how can you be sure it has a firmware?
it can be an FPGA, or even sillicon hard.

I work with this device and it boots up without any kind of ROM or firmware upload.

In this case, would you like the VHDL to be open?
If that's the case, why not ask intel/AMD/... to release the VHDL for their current lineup?

if you aren't allowed to take the hands off the wheel, you can't drive stick (unless you stay on first gear all the trip).
I guess since all yanks drive an automatic geared car this is no problem

This effect has been noticed in Barcelona.
Despite have a simple gear mechanism (I think it's this one, with 3 settings), the higher areas tend to have no bikes and the lower ones no empty spaces to leave them.
However, the bikes are distributed regularly using vans.

From the article: "Internet cafes also must make and keep a photocopy of the ID." I don't know about Italy, but here in Spain, the main teleco company Telefonica doesn't require any ID photocopy when signing up for a new phone line with ADSL service - they just want the ID number, and as the whole process can be done over the phone, I don't think there's any sort of verification. Why should I give an ID photocopy to a lousy cafe?

On the other hand, also from the article: "European ministers agreed last week to require the carriers to retain records of calls and e-mails for a maximum of two years." How exactly are they going to do this? I can see logging being done on the ISPs SMTP servers, but how are the carries going to log e-mails sent my personal SMTP server? Logging all packets with destination port 25? And what about webmail? How are they going to log that?