If you're on the plane, chances are it's safe to fly.

Nevermind, it sounds like they've spent $200 million on this system since its inception and the site goes down due to traffic every year... that's some extreme incompetence at work.

They have a population of less than 5 million, so limiting to 300000 concurrent logins (6% of the total population) doesn't sound too crazy. Worst case, everyone wakes up on tax morning and goes to check online, and not everybody gets in until the end of the day.

They probably had a fixed budget, with limited hardware, and/or didn't have the time to make it scalable.

Unless they're being used as money shelters in some way, passing debt on to descendants is barbaric.

Others have pointed out that the $100 shipping is also from France to the US. I can't even ship 18 pounds of food from the US to Europe for under $100, so considering this is a breakable and insured server, that sounds like a great price to me.

How often do you think lab rats are released into the wild when they're no longer being tested on?

The grumpy old man in me is just bitter about the direction in which it's evolving. Most of its changes (such as this one) are driven entirely by marketing-speak bullshit from ad executives who never really learned English in the first place. When they create new words, they tend to replace perfectly fine existing words, sound terrible (seriously, "impactful"?), and are irregular forms in regards to the rest of the language.

False positives aside, the real fun is going to start when DNA becomes the only tool police know how to use (because everyone is in the DNA database). Then, all you have to do to frame someone is borrow their hairbrush.

You know, it's probably a good thing the US has a medieval health care system, because fear of insurance costs going up is pretty much the only objection I ever hear for DNA tracking.

Most of the people I know who voted for Obama (myself included) now despise the man.

The public hasn't spoken in favor of bailouts, TSA, and war. The problem is, the two major political parties are pretty much on the exact same side (their own), and the public has been convinced voting for a third party is useless.

Slashdot is basically the techie equivalent of Fox News. We don't really come here to get information, we come here to get entertained and enraged by things that fit our point of view.

So, taking money from people (ie, taxes) are stealing, but you support a safety net. Where does the money for that come from? What about money for roads? The police? The military? Firefighters? Schools?

It sounds to me like you're defining "stealing" to mean "any government program that I don't like."

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but when you see a car with no person in the driver's seat, you don't expect it to move. Until people have time to adjust to seeing cars drive themselves, it could be a legitimate safety issue. I wouldn't have an issue with it being banned at first, at least until the majority of cars on the road can be used driverlessly and there can be a switchover.

The thing is, if he says he clocked you at 91, and you tell him you were actually only going 79... you've still admitted to speeding, with the exact same fine as if you were going 91 (I'm assuming reckless driving or similar charges comes in at +20 mph like most places).

Not to mention the fact you said your cruise control was set to a speed, rather than actually having looked at your speedometer. If you're going downhill, your car will probably be going considerably faster than your cruise control is set for (unless modern cruise controls actually apply breaks, which I haven't heard of).

I once saw two rabbits in what I assume was battle. The were both standing on their hind legs facing each other, and one of them jumped into the air and kicked the other one with the legs it had been standing on, then landed on its hind legs again. Most shocking/freaky animal behaviour I've ever actually seen in person.