Where I live I stand the following risks...

1 in 2 chance of death from heart related problems.
1 in 25 chance of death from cancer.
1 in 5000 chance of death from road traffic accident (pedestrian or driver).

The percentage risk of death from road traffic accidents has not risen in the last ten years.

Better planning, requiring local bodies to consider the impact of new structures and sub-divisions of old, in regards to road capacity availability as a PRIORITY, would be a start. Further better planning for the location of the premises for local services rather than the focus on cost. Forcing businesses to have a set percentage of workers arrive via public transport is still another idea perhaps even prompting businesses to move to the workers rather than the other way around.....

Just not autonomous vehicles.

I think I would rather not be the CEO of the first company who's "autonomous" system exhibits "Toyota" like behavior.

The first avoidable death attributed to such systems should see the end of this nonsense.

I cannot however, argue with the ecologically friendly developments that this experiment will hopefully promote.

Oh so you're the lunatic that acts first thinks later - the next time you swerve watch out for the kid on a bike you did not see the first time you looked.

I hope modern tape drives are more reliable and accurate than the old DDS2 days.

I once had a situation where I had three IBM servers on my desk to commission. My boss told me "test everything" - I was young and reckless so I did.
Everything was great until I started testing the tape backup. Of the three machines -
"Machine A" would read it's own and "Machine B"'s backups, but not "Machine C"'s.
"Machine B" was happy with tapes from any of the machines.
"Machine C" could only read tapes from "Machine B" and itself.

Individually no single machine actually had a reportable fault, yet in combination they proved to provide a nightmare scenario.
We could not know if a particular backup from one tape drive was going to restore on a different drive. We wound up getting IBM to "tune" our drives into compatibility with each other, even then they would "drift" over time requiring regular checks.

How soon will cheap / diy schematics for jammers become available and these UAV's start crashing into things ?

I don't get it.

If the device is powerful enough to run a browser well enough to run Google Docs, then it is powerful enough to run Open Office locally.

When there is *cheap* *universal* wireless broadband then maybe, just maybe I can see the point..

Without it why would I use software that means that I loose needed functionality when I'm in a place with no broadband ? Forget using it when you go camping,hiking,off roading etc..

Flash storage is relatively cheap, exactly how much would an additional 1Gb for local apps add to the final sale price of a netbook if the existing devices are not big enough ?

Would sir/madam like the "works only on the internet" device for $XXX ?
Or would you prefer the "always anywhere" version for $40 more ?

Why not shine a bright light on the whole process ?

Establish an independent review body.

The review body charges to review DMCA takedown requests before they can be submitted to court.

A fee of around $200 per DMCA application per target should be about right.

This is initially paid by the entity applying for the takedown, but is however considered as a "cost" when a final court verdict is announced.

The $200 fee should cover the costs involved in having the material reviewed by SEVEN independent publically acknowledged reviewers, with the decision being that of the majority.

In the event that a "you cannot file" decision is challenged, then this can go to court as a separate case, with the funds for the review body's defense having been raised as a part of their $200 application fee.

ALL of this review body's actions and financial information should be made available to all via the internet for review by anyone with questions as to the impartiality of the board.

"prudent security precautions"

Based on what level of risk is this "prudent" ?

For what level of reward ?

Link : http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23790729-body-scanners-unlikely-to-find-al-qaeda-bombs.do [thisislondon.co.uk]

Quote : "It was unlikely that it would have picked up the current explosive devices being used by al Qaeda," he said. "It probably wouldn't have picked up the Detroit Delta Airlines bomb on Christmas Day."

"grow a backbone, grow concerned about your freedoms when they are REALLY threatened"

I should surrender to the indignity of performing nude acts for no appreciable benefit ?

"Recent attempts were about destroying the airplane, not about hijacking it and then making demands."

I agree that the tactics have changed - but not so much the risks.

There are risks in everything we do, but there are some things that simply don't make sense.

Link : http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23790729-body-scanners-unlikely-to-find-al-qaeda-bombs.do

Quote : "It was unlikely that it would have picked up the current explosive devices being used by al Qaeda," he said. "It probably wouldn't have picked up the Detroit Delta Airlines bomb on Christmas Day."

And still people want us to pose nude for some ineffectual piece of privacy invading junk ?

Not my job per se, but I intend to vote for someone who has a clue.

The fight is not the means to the end.

I'm proposing the radical idea of learning from history and skipping the fighting and going directly to the last chapter.

Ahhh I think I see another disagreement. Are you presupposing that a "war" on terror can be won ? That the bad actors can be eliminated the threat removed?

"temporary threat"

We thought that about Ireland...

It wasn't.

As I understand it Britain will no longer be self sufficient for electricity as of 2015.

A sizable portion will be outsourced from Russia.

Through undersea cables (we are after all only a small island).

A loss of those cables during the height of our summer or the depth of our winter would be far more devastating.

Overnight - no but then again I have no idea what the timescale is in today's internet age.

But I am still hopeful that there may yet still be time.

Yes I believe we are :-)

I believe our only points of contention are where to set the cost/benefit point in our security efforts, and the exact scale of the threat.

In this case I can see an imbalance in favour of not permitting these scanners with some of my costs not even registering on your scale. Having a personally formed mistrust of the authorities I shudder at the ramifications of this technology and do not believe it's use to be proportional to it's benefits.