phone companies generally know this. Im not quite sure about this weird rating one - it doesnt seem to be connected with actual phone service providers.

Unlikely, since you cant get phone numbers for free. In regards to availability phone numbers are closer to IP addresses then emails (limited amount, regulation etc).
Also those numbers would quickly become 1000 ranked because of huge activity.

while phone number is unique at any given moment, it doesnt necessarily mean it stays with same person. Most providers sell the used numbers some time after they got inactive.
Good luck to the new buyer of 1000 ranked number :)

only if by discarded you mean droping the mail with standard mailer deamon reply "couldnt be delivered". Otherwise I prefer my spam filter to actually work, thank you.

How can a truly civilized race possibly take us as anything other than animals when we still dont worship the Great Kztplrhw and dont kill all heretics using most brutal tortures imaginable?
Thats what you meant, right?

about 2 and 3: get some normal programming language instead of provided blocks. When I played with it in college we were using some C API with it, so we pretty much had a normal language available. Obviously there were still API limitations on our hardware interfaces, but for normal calculations, delays etc we could do pretty much whatever we wanted (it was simple unix programing with some hardware api).

as for 1: yeah, number of in and out slots was always a bit of a problem. Still you can do quite a lot within those limits.

Ill second this: this is what we used in Introduction to Robotics course in my college.
During practicals we had to build and program robots to accomplish some moderately complex tasks on its own. It was great fun trying to program and work around hardware limitations in my teams robot - we overcomplicated it quite a bit and it turned out a bit inferior to its competitors. Still it gave me great impression of difference between controlling pure software stuff vs a real life hardware.

its not really legislation as it has no binding power whatsoever. Its pretty much "Hey, we dont like this idea" shout from them.

2B figure relates to the total cost of program (including PR spendings and other stuff). .
On the other hand there is also some extra computer related costs:
"(...) $227 million in computer costs, including complicated application forms that slow processing times; and $332 million for other programming costs, including money to pay staff to process the forms (...)"

Very large part of sites that want/need to stream DRMed video content.

Because they just turn java off on regular basis. Sometimes even when user explicitly tells them not to do this

from S1E11 animated series episode:
boss:
"Everybody who donates will get one of these colorful, stylish I-get-to-keep-my-job T-shirts. Of course participation is completely 100% voluntary."

I guess it may help some people that crash in some remote place in the night (so basically where none would report it anyway).
Unfortunately it solves pretty much the wrong problem. The biggest issue with help is not that it is not notified in time, but that it cant arrive in time. There is not enough ambulances and they often have to travel vast distance to help. Adding new source of calls wont help.
Whats more they will now get more distracting calls from accidents that are resolved by participants or cops (no serious injuries - sensors cant tell about this) or even completely bogus from defective cars, so the ambulances will move around needlessly at some times (likely failing to help some extra people due to extra distance).

From the Rockstar announcement:
"In the event we decide to absolve any of these cheaters for their past transgressions they may re-enter play with the general public, however a second offense will result in their indefinite banishment."
So:
1. it only applies to those that get moved back to normal servers
2. word "banishment" may mean ban, but may also mean just being poot in cheaters pool without chance of returning to normal game (and I think second interpretation is the correct one)

Interesting... Mine is 13 MB while in tray, 20 - 25MB in library. Entering shop I get ~60MB. Seems like switching between html tabs (shop, community, news) wastes some memory (steam uses more after each switch). But after putting steam back in tray all that memory is released and it goes back to 13MB.