I just bought a 2012 Fusion, and I've got to say, I've actually been really impressed with the Sync. If you actually read through the manual once or twice to learn the commands and what it can/can't do, it's incredibly useful while driving.

And it has the added benefit that since it uses your own phone's connection (through a bluetooth phone call) to gather it's traffic/directions/whatever, you don't need to have OnStar-like overlords constantly getting updates on where your car is. It sends it's GPS location, once, when you ask for directions or traffic. That's it.

The problem with this is that not everyone who hops on a bicycle cares about traffic laws. I consider myself a semi-avid cyclist and I ride with traffic quite regularly. I usually don't run into too many issues besides the occasional person honking at me or shouting something, but I follow every traffic law and make sure to give right of way when required. On the other hand I see a lot of bicycles doing stupid things like riding on the wrong side of the road, not stopping for red lights, darting into traffic, riding at night with no lights/reflectors whatsoever, etc. Should I go to prison and have my life ruined because one of these idiots did something insane? I'm all for cyclists' rights, but it goes both ways.

If there are any other invites floating around, I could use one and would much appreciate it. My email is my slashdot username at gmail

I think a better analogy would be me shouting my banking information to some friend of mine over a random CB radio channel. There are IIRC 40 CB radio channels, so the chance that someone besides me and my friend are listening and are within range is remote, but still possible to do with a trivial amount of equipment and skill.

Well, so long as his backups at her place consist only of jpeg pictures of their relationship, you could actually kill two birds with one stone there...

Depending on the acceleration power of his car, not coming to a complete stop at the light could allow him to get up to speed faster and possibly make the next light instead of missing it. Not to mention the fuel-efficiency benefits of a smoother accel/decel pattern.

This is one of the main reasons I refuse to fly if it would be shorter than a 9ish hour drive. Driving is easy and pretty relaxing in most locales. I can stop whenever I want, eat good food, bring along anything I want, and probably get there in a similar amount of time.

I thought the standard process for ThinkPads in a spill was to leave them facing right-side up. I think the drains in the keyboard are built to work assuming that the laptop is in a normal orientation. I'll have to consult my manual again...

If the attacker has access to your computer (as is the case in this article), your TrueCrypt keys stored in memory are already hosed. The only way TrueCrypt will help you in this case is if the attacker is accessing the files remotely somehow and has no access to RAM.

Automated cars plus motorcycles would actually probably cause a lot less deaths than the current situation we have now. Aside from the occasional idiot cruising down the highway on his motorcycle doing 180mph, I'd venture to guess a good majority of motorcycle involved accidents boil down to "driver didn't see them". Put a pair of redundant radio beacons on every motorcycle and now I can merrily ride around the (automated) interstate without constantly having to worry about the SUV three lanes over veering across the road into my lane because their GPS didn't tell them about the exit in time.

How many people on earth had a firewall installed on their networks before the internet became mainstream? Serious question. I imagine a few did, but I don't think it's that far-fetched that an alien species would focus on physical security more than data security.

Alternatively, you could look at it as they CHARGED me for NOT letting them get a little data about my shopping habits.

Most websites I set up now are implemented with some form of CMS, so typically my process is to upload the zip file for the CMS installer, extract it using my host's upload tool (there is a button to extract zips you upload), and then install the CMS. It's pretty idiot proof, haha. Once that's in place basically anything else I'd need to do (update/change themes, upload files, add content) can be done via the CMS itself, so I rarely have to touch FTP. I typically use Wordpress for my simple 5-10 page sites and Joomla for anything that requires something more dynamic or complicated.

I do a fair amount of web design, and I barely mess with FTP nowadays. I use my hosting provider's HTML upload tool to throw a zip file on the server and then extract it. I haven't installed a standalone FTP program in probably over 2 years. Just haven't required it. Occasionally if I need to mess with something more complicated I'll fire up Dreamweaver (which uses it's built-in FTP) but that rarely is required.

I see this horse thing come up a lot in drunk driving discussions. Is it not possible to direct a horse in an unsafe manner due to being drunk? I'm pretty sure I could still cause a lot of damage if I have my horse dart into busy traffic. I'm no expert on horses, but I think there are plenty of situations where a sober human could be a lot better judge of danger than a sober horse. Would a horse think twice about galloping through a blind intersection with a red signal?