Based on my experience with my last Hyundai vehicle, the dog robot, SPOT, will use up its batteries by chasing its tail.

Just like the 107 characters in your reply, FYI.

Excellent! Instead of being a Twitter user, you can now just be a Twat!

The other issue of course is now most cars come with backup sensors or lane assist sensors etc. The cost is not so much the plastic but it's all the electronic widgets they are installing everywhere that's driving the costs up as well.

I got into ham for the emergency side of things as well, but also, as a back country person and amateur off roader, I like the fact that in areas where my cell phone doesn't work, such as in the mountains, my mobile radio can hit the local repeaters in the mountains. At least I am not completely cut off if something was to happen to my vehicle while exploring the back country.

I have my ham radio license for Canada and they did away with Morse Code several years back.

But fanatical groups don't typically work alone. Why couldn't a person become infected and in a sense, act as a human petri dish? If another fanatical like minded individual took all of the necessary biohazard precautions, then this person could collect all of the bodily fluids he needs, and then infect others through misting? We have suicide bombers willing to die for their cause, so I don't think it would be much of a stretch for one these fanatics to volunteer themselves to become infected.

I understand what you're implying, but unlike chemical weapons, a virus is self replicating, and therefore, no need to make large quantities. Although my natural reaction is to 'panic' at the thought of these scientists doing this type of research, and all the imagined scenarios that run though my mind, I understand the importance of their work and the need to understand how the genetic mutations work, and the eventual interruption of the mutation process which would hopefully result in a cure. But my main concern is the experiment being replicated by someone with the intention of destruction, rather than research based on an eventual cure or vaccine.

Wouldn't a fully charged lithium battery be more of a security risk than a dead one?

Wait, so what you're saying is, that I can watch one show, while recording another show, that's on a different channel? - With apologies to City Slickers. I also believe that it has a lot to do with exactly who is doing the instructing. My communications teacher, (electronic communications, wave guides, radio transmissions etc) was one hell of an engineer and any company would have been very happy to have him, but he couldn't teach. His course averaged a 60% failure rate and no matter how hard you studied, or asked questions, he was incapable of 'dumbing it down' where most people could grasp the concepts a lot easier.

Terraformed Animals* *TM Pending

Available for purchase is one of the reasons I used to use software like Limewire, or, in actuality, not available in my country. Living in Canada, iTunes US and iTunes Canada had different collections of music available for purchase. I could find a song on iTunes US, but not available on iTunes Canada, and because I do live in Canada, I could not easily order it off of iTunes US. If the right's holder decides to maintain the rights to a song, and not allow me to purchase it legally in my own country, then why should you be allowed to sue for copyright infringement, considering you're not making it available for me to purchase legally? I would like to see copyright reform in the sense of by maintaining the copyright in say, a country like Canada, but you're not willing to release the copyrighted material for whatever reason, then say, after a period of 5 years, you must sell or give up the copyright. It never made much sense to me for a rights holder to not allow a consumer to legitimately purchase a song, and then bitch and complain when the frustrated consumer finds other means to acquire the same song that you refused to make available for purchase.

But the popcorn was buttered. Surely that counts as being a salted.

My vote is for Wi-Loon!

"Yes, there are some additional conditions which are not practical (like the driving the path manually before to record a precise map), but it has been done." But is it possible that the whole streetview concept was a leadup to the self driving cars? It would seem unlikely that the whole streetview concept was strictly to produce 'pretty maps'. If Google knew that their program needed a precise map, then why not collect this data along with the image data collected for streetview?