Libel laws in the US generally may not be as broad as those in Europe. But try criticizing a company like Monsanto or Cargil or ADM or others in "big agribusiness" (even with the most rigorous proof that what you are saying is true) and see how far you get before being sued under "food libel" laws (which exist to make sure all the nasty stuff the "big agribusiness" companies do stays hidden)

It doesn't matter if the taxes and tariffs in Brazil are set at 0%, 50%, 100% or even 1000%, it wont do a thing to encourage electronic manufacturing in the country. In fact, I suspect there is nothing that the Brazilian government could do that would get electronic manufacturers to build product there short of dropping wages and other costs low enough to make building there (instead of building in super-low-labor-cost countries like China) viable.

I have no idea if the Wii U has been fully hacked but I know for the Wii you can download disk images from the internet, use any of the various exploits out there and easily play pirated games, you dont need optical disks (blank or otherwise)

If the cable companies unbundled the expensive sports channels like ESPN and Fox Sports they could reduce the cost of the new no-sports packages by an amount that is less than the cost of the sports channels but still enough to make people happy they are getting a saving.

If the sports channels cost $10 per month per subscriber, they could reduce the cost of the new no-sports package by $7 and make $3 more in profit from those customers.
Sports customers would also be paying the non-sports cost (and making the cable company the same $3 in profit) plus ALSO paying for the sports pack (which could be priced at $13 in the example meaning that the cable company gets $3 profit from it)

Obviously this is a simplification but with my example, everyone who doesn't want sports earns the cable company $3 more profit (possibly even more depending on whether the subscriber numbers increase as a result of the cheaper no-sports package) and everyone who wants sports earns the cable company $6 more profit.

If Gogo doesn't have the bandwidth to handle streaming video, they should just block the sites outright. Better to do that than to mess with it in this way.

Even without baseband support, if your OS/platform of choice exposes the cell tower ID to the main processor and gives you APIs to trigger it you could have an app that looks for the towers you dont like and when it finds one, switches the phone to airplane mode and gives you a warning. Apple does not provide the relavent APIs (although anyone concerned enough about privacy that they are worried about rogue cell towers shouldn't be using a crApple phone anyway)

Android appears to provide APIs for getting the cell tower ID. Switching airplane mode on cant be done by apps as of Android 4.2 (it was made a protected setting, presumably for valid reasons) but if you root your device you can overcome that limitation.

If you have an N900, you can easily get access to the cell tower ID AND toggle airplane mode via dbus calls.

Is there a list anywhere of Sony produced films hitting theaters in 2015 so I know which films to boycott and not go and see?

I know The Interview is Sony (not that I had any intention of going to see it anyway) and Hobbit is Warner Brothers/New Line (saw it the other day and it was great) but I cant find any information to help me figure out what other theatrical releases of 2015 I should be avoiding (both going to the cinema AND pirating) if I want to avoid Sony.

That's what footpaths and bike paths are for. Keep the cyclists and pedestrians away from any traffic moving fast enough to be dangerous. And for when pedestrians and cyclists need to cross a road, they can use signposted crossings, traffic lights or overpasses/underpasses.

The big question with speed cameras is whether speeds are properly set for these roads.

There are 3 speeds a road can have:
1.The speed limit set on the road signs
2.The speed that it is safe to drive the road at (which may vary with weather conditions, traffic conditions etc)
and 3.The speed that the majority of the traffic is actually driving at.

Limit #1 (the posted speed limit) should be set at no lower than limit #3 (the limit people actually drive) unless that value is higher than limit #2 (the limit its safe to drive at).

If everyone is driving faster than its safe to drive at, the governments and authorities need to ask why. And possibly introduce safety improvements to the road to make it safer to drive at the speed people are actually driving at.

If Visa and MasterCard and PayPal and other payment entities can stop payment going to WikiLeaks, it should be possible for those same payment entities to identify (and block) the money flowing to the entities selling online drugs or fake designer goods or whatever. The FDA (in conjunction with law enforcement and with regulators in other countries) should be doing a lot more to target and shut down the websites behind the online prescription spams and scams (the ones that offer to enlarge parts of the male anatomy or increase your sex drive or give you all sorts of prescription drugs without a prescription and at much lower prices than you would pay in the shops)

The problem with #1 is that whilst airline A might fly from city A to city B via city C (because it has a hub in city C), airline B might have its hub in city B instead and might have a direct flight. So airline A has to price its flights to city B at similar prices to airline B to get passengers even though it actually costs them more than airline B.

#2 I agree with, having a uniform "this is the price you will pay" displayed based on the trip options you select and your location (to cover any taxes etc you need to pay) will make it easier to compare things. No more adding surcharges after you start the booking process.

As for checked baggage, the way to go is to have a strict size limit for carry-on baggage enforced at the gate (no more bringing massive suitcases as carry-on to avoid the checked baggage fees) where anything bigger than the size limit is required to be gate-checked (which needs to attract a fee higher than it would have cost if you had just checked it in the first place). Doing this will encourage people to pre-purchase checked baggage with their ticket but without penalizing those who genuinely CAN get away with just carry-on (carry-on that meets the size limit)

#5 wont work, a lot of the time the delays aren't due to things the airline can do anything about like weather. No way should the airline be required to compensate passengers for delays beyond their control.

If it wasn't for the negative reports I have heard regarding the Model M and certain games (e.g. twitchy FPS games or fast button mashers) I would buy a Unicomp to replace this generic Microsoft job.

But I dont want to spend up big only to find that its too hard to play the games I play (although to be fair for the arcade stuff I have a USB arcade joystick) so I dont want to take the risk...

I can understand the initial purchase (in that we needed something to replace the obsolete F-111 Aardvark and at the time it wasn't known how bad F-35 would turn out to be. But now our government wants to buy MORE of these things despite no evidence that they are actually any good as an airplane? Why?

Does Australia actually need that many airplanes? (its not like there are any countries in our region that are likely to decide to attack us so the only real mission for the F-35 is going to be sending a few to help in some foreign war and we dont need anywhere near as many aircraft to be able to do that)
Is Abbot just following through on a commitment originally made by Howard when he placed the first order of F-35s?
Is Abbot deliberately doing this to make the budget look worse so he can justify his unpopular budget cuts?

The decision of Sony to limit the release to the US as of now (presumably because they still want to be able to negotiate with cinema chains in Australia, Europe and elsewhere) means people who want to see it have no choice but to pirate it.

If Sony had made the online release (through the special website at the very least) global then piracy wouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem.

Its an interesting idea but there are so many issues to resolve.
Which platform do you use? Xbox? PlayStation? PC?
If PC, who defines the system specs? Which games do you use?
Who defines what settings are used for each match like the level to use? What would the rules be regarding player choices like e.g. which faction the player picks in an RTS? What happens if the internet or severs go down mid-match?

Of couse some of these questions have already been answered by existing e-sports contests and the IOC would probably defer to that rather than inventing new rules. (just like olympic golf, if it was a thing, would be played according to the rules set down by St Andrews Royal & Ancient instead of inventing ndw ones)