I originally lost my license because I lost a civil suit and refused to pay (didn't have the ability either, but either way). I didn't get a traffic citation in that incident. In Kansas, you can lose your license for 10 years for failing to satisfy a civil judgement. That was 14 years ago. Since then, I've acquired a few driving-while-suspended convictions, each of which adds another year to the suspension.

I have a almost-perfect driving record (before and after the license suspension), and I spent much of my life driving overloaded suspension-enhanced small trucks in the axle business.

I don't understand the last part of your post. You need to read your own post when it's in preview. Nor do I understand what your point is.

You should have thrown up your hand and kept repeating in a shouting voice, "Ferguson, Ferguson, Ferguson, (and so on)."

Because I don't have a license, I always drive as though a cop were right behind me. I don't exceed the speed limit by even a mph.

Once, because I had shown my non-driving ID at a sheriff's station (which doubles as a jail where I was visiting an inmate, my wife) and then drove away, a cop car really did follow me for a few miles. I was aware of it and drove as usually, very carefully. He stopped me anyway, citing me for stopping at the wrong place for a stop sign (not true). He also complimented me, saying my driving "was good - maybe too good."

(I ended up paying a few hundred in fines and bond fees but later did 14 days in jail because I was delinquent on payments. I didn't lose the vehicle nor was my dog, who bit one of the jailers, sent to the pound.)

This happened in Chase county, Kansas, USA in '08. Two points:

• ~ Traffic laws are enforced not to make the roads safe. The laws are just to make money for the local governments who are running kidnapping-for-ransom enterprises.
• ~ Sometimes, it doesn't matter how well you drive.

The US (in addition to some European rich guys) funded the insurrection in Ukraine that led to the removal of the (albeit weak) elected government. This directly led to the current conflict. We (the US) were not simply a bystander.

Despite criticism of Obama (actually the Obama administration; he plays golf) botching foreign affairs to the point of re-igniting the cold war and arming our enemies in Syria, you must say Obama does an excellent job of presenting awards and things like that. He's the best I've ever seen in that regard. Have Putin match that!

The rules of engagement for the Cole were clearly incorrect for the time and place. Bombed US warship was defended by sailors with unloaded guns It reminded me of the barracks bombing in Beirut.

Making drone control communications secure is certainly an important subject, but cutting-edge for Al Qaeda downloading the Allahu Akbar (god is great) app for their cellphone. The previous attempted attack against the USS Sullivan failed because the attack boat was so overloaded it sank. And the USS Cole could have easily defended against the attack by using a more cautious and aggressive rules of engagement.

"not enforcing"? The Obama administration continues to enforce federal anti-drug laws. Obama has said he "wouldn't go that far" (Barbara Walters interview) , meaning he wouldn't be in favor of legalizing marijuana. But he has said that the federal government wouldn't use resources to go after people in states where it has been legalized except in cases of minor use, or cases of sales to people in states where it's still illegal. Obama is not pro-pot at all. He simply likes to straddle the fence politically to pretend he's a friend of people on both sides of the issue.

If he were in favor of ending the prohibition, he would make statements to that effect. And he certainly could use the power of pardon to help many thousands of people.

First, I'll answer directly. If an American judge believed he/she had the authority to compel you to hand over the data, and you gave the *unable* excuse, the judge would simply assume you are able and rule against you until you found the ability. This may mean you stay in jail, you continue to be tortured, your girlfriend continues to be raped, your kid remains in foster custody, the state takes your money, or whatever.

This has already been thought of. And one answer is engineering some form of plausible deniable.

One idea is to make the existence of encrypted data invisible. Then you could try to claim everything is already visible. But that may not work with a dedicated inquisitor.

In a better designed system, you should be able to provide a password to your inquisitor (the government, perhaps) and it would appear to be successful. But in reality, yet another password would be needed to get at the hidden data.

If a vehicle is wide enough, it doesn't need to tilt. In that case, the tilting would only be for improvement of rider comfort. A bicycle or motorcycle tilts to be able make the turn at a higher speed. The concept is constantly discussed. Also see Max Hall's tilting site.

However, I don't mean to imply bicycle turning is a easily-understood phenomena. I don't claim to understand it, and I've been trying to for years.

If a person has a behavior that she or he keeps hidden publicly, they often assume other people are doing the same, dispite outward appearances to the contrary. For example, gay people think everybody is gay, perhaps in a repressed way, they may rationalize. And people who do particular popular illicit drugs believe most everybody does those drugs, naturally, not openly. There is certainly evidence to support their suspicions. Unlikely people get busted every day for drugs. But, regarding the drugs, the truth is many people really don't do those drugs. The drug user is simply projecting his or her own situation indiscriminately on others.

Now, I don't claim to be Mr. Clean. I would do heroin again if I could feel it. But I can't because I'm under a large dose of buprenorphine. However, I've never done ecstasy, ice, nor crack.

A legitimate defense to any accusation of a crime is the necessity defense. Basically, it means if you have to commit a smaller crime to prevent a greater wrong, then what you did is excusable and not even a crime. For example, if you have a passenger in your car who is bleeding to death, and while you are headed to the hospital you encounter a red light, legally, you can run the light and you would *not* be breaking the law.

That reasoning fails on two points.

• The government is frequently not logical. For example, many people naively assumed that although there were anti-pot laws, the state would never expend the resources to attack a little 'ol nobody like themselves. Thus, they concluded they were safe. Some people who had that attitude are now growing grey behind walls.
• Sometimes the motivation to attack somebody are the financial concerns of particular people in the government working under tangled rules. Because of the way funding laws are arranged, particular people in the government may get money if they prey on a particular nobody. So there really isn't a valid reason to target that someone. They just happen to be in the cross-hairs, and someone is getting paid to pull the trigger.

You don't have to be truly important or truly threatening for the state to persecute you. Indeed, if we could rely on the state always being correct in whom they attack, we wouldn't need individual rights.

By American standards, 8 months is a very light sentence. Lots of people spend that much time just awaiting trial, while they are technically innocent by law. My wife, for example, just finished 40 calendar months (lost all good time for tobacco smoking) for possession of a tiny quantity of crack (which I don't do, btw). I could go on with examples that are even worse, but I wanted to show something near to me to demonstrate prevalence.

The big filter (I don't like the term "great filter" but I'll include it to make search easier) is the point at which software programs itself (I don't like the term "singularity") - and so on. This point will soon arrive for our civilization, and it has already passed for the civilizations we are looking for. SETI is futile.

We must admit something is wrong after the current statistical failure to find detectable electromagnetic radiation (DEMR) from others. The best suggested answer is that civilizations hit the big filter at a point before having centuries of producing DEMR. So what comes early in DEMR production? Software intelligence. Right now, it's not a species killer, but tomorrow, when it can evolve itself, it will write our epitaph.

Regarding the article, it won't work. Civilizations will reach the big filter before they reach other planets.