Godaddy is the current registrar used when signing up for apps for business. Google provides a clean interface that automates most of the tasks, and takes no money either (although they do get you to open a checkout account to process purchases fm godaddy). Wonder if they are working on a switch?

Have you seen the box office numbers for this holiday season?
http://boingboing.net/2011/12/25/let-there-be-sequels.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/25/idUS261492126020111225

We are negatively reinforcing this behavior

The moment their masters find out what they gave away instead of selling (it doesn't take a lot of persuasion if you know the correct marketing speak) you're going to see a lot of corporate turnover. That's why, even though you're not Sony, as long as you have to answer to them, the taint will get to your product sooner or later. And that's a good reason to avoid buying anything attached to their brand.

Then they don't get to feel the pain immediately, before their law comes into effect

Just hypothesizing, but what would happen if Google didn't renew their contract with Mozilla, allowing Microsoft to burn $300 million a year, while expecting users to change their search provider based purely on the expectation that their product was stronger than Bing search?
Additionally, Firefox would take some flames from users who would be unexpectedly switched away on their next product update. I doubt that Mozilla could change the existing search provider without people noticing or complaining that their rights were invaded, and they would be forced to do so because of the contract. Mozilla may essentially be forced to accept Google on their terms, whatever they were, and turn down a higher bid from Microsoft and Yahoo, simply based on the difficulty on making the switch alone.

If they call you first, aren't they soliciting a reply?

I compare what Google is doing to archaeology. In many cases, the rights holders of the books that they are copying do not give consent in the way that King Tut did not give consent to have his tomb opened and his treasures taken and displayed for profit.

I'd consider it an ideal solution but for 1 issue: Individual departments are poor at managing their own IT risk. If a chargeback item is already purchased, but costs are high for the department, then they may consider alternatives that they perceive are cheaper, even though the resource is already available as a whole, and in the end you buy the same resource twice. Departments become little islands on their own, since the perception is that if they take on the cost, they have the ability to choose their own vendor.
An example: My company has a subsidiary that is trying to save on their overall budget, and we chargeback for email storage and license usage (exchange). As a result, they have started using personal email to do company business, despite our warnings not to do so. They start buying consumer hardware with 1 year warranty and Windows Home editions, convinced that the savings are worth the lack of management capability. Issues that appear may not be addressed until quite a few quarters down, so up-front savings trump long-term infrastructure decisions.
How would you address these issues?

Instead of spending their own resources to dispute the trademark, they ought to consider if the trademark covers their own domain of application - similarly to how Apple Inc and Apple corps are both trademarks built on a single English word, but technically don't cover the same area - one is a trademark on an IT brand, the other is a trademark on a music store, and one should not be able to confuse one for the other (although they have fought over the name, needlessly really). Is LibLime asking them to C&D the use of the name? Can they coexist without confusing their client base over each other's existence? Are they fretting over the problem unnecessarily?

Slaves were property of other people, yet they received the inalienable right to exist for themselves. So you can, nuh-uh.

Try looking for a powerbook G5. Go on, go find it. The G5 series was released for every computer that Apple had out there except for the all-crucial notebook, and iirc one was promised, but never delivered, as it failed to perform reasonably well in a mobile setup. That was one of the nails in the coffin that was the relationship that was Apple and the PowerPC line of chips. PPCs are behind, in that they couldn't deliver a low power cpu in time.

Hopefully enough cases finally go to court that the patent office is fined for misconduct - they are currently just pushing the responsibilities of their job onto the courts, transferring their backlog into someone else's problem

On the contrary, I think this is an excellent time to bring out new technology on products that the market already wants. Every iteration of a smartphone or tablet needs to bring out something different, something new, in order for people to ditch perfectly functional gadgets and get their hit of the latest coolness. In the end, it all boils down to how well you do your sales pitch, but underlying it is the assumption that you actually have something new to sell.

Wait why are we talking about submariners here? Were there submarines deployed into the Middle East?

Singapore here. If Dan Rather has been reporting that the teaching profession is held in high esteem here, then Dan Rather hasn't really been checking his facts. Teaching is a government job, which, like all government jobs, are a good source of steady income in good times and bad. Like all government jobs, there is an incredible amount of red tape to cut through, and half their work is administrative rather than teaching. Also, like all government jobs, in a good economy there will be a lack of fresh blood (since it pays well but not that well, and the workload is heavy), has generally lower bonuses as compared to a banking job, but better than those of, say, a manufacturing job, and is full of colleagues only there to collect their paycheck. The government does make efforts to innovate and spends money and resources in the latest trends and techniques, but there has been criticism that they don't stick with it long enough to produce results before they start chasing the next trend. Some teachers enjoy their job, some hate their job. Personally I don't see how teaching can be that different than in America. You teach because you love to teach, otherwise you're going to be a bad teacher.