maiac, posts by tag: check the date - LiveJournal

A followup to this earlier report.

YHTB NEWSWIRE, April 1, 2008 - The manufacturer of the Roomba and other popular robotic home appliances, iRobot Corporation, has filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that Apple has infringed its trademark by naming its new digital lifestyle companion "iRobot".

"We don't care how many iProducts Apple has produced," said iRobot spokesman D. B. Davis. "We've been iRobot since 1990. It's our name, and they can't have it."

Responding to the lawsuit, Anson McDonald, head of Apple's legal department, said, "They chose the wrong science-fiction writer for inspiration anyway. Considering their product line, they should have read Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer."

Apple recently filed an appeal of a judgment against them that their corporate name violates Jehovah's copyright, on the grounds that the Book of Genesis does not explicitly describe the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as an apple tree, and there is no proof that Jehovah is even the author of the Book of Genesis.

From the Guardian UK:

The centre of Bodoni, the capital of San Serriffe, was, as ever, confused last night as it prepared to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of its discovery, the most dramatic event in the patchy - even blotchy - history of this remote sea-girt nation.

Previous anniversaries had been celebrated with little ceremony. Indeed under the stern military rule of the strongman, General Pica, and his obscure successor (note to subs: have forgotten his name, please check) few Serriffeans felt they had much to celebrate.

However, since free elections were held and the handsome, popular, charismatic, boyish, charming, dynamic, modest, new leader Antonio Bourgeois was catapulted into office, the atmosphere in San Serriffe has been transformed. Nothing has actually happened, but the atmosphere has been transformed.

Regular followers of politics in this region will recall that San Serriffe comprises two islands, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, shaped curiously like a semi-colon, sited (usually) in the Indian Ocean. Since the country briefly hit global headlines in 1977, Western journalists have steered clear, in the belief that little was to be gained from visiting these shores, particularly in the matter of expenses.

[more]

Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are teaming up with Virgin founder Richard Branson to found a colony on Mars.

Apply here.

I was so jazzed about this, but after submitting my application I started having second thoughts. Months in a spaceship with ads flashing on the walls? Not my idea of a good time.