Naimina is a weird word - if I asked somebody to transcribe the Russian, " ", I would expect something like this. It translates to "at exactly". The problem is that then that doesn't tie in to the names, which seems to confirm - but the only reference I can find to that that doesn't relate to this story is this photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/smallbird92 which seems to be the Picasa album of some rich Russian teenager.

As I understand it (usual disclaimer, IANAL etc.), the law under which he is being prosecuted is a law designed to protect people from wiretapping. Most states have a one party rule, which basically means that a third party can't record a private conversation between two people, but either of the participants in the conversation can (the "one-party" bit referring to how many parties to the conversation have to be aware of the recording before it is legal). Maryland, on the other hand, has a two party rule, which means that nobody is allowed to record any private conversation unless all participants are aware that the conversation is being recorded. So, the motorcyclist was supposed to turn off the camera as soon as a private conversation began. The problem here is that the guy who recorded the conversation either a) did not know about this law, or b) did not believe it applied in this instance [in the interests of even-handedness, I should probably add "or c) knew about the law, knew it applied, and violated it anyway"]. The real issue is that the guy, and most of the commenters here, by the looks of things, do not believe a traffic stop in a public place constitutes a private conversation between the individual and the police officer.

This is where things get a little tricky, because (at least in the UK), if you are stopped by the police, you are legally required to give your name and address, which is private information. So we have a situation where two individuals are in a situation where one party is unable to legally refuse to give private information in a public forum - so why is this conversation not afforded any sort of privacy rights? On the other hand, it's quite clear that, as others have said, if, for example, you are filming a school play by your child, and the couple next to you have a private conversation, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

My personal opinion is that technically, legally, Maryland probably have the slight upper hand, however, any jury that finds for them should be shot. I also believe though, that this is a use of the law outside of the spirit in which it was written, so there is a case for the defendant there. I shall be following this with interest.

I know of at least three ways of expressing sarcasm through the internet already.

One of them, we all do anyway, more or less, using smiley faces. The second is used in closed captioning and is an exclamation mark in parentheses, although is somewhat ambiguous as it can be used to indicate surprise as well. The third, and the one most likely to appeal to slashdotters in my opinion is the use of one pipe symbol to get it across (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar#Language for why).

Actually, there are loads here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation

Hello?
Hello.
Follow me?
Okay.

Oh God, I've turned into a grammar nazi... but I can't leave that "whom" there. In "people [who] crashed their Toyota...", the [who] is functioning as the subject of the sentence, and so is "who", not "whom". Basically, any oblique case requires whom.

But, as William Safire so aptly put it, "[t]he best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of your mind available for baseball averages."

Sorry... I hate myself, and feel unclean for doing that.

Certainly in the UK, that's not true. A shop does not have to sell you an item for the price they advertise it at - they are allowed to correct their mistakes. You would, however, I would speculate, get it for that price if you were able to complete the transaction before a shop assistant questioned you - if you were prepared to fight. The reason I think this is that although a shop does not have to sell you an item for the price they advertise it as, once you have completed the transaction, they already HAVE sold it at that price. They would probably challenge you, call security, probably the police, might even take it to court, but I think the court would find that the shop have essentially authorised the machine to complete transactions on behalf of the shop, and that it's the shop's responsibility to ensure that it does not make mistakes, or to absorb the cost of any mistakes it does make.

My old primary school have been doing this for at least three years.

In the UK, and most of Europe, walking along the bigger roads without pedestrian walkways is illegal. Don't know whether that alone would be enough to get the case thrown out, but I'm fairly sure that in sane^H^H^H^HEuropean countries, you wouldn't be able to sue unless the company had explicitly told you to break the law... and even then, it'd be dubious. IANAL, etc., etc.

If it's your kid, you set the rules... until you let someone else set the rules.

If you don't want anyone else to set the rules, you can always home school.

I'd love to see ANY hacker turn a computer into the police. It'd solve the crisis we have in the UK of not enough bobbies on the beat.

I disagree entirely. If you don't understand a contract, don't sign up to its terms. If enough people did it, and explained their reasons for not buying a product, then the company in question would make it easier to read. If you don't understand it without a lawyer, get a lawyer, or just don't sign. That simple.

Don't legislate for people's stupidity and apathy, because that encourages it.

An even better question: who the hell sent this guy death threats?!

Actually, on re-reading the whole thing, I've just got completely the wrong end of the stick... ignore me :P

Latin/Cyrillic is not a question of language class, but alphabets. German uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics (and, I think, the Schaffer's S, although I vaguely remember hearing something about them trying to get rid of it, so it may not still be in use). My fault, should have been clearer when I said "Latin-based".

Last I checked, German was a Latin based language.