This astroturfing paid for by Microsoft.

No matter what a corporation pays, they just pass the expense on to the consumer.

The only time corporate tax works is when it taxes a company who's primary income is in another nation. How often does that happen?

In the end, there's only one true income source to tax, and that's citizens. You can tax them on what they own, what they make, and what they do. That's it. Everything else is juggling accounts so it's harder to tell it's all coming out of the same wallet.

I assume NPR is satellite, not FM? OK, add another antenna connection to the dock.

Depends on the crime. Crime of passion? Never. Violent crime due to rage issues / drugs / etc. Never.

All sorts of other crimes can be deterred if the threat of punishment outweighs the perceived cost. Not 100% of the time, but it'll reduce offence rates.

While I agree rehabilitation is a worthy goal, the PRIMARY goal of a justice system should be to prevent offenses. Towards that end punishment is used as a deterrent, detention is used to remove opportunity, and rehabilitation is used to remove motive.

Once somebody has commited a crime, *society* comes first, not the convicted criminal.

That's different from what has allegedly occured here, of course, where excessive punishment that many would call torture has preceded trial.

Seriously - put a tablet-sized dock in the centre of the dash, and publish the interface standard. Include connections for power, data to select vehicle systems, audio, and a combo GPS/cellular/FM antenna. Replace the car radio with a DVD drive and a USB connector, plus whatever the current major portable audio connector happens to be.

Sell a factory tablet when the car is new, but sell the developer's kit and let anyone make their own as well.

Full size & street legal. One in red, one in purple.

I assume that they're unable to directly detect AdBlock, but instead are checking to see if your browser has requested the advertising to load. If that kind of check becomes too popular, I imagine AdBlock (or similar software) will be modified to include a list of sites for which it doesn't completely block advertising, but merely stops it from actually rendering on your screen.

You'll still take a bandwidth hit, but your eyes will be safe.

"Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them"

I like this solution. Google should announce that they will be billing back any fees levied in France against the newspapers they index, plus a bit for administrative overhead. Any paper that doesn't like it can be banned from Google's index.

Negative. It is NOT illegal to take pictures "inside a mall or any publically accessible but privately owned facility".

However they're clearly posted, doing so may violate the property owner's rules, in which case they are well within their rights to remove you from the property, ban you from returning, and/or asking the police to charge you with trespass to property.

Find me a cop who would waste his time doing that for snapping a photo in a mall. Please. I'd like to meet a cop with so little else to do he'd waste time on that without a really good reason.

1) Security guards are pinning somebody down in a mall
2) Kid takes pictures
3) Mall 'cops' demand he delete photos from his *film* camera
4) Kid declines, tries to leave (while taking more pictures)
5) Guards assault the kid (unlawful, because all they're allowed to do is remove him for trespassing unless he's committed a crime, in which case they can hold him for police)
6) Kid is swearing and mouthing off (no shit!)
7) RCMP shows up, sees unruly teen being held by mall cops, and cuffs the kid.
8) Genius cop decides that to search the kid's backpack, he's going to cut the straps to get around the handcuffs

The real cops made some minor decisions that make things look worse, but given the circumstances I'm not sure we can really blame them. If the kid had kept his cool and done something smart - like politely request the guards be arrested for assaulting him when all he'd done is take a picture instead of cursing and being mouthy, this could have been a much funnier story.

Neither the kid nor the real cops handled the situation perfectly, but the real villains here are the minimum wage mall cops who should all be fired. If I were that kid, I'd be putting up their photos (and he still has those!) on a nice web site with the caption, "I work at Metrotown shopping mall in Burnaby, B.C., and I assault mall patrons for taking photographs, with the full support of the mall owners."... I bet things would change pretty damn quickly once that shitstorm caught on with the local news.

You jest... but people with hermit tendencies who are satisfied getting most of their social contact through a computer interface might be the pool from whom we select deep space astronauts.

Finding them in suitable physical condition, with appropriate education, and with proper social skills to deal with a small group of people just like themselves would probably winnow that group down considerable. Still, probably a much better starting point than air force pilots.

True, but I have a 12 year old vehicle with no rust but an engine about to fail. If $14K gets me a 'new' vehicle that will do my work commute, that's not too bad a deal.

Still, not as good as a $5K used car with a slightly better engine plus $9K in gas and maintenance... or even $14K in refurb work on the current vehicle.

Because the heat is created by the fueling (compression) process, and reabsorbed from the environment during the use (expansion) process, the exact opposite of when you'd want to recover the heat.

On the up side, you get free pollutionless air conditioning every time you hit the 'gas' pedal.

Forgetting to renew your registration should be a problem. However, they don't need ALPR to get you - the DMV (or MTO where I live) could simply notify the police in your municipality with a daily extract of people who have expired tags. Insurance companies could do the same. If we were serious about ensuring people were registered and insured, it's not a big deal to create the channels to do that.

It's not harrassment unless they're bugging you when you've done nothing wrong.