Why bother? They can just 'extraordinarily render' him to a friendly (read: totalitarian) nation and have him tortured indefinitely without making a single charge.

I think the Craptastic Duo keyboard and mouse with "Moar D's" was the best product at CES. For realZ!

We hate them because they stifle innovation, limit choice, force lopsided contracts on us, and keep prices artificially high.

Why don't most "smartphones" have Wi-Fi? Why doesn't the iPhoney have a VoIP client? Because the carries HATE VoIP and see it as a huge threat to their lock on recurring revenue.

How many phone choices do you have? Why can't you use your phone on somebody elses network? Because they would all threaten their artificial scarcity that allows them to keep prices high.

Look at the report that just came out about 3 billion cell phone accounts. In the developed countries, monthly per-user revenue is north of $60 a month. In less-developed countries, using *MORE* minutes, it's closer to $3 (THREE) a month! Why? ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY.

The analogy that should open your eyes: What if you could only buy a car from an oil company, and it only ran on gas from that oil company? Even if you could break the locks on it and use another company's gas, you would have a two year contract with the old company to only buy their gas. Your choice of cars is limited too. If they don't have what you need, tough luck. Nobody else can make a car that fits your needs because the oil companies won't sell you gas. WOULD WE PUT UP WITH THAT?

And because they have us by the balls, there is no way in hell they are going to let some upstart screw with their lock on the market. They will screw with Goog any way they can, and will bid this as high as needed to keep in "in the family".

Don't bet on this. The giant Evil Telecoms will never let this happen. They will bid until it hurts, and then bid some more. They will never let anybody crack their stranglehold on phones and services.

How did we get here anyway? It would be like only being able to buy cars from the oil companies, and each car only working with one oil company's gasoline. STUPID!

Dibs!

Make me a WINNA!

How do you spell "Class Action Lawsuit"? G-o-o-g-l-e.

Maybe a good class action suit against this big name will put the reality of DRM-infections on the front page and wake people up. Maybe it will be the death knell for DRM. Good riddance!

@JC, don't you mean "Well tar -c and feather me"?

;-P

I have been personally injured by Microsoft. Before I dumped it, I spent thousands of hours cleaning up after their horrible excuse for an OS. Countless reboots, myriad reinstalls, thousands of virus scans. I'll never get those hours back.