Extremely different.

The same way laser-guided bombs aren't self-directed. I'm guessing here that the gun puts an IR laser dot on the target and the bullet homes in on that. Keep the dot on target and you should hit.

I'm fairly sure that such gyrocopters qualify as ultralight aircraft, and thus require no license.

Not in intermittent driving conditions -- at least, not decade-old ABS systems. I can't speak for the newer ones.

I almost rear-ended someone two nights ago because, while I was braking, I went over a pothole and my ABS system kicked in. (I was doing about 20 mph, coming up behind someone stopped at a stop sign.) The extra stopping distance required when the ABS is going ate up -all- the distance I had planned to leave between myself and the car when stopping, but for maybe a centimeter or two, and put extra wear and tear on my nerves as I "shit, shit, shit!"ed my way to a stop. Without the ABS, I would have come to an uneventful, routine stop with about a yard between that guy's bumper and mine, even with the pothole taken into account.

But hey, at least my tires weren't locked up, am I right? %P

Bullshit. I sneeze. A lot. I have seasonal allergies for every freaking season. My eyes are closed for slightly longer than the usual blink when I do, but nowhere near 2-3 seconds -- call it 250 ms at worst. I've had machine-gun sneezes while driving on the highway and while driving in horrible traffic. It's never caused an accident. You should be following at -least- two seconds behind the person in front of you, and if they start slowing down, hey, you should too.

Of course, I also generally don't ride the ass of the person in front of me, and I pay attention not just to the vehicle ahead of me but the ones ahead of that one, and that probably has a lot to do with it, too.

That kind of public transport is -exceedingly rare- in the US, limited mostly to major metropolitan areas, and even then, not always.

Where I live, within 50 miles of NYC, A trip that would take you half an hour by car will generally take two to three hours by bus, particularly if you have to change routes, which you usually do. If you're lucky enough to live by a train station and your place of work is on that same line, then you're doing good -- if you have to change lines, though, you're just as screwed.

Actually, I'd disagree with that, partially. Granting permission to search your stuff is not permission to take your stuff, unless that stuff is illegal or involved in the commission of a crime. You've waived a portion of one right, not all of them.

Well, if you're referring to a iPhone or something similar, they need a warrant to access it, IIRC.

Yes, but that stuff is, without evidence to the contrary, -my- stuff, and should thus be protected. It comes under the 'effects' part of 'persons, houses, papers, and effects.'

There are two types of civil forfeiture:

There's the kind where they arrest you, take your stuff because it's evidence, or involved in a crime, and then, because it's involved in a crime, after you're convicted, they keep it. This is entirely reasonable in most cases and is not the kind that most people who talk about Civil Forfeiture are actually talking about. For one thing, you're actually convicted before they get it for keeps.

Then there's the kind where a cop pulls you over, finds ten grand in an envelope under your seat, takes it because you -might- be using it to buy drugs (or you just sold a bunch), not that there's any evidence indicating that, files suit -against the money-, and keeps it. Or the kind where your kid sold pot from your house and they take your house the same way. This is the kind of civil forfeiture that people complain about when they talk about it. This is utter bullshit.

Actually, there aren't any laws -- at least in the majority of locales -- that forbid someone from building their own firearm. Such arms don't need serial numbers or background checks, but they can't be sold, or, I think, transferred.

Incorrect.

FTDI, in generic electronics use, refers to an interface. (In fact, that's what the I at the end of FTDI stands for.) So an "FTDI chip" is different from an "FTDI(tm) Chip." Electronic interfaces are not patentable or copyrightable, AFAIK. The 'fake' FTDI chips don't necessarily represent themselves as FTDI(tm) Chips, and certainly don't use the same designs -- it's just that they take the same inputs and put out the same outputs. Misrepresenting your PID to a driver is not the same as counterfeiting -- it's breaking a USB(tm) rule, but if you're not a party to those rules, there's no legal onus to not do so. It's basically the same thing as an x86 compatable PC chip -- it may be made by AMD, but it'll accept the same inputs and spit out the same outputs from those inputs as an Intel chip, even though the internal architecture may be significantly different.