"Apple can now swing +6 mace of multitouch at enemies"

That's the title that drew me in to this digg post.

It's reporting that Apple has been granted a patent on the touch gestures (like "pinch and zoom") from the iPhone.  It'd been reported long ago that they were trying to get these patents, which has been real controversial (i.e. "What? You can't patent that! It's like patenting right-clicking!").  And then in January we found out they got it.  Hence "Apple granted +6 mace of multitouch" which they'll be able to swing at companies like Palm which has gone ahead and included pinch and zoom in its Palm Pre.

So I was looking up stuff about that whole deal (actually I was googling "apple touch prior art minority report" but that's another story) and among all the dry headlines was the aforementioned gem.

But really, this post is about the tragedy of unreproducible but genius comedy.

Let me explain.  I was reading the comments on the original digg post, which is pretty much everyone crying out in one voice about how much of a d-bag Apple is being.  I happen to agree, but all I'm going to say is that prior art isn't restricted to Minority Report and goes back to the 80's (also this is an awesome presentation and from 2006).  Then after a litany of serious and diverse points against Apple, I see this (the highlighted one):

I know, I know, I killed the joke long ago.  That's the point, really.  The humor cannot be experienced by anyone else except by coming upon this in the same way I did.

But the more fun point is that this is, like, the point of the internet.  Stuff like this.  It's awesome, and it can't happen in any other medium.