I also refuse to use up my precious Internet bandwidth in India to watch the iPhone and iEverythingElse launch in far-off San Francisco, live on my Safari browser. What other status symbol inspires that kind of insanity? I just don't get it. Why are so many people watching the launch of a product that most of us cannot even afford, though Apple sales did go up 400 percent in India after it initiated its installment and buyback schemes?

The real issue is whether the framework of the century-old patent laws, which served as the basis for the San Jose decision, has outlived its essential usefulness for inspiring innovation. The essential process of this involves building upon and improving the works of others. This was precisely the real genius of the late Steve Jobs as he converted the touch-screen computer from a colossal flop to a mainstream consumer device and invented smartphones on the basis of ideas that he couldn’t claim to be his and his alone.

Billing themselves as the black male version of “The View,” the Table of Truth can’t be accused of plowing an oversaturated field.  And listening to the podcast’s Backlash episode, the conversation meandering from planking to the dearth of African-American comic book heroes, it’s kind of  true.  Except Elisabeth Hasselback couldn’t improve a 19^th-century tale of a slave with superpowers like these guys can.  The Table of Truth -- four friends and entrepreneurs on the cutting edge of hat tilting -- broadcasts  conversations you overhear on the subway and quote to your friends later.