I think having laptops in class should be assumed these days. I bring mine with me every day; I use it to do assignments, take lecture notes, look up stuff the teacher is talking about for more details and so on. Yes, I do occasionally peruse Facebook and /., however, I don't allow it to distract me. The OP saying that someone's screensaver is enough of a distraction should probably get some ritalin or find a more interesting subject to study. People who want to be distracted, will be. whether it's a laptop or just doodling shit in their books, it's gonna happen.

Maybe, do you think just maybe, Ford might have thought about that and put a special case instruction in the ECU to oh, I don't know, not do that?
Just a thought

I'm currently a second year engineering student. In first year, we had several mature students (aged late 20's to late 60's) myself included. The people that survived were the ones who took advanced math courses in high school, or retained their prior knowledge of math. Those who did not have a strong math background dropped out fairly quickly, even though the first term math was considered a 'remedial' math course (covering basic algebra and trig, stuff I did in grade 10). Those with poor math backgrounds quickly floundered and failed out (a couple of the more tenacious types stuck on, but they had to re-take the course and are now severely behind).

But really, if we're only going to teach the basics to everyone and leave specialty courses to when you've chosen your field, then why not eliminate the need for English after grade 10 for those not pursuing a degree in it? get rid of all science classes for MBA and Economics students too; no more history classes unless you plan on being a history major or social science classes unless you're gonna be a sociologist.

The point of high school is to provide a well-rounded, general education is just about every academic discipline. To do this, a certain level of math proficiency is required. While I agree that calculus isn't necessary for most students, normal math classes all through will be. Even if you will never again have to sketch a parabola, or solve two unknowns in two equations, having a knowledge of math that is significantly higher than required will not only make the maths that you need to know for life much easier, it will also enable you to expand your horizons later in life if you choose to.

Do you also pay the gas station a monthly rate for the privilege of using the pumps?

Not at all. It's more like five razor-sharp titanium spikes, rather than nine.

So, if I'm out at the range doing some target practice and a person does not mysteriously stumble out from behind the target paper with a bullet stuck in them, then I can go and ask for a refund?

I used to do pretty much all of the work on my older cars; replacing fuel lines, struts, ball joints, doing body work etc. It of course saved me some money in mechanic bills, but would take me a whole lot longer to do since I didn't have any of the specialized equipment that they have there. These days though, I have a mechanic do everything, even oil changes. Now, I don't have to spend my weekends fixing vehicles, nor do I need to spend thousands of dollars on tools that are only useful for auto mechanics. Instead, I can use that time on stuff that I want to do, which to me more than balances out the time not wasted in a pool of oil under my car.

Does Australia not have anti-collusion laws? If that (exact) situation happened in the US or Canada, there wouldd be a pretty big kerfluffle about it.

Citizen's arrest, folks. It's legal in most states (and in just about every common law country too) to arrest someone, without warrant, who is in the process of committing an indictable offense. Meaning, if the cops can arrest you for it, you can arrest someone else for the same thing, so long as you immediately bring the offender to the police.

Kind of a gray area, but I guess if you are pursuing someone to do a citizen's arrest, it might be overlooked, though I doubt you'd need to call your boss ahead of time.

Self Defense.

At least when we pay our health care taxes, it means we don't have to pay the hospital too.

In Canada, ambulances for life-threatening emergencies are free (i.e. you have a heart attack and need a hospital NOW). Non life threatening emergencies do cost money, but it's only about $40-50 CAD (including hooking up diagnostic equipment, medications sometimes cost a little extra) and many (if not most) benefits packages cover a significant chunk of that too. If you call in a false alarm, you don't get billed so much as arrested if they believe that you are willfully abusing the service, since they are not so much concerned about the cost of the trip to get you as they are about committing resources that may have been needed in a real emergency. I've even heard of cases where very serious charges have been laid against someone prank calling emergency services where a person died because the ambulance was tied up in responding to the prank call.

Not so much a ban on vehicular transport, but a ban on manually piloting a vehicle. Support research on autonomous vehicles, lobby to make them street-legal. If all you have to do is tell the car where to go, there's no need to worry about how much you've had to drink beforehand. The only thing that might be tricky is motorcycles, since the rider's balance is a significant part of the steering; maybe a separate motorcycle lane would suffice.

Here's the thing that gets me: Why do I see the headlines on Google News, CNet and CNN hours before it's on Slashdot? I remember (not too long ago even) when /. would have articles out far in advance of mainstream media.

maybe not as feasible on back roads as it would be on frequently used city streets/freeways/interstates etc. maybe find a way to create a standing wave of electricity in large cables under each lane. Place an inductive coil under the car in such a way that if the car drives down the road, it will pass through the standing wave and generate electricity(since the car is moving relative to the wave, this would work; instead of the field moving through the coil, the coil is moving through the field). It would just have to be done on a large enough scale that the car would not only be fully powered at whatever speed it's traveling at, but also be able to recharge a battery in the vehicle so that when not on a powered road, it can still drive around. The upshot to this, people could install charging coils in their garage. No plugging in required!

Simply a character reference to the failings of the no child left behind program