Maybe initially, but how long does it take you to get naked, especially if there is someone watching you (that you don't want to watch you) do it. The time involved would be very expensive. Also most people would freak out if you told them they were going to have to get naked in front of a stranger to fly. I'd bet that 9 out of 10 fliers don't even know what the scanner does, I bet they would think it's just a fancy metal detector.

When I was younger I used to use the $$PerHour measure for a lot of things, but now that I've gotten older and I have more money than I did before I find I use it less and less. These days I am much more willing to spend more money on a game or a good meal or a night out since using/wasting $50 isn't the end of the world.

Using a $$PerHour makes the assumption that a $ to everyone is the same. Maybe if you were to divide it again by your hourly pay rate? ($$PerHour / $PayRate)

Because in Soviet Russia Santa tracks you!

wait a minute... oh my god...

You have a living creature that is solely dependent on another creature for it's existence, you have a parasite, not a human. Personally I like to use the line of when would it be able to be removed from the mother and survive. Saying that there is 'no question' is incorrect. There is always room for debate, even in your example you gave a gray line: "But the first few months in, when you've got a brain forming, a beating heart, a nervous system, limps and other identifiable organs we've absolutely crossed a threshold.. So what is the threshold? 3 months? A beating heart? Nervous system? Organs? All of the above? 1 of the above?

From Wikipedia:The earliest gestational age at which the infant has at least a 50% chance of survival is referred to as the limit of viability. As NICU care has improved over the last 40 years, viability has reduced to approximately 24 weeks,[5][6] although rare survivors have been documented as early as 21 weeks either one of those works for me.

The law does not agree with you, terrorist threatening is more about how the person intended/perceives the statement/action and less about the literal translation of the message.

A cellphone gun is an extreme example of this, what about hidden drugs or lockpick kit behind the battery or even in the battery casing? Or what about components of the phone? Little bits of metal or chemicals that could be used to escape or injure other people arrested / officers.

Is the state supposed to pay for training to teach officers how to disassemble / reconstruct phones in order to properly search them?

I was more thinking along the lines of a pissed off drunk calling 911/the police station all night using a prepaid phone. Or calls to facilitate escape "One of the cops is in the bathroom now!"

Well maybe not punishment, perhaps I misspoke (err typed). That is exactly what arrest is: "An arrest is the act of depriving a person of his or her liberty usually in relation to the investigation and prevention of crime..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrest). The person who is arrested gets most of their rights taken away. Liberty doesn't just mean 'go where you want'.

How would they know to? Most arrests aren't made off of warrants, most are made on-view or just thru investigations. It would make investigations of criminals a lot more difficult (destruction of evidence, establishing alibi's, etc).

Anything not made out of NERF can be used as a weapon. Pencils, pens, cellphones, belts, shoelaces, etc. What do you just hope that the crazy, meth-addict, guy doesn't stab you with a pencil while you sleep? The police are the ones responsible for you once your liberty is taken away, if you get hurt in there they will have to answer for it.

Let's say there are ways to fix everything I mentioned with absolute 100% certainty:
"Magic-Scan(r)" scans the item/phone for any item/component/chemical of a phone that could possibly be used in any sort of 'bad' way.

"Safe-Brain(r)" then scans the brain of the owner to make sure they don't intend to use the item(s) in a hazardous way or to contact anyone to do anything 'bad'.

What about all the social issues that having all those items will cause? Do you want to be stuck in a room with 10 guys who are all trying to talk over each other on their phones? What do you do when Bubba demands to borrow your phone? when he doesn't return it? when you wake up and your watch is gone? What about the people who don't have phones? Do they get loaners? What if you don't get a signal? Should you get another cell? Etc...

Let's say we have another magic device that fixes all those issues as well. To what end? So you can update your Facebook status, play Peggle or plan what movie to see next weekend?

Who cares? Having a cell-phone isn't a right. It's a few days at most until you get charged, released or post bail.

Maybe, depending on where you live.

But for the most part, no. For example if you get arrested for DUI and you have a backpack, you get separated from your bag and thus it does not create any danger to the officers (well I suppose except for an armed bomb, but that doesn't seem reasonable). But there is a good reason to search it, to do an inventory of the container so the suspect doesn't say "I had $10,000 in my bag. The cops took it!".

I'm sorry... Seriously?

Ok let's not count the fact that that a cell phone could easily have hidden weapons/means of escape (http://www.google.com/search?q=cell+phone+gun) or the previously mentioned fact about the crimes that could be committed while the person was in jail.

The people are charged with a crime and they get their rights/freedoms taken away unless they post bail. They don't get to leave, they don't get to have their phone, they don't get to tivo american idol. That's the point.

If you have a problem with the whole bail/arrest system, that is a completely separate argument.

Lets pretend that 99% of border patrol agents are evil assholes and are want to beat people for no reason 99% of the time and 99.99% of people crossing the boarder are completely innocent in every way possible.

Even in that scenario (which I propose that even the most anti-authority people would find a bit of a stretch) we still don't know what happened in this situation.

All we have is the victim/suspect's account of the events which is obviously going to be biased, just as if you had the boarder agent's report it would be biased towards their side. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Crack is worse than cocaine because it is cheaper. Cocaine is too expensive to be high all the time, whereas crack is dirt cheap enough that it is doable. The fact that it is so cheap allows people to get easily really addicted to it, and when someone is really addicted to crack they do stupid things. A HUGE percent of property crimes (theft, robbery, burg, etc) are done by people addicted to crack and meth.

When a rich person runs out of coke, they don't go robbing liquor stores at 2am, people addicted to crack do. Race has nothing to do with it.

It is hard to tell what happened without the court documents. I guarantee that their case is not 'he download 'college_girls_gone_wild.avi' but it turned out to be kiddy porn.' Just based on the previous 'link-sting' operation I would suspect that they used a multi-part rar file, with a descriptive file name.

I don't know of any prefetching that would download 6 MB .rar files, nor would AVG's predownload scan thing, nor would your browser prefetch items in limewire.

I think it is reasonable to assume that if you post two sentences above 5 links, at some point while in the course of downloading the 4 part rar file they will read it.

I was discussing the methodology for the link-sting then the actual law. Personally? I think they need help, the type of person that gets off on 4 year old anal and oral needs help, maybe they will get it in prison (doubtfully though).

Remember the media is biased, without the court documents or police report we won't know what happened to WHITE. I suspect that he is guilty since he is pleading guilty. He will use the media's coverage of his 'accidental' downloading when asked about it later in life. But he is avoiding trial to keep the real evidence hidden.

There is noway in hell I would plead guilty to a crime like that, sell everything I own to pay for a legal defense, put myself in debt, read a book and defend myself. There must be some big reason why he is pleading guilty beyond a few less years in prison.

Did you read the link you posted? Re-read the scan of the first court document, specifically the description of the video file, it turned my stomach. Also note that the files are 4 parts to a .rar file. My guess is that is to further show 'intent', the person would have to download all 4 parts to have it work. If only one of the files was download, I'm sure the 'accidental' defense would work.

I'm not sure what they take, but whatever they are, they are out of this world...

Incorrect:

The margin of error on laser guns (no one really uses radar anymore) is about 0.5 - 1 mph.

Again, this isn't really accurate. True laser guns can be 'off' but normally they are not, and it is very easy to check (check, not calibration, they do not require calibration), all the officer has to do if fire it at any fixed object and if it shows 0mph, then it is working correctly.

Sometimes if the ticket is taken to court they will cut 1mph from it take the possible error into account. Just think about it logically, most places have some sort of criminal speeding law, there is no way any piece of tech could be the primary piece of evidence in a criminal trial if it had such a huge margin of error.

Most cops aren't going to give tickets for people in the 5-10 range because, that is what everyone does. They want to focus on the people who are really breaking the laws, not just the people who kinda do.

Umm in most places they are illegal*. For example in Hawaii (which is part of the 9th circuit, which is the same on as mentioned in this article.) steroids are considered a 'harmful drug' and possession of any amount is a misdemeanor.

*: Assuming you mean 'real' steroids and not those used for asthma and so forth. Also there is a huge cat-and-mouse game with law-makers and steroid-makers, law-makers ban substance X, steroid makers tweak it slightly so it does the same thing, but it has a slightly different chemical structure, so law markers ban that one, and so forth. But the law-markers bannings take a long time to do, so any one substance might be legal for a while.