Thanks for wording that so well. It seems like there are always people who think something like a seatbelt law is the foreshadowing of a totalitarian regime.

That's quite a lens you're looking at the world through. Somehow, in spite of not being free, people manage to change schools, change jobs, change friends, change homes, change weight, change genders, change musical tastes... my fingers are getting tired listing all of our non-freedoms.

"The freedoms that many great men have fought and died for..." Wow, more hyperbole.

If "driving around without a drunk test" belongs on the list of those freedoms, then so does "making it home alive without getting killed by some drunken idiot," and I'd personally put the latter freedom a lot higher up on the list. We just disagree on which freedom is more important. I don't object to taking a DUI test any more than I object to taking a driving test to get a license. I think they're both reasonable measures to promote a level of safety on the roads.

History does not, in fact back you up on your view of DUI tests as a gateway to a police state. There were people who once thought traffic signals at intersections and painting lines down the middle of the street were the first steps toward a rigid, robotic society, in which everyone moved in lockstep and weren't allowed to think. Obviously that didn't happen or we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If a mandatory DUI test is an unreasonable search, is a mandatory driving test at the DMV an unreasonable search? I believe both are reasonable.

Sarcasm and hyperbole aren't rational arguments.

"What's next?" is not an argument. If we require drivers licenses, what's next -- permits to walk on the sidewalk? No.
You're obviously against these DUI checks. Go ahead and make a coherent case for point of view.

Drunk drivers have been killing about a 9/11 worth of Americans every couple months since the 1960s. Given the extent to which we've allowed the government to invade our privacy in ineffective ways in the name of protecting us from terrorism, I'm happy to see them do something genuinely effective against a problem that's about a hundred times worse than terrorism.

I know Italy isn't exactly a renegade terrorist dictatorship or anything, but such actions by a government with such a blatant conflict of interest is just wrong in principle. I think the U.S. government should put on its white hat and publicly take a stand against this. I mean, suppose Rupert Murdoch became prime minister of Australia and decided to fine any website that contradicted Fox News. Why should the U.S. cooperate with that?

Looking at it from a completely different angle, if putting videos where Italians can see them makes YouTube an Italian television station, then every website in the world that streams audio is an Italian radio station, and every news site is an Italian newspaper. The whole concept is patently ridiculous.

Most 3D projector cell phones will run on ethanol.

I've always been a very fast typist; many people I've worked with have noticed and commented on my typing speed. An Indian contractor I was working with wanted to know how I got that fast -- had I taken a class or used some typing training software that he could use so he could become as fast. I told him it was just something that came naturally to me and that I didn't really think typing speed was very important for software developers, because actually typing in code is a very small part of the process. But it seemed to bother him a lot. He said that if he was typing in a "for .. next" loop and I was typing in a "for .. next" loop, I would get mine done faster. I kept telling him I didn't have any special tricks for typing fast and that he shouldn't worry about it. But he just wouldn't buy it; he genuinely seemed to believe I was withholding something from him so I would have what he saw as an edge over him. I've always thought that the importance he attached to typing speed was kind of strange.

There should be an algorithm for that.

Either pay-as-you-go will work as a sustainable business model and become the norm, or it won't. Debates among armchair economists won't affect the outcome. If IP stakeholders start attacking pay-as-you-go with PR campaigns, lawyers, and Congressional whores, then you'll know it's definitely working.

I used to work with an old guy whose job was to run the catapult on a carrier during the Korean War. He had some good stories about stuff they launched off the deck to "test" the catapult. The best one was an aircraft tractor that had been wrecked during a drag race below decks. Boredom and sailors don't mix.

a huge win for a slick lobbying campaign run by liberal activist groups and foundations. The losers are likely to be consumers who will see innovation and investment chilled...

Yep, typical Murdoch Street Journal editorial, didn't read the rest. I used to actually read the Journal when it was an objective paper with a conservative slant. Now it's essentially Fox Financial News. Much of their news writing contains Limbaugh-esque omissions and half truths. Their OpEd formula is to blame something on liberals in the lead paragraph, recite standard Republican Party litany, continue until trimmed for space. It's no longer the reliable source of information it once was. It's a very sad vandalism of an American institution by a mercenary bastard.

Think what the business world would be like if someone had been allowed to patent: "Process for storing products in boxes in a warehouse and later moving them to shelves in a retail store."

USPTO patent approvers should do that. Especially the thinking part.