I know that some of the devices on that list infringed based on design, but others were based on software patents. For example, the spring-back (the way a document or page behaves when you try to drag past the end of the data) is patented.

That's a matter of opinion.

I went from Palm to Windows Mobile to Apple to PalmOS to Android. Apple absolutely delivers the best experience, followed by PalmOS, then Android.

I hated Android. Seriously, with a passion. I loved the idea--a modern, open-source phone where I could install anything I wanted. In practice, I never found anything worth installing that wasn't in the market, the free apps were all ad-laden (taking up valuable screen real estate and slowing things down), the source was incomplete (drivers) and the phone vendor tried to lock the phone (and claimed that overriding it would void the warranty.) I couldn't even find paid versions of some classes of app that I wanted in order to avoid the ads because free apps are a race-to-the-bottom (on both platforms.) Paid apps seemingly have a hard time competing when there's any free version out there that isn't just a demo. The scrolling was horrible--I felt like I was using gestures to perform unrelated actions rather than directly controlling the on-screen elements. This probably sounds like a minor gripe, but UX is a rather important part of any design. I understand most of the UX is fixed in ICS. Maybe I'll give it a shot when my contract is up. Probably not, though--I'm practically locked into the ecosystem such that I the cost/benefit skews more in Apple's favor.

Regardless, due to the customizations, philosophical differences between vendors, and varying degrees of carrier influence, it's really not fair to compare Apples to Androids. You really need to compare specific phones (and specific OS versions). You might say Android is better, but I could show you phones being sold in stores today which offer a vastly worse experience and are as locked down as the phones being sold by Apple today. At the top end (best Android phone in all categories compared to best iPhone), things get tighter, but the price also get closer, if not exactly the same (16GB GS3 and the 16GB iPhone 4s cost the same.)

MS negotiated with the infringers and both parties came up with a deal to license the patents. Every. Single. Time.

Apple and Samsung couldn't come to an agreement. We can't know what Microsoft would have done at this point. Apple had three choices--ask for damages in the amount of the profits made by the infringing products, ask for an injunction, or drop the suit.

That's easy to say when you aren't being threatened with 15 years in prison. I'd imagine that innocent people plead guilty when they can't afford a good lawyer, or when they think that they are likely to be found guilty anyway and the plea deal is considerably better than the maximum sentence.

When I type "appropriate" into Google to get its definition, it doesn't say anything about depriving the original owner.

Well, it's stealing by the second definition here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/steal

If we're talking about Dropbox's general security IQ, how about the bug that allowed anyone to access any account with any password?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-passwords-optional-for-four-hours/

And before anyone freaks out and thinks that the NSA is reading their e-mail, keep in mind that they have to be very selective about how and when they use results from their quantum computer. This is similar to breaking ENIGMA--you want the enemy to think that their codes are secure, so you don't suddenly counter all of their plans perfectly. You certainly don't turn this on e.g. classical organized crime, as that could give away your capabilities on a considerably less valuable target.

Then the summary was worded terribly.

Nah, as others have pointed out, what you do is run the Shor's algorithm, then verify it. If it's wrong, run Shor's again. If it's right, you know you have the factorization. In this way, you can be 100% sure that you've correctly solved the problem, even if Shor's only provides the correct answer some percentage of the time.

What I don't fully understand is why 48% makes this impractical. Having not read TFA, the only way I can imagine that would be the case is if somehow not having exactly a 50% chance of getting the correct answer means that the algorithm doesn't scale correctly. Even only being correct 10% of the time would mean that you could break RSA much faster than you can without quantum computers. I suspect that was some bad editorializing.

What wouldn't be practical under these conditions is factoring larger numbers. You need more qubits for that. Nevertheless, this is a nice stepping stone towards high-qubit computing.

Actually, grade-school children can factor really large prime numbers in their heads. The trick is factoring the product of two really large prime numbers in your head without knowing either of the primes. You can get two of the factors (one and the product) but neither of those is particularly useful to the problem at hand.

Just FYI, it's the product of two secret primes. Product is for multiplication, while sum is for addition.

But the jurors are the ones who would have to decide that. So again, it's all up to the jury. And they don't come back with a verdict of "nullification"--they need only come back with the verdict that nullification would imply.

Programmers from the 70s would laugh at that statement.

That means Windows is a better product than Linux, right? Same for OS X?