The only thing I see different from various pre-existing things is the input method, and that's not new either, so the whole thing falls under the pre-existing and bloody freaking obvious category. Again the patent system fails to follow it's own rules.

Half of which isn't vampires, it's confused faeries.

I've enjoyed many of his books over the years.
Another master will be greatly missed.

They eventually will, it's cheaper than them providing their own monitoring equipment/bugs.

Despite the fact that the sender has no real way of knowing if the recipient is operating a vehicle unless they are in the vehicle with them, and on top of that, the text is a non-time sensitive communication like a physical letter. The only reason to read it the moment you get it is because you want to, otherwise you just wait until it's convenient, nobody is in any way forcing you to read it now.

As to the morons in NJ, they said "...know, the recipient will view the text while driving". I guess the statement of "I didn't know he/she was stupid enough to text while driving." suddenly becomes a valid defense.

So you think that someone that can't even begin to comprehend the course material should be allowed in just because they want to go there?
When there are more qualified applicants than available slots, you need to limit the number you admit to supportable levels.
On the other hand, you shouldn't let unqualified people that just don't have the requirements because they can't succeed, and will just be wasting resources, especially when there aren't enough slots for the qualified ones.

In this case, there were no qualified applicants. Do you expect them to repeat grade school & high school math and teach remedial English just so they could admit new 'students'? That's a waste the colleges resources. Colleges and Universities are Advanced or Higher education. If you don't have the lesser ones yet, you can't be taught the next level. It's like trying to build a skyscraper without a foundation. It will fail and topple, wasting a lot of time, effort, and other resources.

So no, I can't agree with your opinion that it's a failure of a university to have an entrance exam. Rather, if it's any ones fault, it's a failure of the prior education system or students that makes an exam necessary.

I want to can some tuna, and no, that's not a code name for anything. ;)
(Ok, I don't actually can anything, but I've been known to help my mom with the canning since I was a little kid.)

SciFi writers have made many accurate predictions based on extrapolations of technological development.
They've also made many errors, but then again, they usually aren't trying to predict what will be, just write stories about what could be.
As to getting the dates right, nobody seems to get that past the 3 year mark, unless it's already got marketing pushing for a release date, but that's not really a prediction either.

As opposed to the laws created to intentionally hide criminals and corruption?

But changes in funding and laws have changed and allowed a record amount of fuel to accumulate. This was also made worse by the expanding footprint of mankind. We have towns and other installations all over the place, and most people don't want the burns and/or logging/clearing to occur near them. So it's just built up to record levels. Of course, the funding for all this hasn't kept pace, and has even been cut in various ways. (It's seems as though every time they get an increase in funding for this stuff, it gets yanked back pretty soon, with an additional cut to follow, but I don't have an exact list or anything.)
Of course, you can't forget that there have been numerous laws and regulations put in place that limit or prevent the removal of fuel by various means in a number of locations. That's a self defeating thing once the first fire sweeps through. In a place where once there were trees that were fire resistant and needed the normal fires to cause their cones to open and disperse their seeds (fir trees are a good example), the fires with this new abundance of fuel are too hot, and actually kill or even destroy the trees along with their seeds.

Managing the forests is a complicated and difficult thing due the previous reasons. Also, just because something was said almost a century ago, or even longer, doesn't make it any less valid.

I tested speeds on my comcast accounts over the years, and I noticed something hinky.
If I use well known speed testers, I get about what comcast says I should.
On the other hand, if I use more obscure testers, the speeds are a LOT lower, but are consistent between different tests.

So I tried the more well known tests again, but I obfuscated them so comcast wouldn't know what I was doing.
Guess what. The speeds went way down to the same thing the more obscure tests were saying.

That seems to indicate that comcast is actually giving you a much lower speed than advertised, but try to protect themselves from law suits by saying 'up to' on their rates, but will temporarily boost you to what you paid for if they detect you trying to run a test on them. (That's pretty much standard practice for a con man trying to prevent you from learning about the con.)

What if you forgot to take the groceries out of the back before you 'shut it'?
Will it do that if someone is in the car?
I bet a lot of people would have fun tipping them over when folded up.
The smaller size is only when parked, so it won't help you get into a smaller parking space.
Those tiny casters aren't going to be used for rolling it around anywhere, so why the heck didn't they use something more durable like a post/leg?

It's funny, but not very practical in my opinion. I wonder how many clowns you can cram into it?

That's a horrible choice. I don't know about the books you have to read, but that miniature screen is too freaking small for several of the textbooks I had to use.

Yes, I know you can enlarge the view, but you can't enlarge the screen, and when you need to see the whole thing at a size large enough to make out the details, a miniature screen is annoying and useless. The mini is a fail for that purpose.

Let's see, on class, anywhere from 10-30 students. Library usually having 1 or 2 of any single book. Possibly multiple classes, especially for common stuff. Homework and study requires you to spend more time with the book than a quick read in the library would allow. Sure, that'll work out real well. Shadowrat is right, you still have to buy the books.

The same thing that always goes wrong, somebody will abuse it because they can.