Exactly. One of the big things to come out of the fight against SOPA was the realization that Silicon Valley needed to step up the lobbying if they were going to avoid being stepped on by Hollywood's lobbying.

Hybrids and electric cars are exempt though, along with several other alternative fuels, really old cars (older than 1975 and still running), and new cars less than six years old. So CA only gets the data on older cars that are using the "usual" amount of gas.

If California were to implement the plan that Oregon is looking at, they wouldn't be able to use the smog inspections, because the segment they want to add is the same segment that's exempt from inspections.

Considering this news...

I figure over-reliance on this sort of analysis explains why Facebook will show me ads for dating services even though it knows I'm married. I like all this geeky stuff, so obviously the advertisers assume I'm single.

Turbotax for iPhone & Android.

Just sayin'...

The Kindle Fire line is an Android tablet with a custom UI and comes with Amazon's app store pre-installed instead of Google's. It's in the same class as the Nexus tablets and iPads.

There's at least one app out there that give you read access to USB drives without rooting. It's called Nexus Media Importer and runs $3. Obviously it doesn't apply to anyone installing Ubuntu, but for those who want to stick with Android & don't want to root their device, it can take care of simple use cases like loading photos from a camera, pulling audio files from a thumb drive, etc.

Yes, actually, Los Angeles and its suburbs do have a long history with aerospace. Look up JPL on a map sometime. Or type "Downey Rockwell Apollo" into Google.

I work near LAX, so I was able to watch the landing last month and walk out to see it on the ground today. They let the crowd get a lot closer to the shuttle than I was expecting: just one parking lot aisle away.

My own photos from both events: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kelsonv/sets/72157631590634138/detail/

Anywhere with clear skies, though as I understand it you can see more in the Northern hemisphere.

This is an event that takes place over several days and is based on the Earth's path through the solar system, so it doesn't matter what time zone you're in. Wherever you are, your patch of land will rotate into the right position at the same local time.

Except they need to randomly turn off the network connection in their test envronment. It's amazing how many mobile apps assume you'll always have a solid connection and never be in an elevator, or walking between tall buildings, or the basement of a convention center, or any other place with a spotty or overloaded signal.

I remember this being something that came up during the fight over SOPA: Namely, that while the entertainment industry is used to lobbying the government, the tech industry was fractured and didn't see lobbying as a high priority, so the success Hollywood had at railroading some of those crazy ideas just blindsided them. (Stacked hearings, deliberately ignoring experts, etc.) It became clear that something would have to level the field, and since we know the RIAA, MPAA and friends aren't going to back off on their lobbying (and we know the government isn't going to stop listening to lobbyists), the solution is a tech lobby.

Blizzard still uses torrents to distribute software updates in their games, right?

From CNet's article:

This is the same committee that wouldn't let any women testify in a hearing on contraception last month.

Apparently, if you know something about the topic at hand, they don't want your input.