The more successful and the more money you make in the US, the more you are advantaged by the "commons", which is what taxes pay for.

Not exactly.

Federal taxation exists to take currency out of circulation, thus propping up the value of the remaining notes in circulation.

As such, your taxes don't "pay for" anything except perceived value.

If you have a bunch of notes, those notes become less valuable the more you accumulate.

If you have to destroy, say, 50% of your notes every year, however, and everyone else must do the same ... your remaining notes maintain their value for far longer, although they still become less valuable over a sufficient period of time (inflation).

Most Americans are woefully unaware of the way the Federal Reserve, fiat currency, and our fractional reserve banking system works.

They have an almost infantile notion that they send in a tax check, and that check goes to pay for government services.

The Federal Government never sees your tax money. It goes to the Treasury, which in turn goes to the Fed.

They central bank just want as little money in your hands as possible, because it makes the notes the Fed prints and hands over more valuable.

Exactly. The iPhone has been around for a long time, is insanely popular, and it does not run Flash. There will always be more iPhone and iPod Touch users than iPad users.

This OS and these devices are not new. If these companies were that concerned about iPeople, they would have made the transition to an iPhone OS compatible technology long ago.

By the time the settlement or judgment is made -- assuming Microsoft doesn't go to trial and win -- the damages would probably amount to a few bucks per end-user anyway.

This is why large companies often preferclass action suits over individual suits.

Class action suits mean that, if the company loses, they never have to litigate over the matter again.

If they lose an individual suit, every consumer on the planet is free to chase the same reward the original litigant won, and they are not bound by any $5 off coupon settlements.

It also means that noone else is bound by the outcome, and is free to sue individually. If Microsoft loses the individual suit, you could potentially see 10,000,000 more individual suits using this case as a precedent for an easy win. That would cost MS significantly more money. Lack of class certification COULD be a disaster for Microsoft ... especially if they lose and the award is substantial.

That could be it.

Or maybe people don't feel like joining real life out of High School. Maybe they just want to drink lots of beer, smoke pot from a bong made out of a toilet paper roll, root for the school sports team, and have bitchin' spring break parties while going into debt for the extended vacation.

Then again, maybe it is about all of that altruistic shit.

Anything's possible.