Usually it comes down to the vendors not wanting to share the details of their hardware. Same reason NVIDIA doesn't share the details for its GPUs.

I am an Aussie, dont like Tony Abbot or most of his policies and didn't vote for him or his party but I believe that a carbon tax is NOT the right solution to climate change. The RIGHT solution is a trading scheme, one designed in a way that will cap the total amount of carbon pollution allowed at a number smaller than it is now to force emitters to reduce their emissions. One that doesn't allow the purchase of cheap carbon permits from overseas, the use of carbon offsets (e.g. tree planting) or the use of carbon capture and storage but instead requires genuine reductions in carbon emissions.

One that includes big incentives to anyone who owns a coal fired power station and is willing to shut it down and replace it with something that isn't coal (i.e. specifically targets coal power as "public enemy #1" in the war on carbon emissions)

Targeting emissions from burning of oil in cars (the other big piece of the carbon jigsaw) can be done through measures like CAFE but without all the loopholes the US system has like the one that lets automakers make their big gas-guzzling SUVs flex-fuel capable and get a benefit even though most of those cars will never be run on biofuels to any significant degree or the one that distinguishes between cars and "trucks" (which includes the aforementioned gas-guzzling SUVs) and distorts the incentives in favor of SUVs, crossovers, CUVs and big pickup trucks whilst distorting things against wagons and smaller pickup trucks.

The most telling thing about the whole story is that the last chips in the P3 line were beating the first entries in the P4 line at the same clock speed.

The difference is that its a lot harder for the NSA to get a microphone into the office of a German agency (and a lot worse for international relations if the NSA did it and the Germans found out) than it is for the NSA to hack into the computers at a German agency from a computer room at Ft Meade.

I live in a rental apartment (so no solar) and don't drive a car (so I have no control over the fuels used to power the buses and trains I take to get around). No air conditioning either.

The biggest energy users in my house are probably my TV, my computer and maybe the fridge. I doubt I could buy a TV or computer that was more energy efficient than my current ones without sacrificing usability and the fridge is probably the most energy efficient model that exists in the size/price range. (its a Samsung Inverter)

I usually pay for things with EFTPOS anyway unless the merchant doesn't take EFTPOS (online is another matter obviously)

I suspect the bank in question makes its money from loan products, credit cards and other things that do have fees and interest charges.

The problem isn't banks, its US banks.

Here in Australia I recently opened a bank account including an attached VISA Debit card (lets me pay with VISA using my own money). When I did it, the bank didn't care about my financial circumstances or anything and I was able to open the account with a single dollar coin.

The only account fees I have paid since I opened this account was an overseas transaction fee when I bought something from overseas with the VISA and a fee (charged by the ATM operator) when I used an ATM not part of the RediATM network.
I pay NO monthly fees and NO transaction fees for using RediATM ATMs, EFTPOS, VISA in Australia, bPay or internet banking.

No reason why a bank has to make it hard for people to get a bank account or charge huge fees, they just choose to because they are greedy.

If Aereo is now considered a cable company then presumably it will be paying the same fees to, say, WABC7 in New York as any other cable company operating in New York. So why would WABC7 (or any other station) be unhappy with that?

They get more eyeballs watching their ads and they get the same money from Aereo as they do from cable companies.

There are any number of proposals out there to replace or augment CA certificates for SSL purposes (the EFF has Sovereign Keys, there is the DANE proposal to store certificates in DNS with DNSSEC security and there are other proposals out there designed to make it much harder for these kinds of "bogus certificate" type attacks)

Why aren't any of these proposals actually gaining any traction?

Per TFA they generally have evidence that someone connected to the house they want a search warrant on is connected with criminal activity. And asking for a search warrant for all the data storage devices present at the house seems perfectly valid to me.

We need to start by ending ALL money spent by the governments that supports or benefits the coal industry (direct subsidies, governments building rail lines, ports etc to benefit the coal industry, building new coal fired power stations instead of building better alternatives etc)

And no I dont care if you loose your job because no-one wants the coal your mine (or mining town) produces anymore, much like I dont care that people no longer want asbestos or buggy whips or any other obsolete technology.

From looking at this, it looks like it was NOT Qualcomm who sent these notices but a 3rd party firm employed by Qualcomm to enforce their IP (who have a vested interest in being seen to be as pro-active as possible when it comes to IP enforcement). Once we have an actual response from Qualcomm, then we will know for sure if Qualcomm is being evil in this case or not.

As for a boycott, my current phone is a Nokia N900 (a phone with zero Qualcomm parts in it) and when the N900 dies, I hope my next phone can be a Neo900 (also a phone with zero Qualcomm parts in it at least in the current plans)

Instead of building a giant wall, just require that any new buildings (including replacements for damaged/destroyed ones) built in Tornado Alley MUST be strong enough to withstand a certain amount of force, that way if its hit by a big tornado, it wont collapse. Its been done elsewhere (mostly in areas where cyclones/hurricanes are a problem but the same standards will stop all but the biggest/most extreme tornadoes).

At the last place I worked, they didn't watch what people were doing but they did have a proxy server that blocked certain things (Facebook, YouTube, others) and they did log every site people went to online.