Research done has shown that for real mpg improvements you need to be closer than even a computer controlled car can compensate for, and you pay for it by needing to brake so often that you burn off any potential savings.

Computer controlled cars might be able to do it better, but do you trust the signals from the lead car?

Then you'd have all the taxpayers who haven't had a traffic ticket lately clamoring for more and more expensive tickets to be written. ;)

If you're bombing your own population you've already lost.

Besides, a B-52 is even more fuel hungry than the tank.

I think this is why it managed to say 'secret' for so long. When you were briefed into the program you realized that:
1. The plan was incredibly unlikely to ever go 'live'
2. If the plan DID have to go 'live' things were so FUBAR that it was the best remaining option.

We need continuity in government. So long as the military command(majority of surviving government due to being designed to survive attack) gives command back over to civilians in a reasonable timeframe*, we're good.

*2-4 years? Enough for a new election cycle, at least.

No doubt filed between the plans for invading Cameroon and Cape Verde. Updated once every 5 years. It's one of the important ones. The two I mentioned are on a 20 year schedule.

I don't know, the world's 2 most ancient professions are still around... ;)

Actually, I'd imagine that truck drivers, especially long haul, would suffer before taxi drivers.

The taxi 'industry' would be fine, perhaps even invigorated by this. Fire all the nasty taxi drivers, have a computer do dispatch, etc...

Reduce costs enough and people will be less likely to buy a car rather than just renting one when they need it.

As you say - need a heavier vehicle, rent one, even over the phone. Heck, buy something and arrange for delivery. It'll drop the package wherever. Though delivery services at that short range are often cheap enough to be worth the human labor placing it in it's final location and hauling the old one away.

Sometimes they're sitting there between calls doing paperwork.

The problem with cutting their budget is that traffic enforcement(writing tickets) generates revenue, solving crimes doesn't. So you'd be forcing them to write even more tickets.

Even in areas where the police department doesn't get a cut of ticket revenues, generally the legislatures will alter funding - IE give the cops money to be able to afford to write tickets where the money from the tickets goes to the schools. If they don't write enough tickets, they'll be questioned by the budget committees.

You spout things you do not know. I never stated that they all had national support. I don't remember who, but Langley wasn't the only one with government support. Which is why I said 'some'.

Do you own a car? If so, do you change it's oil or take it to a place? Why?

Most people don't do it as explicitly as I did, but people still do it. It's one of the major reasons people drive rather than taking the bus. Sure, it's more expensive to drive, but they value their time highly enough that they'd rather spend $5 to get there in 1/3rd the time that the bus would take.

People especially do it when they hire a contractor to fix something in their home, mow their lawn, etc...

At how much cost compared to salvaged cell phone CPUs? Secondly, the 'needs' you list rather depends on the task they're being asked to do. There are still lots of tasks out there that aren't particularly CPU dependent.

Oh, now that's an idea: Said CPUs tend to be fairly ruggedized. What if we're talking about micro-servers intended for use in neighborhood locations for whatever function?

As Kenh says, "maybe not your cellphone".

My cell phone is more powerful than the old domain controller at one of my previous jobs...

Since so much of what you said is the same thing as I said, doesn't that make you far from reality as well?

For example, you said: "If a pedestrian runs into your lane and the car does an automatic emergency break AND the car following you crashes into you because of that, the liability issues are clear."

Which is simply an expansion/different case on my "pedestrian considered at fault for darting into traffic."

You don't address my pointing out that the system maker could be held at fault, but I specified 'possibly' for a reason - that's reaching into politics. We all should know that what is 'right' is not always what happens.

Fact is, I figure auto-drive accidents that are the fault of the car will be extremely rare, but still happen. That's where the limited liability becomes important.

That rather depends on the use you're putting them towards, doesn't it?

Cell phone processors might tend to be slow, but they're rather power efficient per operation. Always good in a data center, especially if the single powerful processor gets a lot fewer operations per watt.

I can see it being useful for highly parallelized tasks. Google searches, serving HTML pages and even video streams, re-compressing audio/video streams*, etc...

I'd say give the cops medals for NOT shooting the homeowner shooting at them thinking they're home invaders.

It's also yet another reason why I want to get a home security system that records. Including audio. Maybe I can set it up to forget the audio(and video) unless there's gunfire within an hour?

Don't set a trap(Fails even in the USA), shoot them in the front, and have a 'legitimate' reason to express fear for your life. Them having weapons of their own(knives should work) would help.

If you DO end up shooting one in the back, being able to state that you were aiming for his buddy that hadn't turned yet might work. Or 'he turned as I pulled the trigger' while sobbing or something.

Remember, human reaction speed is something like 200ms. If you decide to pull the trigger a moment after he decides to turn, it's quite possible that you'll have pulled the trigger before you recognize that he's turning, too late to recall the 'pull trigger' impulses. And while guns fire fast, they still take time, giving him time to turn a little more.

Should 'most' smugglers and dealers, I'm assuming of drugs, be criminals in the first place?

If they're trafficking persons, well, people are harder to hide.

Everything I've read says that the intelligence agencies are so deluged in data right now that they can't find anything in the mess much of the time. If they stopped trying to spy on 'everybody' maybe they'd have the resources to actually properly review the data that DOES matter.