Don't know if I'm miss reading your implication; but Iran is far far from flat.

I only checked out one of those, but it was determined that pilot error was to blame... hardly the fault of the plane.

Does it change any if you see Google Chrome essentially as a free tool that you can download in order to use the Google search engine?

The main difference in the real world is that there are as many US dollars as there are numbers. You're comparing a finite resource with an infinite tool.

Just curious, what did Oracle do to Java? Been out of the Java loop for a while now...

Is SCO still around? Wow.

Patents don't prevent you from using a technology, they prevent you from using a technology royalty free.

You don't need to start a new religion to practice those beliefs: have a look at Gnosticism, which is essentially that, it's probably the most sensible branch of Christianity that ever existed. Of course there aren't that many left these days, after the massacres etc... wikipeida has a good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism#Nature_and_structure_of_Gnosticism

The probably with tape isn't so much the media, it's that you can't find a tape drive old enough to take those old tapes you find.

The first Apple Woz not Jobs ;-)