But you're driving your own vehicle, no? Shouldn't you already be insured (as is the law in many states)?

Yes, because centrally planning technology development worked so well for Russia.

Which means GOP never tried to legitimize their illegal actions, making it more difficult to follow suit in the future. Obama meanwhile wants to throw open the oppression floodgates.

You have an idealized model of commerce. The reality is internet is like a utility. Ever experience a electricity brownout? Those happen specifically because utility companies are permitted to manage their networks how they see fit. They can reduce capacity as needed to improve the experience for everyone.

If you're out of work at 30 after working for 8 years in the tech industry, you suck at your job.

I really think Wayland is a step backwards with the loss of network transparency. The story from that article (of thin clients improving the way MIT IT infrastructure operated) is basically due to the network transparency of X11.

Depends on where you live somewhat. My air conditioning in SoCal is only on for about 10 hours per year. My laptop and TV probably use more power.

The vast majority of modern televisions do handle this. But they don't handle the channel guide. That's pretty much the killer app the cable companies rely on to get you to put their box in your living room and charge you for the privilege.

You really think the federal government has the programming skill to pull off something like that? An organization run on software from the 80s?

That said, it would be relatively easier for the NSA to just take control of Gigahash or some other 51% group to disrupt the network.

The BTC network power went past the point where the only entity with the resources to take control like that is the US government. Maybe not even them anymore. But it would be such a vast investment in hardware, the bill for such an endeavor to the American taxpayer would be difficult to get past congress.

I don't understand your claim that no one would find out. If they double-spend, one recipient of that double spend is going to find out very quickly.

Signatures are typically only for larger purchases. When you buy a pack of gum with a credit card, you almost never have to supply a signature. Also, in the US we buy packs of gum with credit cards, which is not really easy to do a lot of places outside of the US, with minimum purchases requirements.

The imprint is for convenience only. There's nothing stopping the merchant from just writing in the info in ink pen. This is perfectly valid and will be honored by the card processor. I suppose it MIGHT take a bit more time to get processed if they're using OCR or some such thing, but most likely they hire teams of data entry drones with mad 10-key skills.

The Tea Party people want whatever the Koch brothers tell them to want. If the Koch brothers have a stake in telecom, I bet most teabaggers support these contracts.