Not to mention the ~900lbs of their fuel pellets, and the facility the size of Hanford WA to enrich it to the point it can go boom!

Also, let's not delude people: no (petrochemical) plastic biodegrades. Nothing will eat the shit. It will chemically breakdown (albeit VERY slowly.) And it will photo-degrade, assuming sunlight can get to it and wasn't mixed with lots of UV stabilizer.

Right. And everyone is supposed to declare the actual value of the item crossing the border. I laugh every time I get something at work from outside the country; that SSL crypto card is "$100", and the "web server" it goes in "$2000". "Value for customs only. Not for sell" No shit!

they will chase it back to the day it was made

And Cisco will enter the serial number in their portal -- btw, used to be, anyone could lookup any serial number, only a Cisco Employee would be able to see who owns it, 'tho. That search will show it was sold to IBM: "we sold it to IBM in 1992. Go ask them how restricted technology ended up on eBay."

(Shit happens. Remember the F-16 parts that ended up on eBay? The only way to know what they were, and that they were classified/restricted, was to look up the random-looking "part no.". (do you have the parts manifest for an F16?) To you, me, and apparently the junk recycler who put it on eBay, it's an ancient circuit board with some scrap discrete parts on it.)

More likely at customs. They're already "gubment", and it would be very easy for a package to pass through one of these uber-secret hack-points.

Exactly. They already pay numerous companies to do this. (Smartnet warehouses and couriers. Only in RTP or SJC are you likely to ever get anything direct from Cisco -- and the one time Cisco-proper replaced something of mine, it's because the RTP lab had the only one left [cat2926])

If you're going to go to the used market -- esp. for stuff the vendor (Cisco) will no longer support, there are plenty of non-cisco options as well. Bottom-line, YOU are more familiar with Cisco tech, so that's what you're using. But yes, it will be easy for anyone to come along after you that knows Cisco as well. (the same is true of Juniper, Brocade, Fortinet, etc.)

Enjoy your flight(s) to and from Mexico, Malaysia, etc. Very little of Cisco's gear is made in the USA.

But yes, a "retail" market for these things would make it virtually impossible to target anyone. Having to intercept every shipment to Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, etc. would be a major pain in the ass, and their tampering would become very apparent. (by retail, I mean a place where you take it off the shelf yourself. Any mail order, and it's back to the NSA being able to get it before it reaches you.)

That had to be a long time ago. Today, even 'tho the key fits and turns, the electronic security codes won't match. (assuming there is a traditional key.)

That said, my '84 Ford and my sister's '90 Ford had the same ignition key, but different door keys. That's before such electronic security, and when there was a "door" key.

Newer SSL standards include a host hint in the client-hello. So, yes, virtual hosts do work with https. (and have for MANY years now.)

We aren't talking about a theory; we're talking about applying an existing, well defined system to the US. Everyone with any sense (i.e. money to protect) fights tickets in court. The poor can't afford lawyers any more than the ticket(s), so they're already screwed. Those with means, will usually get out of any ticket -- and this cost a good bit of tax payer money (the cop was paid to write that ticket, do all the associated paperwork, and got overtime for sitting in court all day) while netting nothing but "court costs".

Just for comparison, let's take a "12day fine". For someone with 10k income, that's a $328 fine. For someone with 100k income, that's $3280. For the former, who very likely is living at the edge of their means, that's a fine they're unable to pay. For the later, unless they have the money management skill of a doorknob (which is far too common), that fine is merely a pain in the ass -- which their lawyer will get them out of. All such a system will do is drive up lawyer fees!

Except when Richie Rich hires far better lawyers than you can afford. And he can pay them for years.

where did you get that stupid idea from?

From the Real World(tm) reality of speeding tickets. They are 99% revenue -- check the revenue for your local LEOs. When I see Wake Co. sheriff deputies under the Globe Rd. bridge at RDU, I *know* they're there for money. (I've known too many deputies and sheriffs, and none of them have a single kind word about speeding tickets... paperwork nightmare -- document every pissy detail because it's going to come up in court months later, and a waste of time in court because everyone fights the damned things. [the overtime pay for being in court is nice, 'tho])

Revenue is the entire point of most traffic tickets. Look at the stats for speeding tickets, or stop light cameras, and it's as bright as a road flare. When someone does something dangerous, or actually does harm, no ticket is ever written -- when I was rear-ended, destroying my car, the idiot soccer mom that did it received no ticket at all. When you rear-end someone sitting at a stop light in rush hour traffic on a five lane highway less than a mile from the trailer park you call home -- i.e. a road you drive every day -- you deserve to go to jail, have your license revoked, and your vehicle taken and destroyed. You've proven you cannot be trusted with a vehicle.

As for the "day scale" for tickets, it won't have much effect on the "rich". The fines will not be the deterrent you might think. And they'll have even less effect on the poor, as this will make their tickets even less. All this will do is skew speed traps towards more expensive cars in an attempt to cash in on the income bias. (which also won't work as I know a great many "not so rich" people driving what were very expensive cars... until you run the VIN -- flood damaged, wrecked/totaled, drug/tax seizure, etc.)

The "cost to make" and the "cost to buy" are not in sync. That extra $3 in RAM will add far more than $3 to the retail price. Manufacturers take every measure possible to shave every penny off the production costs. (one cent over a million units is non-trivial. even more so given the razor thin profit margin.)