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Which big business? Where are big businesses interests on both sides of this issue.

That sounds like a fair trade. Once there is a free competitive market of at least 5 independent ISPs in a market, then we can talk about eliminating new neutrality.

Exactly, the problem (from the seller's POW) with credit cards is that the transaction can be reversed if the buyer complains. If you have a physical delivery address, and you send the cops there to investigate. If your goods are delivered electronically, then there is no recourse. A scammer could give the billing/shipping address associated with the card, receive the stolen goods, and everything would look kosher until the card owner receives their monthly bill and complains. At this point, the store would get a chargeback, and be screwed over.

With Bitcoin (or other cash-like on-line services) there is no possibility to reverse the transaction, no fraud protection, so once the store completes the transation, they have their money, and it cannot be taken away.

The disassembler he used is not. So it is (at least theoretically) possible to see if there is a back door. The compiler has a very low-level view of what it is doing. In order to add a back door, it would need to recognize when it is compiling TC. This could be a much more difficult technical problem than what Kernighan did to login, and, if discovered, would be devastating to MS from a PR standpoint.

The get the 1-2 days of float on the translation. That may be enough to enable them to make a little profit.

Android already does this. The OS has a set of permissions available for apps (get location data, use camera, access internet, etc.) These permissions are displayed to the user when the app is installed, giving the user the chance to reject the app if the permissions are unacceptable.

What makes this even worse is that the guy who "reinvented" the patented idea in most cases does not even know the patent exists in the first place. The courts have the legal fiction that the knowledge in the patents is in the public domain, but in practice this is not just the case -- especially when a defendant has a disincentive to willfully infringe a patent (better remain ignorant and avoid extra damages). Perhaps we need a system where the patent owner had an affirmative duty to publicize the patent.

Not surprising at all. The flighpath from Moscow to Havana goes over Western Europe, and I would not be surprised if the plane would be unable to get the airspace clearance to complete its planned flight. Another risk is that the plane may be forced to make an unscheduled landing in a country that has a better extradition relationship with that US than China or Russia does.

Unfortunately, you need to convince an overworked federal prosecutor with other fish to fry to take the case.

In a reasonable world, the inland "border" searches would be limited to those individuals whom the Border Patrol has reasonable suspicion to believe has recently entered the country and/or attempted to evade a search at the actual border.

If they have no reason to believe I have been out of the country or an conspiring to smuggle contraband, then in a just world, they should not be able to search me. The rules would need to be written to allow then to search someone never left the US, but picked up a package of contraband that someone else moved across the border (perhaps by catapult). Other than those cases that actually involve the border DHS should have no authority.

Unfortunately the lithium-ion battery in the iPad will wear out in 3-5 years.

Photoshop + Cafepress = shirt now exists.

Without class actions, how can a company be punished for, for example, cheating a million people out of $10 each?

I suppose that the government could step in, but a class action has the advantage of providing a market-based solution to the problem. A greedy law firm can determine that the payoff will be profitable, and then invest their own resources to punish the offender. The fear of being on the receiving end of a suit helps keep big corporations in line, and this explains why they hate them so much.

...as long as it does not eat your cat.