How about unusable outside the USA? In many stores in Belgium the staff does not even know how swiping works.

Really? I was in Belgium in February and I didn't have a single problem with it. Everyone took one look at me, knew they had an American on their hands, and did everything properly without hassling me one bit.

The XBox unit is profitable. ...

You sure about that? Microsoft Is Making An Astonishing $2 Billion Per Year From Android Patent Royalties

FYI, The CO-OP Network is for ATMs (triangle-ish symbol), the CU Service Centers are for performing financial services at a "partner" Credit Union (starfish-ish symbol).

General Electric Paid No Federal Taxes in 2010

Most people I've known who "hate" it stop hating it after I sit down with them for five minutes and just show them how to use it and make it work like they want it to.

Every time I use an Office 2007+ machine I have to re-learn how to use the damn thing. I use a lot of different software and somehow I can still remember how to use it even going months or years between uses, but for some reason I cannot do that with the Office ribbon interface. However, my main compliant about the ribbon really has to do with that it doesn't tell you what the shortcut keys are. All sane software for the past decade has had this nifty menu system that tells you exactly what shortcut to use for each operation, why exactly is it more convenient to force me to use the help to find the shortcut keys?

Ain't that the truth. Talk all you want about Microsoft; however, at least they have a real, live, functioning telephone number.

MS: What is the nature of your call sir?
Caller: We'd like to get a representative of your company to show up to a senate hearing.
MS: That'll be $200 for an incident report sir, would you like me to charge your credit card?

... Meanwhile, these guys have sufficient resources to start handing out equipment and lab space to enterprising teenagers for science fair projects! ...

A lot of funding agencies require a certain amount of your research budget to be spent on "educational outreach." It's likely that someone went "gee, here's a cool way to spend my outreach budget that won't require me to do anything."

You can't set traps for people even if the only way they would be harmed by it would be because they themselves are doing something illegal.

Not entirely true... At least in the US it is illegal for the government to entrap you, but there is no prohibition on private corporations doing the same. You can, however, sue over just about anything here (and you can sometimes win said crazy lawsuits).

In other words, the current situation sucks, but it sucks less than most of the alternatives, and the only truly better alternative -where censorware is banned worldwide for all purposes- is never going to happen. At least transactions which take place in the open are known quantities.

That's not necessary, all you'd really have to do is ban country-wide censoring. If you passed an international law that essentially said "anyone may offer optional crippled versions of the Internet, but no country may cripple the Internet outright" then you'd be golden. At that point all you have to do is make the punishment "we all agree worldwide to cut you off" and you're done, all this stupid crap is over.

Most Universities have legally distanced themselves from the state.

That's a little hard for some universities, in my state several of the state universities are written into the state constitution.

He is NOT a public employee; he is an employee of a university which (more often than not depending on the state) is a separate legal entity.

He works for the University of Wisconsin, a public state-owned university. Granted such things can vary by state - but I work for a state university as a graduate research assistant and I know we were warned by legal a while ago that the same thing can happen to us, even as grad students.