Is anybody behind these "free" codecs willing to indemnify the implementers against submarine patents that surface once the codecs gain enough market-share to be worth litigation? There's no way anyone can know if Ogg, Theora, WebM etc are not infringing (or can be alledged to infringing) somebody's IP until it's tested in court. And even then... I note that Apple has been to bat for its developers against patent trolls. Anyone else?

purchased in a protected format behind
Apple's music hasn't been protected for years and even when it was Apple provided a method for stripping the protection off.
Perhaps you are thinking of "Plays for Sure" or its incompatible stable-mate Zune.
Or even worse, the "rented" music from subscription services.

You've only been saying this since MS lost the top slot.
A year or so ago it was all "MS is teh biggerz!!!"
Now it's "Meh?".
Nobody is fooled.

Now all of the tax payers get to pay for these iPads, even though many of them won't get used.
The same applies to nuclear weapons etc. Don't worry. The iPads will eventually be sold. In the mean time the college retains ownership and will probably use them for several years.

In Australia everything is either compulsory or illegal.

Except whining, apparently.
Or are you saying it's compulsory?
As an Australian I get really fed up by people who feel it necessary to parade their angst as my opinion. If you're not happy just leave. There are people queueing up at Christmas Island who'd be glad to take your place.

I doubt the problem is really pranksters.
There has been a campaign for decades to close or at least move Sydney airport. It sits in an inner-city suburb that predates the airport.
Every election sees both federal and state governments promising to do something about it.
Spend some time in a suburb like Rockdale and you'll have to get used to large aircraft passing at chimney height all day and most of the night. At other airports with similar problems aircraft have been found with bullet holes in them. So I think the laser crew are being most restrained.

MS has a very small, nominal, holding in Apple and several other tech companies. They sold the $150Million in non-voting stock as soon as they were allowed (around 2002 IIRC). The punitive purchase was in settlement of the IP suit Apple had against MS for using Quicktime code in Windows. Jobs, on his return to Apple, wanted to clear the decks of all the cross-suing between Apple and MS.

How long have Apple been using .dll files? I thought they were Windows-only.

Lets not forget that there were many other computer manufactures around at the time producing hardware superior to anything apple was doing and most of them went on to be far far more successful than apple. Care to name one that's still in business? Every product they make has a competing products that are superior, cheaper and more popular. Some sort of facts? Apart from rabid fanboy trolling? It's all marketing. There were smartphones better than the iphone long before the iphone was released. They're called blackberries. Now, after the fact, there are even more... and again, they are better, cheaper, and more popular. Which is why RIM have been assiduously copying everything that Apple does. Even a "tablet" now. Go back to 4chan/g/.

Which is why, where I live, you are given all that stuff, including X-rays, to take home and keep. I have a stash of X-rays, colonoscopy shots, gastroscopy shots etc in my study. Maybe I should frame them.

Like the first female President of the United States wouldn't be news? Like the first black President of the United States wasn't news?

This explains why there is so little astro-turfing over at the piece about the MS phones. All the MS trolls are in here trashing the Macbook Pro announcement. I suppose that, with dwindling resources, it becomes a matter of priorities.

Does the name Mark Papermaster mean anything to you? How about P. A. Semi?

So what platform are you on? Windows? That's not closed much. Just have to ask uncle Bill if you're allowed to put some more RAM in it. Can't use it until he says you can.

Actually, it's Microsoft and HTC who are jointly in competition with Apple. Microsoft's relationships with its partners are very complex and, in some cases, very unhappy.