Of course this is a good idea, why do you think every mini-van in america comes with DVD players and TV's. It's the easiest way to get kids to stop fighting.
I'm guessing that a defense contract that's 4 times it's initial budget and 10 years late doesn't have the time to worry about filtering out the non-classified data to give to scientists. IR data is very very noisy so it's pretty difficult to separate out the parts you care about vs the noise.
What about basic trademark infringement?
It is for sure illegal for another company to pretend to be some other company, especially through the use of its name. Who's to say that the same can be said of a device. That the device is made by Palm is pretending to be a device made by Apple and hence infringing upon the trademark by Apple and devaluing Apple's brand.
My vote is that there will be a lawsuit, how it ends up is anybody's guess.
zwei2stein writes: I found this question with far reaching implications in offtopic section of one forum:
My economics teacher is forcing us to give up all of our work for the semester. Every page of notes, and paper must be turned over to her to be destroyed to prevent future students from copying it. My binder was in my backpack, and she went into my backpack, and took my binder. Is that legal?
Besides of issue with private property invasion which was trigger of that post, there is much more important question:
Can teacher ask student not to retain knowledge? Can school command pupils to become ignorant once again? How does IP law relate to teaching? Whose property are those notes?
Haven't you ever seen the documentary "Lost" on TV on ABC. About 30 people survived when Oceanic flight 815 crashed off the coast of Australlia. What I can't figure out is how these people get their documentary broadcast but nobody has been able to find the island they are stranded on for 2 years.