In those states, they are not illegal in and of themselves. You can own and/or transport them, you just can't use them in a car while driving on public roads. The states are well within their rights to legislate what equipment is or isn't allowed on motor vehicles.

Had I guy from Best Buy follow me out in to the parking lot after doing this. Some of these guys take their job really seriously!

What was that about running around a field and kicking a ball? http://www.robocup.org/

I did this for my father. I gave him a non-admin account and set up UAC. Then in case he did want to install something, I made an admin account with the username "stopandthink" with the password "aboutwhatyouredoing" and wrote it on a post-it note for him. I told him if he ever has to use that account to do anything like watching a funny video or opening an email he should just stop right there and assume it's a virus. Seems to work for him so far.

I just bought a 2012 Fusion, and I've got to say, I've actually been really impressed with the Sync. If you actually read through the manual once or twice to learn the commands and what it can/can't do, it's incredibly useful while driving.

And it has the added benefit that since it uses your own phone's connection (through a bluetooth phone call) to gather it's traffic/directions/whatever, you don't need to have OnStar-like overlords constantly getting updates on where your car is. It sends it's GPS location, once, when you ask for directions or traffic. That's it.

The problem with this is that not everyone who hops on a bicycle cares about traffic laws. I consider myself a semi-avid cyclist and I ride with traffic quite regularly. I usually don't run into too many issues besides the occasional person honking at me or shouting something, but I follow every traffic law and make sure to give right of way when required. On the other hand I see a lot of bicycles doing stupid things like riding on the wrong side of the road, not stopping for red lights, darting into traffic, riding at night with no lights/reflectors whatsoever, etc. Should I go to prison and have my life ruined because one of these idiots did something insane? I'm all for cyclists' rights, but it goes both ways.

If there are any other invites floating around, I could use one and would much appreciate it. My email is my slashdot username at gmail

I think a better analogy would be me shouting my banking information to some friend of mine over a random CB radio channel. There are IIRC 40 CB radio channels, so the chance that someone besides me and my friend are listening and are within range is remote, but still possible to do with a trivial amount of equipment and skill.

Well, so long as his backups at her place consist only of jpeg pictures of their relationship, you could actually kill two birds with one stone there...

Depending on the acceleration power of his car, not coming to a complete stop at the light could allow him to get up to speed faster and possibly make the next light instead of missing it. Not to mention the fuel-efficiency benefits of a smoother accel/decel pattern.

This is one of the main reasons I refuse to fly if it would be shorter than a 9ish hour drive. Driving is easy and pretty relaxing in most locales. I can stop whenever I want, eat good food, bring along anything I want, and probably get there in a similar amount of time.

I thought the standard process for ThinkPads in a spill was to leave them facing right-side up. I think the drains in the keyboard are built to work assuming that the laptop is in a normal orientation. I'll have to consult my manual again...

If the attacker has access to your computer (as is the case in this article), your TrueCrypt keys stored in memory are already hosed. The only way TrueCrypt will help you in this case is if the attacker is accessing the files remotely somehow and has no access to RAM.

Automated cars plus motorcycles would actually probably cause a lot less deaths than the current situation we have now. Aside from the occasional idiot cruising down the highway on his motorcycle doing 180mph, I'd venture to guess a good majority of motorcycle involved accidents boil down to "driver didn't see them". Put a pair of redundant radio beacons on every motorcycle and now I can merrily ride around the (automated) interstate without constantly having to worry about the SUV three lanes over veering across the road into my lane because their GPS didn't tell them about the exit in time.

How many people on earth had a firewall installed on their networks before the internet became mainstream? Serious question. I imagine a few did, but I don't think it's that far-fetched that an alien species would focus on physical security more than data security.