I've got an X series (X1 carbon) I like as well, if you want a smaller/lighter notebook. Only thing I don't like is the ssd size options aren't as good as apples. Lenovo should really offer 512 and 768g ssd options.

I suspect when they say consumers won't be able to download the operating system they mean google won't be providing a package for end users, nor will it support installation.

As for the os itself, I wonder if it'll support native client or not...i suspect so, it might not be half bad at the low end of the netbook market, which seems to be where they are aiming.

Pretty much this. A closer comparison to these patent claims would be openbsd's systrace w/ priv escalation, rather than sudo. Even that's not quite the same thing, though, and is primarily designed for a different purpose. They key behind this patent seems to be that the application does not need to be sudo-aware, and invoke it explicitly -- and it just happens passively as a result of a failure due to permissions.

Also, in the patent apps references section, they call out gksudo, sudo, and several other unix tools that are similar to this if you only read the abstract.

Sure, any wow player can take a few hours out of their tuesday morning to watch the movie, as long as it doesn't extend past 11am pst, there's no problem.

Any software developer is going to probably have their work pirated at one time or another. You have to assess whether or not the people downloading it for free are likely customers. Maybe some are, but likely the vast majority are not.

However, pirate bay did not pirate anything, the facilitated the piracy. They played a relatively small role in piracy, it's like suing an irc network for pirating your software, it's a little bit silly once you think about it.