$126 million penalty for violation of Cheirim

... that oughta teach them, you say?

Remember that hilarious Yiddish cartoon that circulated last year? It pictured a man using all his strength to keep bad influences (pictured as beasts) at bay—TV, DVD, newspapers, etc… The caption said something like, “Think you can lock out tum’ah? Get real bro, you’re holding a cell phone!” Sure enough, all those vices were creeping in through the wireless phone clipped on to his belt.

I’d guess that the cartoon and related ban were responding to the BlackBerry, not just any old phone. The rabbanim who issued the chierim against cell phones had unbelievable foresight to first recognize the evils inherent in a wireless e-mail device that has many additional web-related features. It turns out that they are being backed by the United States government. This is not a conspiracy theory folks. In recent events, the U.S. Patent Office has also found this gadget to be in violation several serious federal laws. With the patent-holding company (NTP, Inc) having successfully sued BlackBerry’s maker (RIM) for patent infringements, this sinful contraption may be forced into retirement. I’m sure that somewhere Pat Robertson is grinning, “Blackberry should’ve known it would face Judgment Day for messing with the Jews.”

Seriously though, the media coverage of the possible service outage reached such a feverish pitch before the court ruled against a service blackout last Friday, you’d think a tsunami were about to hit our shores. For all those who can’t fathom a day without their tech-toys and can’t appreciate the need for inventors' ownership of their intellectual property... admit that you couldn’t have thought of it yourself, and let the people who did be compensated fairly!