This depends on WHERE you are. There have been a number of reports in the Southwest saying this is NOT the case because of the strong separation between the companies handling the speeding camera tickets and the government agencies responsible for traffic enforcement (and presumable vehicle registration).

Interestingly enough, whenever someone mentions this online someone posts exactly what you did. While I do not suspect any one in particular, I do suspect there is a champaign from the companies behind these products to spread FUD. That is the only way they can make their program work in the Southwest because if one is an informed citizen, it is clear that threatening letters from a non-government agency have no footing. Only once one is served is it legally enforceable.

Given the topic of this article, it is indeed chilling to imagine this kind of cruft coming to my home area. I hope our voters here in the Midwest are more sane about these ideas and reject them out of hand. Greed should have no place in law enforcement.

I had the same experience and resolved it with disabling the disk in the GUI too. As you mention, it would be nice if VirtualBox would at least try to boot the VM even if a disk or two went on vacation (especially if it's a CD/DVD).

I've found VirtualBox to be much more pleasant than VMWare Player. Mainly due to:
  - not so hard to get it working on 0-day kernels
  - really annoying VMWare keyboard bug
That keyboard bug might be fixed now but the way VMWare (didn't) handle it is enough to move me on to more pleasant pastures.

Sounds like the UW-Madison CS course although I'm sure many are similar (same TCP and interrupt projects and same languages). I thought it was a good undergrad program although I was disappointed how much is left to grad school.