After flying on a domestic US flight, sat next to a pilot who did not turn off his phone (he knew that it was on), I usually did not bother turning my phone off before the ban was lifted.

Also, one only had to scan for bluetooth devices on flights on which radios were supposed to be turned off to know that the rules were flouted for years.

What about my freedom to accept the money in exchange for signing one?

How about because it is good for society? WIth the high cost of living, overcrowding, etc., why is it that tech startups happen so often in the SF Bay Area? Perhaps because of the pool of talent that is available because non-competes are not enforcable?

You cannot sell yourself into indentured servitude either. Do you really want that "right"?

And, as for the $5k, you are hopelessly naive. Non-competes depress wages, so that $5k is probably less than you would get in increased pay if non-competes were illegal where you live. Basically, you are saying that you should have the right to be screwed by large corporations. Good luck with that right.

If you look at a recent Supreme court decision in Canada involving RBC, you will find that they basically struck down most of the concept of an employment non-compete as violating a charter right to live and work where you chose

Maybe you are looking at a different case to me, but in the case I looked at, as long as an employee gives proper notice, once the notice period is over, there is no actual or implied non-compete agreement.

A non compete that says 'for one year, you may not program computers for any of our clients or competitors' is enforceable (unless the whole industry is your competitor).

Not in California. There is a small set of exceptions where non-competes can be enforced, but none of them apply to a regular employee (they apply to business owners and principals). Furthermore, non-compete agreements from other states cannot be enforced in California courts.

I've done a couple of projects with engineering companies including one at a power plant. From what I've seen, the thing that tends to lead from air gapping to lack of airgapping is support.
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They could maintain the air gap, but it would cost money -- support and travel costs, etc.

Ultimately, it's a profit problem. Increased costs == lower profits (at least in the short term). Possibly over the long term, a security breach could cost more than the cost of an airgapped solution.

Alternatively, if the key issue is support, why don't the critical systems have their own LAN and firewall which allows only connections with the necessary IPs and ports for the remote access solution?

As long as you try to keep it running from your basement as you sort out the bad accounts, sure.

Why? Microsoft doesn't seem to think it necessary to resolve the subdomains that are not included in the list of bad subdomains.

Perhaps Microsoft should be enjoined from distributing a OS that is responsible for most the the malware and spam that everyone's firewalls and filters are defending against.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I feel like we've barely grazed the surface of the potential of crowd funding. I mean, in a real sense here we, as society, are funding self-education - we are funding the education of our own society. That's cool.

If only there were a central organization that could collect all this money, with those who could afford it paying more, and then re-distribute it ....... oh wait!!!!

Microsoft could have avoided all this mess by simply listening to people who were beta testing and using 8 and complaining about the horrible start screen. I'm sure they got PILES of feedback, but they were so stubborn they even went out of their way to keep people from bringing back the traditional start menu.

They were not listening because the feedback did not feed into their internal narrative. That narrative was that, to establish a position in tablets and phones, the UI had to be common across all types of devices. If your feedback went against this directive, it could not be accepted.

This. Each an every NSL needs to be challenged.

The guy behind Lavabit tried. Look how far that got him. The government effectively denied him the right to have a lawyer. Good luck representing yourself against government lawyers.

it's pitting a highly regulated industry (taxi cabs) with an unregulated variant.

Unregulated versions have existed in many cities for a long time -- for example, private hire cars in the UK. In the US, the equivalent is not unregulated (limo services) but it is much less regulated than taxi services. People were prepared to pay more for the convenience of a taxi.

What Uber brings is the convenience of a taxi combined with the advantages of existing unregulated services. That's where technology comes in -- it provides the convenience.

Taxi services are now suffering because of a combination of historic greed and anti-competitive actions. By that, I mean the sale of medallions, which brought in revenue to cities (greed) and made it difficult or impossible for people to start a taxi business (anti-competitive). However, those medallions are a huge cost of running a taxi which is not incurred by services such as Uber.

Time shifting is perfectly legal under fair use for your own use, but not when you do it for someone else.

Cablevision would beg to differ.

When Google still owned Motorola they tried to make some quality designs that had a lot more polish than the typical Android phone, but the sales didn't follow because it didn't have the bells and whistles that attract tech geeks

Perhaps part of the problem was that (prior to Google ownership) Motorola had already put off many of the geeks by producing the most locked-down phones of any Android manufacturer.