You complain about the "corporate monopolies", but do you just want to replace it with a government monopoly? How is that any better? The only difference is that you'll have completely inept and/or corrupt people running the monopoly, with little or no check on their powers or budget.

Read again, short timeframe, how long do you think it would take to mail them and how long till they get it. Plus from my reading she didn't use a maillist, but, carefully selected them

maybe Apple caved because they want to sell iphones there?

first of all, the same would be true for basically any GPS cell phone. Secondly, banning it will only stop law abiding citizens.... are they afraid of the law abiding citizens or terrorists, I assure you the terrorist does not care about the ban.

They should just bad suicide bombers, and go ahead and make terrorists illegal too. Obviously making things illegal makes them go away so if you outlaw being bad everyone will be good.

because it could eventually kill off Apple, like the first wave of clones almost did. Apple is a hardware manufacturer the software is to boost hardware sales, if they loose the software, it could hurt apple.
now, I am not saying Microsoft is behind it, but that would be a possible motivation.

The problem with your example is simply
that is Microsoft's business model. They know what they are in for
they sell their software to run on basically any computer.

Now call Microsoft and tell them that your vista doesn't work on your 386 with 128mb of ram and see what they tell you

I am sure it was no accident that when they were on trial for abusing monopoly power they suddenly started spending tons of money on lobbying congress.

At least we know that they did, and it was not hidden from view.

The problem is this is public money being spent, and they should be willing to divulge this information to clear up any ideas people might get concerning government collusion with a large corporation. They are free to use whomever the please, but the practices they use in determining who to contract with should be a matter of publicly available policy.

They need to protect businesses equally, and if it appears they may be protecting a certain business over others, it does make it look as if there might be a conflict of intrests with the public good.

I am not saying that is the case, just that they should make it clear that it is not the case.

in other news I know a bunch of people who eat living scorpions for breakfast, they must therefore be much better than captain crunch.

Just because people you know use google docs instead for open office doesn't mean that it is better or more used.

If you are in the apple store and say every computer I see is a mac, would you say noone must use windows anymore?

sometimes its like eating a bowl of sawdust without the milk.

I have had problems with it when it didn't like my browser, and like right now, I have a bad cable splitter in my attic that I have to get to this afternoon so I have no internet at home because of low signal and bad noise.

and the hummer definitely wins cause it could roll over top of a prius without slowing down.
it could also go into areas a prius would just be stuck
of course if you need to get through a space less than like 10 feet wide the hummer is straight out.

This is a false comparison because the apps were meant for different things, and don't really compete, well at least not in my opinion. I have used both, and for different reasons/projects.

funny, the first thing that comes to mind for me is monty python.

I don't think unions are the answer, maybe what we need is an association like lawyers and doctors have, there would need to be legislation to make sure programmers would have to be members to be hired somewhere....but that could lead to corruption as well and might still bite us in the ass.
probably better to have non-competes made illegal, or force companies to continue your pay until the non-compete is up or they let you out of it.

you are correct, however in his defense the declaration is the document outlining the principles that the constitution was founded on.