Gregory Watson, of the law firm of Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, says that the new iPods released on Wednesday prove that Apple is a monopolist:

The class-action firm says that like their predecessors, Apple’s latest iPods will not play music encoded in Microsoft’s competing Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format. [...]

Apple could license the WMA format from Microsoft for less than 2 cents per iPod, lawyers say, which would make iPods and iPhones, old and new, compatible with music purchased online from rivals like Wal-Mart, Napster, Best Buy, Yahoo and others.

Wow. Apple is a monopolist for failing to help prop up Microsoft’s failing music business?

I wonder how much they’ll be asking for if they receive class-action status? Three hundred million dollars for the law firm, and a $1 iTunes Store gift card for each of the consumers covered by the class action?

Trial lawyers. I know there must be some of them that actually fight for justice, but you never hear about those ones.

I’d like to think that if the captain of Comair Flight 5191 wasn’t dead and the co-pilot wasn’t recovering from his serious injuries, they’d have put the brakes on this stupidity and taken the blame that they deserve for their mistake. Their wives are suing the airport, Jeppesen, the FAA, and the squirrels who looked at the pilots wrong as they taxied to the wrong runway, failed to check their compass against their assigned runway heading, and then failed to abort the takeoff in a timely and safe manner.

This reminds me of the accident at Westerly, Rhode Island that was a battle of the stupids — Stupid #1 taxied onto a runway with an aircraft on short final, and then Stupid #2 continued to land on that runway, despite the presence of another aircraft. Their widows then commenced suing each other, the airport, the FAA, the state of Rhode Island, et cetera. Pilots make mistakes, and sometimes with tragic results. The tragedy is only compounded when their families try to lay the blame where it doesn’t belong, harming the aviation economy for everybody else.

Note to my family: if I crash and die, and it’s even the least bit attributable to error on my part (which it will be — almost every general aviation crash is), please do not sue anybody. Do not compound the injury to my piloting memory by engaging in totally frivolous lawsuits that harm the rest of the aviation community. Thanks.

See here.  And yet Lindsay Lohan gets a slap on the wrist for her nth case of DUI and possession of cocaine.  It’s an odd world we live in.

According to the Arizona Republic, the suspect in yesterday’s car chase that resulted in two news helicopters colliding in mid-air could be charged with murder in the deaths of the four aboard the helicopters:

The suspect who led police on a vehicle chase Friday in Phoenix could face murder charges after two television news helicopters filming the pursuit collided in midair, killing both pilots and their photographers.

[...]

He could face harsher repercussions because the chase resulted in four deaths, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris said.

“I think he will be held responsible,” he said.

I sure hope the Phoenix police chief is just talking out of his hat. It doesn’t make any sense that the suspect should be held responsible for their deaths. It’d be one thing if they were police helicopters, assisting in the pursuit — he would definitely be culpable then, just as if a police automobile had crashed during the chase. But the news helicopters had no reason to be there except to satisfy the curiosity of their viewers.

This is more like a situation where, in a hurry to catch a crime in action, a news photographer trips over a step and breaks his neck. Would the suspect involved in the crime be responsible for the clumsy photographer’s death? I’m assuming not. I don’t see any difference between that situation and the situation with the helicopters. It appears from the initial investigation that the helicopters collided due to pilot error (they apparently failed to see and avoid each other, the responsibility of the two pilots-in-command). Nothing the suspect did sabotaged the helicopters in any way.

Flying around in congested airspace is dangerous work, especially if a bunch of helicopters are hovering in the same area trying to catch the same story. My best goes out to the families of the pilots and photographers on board the helicopters, but charging the suspect with their murders is too much of a stretch. What if a helicopter had been felled by mechanical failure during the chase? Would that also be the suspect’s fault? What if the photographer had had a heart attack from the excitement of the chase?

Charge the guy with the crimes he’s actually committed. Justice isn’t served by making him responsible for the mistakes of others.