"spent eight years slaving over a bottle opener that quickly and neatly extracts all the cork along with the wire restraint and foil wrapping from a champagne bottle."

Hardly sounds like an easy job, or much like a buggy whip.

By the way, NZ law specifically excludes inventions that have been patented elsewhere, so patenting 'extrapolate one obscure datapoint to generalise millions' is probably blocked by the yankee precedent.

Beautifully said sir. I applaud your erudite and insightful analysis of the situation, and pray that many will follow example of pecuniary support to a just cause.

What more precautionary measures could Megaupload have taken? They are a non-USA company, operating outside the USA, with executives living outside the USA. And even if they had a spare 25 petabytes of storage for co-location, somewhere other than outside the USA(???), the USA would have seized that as well.

How does "acquitted" make it a grey area?

Most of the best investigative journalism has been thru some form of misrepresentation. Like the journalist pretending to be mad to expose the horrors of early twentieth century asylums...

Ok, I'll bite.

Christ is an inspirational person with some really interesting teachings, but not the Son of God.

Bullsh*t!

Inalienable rights are the basic requirements for all people to have a reasonable chance of enjoying their lives within society.

Religion has absolutely FA to do with it.

Hah! Being America's friend is much better than being his enemy ... or ally.

Etymological Fallacy.

Just because the 3 religions started from the same point does NOT mean they arrived at the same destination.

"I know we're supposed to hate the commies..."

As most Americans define it, this means hating most other countries in the world.

The Yanks are so lame in their security assessments: did drugs 30 years ago; not a communist; has human failings. None of these matter, being communist would actually make him more useful to a strong central government in some roles.

How about: totally committed to Apple; completely inappropriate for the job; polarizing figure; much more useful as an entrepreneur; will make the best damn product in the world and alienate 75% of the people doing so.

Speaking as a longtime Apple fanboi and iPad owner:

Whoops, bwahahahahaha!

Oh well, At least Apple only missed a trademark in one country (Taiwan+China are technically the same country). With a trademark as simple as "iPad", that's pretty good.

For comparison wasn't there a company that accidentally infringed Ireland?

Used to stop speeding driver in 10, 9, 8,...

Apple and Microsoft cross-licensed many years ago.

The current problems are from a predominately computer industry company moving into the telecoms sector as a predominately telecoms sector company moves into the computer industry. The 2 different ways of doing business, cross-licensing versus common standards over expensive infrastructure, are clashing spectacularly.

Which one will win? I don't know but I hope software patents die.

This is a silly argument: PCs have programs, they should be sold in ProgStores.

Apple has always talked about Applications: even the file type was APPL.

Partly I'm sure this was an in-joke (is APPL short for APPLication or APPLe?) but it's in their programming and UI design books, the file system, and the Mac API.

Meanwhile PCs have the "Programs" menu and the "Program Files" directory. API-wise there is no program concept that I know of, only windows. So an App store for a PC or Windows tablet would be silly and confusing.

Google can call the android executables what it likes but if it uses Programs or Applications then it's copying Microsoft or Apple respectively. Android Units maybe?