" they have something nobody else has, they know it, their customers know it, and the customers pay. Bullies, one and all, with none to push back."

And you said they were terrible at marketing. ;-)

Marketing is not about creating a positive attitude, it is about creating a positive incentive. That can be a positive attitude, or it can be the edge of a cliff.

or are they facts, and not covered by copyright at all?

Sales and Marketing.

If they were worth what they charge they would be able to get their payments whether the client liked it or not.

But there are not other ways to *buy* the product from the label, and the labels contracts with Apple fix the prices for other purchasers with them being a party to the negotiations.

" If they aren't colluding with other companies"

Except they already are, so we can skip this clause. They are making contracts with their suppliers that fix the prices for other people who are not a party to the contract negotiations.

From the article:
"thereby setting a new *Swiss* endurance record for unmanned solar-powered flight, and improving upon the previous internal record (ASL’s Sky Sailor) by a over an hour."
(emphasis mine)

So the summary overstates the record by most of a planet.

Two cloudy days in a row.

They would have to flip up like the seat bottom to fit them in: http://www.flyertalk.com/wp-co...

"this means not sharing arm rests with people."

You have not looked closely enough at where each passenger's parts go:

http://cdn.travalliancemedia.c...

'It's harder to accomplish this in a "air conditioned" air terminal'

Is actually not harder, it's just that no one can be bothered to do it if the terminal space offsets the airframe utilization. Also, while it does reduce complains of boarding/alighting time it increases complaints due to the walking and/or bussing.

If you look at old photographs of LAX, from before the build the ground level connectors buildings, planes would pull up parallel to the sides of the rotundas and a jetway connects both in front and behind the wing. Some of the west remote gates still operate like this, where a very large plane actually connects to two remote gates. Currently, LAX TBIT has gates with multiple jetways that can meet multiple doors in front of the wing as is done in many other places with large planes with high-prices premium traffic. (The jetwways are often split between first/business/economy classes.)

Some airports AMS and even little ALB have dual jetways where one extends over the wing. However, AMS has had incidents where the jetway has struck the upper surface of the wing causing damage.

"Airports would need several cabins per flight per aircraft model, plus room to store them, plus machinery to handle them..."

All of this this actually exists. Just pack all of the passengers into LD2s.

"Why does the USA have such ludicrous damages amounts?"

Because we have companies pulling in insane revenues. iPhones alone are on the order of $100 billion per year, and the infringement was claimed for multiple products for multiple years.

As any that read past the inflammatory headline will know the judge did not throw out the verdict. The ruling of patent infringement still stands.

As such, the case is being sent back to the lower court solely to rehear the damages portion, i.e.not further argument about whether or not infringement occurred will be considered there.

"But of course that won't stop someone with a spreadsheet & a mission from finding a correlation & implying a sinister causation."

You didn't even need a spreadsheet.