It doesn't hurt me personally at all, but I have to say that it amuses me that after MS failed to get B&N to pay for their patent racket some people still think that those patents are strong.
By the way, have you read what you wrote? I doubt it, so I will quote it:
"B&N decided to fight the lawsuit in order to keep Nook unit prices down and angle for wealthy partner to subsidize their failing dead-tree+bricks+mortar business."
Well, I thought that the AC was funny, but he can't touch you.
So your point is that B&N was failing, so they decided to spend millions fighting a lawsuit they knew they were going to lose, since the patents are that strong, when the alternative was sending a few dollars per device to MS.
And MS seeing that the were going to win decided that, they were not going to make an example of B&N, in fact they felt so sorry for them that they sent 300 millions dollars to B&N.
And in exchange B&N say they will make a Windows Nook, but they don't and MS say: "Nah, it's just 300 million no reason to make them comply with the agreement"
As "grabs for the ebook market" go, this sounds kind of half-hearted, doesn't it?
And no, none of them are on my side, what has that got to do with laughing at silly ACs?