If anyone ever comes up with a smart gun system that's 99.8% accurate, that will, no doubt, be good enough. Pity no one has yet, and no one is likely to any time soon. Biometrics just aren't there yet, despite improvement in recent years.

As to the rest, if you expect otherwise, you're a naive fool. Especially if you think that somebody is going to replace a critical piece of equipment with a - as you note - 99.8% success rate with one that is, at best, an order of magnitude lower (which 99% is, and last I heard, nobody could manage that with smart guns, either, in the real world.) It's rare to see any biometric ID system exceed 80% in real world conditions.

Police chiefs, who are politicians, will be in favor of this, because they think it's good politics. Police unions, representing working cops on the streets will be unalterably opposed to it, because even 99% isn't good enough when your life is on the line.

$ 1725 for the pringer, $25 for the materials, and 48 hours to print it.

Versus my local hardware store, where I could build a zip gun that will fire as many rounds as I want, without any worry about it exploding in my hand, ever, for about $5, in about half an hour (including drive time), and have no record kept of me buying politically sensitive tools.

A Google search for "zip gun plans" produces about 2 million hits. 3D printed guns are nothing more than crappy zip guns, more dangerous to the user than to the target. And to be crappy compared to the average zip gun is saying something.

Why should a fully capable PC and a tablet be two different experiences?

Because after using a touch screen on a desktop all day, my arms will be too tired to beat the designer with a baseball bat like he deserves.

I'll be impressed when they can match ComicCon San Diego, who have a hard time finding a ticket sales service that can stand up to more than a few seconds before it collapses under the load. The only reason it took 93 minutes to sell out completely was the slow server response times. Not many wet sites can handle 140,000+ people trying to log in at the same time.

Many police departments, in the US and outside it, already require their officers to wear recording devices while on duty. It's turning out to be a major deterrent to abuse of police power. Either you get nailed for abuse, or you get nailed for not having a working camera.

Google is working to get other companies to develop uses for it. Three of the first five such uses will sell advertising. The other two will consist of nothing but advertising.

I'll bet the hospital can produce a binding contract in which the doctors ageed to allow this.

In order to orate, the teapot would have to make noise. If there were a patch of gas between the Earth and Mars big enough for that, we'd have detected it by now.

I'll take cash or gold.

After all, we're talking about people who buy $1,000 Monster cables, even though in a blind test, they can't tell the difference between those and wire coat hangers.

If so, it's not the same as the surveillance cameras that are everywhere already. And in some states (including California, Google's home state), recording audio without permission from all parties is illegal (and in California, a felony) under many circumstances.

I think I'll set up a Cafe Press shop selling t-shirts that say "I refuse you permission to record audio in my presence."

The city did take notice. And lose the resulting lawsuit.

It's one thing to not read TFA, but dude, you didn't even read the summary.

We use username@, but the username is generally FirstInitialLastName, unless it's already taken, in which case it's "what do you think you'll be able to remember?"

But we don't have 30k users.

That simply isn't true. Only the debtor can send a C&D under the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. But anybody can send a C&D for any reason to any one at any time. Anti-harassment laws have nothing to do ith FDCPA.

The difficulty is that debt collectors who call on the phone will always be out of state, and you have to sue them in their location, which means small claims it out. You'll have to hire a lawyer, pay thousands of bucks in legal fees you have no hope of recovering, and probably not be able to collect the actual judgement because most debt collectors have nothing to sieze anyway.

Better to just convince them they're wasting their time. Make it clear that a) you're not afraid of them, because you know how powerless they are, b) you're going to waste as much of their time as you possibly can, thus costing them money, and c) you're going to be the biggest abusive prick you can possibly be over the phone, because they can't do anything about it.

You might also start screening your calls with an answering machine that says "All calls will be recorded. By staying on the line to talk to a live person, you consent to being recorded." They hate court-admissible evidence.

The laws that protect the debtor don't protect the debt collector, either. To quote Major League, "This is the outlet you've been looking for." You say say literally anything to them, and they can't do a damned thing about it without providing court-admissable evidence of their own crimes to the cops. So take your frustrations out on them. Call them names, question their intelligence, their parentage, question their species and what their mother mated with. Hell, tell them you're masturabting while you're talking to them. Take out all your frustrations on them. They'll make a note in your file that calling you is a losing game.

Free bonus hint: A debt collector who is calling you on the phone is a joke, no matter how much the debt, no matter what they threaten to do, even if you are the one that owes them money. If they were serious, you'd get a letter. The ones that call on the phone are trying to get a couple hundred bucks before they sell the debt off to another scam artist. They literally won't let you pay it off, more often than not. They are con artists. And they know it. So don't feel bad about abusing them. They, personally and individually, deserve whatever abuse you heap on them.