This story has a long history. Basically these places were operating with a variety of names (cafes, arcades, sweepstakes, probably others) for many years. They operated based on loopholes in Florida law and their sole purpose was for gambling. A very large one got shut down because they crossed the line from simply unethical to illegal. They were operating under the premise they were a veterans benefit organization and not actually giving veterans and significant amounts of money. The lieutenant governor was involved with the company somehow so the story exploded. Rick Scott is already wildly unpopular and the Florida Republican party is on the path to possibly losing 2014 so the hammer came down to make a point that the legislature can still get things done.

It's pretty telling that the company that was shut down was run mostly by lawyers. They operated along the cracks and loopholes of Florida laws. These places are usually in poor and retired neighborhoods so I'm not that sad to see them go away. Maybe if we can do something about the "WE BUY GOLD" and check cashing places we can start to clean up these communities.

I don't think it's such a black and white issue. There needs to be specific algorithms for determining speed limits. In America, speed limits vary WILDLY from county to county for equivalent roads. I'll give an anecdotal story...

Where I live, there was a road that had a speed limit of 35mph. All the state guidelines said the speed limit should be faster. It was 35mph because the mayor lived on that road and he blocked it every time anyone tried to raise it. When he left office, all of a sudden it was 40mph. So all the people that got tickets for going 40mph on that road were in the wrong 6 months ago, but are not wrong now? Nothing has changed except a sign. The road is no more or less safe.

In the Gainesville, FL area the surrounding towns know there are a lot of people passing through that don't know the local speed limits (that's where the University of Florida is). That area of Florida is very poor and for some small towns, speeding tickets are a significant source of revenue. They will do things like post a 35mph limit, then soon after a jump to 50mph within a few hundred feet. When people see the 50mph sign they begin to speed up even though 50mph doesn't technically begin until the point of the sign. They hide behind billboards trying to see how fast they can clock you before you've technically reached the new speed limit.

While in most places it's illegal to have an official ticket quota, I know for a fact all tactics just shy of a quota are used. I've heard of whiteboards with all officers tickets for the month on display for all to see. Enforcement programs get very aggressive during times of budget shortfall. There needs to be a disconnect between funds raised by the legal system and where they go. If the money stopped going to police departments and say directly to the federal government, the police departments would lose motivation to try and cheat people out of money.

Oh my gosh...I typed a huge long reply to this and then the comment system ate it.

I have had this happen to me a lot. Enough so that my cousins and some of my friends refer to it as my super power. We saw two different types of lights (same day, different times of day) turn off in a movie theater parking lot as I walked past them, or parked under them.

My original reply was much longer and more detailed than this, but I don't want to retype it.

This seems like a late 90's solution to email spam. Why not a system that prescreens the call with a welcome message from you. This would trip some sort of probabilistic model that matches known waveforms of audio data that are robocallers. If after a few second delay it doesn't match anything, let the call through. Phone numbers in your contacts list are automatically let through. *123 reports a caller as a robocall at anytime during the call if one gets through. Anti-spam companies already have a good deal of the staff needed to implement this sort of thing. My guess is not enough people are affected by this to think this tech will be profitable.

What he did was about as dangerous as drunk driving. So unless we're ready to start sentencing people to 30 months for first offense drunk driving, it's not an appropriate sentence.

That's exactly how they are here in Florida. The reason for this legislation in the first place is that the lieutenant government was involved with a company that was operating one of these places under the cover that they were helping veterans. It turns out they were giving almost none of the money to any veterans associations. The really important part that very few in the media are reporting is that they were mostly run by lawyers. They knew exactly where the line for legality was and operated within inches of it for years. It wasn't until they got greedy and crossed it that they were caught.

They had to make a lot of noise about it because the lieutenant governor and a trashy company got caught screwing veterans. This was for the "someone should do something about that" crowd.

These things have been around a long time. I remember when one first popped up about 8 years ago. My friends and I went to it and were amazed that they were legal. Instead of straight cash they paid out visa gift cards. Then about 4 years ago the zoning board approved one in my immediate area. Once they realized the name "arcade" was a cover for gambling, they immediately rescinded.

The reason this is news is because our lieutenant governor was involved with a company that managed to take it to a new low. They operated these things under the guise that it was some sort of organization helping veterans. I think that was the last straw. After the bust, this legislation was introduced and quickly passed. It was completely reactionary and I'm sure poorly written due to the quickness with which it passed.

As I said before, these things have been around for years. I must have at least a dozen near mean in the counties that allow it. Everyone knew they were shady, so no one can act like they are surprised by their existence.

Apple has an app store for Mac OS as well. It uses the same sign-in as the iTunes app store.

My father-in-law has a 2009 Lexus RX 350 hybrid and the in-dash system is already showing signs of obsolescence. The most glaring thing is actually the built-in GPS. It doesn't take long for those maps to get out of date and guess what Toyota's solution is to upgrade the maps? Replace the computer. It would cost nearly $2000 to get updated maps loaded into his car. Toyota didn't think to have some simple way of upgrading the mapping data via USB or anything. They have to take the dashboard apart and install a new computer to upgrade the maps. That's just stupid.

Is anyone else amazed by the sheer scale of an operation like that? Not just Foxconn itself (which I know is huge) but the effort and cost of installing 40,000 robots.

Any idea what the small distorted square shape is on the left 1/3 of the screen at 38 seconds? Looks like some unfinished effects work. It moves along with one of the dwarves (dwarfs?).

For about $30 dollars you could connect an AVR to a serial enabled lcd and use a PS/2 keyboard. Run it on rechargeable batteries. I did this exact thing years back when I was studying communications protocols. My guess is that even if you don't have the skills to put together such a thing, if you contacted sparkfun and told then what you're trying to do, someone experienced would donate the 4 hours it would take them to design and program this.

The university I work for has developed our own home-grown learning management system. The beta is going...so-so and we're supposed to drop-kick Blackboard in 2 months and go wholesale with our own LMS. As a tech I'm somewhat concerned.