Actually, it isn't. I explained before, according to Michael v First Chicago Corp. Illinois, 1985, "A finder of property acquires no rights in mislaid property, is entitled to possession of lost property against everyone except the true owner, and is entitled to keep abandoned property.". Therefore, unless the true owner comes to claim it from you after having tracked you down, and you refuse to return the wallet, it becomes theft. If you return it, or the owner doesn't turn up, it's nothing, since you're entitled to possession of the lost wallet against everyone but the original owner.

Ethics is optional, and often overrated. Legality is what matters. Welcome to reality.

That's ... actually a rather nice way of summing up just what makes most people law-abiding, apart from the threat of punishment.
As for faith in mankind? Personally, I've lost that a long time ago, so it wouldn't be any surprise to me if I returned such a wallet and were turned away with barely a thanks. All the more reason for me to keep it, even if I'm enforcing the stereotype. My needs and interests come first for me, after all. And I assume the same for every rational person.

As far as I know, however, no rules state that you must try to locate the original owners. Given that my knowledge of US law is not exactly in-depth, I may stand corrected, though...

Let me start from the end of your comment, your example. Frankly, aside from her family and friends, nobody cares if you don't help her. Oh sure, people say you're an asshole, and you should help her, take her to the hospital, etc. But tell them to do it themselves, and they make up an excuse and hurry on: Bystander Effect. On the other hand, raping her is a crime unto itself, punishable by law. That's where your analogy goes astray, in that you attempt to substitute a clearly illegal act for a legal, if unethical one.

Which leads me on to the first part of your comment. Given that the wallet was lost, it left possession of its owner. According to Michael v First Chicago Corp. Illinois, 1985, "A finder of property acquires no rights in mislaid property, is entitled to possession of lost property against everyone except the true owner, and is entitled to keep abandoned property.". Meaning unless the original owner tracks you down (which, let's face it, is quite unlikely in any moderately sized city, let alone a metropolis) and reclaims his wallet, it is, indeed, yours to keep. Whether it was ethical to keep or not.
The fact that there was contact information inside is quite irrelevant, given that the true owner has to claim the wallet from you to enforce his possession, in which case you must yield it. Sure, people might think even less of you for not even attempting to return it, but that doesn't make it any less legal.

One is a crime, the other is a legitimate, if unethical action. If there's money to be made, ethics may take a backseat.

To put it into a better context for you, it's like finding a lost wallet on the ground: you should turn it in to the police, but frankly, aside from the owner, who cares if you don't? You won't get punished for taking it, but you might not get rewarded for returning it, whereas if you take it, the reward is guaranteed. After all, "Finders keepers, losers weepers!".

Just a matter f switching the right genes/bits, it would seem (based on how fast we're accomplishing things deemed impossible with the human body before)...

First step along the road to creating the Solanum virus?

If the game is offline, it could just as easily unload portions of the map that are outside of line-of-sight, or a given radius from the character. Events taking place in the unloaded areas that impact the visible ones may be abstracted away to use less memory, with terrain and mob states saved and loaded as the player approaches them again. That should take care of repetition as well as keeping the memory use constant.

Wrong reference there. Eh, does nobody watch Doctor Who?

Little boxes?
"The little boxes will make you angry!"

It certainly would, for turning the equivalent of an FMJ round into a shotgun shell. My vote is for a big-ass chemical thruster, those still have the greatest specific impulse we can muster on short notice.

Aside from Google Reader not being a definitive source, since it's only an integrator for RSS feeds specified by the user, and let's not go anywhere near Facebook as a news source, it's quite possible. I'm not following any of these, and I'm pretty sure there's a sizable percentage of the tech community who's the same way. The idea of his setup being an independent achievement is quite conceivable, for me at least.

According to Elixir, the AK8973 magnetometer in my Nexus S, from Asahi Kasei Microdevices has a resolution of 0,0625uT with a temporal resolution of 16667us. With an extensive enough database, that should be enough to distinguish between types of devices at the very least. Differentiating between individual devices or makes/models, now that's a whole other can of worms. It may or may not be possible, but on this one, I'm leaning to go with you and say that such in-depth profiling is indeed impossible.

I'm replying to you in particular because it pisses me off when people accuse me of giving up principles or points I have taken.

I'm not saying "no big deal. sucks anyway.", I only revised my argument to accommodate my belief that patented inventions should present a leap in thought not reproducible by an outsider, which this patent clearly fails to do, as a complete stranger arrived at the same conclusion independently.

I may prefer Android over Apple, but I'm most certainly not a 'fanboi'.

I think people are interpreting my words the wrong way purposely. The Apple patent is not innovative enough as in not making a leap, logical or intuitive, that others cannot make. This is proven by a hacker, without access to a multi-million dollar research budget, who arrived at the same conclusion. Note that this does not belittle his efforts in any way, rather, it's a praise to him and it's belittling Apple's research department for being matched by a tinkerer.

I believe that the only inventions that should be patentable are those that are were born of such a leap of thought that they demonstrably cannot be reproduced without access to the original research material and/or reverse engineering the device itself. It is on this belief that I base my argument of "not innovative", since the hackaday article clearly shows that a simple hacker can independently arrive at the same solution Apple arrived at, without accessing the Apple research documentation or reverse-engineering a prototype (if prototypes even exist of this device).