So there's a definite public safety problem going on, with people getting mugged for their phones and what-not. For the record, I think this concern is what's driving this legislation. But there's definitely room for the Big Brother Let's Stop the Flash-Mob-esque City Square Filling Demonstrations appeal to the Kill Switch, so the government shouldn't have any access to it. Hell, ideally the carriers shouldn't either. Make it something only the customer can initiate.

Theft by mugging is People don't carry laptops around at nearly the same rate they do smartphones, so the theft by mugging isn't nearly as big a problem. When laptops get stolen it's typically because the owner was careless and left it unattended. Meanwhile violent muggings, where people's cell phones are stolen, is reaching epidemic proportions in major cities. In the 90's people got jacked for their Air Jordan's, now it's for their iPhones. And unlike many other commonly stolen items, this anti-theft capability can be added at no incremental cost. Hell, the iOS Find My iPhone function is already nearly compliant with the proposed California and federal "kill switch" legislation. If they changed the initial setup such that it was enabled by default, it would be compliant in all respects.

As for cars, just about every car made in the last decade and a half has a passive anti-theft system. These systems have been credited with reducing theft of certain models by 90%. Don't have the right programmed smart key? That car isn't starting without some major effort. The process to replace lost or stolen keys is byzantine, inconvenient, and unique to each manufacturer, by design.

And they're making out like bandits with the rip-off "lost phone insurance".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Not to mention but the stolen phone that's not black-listed could find itself re-activated on their network, and that's another customer gained or retained without having to subsidize their phone.

The Constitution grants power to regulate interstate commerce to the federal government. They can totally railroad this through on that basis.

It's spurred mostly by the fact that AT&T and T-Mobile have been sand-bagging, claiming GSM/SIM's don't allow for black-listing. The utility of Sprint and Verizon's blacklists is predicated on the "SIM" being integral to a CDMA phone; they can limit access to their networks to phones locked to their networks. The proliferation of phones containing GSM, CDMA and LTE hardware regardless of the carrier's network, opens the distinct possibility of a stolen phone being unlocked/jailbroken/rooted and re-used on a different carrier, rendering even Sprint and Verizon's blacklist useless.

This law is looking to have all the carriers actually implement a lost/stolen black-list, and to further have communication between the carriers, so that a black-listed phone can't be re-used on anybody's network. This sounds like something that could (and should) be implemented in response to market forces. The proliferation of passive anti-theft systems in late model cars provides a good model. There's no legal requirement for car-makers to implement RFID-encoded key-fobs, yet they are nearly ubiquitous and have massively reduced theft of vehicles so equipped.

You people are all forgetting about inevitable discovery. If the prosecution can prove that a piece of evidence would have been "inevitably discovered" then the fact that it was actually obtained by illegal means becomes a moot point. This inevitability can be empirically proven if the illegally obtained evidence is later also obtained via legal means. See Segura vs. United States. Grand juries are allowed to question witnesses based on evidence that was allegedly collected illegally. See United States vs. Calandra. The Court has also ruled that the exclusionary rule goes out the window if the evidence was obtained, even illegally, by a private citizen. Purely coincidentally, law enforcement agencies have a penchant for using confidential informants.

You've clearly never been picked for jury duty... A court case, be it criminal or civil, is to be decided SOLELY on the basis of evidence and testimony introduced at trial, and in accordance with instruction given the jury by the presiding judge. Yes this means the prosecution gets to cherry-pick what evidence they decide to make their case with.

They're counting on it being cheaper to put butt warmers, GPS nav, etc. in all the cars, even though some of the customers ultimately won't pay for them. Couple of inter-related problems:

1. Any such system will obviously be hacked/cracked by owners. First-sale doctrine, as well as various state-level "right to repair" laws mean their recourse to legally prevent such shenanigans will be very limited. Don't be surprised if independent shops specializing in luxury makes (who already own said scan tools) offer such services at low cost.
2. Ignoring #1, the business case only closes if the take rate on the option is high (say >80%) and/or the incremental manufacturing cost is low. Otherwise it's cheaper to eat the manufacturing complexity and leave out un-ordered options.
3. #1 will erode the take rate of affected options, exacerbating #2.

Service and used car sales is where DEALERS make their money. Modern option bundling reduces buildable combinations of the vehicle, directly reducing manufacturing cost due to economy of scale. It also drives up average selling price, as people take the entire "technology package" (or move to a higher trim line) just to get the one feature in that package that they actually cared about. The modularization and electrification of modern automobiles makes physical installation of high value optional features trivial in many cases. This opens the possibility that a savvy buyer could skip the high value option packages, secure in the knowledge that the desired features can be added after-the-fact at minimal cost.

Example: I bought a Ford Focus ZX3 hatchback the first year they came out. At the time, the "variable intermittent" wiper function was reserved for the the wagon. The hatchback had one fixed delay intermittent setting. Aside from the fact that it was a couple grand more expense for comparable equipment, I was a 22 year old male, so rest assured I was not about to be caught dead in a station wagon. I did, however, promptly purchase the wagon's wiper switch from the parts counter, for $42. I installed it into my car myself, in about 10 minutes. Viola. The car now had variable wipers. I pulled a similar trick to add a second cigarette lighter socket to my wife's Caravan.

Interestingly, the Toyota Sienna design was carried over from 2005 to 2006. No mechanical changes of any significance. All needed access is obtainable by removing the front-right wheel and inner fender splash guard. A bit of a pain, yes, but substantially less so then pulling the engine. If you got socked for 19 hours of labor for a water pump on an 06 Sienna, you were taken for a ride.

And before you yell conspiracy... The alternative of accessory belt drive, favored by American manufacturers, is more serviceable, but allows the engine to continue running after the accessory belt fails (and the water pump stops), opening the possibility of much more expensive repairs due to engine overheating. The Japanese design makes water pump replacement more labor intensive, but is more fail-safe; the engine can't run without the timing belt.

The Nest product-line showed promise, bringing iPod-like ease of use to a product category that had been completely stagnant for several decades. Especially now that they're branching out to smoke alarms and such, it doesn't surprise me that El Goog would jump on Nest to further whatever connected home/Internet of Things play they're cooking up. Yet another device they can have going all Big Brother on me; they'll ultimately monetize this stuff somehow. Google is fundamentally an advertising company, after all.

Previous comments to this thread (and the Amazon reviews) indicate less than stellar reliability of the primary function of keeping the house at the set temperature. With Wifi, a color LCD and non-trivial CPU power, this thing is a power hog compared to typical thermostats, and getting sufficient power to the wall, without compromising the operation of the HVAC system under control, appears to be an issue. I imagine lack of experience making any other HVAC components isn't helping their cause, nor is the emphasis on easy (and likely incorrect) DIY installation. Seems the kind of rookie mistake Honeywell wouldn't have made.

The suggested $20 option also lacks capability for auxiliary heat and multi-speed HVAC. The Nest, as I understand it, advertises compatibility with all extant HVAC systems.

The George Washington Bridge is 14 total lanes across two decks. It's the busiest bridge on earth. This would be a lot bigger deal had the bridge actually been closed. There are 31 toll lanes, spread across 3 toll plazas, leading up to the bridge. The main plaza for the upper deck of the bridge, which has 12 lanes, normally has 3 lanes dedicated (using traffic cones) to traffic from Fort Lee's surface streets. The Port Authority effected the traffic jam by moving the cones to reduce this to 1 lane.

Also, for those who may not be familiar with this link between the New Jersey Turnpike and the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, it is a traffic shit-show pretty much all the time, even when the Port Authority isn't TRYING to make it worse. And to think, people pay $13 to cross the damned thing (well, only $11 if they have EZPass).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington_Bridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal

Microsoft has delivered two customer-visible innovations to Windows PC's in the past decade:
      1. Fisher-Price^h^h^h^hAero UI
      2. Non-atrocious security and stability
The eye candy has never been enough to move units on its own. It looked pretty, but no one in their right mind jumped on the bandwagon for the translucent task bar. Microsoft did (mostly) fix the gaping security vulnerabilities though; A decade ago Win Rot was a given, just a matter of time. Sure, we geeks took that as the cue to wipe the hard drive and start over, but "normal people" bought a new PC, and threw the old one in the nearest dumpster or out of the way closet. Today, it takes a modicum of active effort (or ignorance) to spoil a Windows installation. People have to wait for the thing to actually die, hardware-wise, before they have an excuse to go shopping for a new one.

In the meantime they're snapping up tablets and smartphones, and are finding themselves on the computer that much less. I don't think too many people are actively ditching their PC's in favor of their iPad, but an awful lot of tablet owners are skipping the second (or third) PC for the house, and they're not urgently buying replacements when their PC's die, even if it was the only (or last one).