Or consider this: I am in Ireland and I steal a phone from someone at the pub. I fly back home to the US. The Irish authorities are able to determine who I am. Can an Irish judge issue a warrant to search my house in the US?

Consider this scenario: I am a US citizen who owns a house in Ireland. I commit a crime (in the US), say selling drugs. Can a US judge issue a warrant to search my house in Ireland? Let's say I am convicted. Part of the ruling is to have all of my property connected to the crime seized (by the US DOJ). Can they seize my house in Ireland?

The initial hardware is cheaper with HDDs. Operational overhead might be entirely different. An HDD needs to be plugged in all the time (consuming power) while a Blu-Ray (or DVD for that matter) does not. Also, an infrequently accessed Blu-Ray, stored properly, is likely to have a much longer shelf-life than a drive that is always powered up, leading to lower overhead in the form of replacement/recovery costs.

Not to mention there are things available by torrent I could not buy if I wanted to. For examples: 1) Linux-native Half-Life 2 that doesn't require Steam. 2) Windows 7 that can be installed to, from, or run from a USB flash drive. If these corps would stop slinging artificially crippled tech I'd pay for it.

Nah, you just need another voodoo chicken! Damn kids...

When the corporations can provide me with a superior product I might decide to pay them. But right now, I have a native copy of HL2 for Linux that doesn't require Steam. I have copies of just about every version of Windows which can be installed to and run from flash drives. Neither of these things can be legally purchased. When "they" stop artificially crippling technology I might pay them for it. Of course, I'll probably have my own army of open source killbots by then.

I would actually pay to watch that. Kickstarter, anyone?

The issue here is that our youth are not learning how to learn. Core teaches them several very specific things and often gives our youth the impresssion that nothing else is necessary. Core does not teach our youth to question and test the validity of information. We are teaching them rote memorization. Yet, we excpect new ideas and innovation?

Parent is right, a $1000 transportation tax would be terrible for poor people. I have poor neighbors who can't even afford a junker that costs $1000, let alone an extra tax on top.

I see this "problem" as an admission that police are profitting from crime. The idea that less crime is a bad thing is absurd, especially when the reason is police won't make as much money. Cutting revenue from traffic citations may lead to a reduction in over-policing and the ability for small departments to spend money on things they don't need. When I say things they don't need, I mean things like the military surplus armored personnel carrier my hometown (population ~5000) just bought a couple years ago. Need I mention, they use it when it's totally unecessary (boys with toys).

That is like saying the mafia may quietly pretend to have the power to shut down your business if you don't do what they want. While the NSA may not have the authority, on paper, they certainly have the ability to press the issue by "extralegal" means and have verifiably done so in the past.

Working from a license with an endorsement down to no license makes sense to me. I would like to see insurance, at least liability insurance, dissappear as well. I don't think the owner of an autonomous vehicle should be liable if it wrecks into something or runs someone over.

...when you live in an action movie...

Why should we replace personal responsibility with technology? A person, at least for now, can make a better judgment than a machine. It is true accidents with guns happen, especially involving children. A toddler picking up a gun and shooting somebody is easily prevented by keeping the gun away from the toddler. If we're going to do anything "smart" with our firearms, I agree with the previous poster who mentioned adding cameras to guns.

On another note, a firearm is so easy to make that anyone with very basic machining tools can make an AK-47 in their garage. If over-the-counter guns start to become less user-friendly more people will start making their own guns or buying "homebrew" weapons from sketchy sources.

The cmd-owner match was removed in kernel 2.6.14 because it was broken with SMP.