed over the last 30 years?

Only if IT is really important to them.

And Apple is guilty of nothing IF they secured permission for the footage before hand. (And if they didn't, someone representing someone in that group would have sued them by now.)

Christopher Hitchens nerd factor was about zero.

is interesting advice coming from and MBA.

You're citing a California Supreme Court decision which, although it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, is not relevant in this case (see http://www.davelippman.com/LawoftheMall.html.) That decision is also irrelevant here because the artist's actions occurred inside the Apple store, not in the (possibly) public space outside the store.

Do you really believe that Apple's contract for displays with Samsung is week-to-week or even month-to-month? And even if Samsung could and did stop supplying Apple with LCDs, do you really believe they could quickly find enough buyers to purchase those LCDs at the same price in this economy?

And if I leave my phone behind when I walk to the corner coffee shop to do a little reading, what then?

And Random House, HarperCollins, etal. are what, chopped liver?

There's no reason carbon taxes couldn't be made revenue neutral by cutting taxes elsewhere. Tax the bads instead of the goods as Joseph Stiglitz says.

They aren't insuring the devices, they're refusing to recognize them as medical devices and thereby refusing to cover them.

...it probably takes almost a gallon of oil to get a gallon of oil out of the ground

Not even close. Currently it's in the neighborhood of 10-15:1. It will eventually approach 1:1, but when it does there'll be no point in pumping it out of the ground (for energy at least.)