I think "hippie demonstrations" and posting online are part of that "help make others aware" bit in number 2. But since you then follow up with that 1 and 2 don't change anything anyway, I guess the thesis still stands.

If someone were looking for a registrar, how would we look for one to be a 1&1 incarnation? Is there a list or do they just have a common interface or something?

While I want campaign finance reform, it's been pointed out to me that it will likely be infeasible to give everyone who signs up money from the get go, so there has to be some process to prove one is a viable candidate. If that means getting some signatures or something like that, a candidate must already be able to coordinate volunteers (with paid staff, I imagine), so there's already one point where having someone invest in a candidate can give them an advantage. Plus, the parties already have this infrastructure in place, so the Dems and Repubs are already ahead. We need some finance reform, I just don't know what that full picture looks like yet.
It also doesn't completely remove the profit motive, like you said. Politicians can still help land contracts enact favorable regulations, or dismiss unfavorable ones, and then find themselves landing in a cushy job in those industries they gave so much to. This would say maybe you don't want politicians leaving office to indulge in some post term conflict of interest, but I don't think there are a lot of people that believe in keeping our current politicians around that long. It's kind of tricky :[

Hope you weren't using thermite on the sub, sounds dangerous.

Maybe too late for consumer use, but I can see companies that wouldn't want to put their information in the cloud using them for backup. If their shelf life is longer than other optical media it may also be put to good use for archival in libraries and musuems.

He wants the malware, why have all those cores if you're not going to peg them?

Those two requirements don't exactly strike me as "basic".

= a highly polished solar array! How clever of them.

Some cyclists will put the magnet in their shoe and report good results if they put that foot down to steady themselves after a stop.

In engineering I find sometimes it's easiest to work in Excel, because people want to see their inputs and outputs all on the same page. No matter how much I hate working in Excel VBA macros and no matter how much I'd rather write it in C or Perl or anything else, Excel is the easiest way to make something easy for other people to work with and understand at the basic level. If I write it in anything else, I am completely alone in understanding it.

LED backlit LCDs are not cheaper than plasmas. They still cost almost 50% more. This is comparing a top of the line Panasonic plasma to a top of the line Sony LCD.

Unless it comes at the expense of other countries' interests which then puts it way south of neutral in the international community's eyes.