A patent chest isn't like a sword, in that you can't just swing it at people you don't like. You have to, you know, like have an argument that your opponent is infringing on one or more of your patents.

As for your talk of a defensive patent pool, the difficulty of this type approach is that is generally requires patent holders to surrender some control over their patens and if the patents in question are ones that bring in revenue through licensing, then companies are generally reluctant to do this.

It also may have escaped your notice but Google have shown absolutely no interest in assisting companies who are being menaced by Microsoft and Apple so the test here will be waiting to see if Google will revisit this 'silent partner' now they have a sword. Exactly how sharp that sword is, remains to be seen.

Apple most certainly didn't have a "huge pile of cash" back in March 2001 when OSX launched, OSX pre-dated the iPod (September 2001) which took a couple of years to restore Apple's depleted cash reserves. When OSX was introduced, it was far was decent and the polished product that OSX is today, it was highly maligned and Apple had to give away 10.1 Puma for free.

You are seeing parallels where there are none and your recollection of Apple history is terrible.

How is this an 'upside' for Wii, Xbox and PC owners - unless of course they are petty, small-minded people who take some perverse pleasure in somebody else not being able enjoying themselves?

Indeed, and the labels have already conceded DRM, which consumers don't like - I never liked it and I was onboard with iPod and iTunes from the 2nd gen iPod. I think we're at the point where labels accept that a sizeable part of the market will only buy digital music, fighting it at this point is futile. If people can't get music legally on the terms they want, they'll probably pirate and the labels lose out entirely.

I'm thinking your confusing web-based front-end with backend infrastructure. I think Apple do pretty well at the former but have always lacked in the latter but for the past couple of years have been building a ginormous data centre in North Caroline which is coming online any time now.

Speculation has long been that this would be for some cloud based system so it may all be coming together to Apple. Or course, it may not :)

Apple's lengthy list of open source contributions are listed at http://www.apple.com/opensource/

The tech specs on Apple's own website shows 1024x768 resolution, and no mention of the rumoured improved display (that is the rumours that were circulating when most credible reports debunked the retina display rumours). But for me, as a non-iPad owner, the incentive to buy is being able to render all my existing video - including the 1080p stuff the original iPad hasn't got the CPU/GPU muscle to render.

Sold.

Unless you're already bought into the Apple ecosystem of iTMS media and/or even MobileMe. Sure, there are alternatives if you have non-Apple smartphone but for those who want things to 'just work', the iPhone will still be a draw.

Are we going to pretend CodeWarrior next existed?

Then you've never checked. A lot of developers have complained about the inability of apps to access to user data, except in a few circumstances. This is by design. Indeed in iOS it's only recently been possible for apps to put appointments into the calendar, they still can't peruse and data mine it.

I'm no expert, but really? Somebody with the mental condition Aspergers didn't not respond in a rationale way?

I have no love for people who force their way in to IT systems but the utter lack of security and safeguards in sensitive US systems in relation to what he did does tend to look as though the repercussions are more relative to embarrassment than actual harm.

Obviously this is based on what the, highly biassed, media report, but having worked in IT a while, it's really not THAT hard to take minimum precautions to minimally secure systems and it looks as though key US Government organisations did not do this.

It really does look as though its a nuke the intruder response to somebody who walked in, without forcing entry, into somewhere they should not have been.

iPhone OS already supports PDF viewing; I have a gig or so of legislative PDFs on my iPhone 3GS that I browse with the 'Air Sharing' app. What Apple announced is more subtle, which is PDFs being supported by their eBook reader with the same functionality of native eBooks.

Some power-draw information for H.264 decode, full tilt GPU utilisation, 25/50/100% CPU utilisation of one/both cores would be welcome.

XBMC runs just fine on a MacMini with no keyboard/mouse and using just the standard 5 button Apple remote for navigation.