Like Enron? Or Arthur Anderson?

I had never seen a black rectangle with rounded edges before the iPhone! ... ...well unless you count the TV I had as a child. And the TV I have now. And probably half the electronics in my house.

The whole "trade dress" concept seems a bit silly to me in the first place but ti is beyond stupid when they can claim something as simple as their rounded rectangular design as being "trade dress".

You've missed an important detail. They're not comparing the stock valuation to the assets alone. They're comparing the stock valuation to what the company would sell for if purchased. When you sell a company, you're also selling the "good will" and other value inertia things like brand familiarity, the value that will come from having the company in the future, etc.

So the fact that she actually did those things makes talking about them political? Or does pretending she didn't do them and talking around them make the conversation political? Hillary-centric submissions that wish away her behavior are the politicized ones.

And if I don't? If I find it's a far simpler business model to just let everyone wander up, and use (or ignore) web content without having to handle account management and transaction fees (and fraud, etc) per visitor, and just deal instead with a much smaller universe of ad agencies to fund the site ... so? All you have to do is walk away. You don't have to see it. You don't have to care about it, and you don't have to wish that it would die. You can just stick with the web sites you prefer. Still not clear on what your problem is with that.

Since you don't actually do anything for a living, how do you bind other people into being your slaves and giving you food, housing, and the rest? Genuinely curious. Please be specific.

In the meantime, what is your specific problem with someone playing the roll of tending to the hosting environment that supports other people's web sites? You seem to think it's sinister to charge people for the professional service of managing that part of their IT landscape ... but if everyone did it for themselves (exactly the same thing, and paid for it in having less time to do other things, instead), then that would be noble, and OK with you? Right.

If I thought you were part of my audience, or (more importantly, for me) the audience that my clients' customers intend to cultivate, and you weren't already aware of their content, products, or services, then I'd have something to think about. This isn't the venue for that, even if you were the slightest bit sincere.

What? I'm the who foots the bill if I want something, want to risk resources to make something, or make poor choices. The people with whom I'm debating here want what I and/or my clients do for free, but also think that the source of money that provides it to them should be cut off, all because they think - among other things - that it costs "$5 to run a web site." It's possible you don't actually know what "entitled" means, especially in this context.

Hilarious.

Just with other things on which you're commenting, it's clear you've never actually been party to any sort of actual, real business activity.

Not worth the trouble. But it is worth pointing out that you're a whiny leech. In my experience, people who conduct themselves that way in one area do so in other areas, as well. Which is why this sort of thing especially matters. People with a sense of entitlement tend to want others to do everything for them, not just create and host web content. I can tell you're one of those people.

What the hell are you talking about? The mutual decision by Pepsi and the web site's operator to include some of Pepsi's material doesn't obligate you in any way to buy Pepsi products. If Pepsi does, or doesn't sell some more of their products because of their ad, that's a matter for their internal marketing people to weigh and live with. But the person who runs the ad-carrying web site has already completed their business with Pepsi. Not that you don't already understand this (surely), and you're just trolling. Not sure who you think you're fooling, really.

Really. That's what you think is involved in running a business? In producing enough content for the people who do so to actually earn a living? Nobody's entitled to a living, but that doesn't mean you should deliberately kid yourself that the overhead involved in running a high profile web presence is ... $5.

Really? I run web sites. For a living. One of them involves two rack cabinets full of equipment, and more that's mirrored a thousand miles away. There are about 40 servers involved (some physical, some virtual), redundant storage, physical security, substantial redundant power and network operations, and people involved who absolutely do not want the back end databases to live on "the cloud" or operate in a massive multi-tenant platform like AWS or Azure. Let me guess ... you think that all probably costs something really high, like $20 a month, right?

And no, a browser/server protocol like HTTP doesn't trump copyright considerations, trademarks, or other terms of use. Just like the protocol for opening the door to a retail store ("push, with hand, walk in") doesn't grant you license to walk out with whatever you like once you've done so.

Just pointing out that you're a whiny douchebag leach, and a hypocrite. You're the one who has to live with yourself. Everyone else just has to work a little harder to make up for your sense of entitlement, that's all. Please don't vote or reproduce. Thanks.

Which means you don't even visit web sites that rely on advertising to cover the content creation and hosting costs. Which means you really have nothing to complain about, right? Right.

It didn't. You're just oddly confused (or pretending to be) over who is consuming a web site's content, and who is writing checks to the web site's operator. If you just visit and slurp up content, you're consuming that content. If you're doing business with that web site's operator (say, buying some ad space from them), you're a customer. You know, the one who foots the bill for the service you in turn get.