Why would they build two products when most governments would be happy to have a backdoor into people's electronics (especially when they thought they could claim they thought it was disabled if people found out about it)?

What about non-American companies that want to sell their products in the U.S.? Do you really think they will give up the U.S. market? And do you really think they will go to the effort of building one product for the U.S. market and another one for other markets? Oh some might build a model for none U.S. markets with the wiretapping features disabled (with instructions provided to the relevant governments about how to re-enable them when they desire) and a few might build a non-U.S. model without the feature. But most will build it with the feature "disabled" in software, also with instructions given to the relevant governments about how to turn it back on.
The biggest problem that the FBI is not thinking about is that THEIR equipment will also have this built in, meaning that the bad guys will be able to tap them.

You do understand that lots of companies will distribute the same devices in other countries, perhaps with the wiretapping capability "disabled"?

Then if I run it on a differently designed computer (say ARM rather than x86) it doesn't violate the patent.

Actually that is not true. I do not have to fill out any forms to sell a car. However, the other person needs me to fill out a bunch of forms if they intend to drive the car on the highway. I can however sell a car to you and let you tow it away without filling out any paperwork (I have done this twice, in both cases the other party was buying the car for parts).

CO2 is not poison. Go ahead and try and live without it.

That's fine, as long as you accept that I am not willing to live like that. And that it is not your place to tell me how to live. I happen to think that everyone should live according to their beliefs. I, also, believe that if people actually believe something, they will actively try to convince others to believe it and work to live accordingly. However, I will resist when others attempt to force me to live according to their beliefs.

I am not sure you are talking about the same thing as the article. The article is talking about the North axial pole, not the North magnetic pole. I believe the ships logs from the 1700s and earlier record shifts in the magnetic North pole (although I may have missed the references to shifts in the axis).

That is a fine idea, go ahead and stop doing those things...oh, I see, you want to force me and everyone else to stop as well. Or maybe you want to be like Al Gore who is making a fortune doing more of those things than just about everybody else while going around and demanding that the government stop everybody else from doing them.

Anyone who is in the business of buying and selling guns must, by law, be a registered gun dealer. Registered gun dealers are required, by law, to conduct a background check on those they sell guns to (even if they make that sale at a gun show). This information is in the link which you presented above. On the other hand, private sellers (that would be people who have decided that they have more guns than they need and want to sell a few of them, or people who inherited a gun collection from their parents and want to sell them) are not required to conduct a background check. As a matter of fact, private sellers are not able to conduct a background check (you must be a licensed firearms dealer to have access to the background check database) and none of the "universal background check" laws propose giving private sellers access to that database. Those proposed laws propose forcing all gun sales to go through a licensed dealer. A likely result of "universal" background checks will be that it won't be worth their while to sell the guns for someone who inherits them. Rather they will just give them away (or "throw them away" if the law does not allow them to be given away). If that were to happen, it would be a bonanza for criminals.

Primarily because the leading politicians were pocketing large amounts of cash from Saddam Hussein's government (or did you miss the revelations about how much money various European politicians were discovered to have received from that government after its fall?).

If someone is willing to sell their gun to the guy they've known since childhood, there are two options. Either the seller knows the guy can be safely trusted to have a gun, or, the seller doesn't care and will sell it to him without the background check anyway. The overwhelming majority of people effected by background checks for private sales are the law abiding citizens. Like most gun control laws, background checks for private sales would inconvenience and make life difficult for law abiding citizens while having a negligible impact on criminals (much like DRM).

And that ratio becomes even more significant when we consider those accidents that result in death or serious injury. The only reason that the number of "alcohol-related" accidents is anywhere near as high as it is is because if you have been drinking and someone rear ends you while you are stopped at a stop sign or a red light, it is an "alcohol-related" accident. Even though the fact that the driver who had consumed alcohol did everything exactly as they were supposed to. I am not saying that it is OK to drink and drive, but the statistics for "alcohol-related" accidents are inflated.

Well, maybe because you obviously don't pay attention, since there are background checks at gun shows. The laws you think are about background checks at gun shows are laws which would require someone to go through a dealer so that the dealer could run a background check when he wanted to sell his hunting rifle to the buddy he has known since childhood.

It's not, which is self-evident from the fact that Massachusetts has a law that is pretty much like it.