from wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID-based_encryption)

Identity-based systems allow any party to generate a public key from a known identity value such as an ASCII string. A trusted third party, called the Private Key Generator (PKG), generates the corresponding private keys. To operate, the PKG first publishes a master public key, and retains the corresponding master private key (referred to as master key). Given the master public key, any party can compute a public key corresponding to the identity ID by combining the master public key with the identity value. To obtain a corresponding private key, the party authorized to use the identity ID contacts the PKG, which uses the master private key to generate the private key for identity ID.

Expiration dates != expiration time of current password. If you assume some maximum password expiration time (lets say 3 months) then as long as user is registered for at lest that amount of time the password expiration date doesnt provide any useful information about it. Unless of course hacker gets multiple database snapshots from widely different days, but then the system is probably doomed anyway.

I think its quite good decision in short run, since it will kill all those weird connectors with no merit to them aside from being unique and driving charger sales for manufacturer. On the other hand in the long run its bad, since it actually hampers ("why bother if we have to put usb anyway") or even completely blocks some possible innovation (eg wirelessly charged waterproof phone with no external connections at all).
IMO the best course would be to keep this legislation for a several years (5-10) to get everyone to standardize and then repeal it. Given its EU though, I expect we are stuck with those connectors long after it will become completely obsolete...

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