Apart from the privacy concerns, I would think police might be against this due to detrimental effects on future investigations. If I'm a victim of a crime and need to look at a group of mugshots to see if I choose the person the police believe is responsible, and I've been looking at every new mugshot that they've taken, I may recognize or be subconsciously drawn to those pictures I had seen before. This could hamper some investigations.

I disagree somewhat. we don't like "syncing." we tolerate syncing because it's the only real solution right now for having our data at our fingertips on any device anywhere. but what we WANT is all of that to just work. the cloud is a fine solution if it secure, reliable, and accessible. it certainly makes sense to have backups of your data, stored locally somewhere safe. but does anyone really want their data duplicated on every device? isn't this wasteful? i acknowledge this is dreamy, pie in the sky wishes, though. still, i can't get my head out of the clouds. sincerely, diggum

Their hostile customer service is why I left years ago. They had overbilled me one month for real estate I did not own. I had my little plot of land and was happily paying the $5 a month or whatever that ran, but one month I got a bill for over $25. I tried calling but never got a real person. Tried e-mailing, but never got a response. Finally, I contested the charge with PayPal. That got their attention. Within hours, my account was canceled, wiping out the US$100 worth of Lindens I had at the time, and I received one NASTY response from them. I was chastised for contesting the charge via PayPal and it was surprisingly petty and spiteful. I'll wait for the Snow Crash monorail system to come to life. That's a far more interesting paradigm for this sort of VR anyways.

You're just not creative enough in your thinking. And while no reporter seems willing to mention it, it's not just criminals who might wish to implicate someone by planting DNA at a crime scene or in evidence. And there are some who have far more comprehensive access to DNA databases. And it's not like replicating DNA into usable quantities is terribly difficult. It was the cover story in Make Magazine last year, and the instructions seemed simple enough to perform in your kitchen at home. So while there are many ways to obtain real DNA, there are easier ways to generate large quantities of it from a small piece, which can then be used as the person sees fit.

Like Barney Frank, who has sponsored or co-sponsored forms of legalization legislation for several decades? Like internet-uberpol and doctor Ron Paul, who has co-sponsored and spoken against prohibition for years? What about the past three Presidents, all of whom have admitted to using Marijuana? It feels more risky to admit having broken the law for no good reason than to admit having broken the law founded on ignorance, racism, and protection of corporate interests. Fortunately, the print newspaper industry is almost dead, and they're incredibly responsible for the prohibition in the first place. Took awhile, but good riddance.

> Imagine all the social programs that would benefit.

Not to mention the citizens and businesses who would have significantly reduced taxes - more money to spend and invest - as well as pissing off a lot less of the world, reducing our need for a large military budget in the first place.

Simplistic? Yes. But it can be refreshing how much more effective simple solutions can be than the quagmire of most bills passed.

if you accept money, even in the form of reduced taxes which you may or may not agree to, in exchange for promised services, then do not deliver those services, you can rightly be referred to as a bloodsucker. There are other words that might be better suited, but they are best uttered on a web forum of less class. sincerely, diggum

I was there, too. My building was surrounded most of the morning and early afternoon (Union Square.) My office looked directly down onto 6th Ave and into the thick of the events. The people who were PROTESTING were loud, but peaceful and reasonable. The morons throwing bottles and climbing on the Nike Store sign were few and should have been easy to handle considering the hundreds of officers.

Rather than try to get the handful of people disrupting the peace, officers chose to unleash the pellets and tear gas.

I walked through the area around 1pm. The hallways leading outside were thick with the smell. I saw a guy slumped against a wall, his face was completely red and swollen and a woman was washing it with water trying to help him out. The cops came up, yanked her by the arm, and kicked him over until he got up and stumbled away. They were not there to help someone who looked pretty seriously injured by their tactics. They were there to continue their fucking tactics.

If a few bad apples really did ruin things in your opinion, then a WHOLE lot of bad cops did a significant amount of damage to their image as a whole that day.