One of the cardinal rules of contracts is that words are given their ordinary plain meaning. This rule is applied within the context of the transaction. If words have a usual or customary meaning within a particular industry, then that meaning is attributed to the word used. If you want to depart from that rule, you have to provide a definition in the contract.

Hard drive manufacturers got into trouble with this principle when they quietly redefined a megabyte to be equal to 1,000,000 bytes instead of 2^20 bytes like everyone was used to.

If I had AT&T as my service provider, I would be complaining to the Federal Trade Commission alleging this as a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act. I would also be complaining to my state's Attorney General alleging a violation of my state's consumer protection laws.

Isn't Pussy Riot close enough? But they got thrown in jail for saying words.

Really? It's been a while since my history classes, but I thought it was the U.S. ability to manufacture more tanks and ships and trucks and things. The Sherman was outclassed but was sent in much larger numbers. And their bomber's couldn't reach the U.S. factories whereas the German factories were having to move into hollowed-out mountains and such. The Germans had ballistic missles, cruise missles, superior tanks and were on the verge of intercontinental flying-wing bombers.

They also were fighting a two-front war.

Japan put a prototype jet fighter in the air during WWII.

I don't think the Allied Forces had superior tech in WWII.

It says: Hello sweetie!

...that Tim Cook has firmly taken the reins and is going to start running Apple the way he sees fit, with his team - not the team that was there when he took over.

Individual claims in each patent get invalidated. It is quite possible (and typical) for a patent to have some valid claims and some invalid claims. Typically this happens when broader claims are invalidated by prior art that was not located during examination.

The argument is simple and straightforward: The device does not have an inferior solution. It uses OUR (Apple's) solution.

I had a guy a couple of gigs ago that would call me when one of his desktop icons moved a bit. I'm not sure you're exaggerating with the phrasing "would poop themselves".

Also, if you have multiple monitors it's harder to hit the hot spots when you want them and easier to stray onto them when I'm scrolling on my second monitor on the left of my main monitor.

Some questions to you:

Do you use Metro IE?

Do you use the built-in PDF viewer app? Image app? Media app?

I find myself avoiding the Metro apps and instead living on the desktop.

Simple question: Do you use Metro IE or desktop IE?

I'm trying to run Win8, and when I'm living on the desktop I'm okay. But then I try to open up a PDF, media file or image and suddenly the default Metro-based app launches and my desktop and task bar are gone. I haven't yet figured out how to close the Metro app to return to the desktop. I have to alt-tab back to the desktop and then right click in the top-left hotspot to close the Metro app. Instead I am now manually dragging PDFs into Chrome (the desktop version) and right-clicking media files to launch in desktop WMP. (Adobe's PDF reader annoys me, too, so far I am avoiding installing it.)

I've installed Win8 on my main home machine to force myself to get used to it, but I have yet to like anything about Metro. Shutting down or sleeping the computer takes several gestures and clicks.

When I look at the Metro screen my brain wants to explode. The Win7 start menu does a decent job of promoting my commonly used links while allowing me to pin items if I want, but I can also search the start menu, and unlike Metro it will show me apps, files and control panel items in the search results. In Metro I have to move the mouse a lot and click to search files, apps or control panel items. In the Win7 menu I have the option of browsing the hierarchical folder structure, too. In Metro I get the mass of gaudy tiles that make no immediate sense to me and then a bunch of ugly tiles for installed programs and all the items that might have appeared buried in the hierarchy in Win7. I am not liking it yet and haven't yet figured out an advantage for me with Metro.

The second monitor is the desktop with a copy of the task bar. I'm running Win8 preview and living entirely in the desktop, but it's weird when Metro is on one screen and part of the desktop is on another.

Oh, you can configure where the taskbar appears; I have it only on my main monitor now.

Except that you have to make the initial investment, there is always a risk that you will lose, and there is always a risk that although you have been awarded costs, you will not actually be able to collect the money. Early settlement by taking a license provides financial certainty and eliminates the legal risk, which are two things that companies like a hack of a lot more than litigation.

"Highly questionable" doesn't mean the claims are invalid (although they may be). In this context, highly questionable means that the claims either do not fully describe the product or process accused of infringement or can only be characterized as fully covering it through unreasonable ("imaginative") interpretations of the claim terms.

The cases interpreting Section 285 already do this. This legislation is unnecessary.