...then why aren't we charging copyright holders Property Tax?

"Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying. They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible." http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169254&cid=14107454

You take them seriously when they are in a position of power. With a title like "Presidency of the EU's Law Enforcement Working Party", you better damn well take him seriously, or in the end you are not the one who is going to be laughing.

Consider that the rest of the world has 22x the US's population. Consider that a large part of that does not have the good roads and vehicle safety laws of the US, or ready access to emergency rooms in the event of an accident. Even if their vehicular death rate was the same, that means 42k*22=924k, for 966k total. I'd say 1m is not a bad estimate.

If they have a 0.001% failure rate they will still err every decade or so.
Good point. And let me add, consider the fact that hospitals can have hundreds of nurses. If the average nurse makes an error only once a decade, then 100 nurses will average 10 errors each year. Error prevention systems are a good thing.

oil companies will go broke if they screw up

Call me cynical, but it would never happen. Instead, oil companies would take a lesson from Hollywood, and make every single oil well its own corporation, so any disaster would be insulated to a single small corporation that goes broke.

I would much rather see America turn to public funding for public domain news, instead of trying to let businesses copyright facts. One of the best news organizations in the world is funding by a TV license fee.

Tesco (think British Wal-mart) was legal purchasing Levi's jeans in Europe from wholesalers, and then reselling them in the UK for lower price than Levi's wanted them sold there. Levi's sued them, and won. We can only hope the US Supreme Court sees things differently.

A Chumby One, with a small touch screen, WiFi and FM radio, was $99 on pre-order, and $119.95 now, so it's not impossible, if the screen cost can be kept down. I'd suspect $150 is a more reasonable number to shoot for, though.

It seems these drives need a new "don't lie to me, I can handle it" command, so OSes that don't have a problem with 4k size sectors can get the real info.

I did it a few times when I had my window manager configured to use ctrl+alt+(#) to switch between desktop windows. Type something on desktop 3, ctrl+alt+4 to check something on desktop 4, ctrl+alt+3 back, hit backspace with my right hand to correct my typing before fully releasing ctrl+alt with my left... boom, down goes X.

Granted, I would do something like that maybe twice a year, with 7 hour a day use, but I have done it.

It'll be amazing how many people suddenly come down with "disabilities" once insurance companies start paying for fancy PDAs and SmartPhones.
Even if 5x as many people suddenly "need" these devices, since they cost 10-20x less, wouldn't the insurance companies save money?

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent

Competent people turn to violence much sooner.

Ever heard of the Hays Code? It applied to movies, but they didn't have video games back then.

See "The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms" by Connie Barlow. For instance, Osage Oranges were eaten by extinct North American megafauna. In fact, the tree is rather similar to the one in this article, in that it also has sharp spines to defend it.