they didn't get the half million. Kickstarter shut it down before the transfers.

from what I've read, the interpretation is that you may not be forced to _create_ evidence that may be used to convict you at the request of a government entity. Answering a question from a government employee is creating statements that didn't already exist. Filling out a form is creating documents that didn't exist. Evidence that they already have can be followed up. Evidence that is known to already exist can be demanded (blood samples, DNA samples, papers in a safe), and the fifth won't help because you're not creating anything.

Following this interpretation, data on the drive already exists. Taking the fifth when asked if you know the password may be allowable, but once knowledge of the password has been admitted, it's down to the "demanding evidence that exists" category and the fifth doesn't help.

I'm not saying that's the ideal answer, but there is a certain logic to the position.

It's not illegal for you to do those things. It's illegal for him to accept money for it if he doesn't have a license pass you the data that his equipment has captured.

Because one of the government's justifications in the past has been that it's not really that much of a hardship, and judges tend to try to avoid flat out saying "my predecessors and colleagues were idiots and their rulings were bullshit." So instead we're going with the "well, that may have been the case before, but not so much now, so we're going to rethink this."

photons and neutrinos both travel at approximately the same speed in vacuum - "the speed of light"
However, when it comes to going through a non-vacuum, like a star, neutrinos have a straight shot because they don't interact with anything and the photons have to run through a pinball game (or a pachinko game, if you've seen those) until they actually get out. Best estimates of the time difference to date are about 3 hours.
Because of that, they would expect to see the light about 3 hours after seeing the neutrino burst, but in this case it looks like it was 7+ hours instead.
This guy (if I'm understanding it right) is saying that even "in a vacuum" light does enough zig-zagging to add a few hours to the transit time of a 163000 lightyear trip.

Perhaps it should only outlaw things that we know how to reduce to mathematics. Software is a gimme. Lots of mechanical engineering stuff can be reduced to math; that's how we can simulate it. So maybe not so much need for patents there. Serious biochemistry (e.g. drug research) isn't fully simulatable yet (hence folding@home), and arguably that's the stuff that needs to keep patents. I'm not sure where something like chip fabrication technology falls on that scale, but I think it's closer to the "not quite simulatable yet" side...

Agreed. But what is preventing them from doing it in a way that costs less but does degrade the service sold to others?

I will cheerfully support this. Any function that should work for a driver in motion should not be touchscreen. You can put a touchscreen in front of any/all passengers if you want.

Maybe this is the solution to the GPS issue too. The passenger seat can program at speed (if there is a passenger in the seat who is buckled up), the driver seat can only program while stopped.

And (infrequently) a stuffed rabbit.

They'll probably just attach all traffic associated with your login to your account, whether it's on your cablemodem or on the wifi (if the wifi is comcast-customer-only, they'll have to have some way to authenticate that you're a comcast customer). Which will suck if/when someone gets your credentials (either by sniffing the radio or setting up a fake hotspot).

It's true, though. Security _plus_ obscurity is great, but if obscurity is an _important_ part of your security system, there's a problem.

I use my nav system mostly to see which of three or four routes that I know is least bogged by traffic.

No, but I do think years ago Yahoo and AOL had a lot more interest in customer happiness than Comcast does now.

If it's implemented as you imply, I'd be fine with fast lanes too. I just don't think it will be.

I think the term you want is 'apalled'