That's only because console manufacturers typically sell their consoles at a loss with the intention of making their money back from games and accessories. The Playstation 2 and 3, as well as the XBox and XBox 360, and now the Wii-U all were/will be sold below cost price.

This argument is absurd because there are simply so many patents - no small company could possibly be able to search through them to make sure they aren't infringing. I don't know if you have seen this article in which they quote an estimate, made by the American Intellectual Property Law Association, of the total cost if each software company employed enough patent lawyers to check through even a year's worth of software patents, spending only 10 minutes on each: $1.5 trillion, nearly 10% of the US GDP. It would also require 50 times more patent lawyers than the total number currently practising in the US. Although there are presumably less patents on 3D printer technology, the point is still clear: the system is broken because it is generally impractical to be fully aware of every possible patent that you might accidentally violate while developing your product.

In fact the real absurdity of the system is that is allows people to claim ownership over an idea, which they can then use to extort honest people developing their own technology entirely independently. I agree that some sort of protection over copying someone's design can make sense, but there should be no protection against people independently developing something that just so happens to resemble your design.

My point was only that Apple have a monopoly in the tablet market and in my opinion (for what that matters) are abusing their dominance to unfairly deny their customers the ability to choose a competing mapping application. This appears to me to be anticompetitive, much more so even than Microsoft, who, while bundling their browser with Windows, never went as far as actively preventing the installation of a competing browser.

According to this website the Ipad claims 76.4% of the 2012 US tablet market, which is typically large enough to be considered a monopoly in the US (justice.gov). I find myself surprised that Apple do not have a monopoly in the smartphone market considering how many people I see using Iphones in New York.

Well you can feel sorry for me too, as I also cannot see how Microsoft getting fined for pre-loading their web browser in their products while Apple is getting away with not only pre-loading their products with their mapping software but actively preventing you from being able to choose an alternative. If this behaviour is not anti-competitive I don't know what is. Are you arguing that because they produce the hardware they somehow have the right to maintain an unprecedented stranglehold over what the customers can do with said devices?

No idea, but Dotcom, as far as I am aware, is not planning on suing the NZ government; he is actually (at least according to the summary) planning on suing the US government to fund his venture. The poster I was replying to was suggesting that we should not be happy with anyone suing the US government as the money ultimately comes out of the US taxpayers wallet. My point was simply that $400 million, while a lot of money, is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of the war in Afghanistan ($582 billion according to google) and should not be used as an excuse to deny Dotcom justice.

Out of interest, I was under the impression that it is correct English to use 'do' in this context, e.g. "they do, in fact, offer a telephone service...". Perhaps this is something only the English do, or perhaps it is just widely used poor grammar?

I'm sorry, my message was not clear. The service is only dial-out I believe - I use it to connect to the two-hour conference calls at work when I am not in the office, rather than racking up huge cell-phone bills. I think it may be called called Google Voice but I just use it through gmail's web UI (the little phone icon in the contact list on the left). If they do listen in on my calls I expect they have a few suicidally bored employees by now.

The hope of not being dragged into another war in the Middle-East?

Amusingly google do offer a telephone service on which it is free to call any US number - I use this all the time for conference calls.

So all those people in the Free Open Source movement are what exactly?

Is this seriously an issue? The amount of money he is going for is probably less than the cost of one fucking port-a-potty in Afghanistan.

Don't the Yanks love spending their tax dollars on providing 'freedom' (^TM) to people in other countries? Looking at Australia's recent track record its looks like its right about time for a good ole' intervention!

In the UK a 'tariff' in this context means what you guys would call a 'plan'. From Wikipedia: The word comes from the Italian word tariffa "list of prices, book of rates," which is derived from the Arabic ta'rif "to notify or announce."