I'm not a legal historian, but I think the case that convinced the Supreme Court to take a broad view of the Commerce Clause was a civil rights law that required equal access to hotels and restaurants, regardless of race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause

Yup. The New Deal was the first expansion of the Commerce Clause, and after the civil rights law was upheld, it was pretty much all over.

WRONG! OSS software is most certainly copyrighted. It is the copyright law that makes the license relevant.

My understanding is that the jury's job is to decide any facts that are in dispute, such as whether someone did something. A judge decides matters of law, such as whether that something is illegal. I suspect in this case that the judge determined that the jury's verdict included matters of law, and therefore were outside the jury's scope.

The books were written by an eyewitness many years after the events. The movie script is based on records from other eyewitnesses, so it's not surprising that they would remember events differently (or even correct mistakes from the books). Of course, the books are one source for the movie script, but by no means the only one.

I believe they recovered scenes from a lot of lost episodes from Australia. What happened is that the censors were quite strict in Australia, but as part of censoring episodes, they kept the clips that they cut.

All the lost episodes have fan-made recreations, using the original soundtracks (people recorded them when they broadcast), still photos taken during the filming, and recovered scenes. Some of them are pretty good, though most are painful to watch.

If you want X to be provided as a tax-supported service, as rubbish removal is for residents in much of the USA, then it is completely appropriate for the government to regulate the use of X.

This can be done in a variety of ways, ranging from strict requirements to creating financial incentives (such as where you have to pay for each bag of trash, but not for recycling or composting, which is how it works in my town).

If it's a City service, then the costs are shared among the taxpayers, so the associated responsibilities are also shared. If you pay for your trash service independently, then you have a point.

In my town, you pay a base fee to cover the trucks coming around, and you also have to buy special town-issued trash bags (which are expensive), which covers the cost of processing the trash. Recycling is free. If you want to throw away your recyclables, then at least in my town, you do pay for it yourself. With the old tax-supported system, when you didn't recycle, I paid for it.

Yes, RFID would be better, but something like Bluetooth or even turning on WiFi on a cell phone in the car could be sufficient, and it could eliminate the need to purchase equipment that isn't already on-hand. It also has a nice hack spirit if it works, in using something in ways beyond what it was designed for.

How quickly can Bluetooth establish a connection? Use the optical beams to determine the time that a car passes a point, and give each driver a Bluetooth headset that has been paired with laptops used to record the timing.

You can test the range to make sure it will work--you should only need a few meters. You can get cheap headsets for somewhere around $50, probably less.

I have no idea if this would actually work, but it should be possible to do a test run with parts you probably already have.