Each day you learn something, had to google "doobie" - wrong birth year and wrong continent I guess.

... why wouldn't work for email as well?
You pay the levy/tax or whatever is called for CD-Rs as well even if you just use them to back-up your own pictures (or even if you want to use them as coasters).
Why not tax email as well, even if you don't use it for copyright infringement, even if you don't use it at all.

+1 for ScanSnap 1500 or similar.
OCR on "normal", modern printouts/paper (like bills and such) is spooky, as opposed for old magazines where it's so-so.
Software is a bunch of closed spaghetti-commercial software you can't use for much more than getting searchable PDFs from your boxes of paper but oh, it does work for this purpose. Also it's about the only software where I'm satisfied with default settings. Tried to play with resolution, color, compression (space is cheap, I know how to handle a couple odd hundred megs, etc). No real improvement and everything gets slower.
In short: yes, it does work.

I don't know about the "new" "Smarts" but the usual one in Europe is the 2-seater while the US is the 4-seater. The engines surely aren't the same as well.

That would be the case if you skimped on some 5-15 cent bypass diodes.

You seem to insist with this idea that somehow logging is totally separated and not part of the "operation" when most likely it is. You can probably design a "desktop" system where no matter what you do with the logger you can't affect the system logging (for example put it on another network, another power grid, put some kind of one-way firewall and log over UDP). But here you have very tight constraints and I'm positive that any logging is done using the same CPU, RAM, flash, power supply as what you call "operation". You can of course sandbox to some extent some of the operations if you have enough resources but I somehow doubt this is the case.

He didn't say "stack scanner", he said "have access to a $$$$$ automated scanner" so probably we're not talking about your regular $300 Scansnap but about something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlOQuuLYavY

Yea, and nobody needs more than 640k of RAM...

At this point boycott won't work. They'll claim even higher loses because of piracy and ask for more taxes. There are already countries where CDs, CD-R/W units, fax machines, etc are taxed because hey, you can use them to copy stuff. They'll tax flash cards, hard drives, CPUs. And if it still doesn't help they'll just help themselves with the state money.
Heck, they are right now suing the Irish government for basically their losses: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/01/12/0141219/music-industry-sues-irish-government-for-piracy
No, boycotting won't help at this point (at least if we don't go to extreme "boycotts" like killing ourselves or moving to Cuba).

... and there are a couple videos with it already where it runs some kind of (rather unresponsive) android.
I hope it's easy/possible to make it run whatever x86 OS you please.

In fact is even worse than importing thousands of keys to FF, this used to work "just fine" with the oldish firefox (6 months?). Now it's MUCH worse, sometimes the certificates get regenerated (I'm not sure if it's when you reconfig the box or when you lose power or if it's only limited to really old hardware). I don't have the box in front of me but it's a known issue.
Anyway what happens is that you can't "add exception", "get certificate", etc. The workaround is just to remove all certificates AND then add the certificate that changed! And of course all the others once you start using them.
At least Chrome and IE just complain "not safe" "get me out of here" and other visual signs but in the end they work without any intrusive "under the hood" intervention.

In the end poorly managed https is no worse than http and last I checked this was still (relatively) working in FF. The only danger is that people might assume it's https(=SAFE) when it isn't really as safe as well managed https. Just give clear feedback about it and get the heck out of the way.

If this "protective device" becomes popular can we take bets how long it'll take a poor soul to crack the display from a "couch drop"?

Also there should be a non DRMed copy left in escrow with some state organization if they plan to distribute the work in any digital form and they want any copyright protection to it. Today "they" can remove your book from your "shelf" (ebook reader) remotely, they can limit where you read it, kill your "first sale" rights (you can't resell or loan a kindle book), they can make books "expire" from your reader. Most current incarnations of DRM are today broken and this is why everybody focuses on laws and lawsuits but tomorrow DRM might work "well enough" to prevent you from accessing even stuff without copyright.

I was about to say that UK is one of the countries where 3G access (assuming no Olympics/megaoverload as you did) is really dirt cheap (at least compared to, well, everything else you can buy in London) but now I see, you are "one of those". Guess what, the providers are selling locked phones BECAUSE PEOPLE BUY THEM. There is another obvious alternative: JUST BUY A FREAKING UNLOCKED PHONE.
UK also doesn't ask the SIMs to be tied to IDs or sold only to residents or any other nonsense; and many of them don't expire for a long time (and to extend them you just need to send one SMS which you can do from abroad). And you can recharge them from anywhere (via paypal for example) CHEAPER than "in person" (you pay less than 10 pounds to get 10 pounds of credit for example).
Everything is perfect already, except that you let yourself locked by a provider, possibly halfway across the world. Who can also decide to disable your voip apps as well at any time by the way.

It won't happen unless some kind of Mad Max crisis comes along.
As of now multiple countries are giving up nuclear power PLANTS and TSA molesters are checking people boarding BUSES and you think they'll let anyone have a cheap portable nuclear reactor capable of 100 mph+ ?
Now that we're dreaming I remember I wanted my flying car too (probably a transporter would work just as well). And a holodeck, yes, that would help!