This is why you shouldn't work on free software that requires you to hand over your copyright. This includes GNU software as well. Of course the FSF would be ideologically opposed to selling their copyrights to a proprietary software company, but what happens if one day donations dry up and they go bankrupt? Then the purchasers of the assets would be perfectly entitled to relicense your code however they want. Even if a bankrupt FSF tried to sell their assets to free-software-friendly companies, the court would probably block that if a proprietary software company made a higher offer. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions, the bankruptcy trustee, administrator, or court can terminate existing licenses—meaning that users couldn't even use an older version of the software, since they would no longer have a license to do so.

This is why you shouldn't work on free software that requires you to hand over your copyright. This applies to the Free Software Foundation, too. Of course the FSF would be ideologically opposed to selling their copyrights to a proprietary software company, but what happens if one day donations dry up and they go bankrupt? Then the purchasers of the assets would be perfectly entitled to relicense your code however they want. Even if a bankrupt FSF tried to sell their assets to free-software-friendly companies, the court would probably block that if a proprietary software company made a higher offer. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions, the bankruptcy trustee, administrator, or court can terminate existing licenses—meaning that users couldn't even use an older version of the software, since they would no longer have a license to do so.

I believe this is intel's "NGFF" or "Next Gen Form Factor" -- I think the trade name is now m.2 . This format which apparently is a hybrid pcie-e and sata form factor. I guess the electrical signals are there for sata? But these devices can operate at pci-e x2 or x4. http://www.techpowerup.com/178188/intel-ssd-530-in-ngff-form-factor-pictured-arrives-in-q2.html

Look familiar?
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/27850/adata_shows_working_next_generation_form_factor_ngff_on_video_at_ces/index.html

Apple seems to have their own "extra long" variety (maybe) -- possibly to get at capacities around 1tb?

It doesn't violate copyright, it violates the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions—exactly the thing that the current proposal would change. Part of the proposed change:

It shall not be a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with a work protected under this title if the purpose of such circumvention is to engage in a use that is not an infringement of copyright under this title.

Circumventing an access control measure was never (by itself) an "infringement of copyright": It is a separate offense created by the DMCA.

I cast a ballot to vote for a slate of electors who claimed they would cast their electoral vote in a particular way. The duplicity is the ballot had the Presidential candidate's name and not the electors' names, but in my state only politics, and not law, demands that the electors actually vote for the name I selected.

It worked in ancient Athens, and with much the same rationale- you don't want anyone ruling you who would actually want the job.

to avoid cross contamination, of course.

I think perhaps you are projecting. I have in fact held some newborns, and they were far less aware of what was going on than my cats, and evinced fewer feelings. My cats, for example, can clearly demonstrate annoyance at one another; the babies I have been around seem to express only pleasure/displeasure and that in only the basest of manners, such as screaming and, oh, screaming. Something seems to change in them around five months, when one day you look in their eyes and there is actually someONE looking back at you.

The study I've seen most frequently cited as a refutation to the rape can't cause pregnancy argument is from 1996 and was in fact prospective.

PubMed; Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1996 Aug;175(2):320-4; discussion 324-5.