If compliance with a law is actually impossible, the only way for a company to comply is to cease trading and return the company's property to its shareholders. One company that chose this route was Lavabit.

CloudFlare has been using SNI since Slashdot's previous story about CloudFlare expanding SSL support in September 2014. It became practical in April 2014 when Windows XP, the last desktop operating system in common use whose pack-in browser does not support SNI, reached end of extended support.

HTTPS allows multiple hostnames on one IP address on any platform whose TLS stack supports Server Name Indication. This includes essentially every web browser in common use except Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.x. So if HTTPS, inspect the SNI header, as it's cleartext.

Then it blocks search engines and reduces the SEO of its customers' sites on search engines that aren't big enough to get whitelisted the way Google and Bing are.

If any other CloudFlare customer sees behavior like this, try whitelisting each smaller search engine on which you want your site to appear.

Even for blind users?

These companies use CloudFlare services. Names I recognize include Reddit, eHarmony, Bain Capital, League of Legends developer Riot Games, Cisco Systems, Quicksilver, Y Combinator, NASDAQ Stock Market, Eurovision Song Contest, Massachsetts Institute of Technology, and Metallica. I've also seen CloudFlare services in use on Stack Exchange (the Stack Overflow company). If you can explain what you mean by "legit" and show how all of these companies fail tests for being "legit", I'll believe you.

Unlike copyrights, patents disregard provenance. This means that even someone who does fund his own research and development could end up independently reaching the same solutions* that Microsoft engineers reached. This would run the risk of having production shut down by Microsoft's legal department.

One thing that stops them is the exclusive license granted by national radio regulators to cellular network operators. All cellular network operators holding substantial spectrum leases have chosen to require the use of patented protocols to communicate with their networks.

* "Same" here shall be interpreted in accordance with the doctrine of equivalents.

Unless you mean Rare as in the trade name of a Twycross-based video game developer that Microsoft acquired, I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that software patents are so uncommon. See All businesses have software patent risk.

Not on removable media.

But how would the device make Ext drivers available to the computer to which it is connected without 1. presenting a patented file system on which the driver installer is stored and 2. waiting for an administrator to be present to authorize the installation?

If you want to claim SD[HX}C support

Keyword: "if". No device maker is forced to include an SD card slot. They could go with a USB port or CF slot instead and use UDF.

Have the patents on VFAT (long file names in FAT16 and FAT32) expired yet?

If most home users stop buying PCs in favor of tablets running iOS or Android, won't that cause PCs to become more expensive because businesses are willing to pay more?

By employees of established media production companies that can continue to afford PCs even after they become specialty products marketed only to businesses.

Drivers signed by Microsoft for use with "premium" video are already supposed to disable the API calls needed to record frame buffer when a video is playing through Protected Video Path.

Couldn't you just set your monitor to 1080p (its native resolution) and increase the DPI setting in Windows?

If all my purchases are from the iTunes Store, then for purposes of playing my purchases, iTunes is a better player.

It is if you can convince substantially more publishers to sell through your store than through competing stores.