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From the article: "The gene variant isn't always bad, though. Studies have found that people with it maintain their usual mental sharpness longer than those without it when neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and multiple sclerosis are present."

My take: "usual mental sharpness" - a dull knife is still dull after you run it over concrete. Maybe the people with the gene variant just aren't as "sharp" to begin with, which is why they appear not to change for a longer period of time.

Alright so here's my contribution to the whole driving/traffic laws discussion - I was driving home from work during rush hour one day and coming up to an automated toll plaza (the booth accepted either exact change or EZPass, here's a link for those who don't know what EZPass is - http://www.ezpass.com/). So this car in front of me decided to go through the clearly marked EZPass only lane of the toll booth, only, she didn't have an EZPass. So, she stopped her car at the booth. And I stopped behind her, and traffic started piling up behind me rather quickly since it was rush hour and she was blocking the only EZPass lane at the toll plaza. I gave her 2 minutes to figure out what she should do, and then proceeded to get out of my car and walk up to hers. I asked her what the (expletive) she thought she was doing there. She told me she was driving a rental car and forgot she didn't have EZPass. So I replied, "What the (expletive) do you think is going to happen here? This is an automated plaza, no human being works here, and no one is going to magically show up and fix this. There's at least half a mile of cars backed up here because you've stopped. Just continue to drive through and you'll get a ticket in the mail, the camera (I pointed out the security camera that was aimed at her license plate) already took a picture of your plate because you have no EZPass, so the damage is done. You can't do anything about it now."

Moral: If you have no common sense, do not operate a motor vehicle. You will definitely injure, kill, or piss people off. Do everyone a favor and use mass transit, or just shop on the Internet.

Maybe something similar to the toll system called ezpass. http://www.ezpass.com/

Instead call it e-zpark or whatever. After being in your parking spot for X amount of time, charge your account for it. That way, you don't pay for time not used and you also don't have to waste time feeding the meter. You also won't be dupped into feeding the meter when they're free (such as on the weekend or after hours). For spots with a time limit, they could increase the rate after you've reached the time limit and/or send you a txt message telling you that you're time was about up.

You might need that to do certain things, and do them by the book, but it seems to me that you can get away with what you like so long as you cover it up for a bit and then grant retrospective immunity to everyone involved. And if you think your government, with all it's DHA, TSA and other such stuff isn't keeping a record of everywhere you go, well... I disagree!

Keeping a record of everywhere I go doesn't violate my rights. I question why the government needs such a record but if you think this started with TSA you are sadly mistaken.

Surely the last government proved to you that the US executive can and will do whatever they like?

Actually, SCOTUS shot down several policies of the US executive so I think my underlying point still stands. The worst problem of the last eight years wasn't Bush (every single President since Washington has tried to expand executive power) but the manner in which the Congress rubber-stamped his policies for the first six years.

Also, who cares whether the calls were made to/from overseas places?

Historically the Government has had broader powers at the border and some of your rights may not apply when crossing that border. That doesn't mean I support all of those powers (if the call is between two Americans I don't think they have any right to be listening) but claiming that this is something new shows that you haven't really researched the topic as throughly as you should.

"Shouldna bin talkin' to them furr-ners anyway"?

Yes, any American that might see the historical basis for this kind of policy is automatically the stereotypical xenophobe and can be dismissed as such.

When I was a teenager (late 90s) there were a few people selling a device about the size of two bricks that could fool ez-pass by using another person's id. This is why when you sign up for ez-pass you have to give them the make and model of your car as well as your license plate number. They have two cameras on either side of your car pointing at you and numerous overhead cameras when you pass through so I believe any sort of fraud would be pretty difficult to pull off. I'm sure California has a similar setup and if they don't then they better get working on it.

Bad thing: having the government mandate their installation, and at some later time mandating that the data be uploaded to a central processing facility.

We call that E-Z Pass. Not quite mandatory yet, but at some point there will be only one Cash lane ... then none?

Interestingly enough, if all traffic data was being collected and prosecuted, perhaps some more reasonable speed limits would be brought about. I'm all wisdom-of-the-crowds on this one.

There are both passive (no battery) and active (battery-assisted) tags. Want an example of an active RFID? Try EZ-Pass.

While I'm far from an anti-tech alarmist... it seems like another handing over of your personal information to the government, which ultimately ends up in the hands of private companies... all in the name of "convenience."

While Canadian law is much different than US law... it's somewhat alarming that EZ-Pass http://www.ezpass.com/ information is being used against people in court.

It's also going to be funny receiving a text that says: "Your car has been towed! $250 has been removed from your account. Your car has been towed to your home. Would you like us to call a taxi for you?"

Yeah, but are all those dozens of private companies going to all use the same card?

Can I introduce you to E-ZPass?

Are we talking windshield or license plate stickers here? Because with EZ-Pass certain cars with metal-oxide window tinting have to get an exterior tag to place by their license plate instead of behind the windshield. Would this metallic tint also block the RFID signals?

There's no need for a new technology or overly complex solution for a problem already solved in many states. Using NY and NJ as an example, these two states still have tolls on major highways, but drivers using EasyPass can pass through them at 40-60 mph. And EasyPass (http://www.ezpass.com/) only cares about the number of axles you have, not the fuel efficiency/inefficiency of your car...

EZ Pass works from about 30 feet

Because it's a powered transmitter. The RFID tags in passports would be passive.

Something to trigger the stop lights to think your an emergency vehechical?

That would have been my guess too. Also, maybe something to fake out E-ZPass systems.

any person who has an ez-pass which is the new trend at least on the east coast is already having their travels through toll booths recorded in a database.

if you enter the NJ turnpike at the south end and drive to the north end, its a simple equation to figure out if your average speed was higher than the speed limit.

there are ez-pass scanners everywhere, including buildings all over manhatten. but everyone in the NYC area has them because it makes their lives and their commutes easier (as the name would suggest) and cheaper.

people don't seem to have a problem with those things being recorded if it means they don't have to pay more/ wait in line.

What's so strange about that? The EZ-Pass system covers a goodly portion of the Northeast, including the New York Thruway, the New Jersey Turnpike, and down as far as Delaware if not further. It's not our fault that you guys had to be different and call it FastLane or whatever. ;-)

Speed Lane is called "EZ Pass" (WTF?) and rotaries are common.

I really hope you're just trying to be funny and doing a poor job of it, but in case you're serious...

I keep waiting for a gas pump that "recognizes" my gasoline credit card device and waits for me to "fill it up."

Uh, hate to break it to you, but those have been around since the mid to late 90's, when Mobil introduced the SpeedPass. I've had one since long before I ever heard of Bluetooth. Now they are used at Exxon and Mobil stations all over the place. I think McDonald's even did testing a while back in California, IIRC, where people could pay for their drive-thru purchases via SpeedPass-- dunno if that's going to go national. When they launched it, it came in two varieties-- a small cylinder for your keyring that must be waved in front of a spot on the pump, and a transponder meant to be stuck inside your car's window that is "read" by an overhanging antenna when the car first pulls up to the pump (sort of like the E-Z Pass system some states have for toll roads). I think the stick-on transponder SpeedPass has been phased out, because I see no reference to it on the website.

Have a hard time getting a paper receipt, though. Keep getting a message saying "Your receipt is inside."

Where I live, gas pumps have been accepting credit cards right at the pump for at least 10 years, and have been printing their own receipts right at the pump as well. My SpeedPass account is even configured to assume I want a receipt when I gas up, so the pump just spits one out without asking when I'm done filling my tank.

I won't even tell you what I can do with my Macs running OS X and my Bluetooth phone, it may make your head explode. No flying cars yet, though.

I suggest you move to a state where people aren't too busy dating their relatives to embrace technological advances. By the way, the North won.

Out here in PA (as well as NJ, MD, DE, VA, NY, and other New England states that I do not have first hand knowledge of) use a system called E-ZPass.

Many, many people use it (as it lets you pay tolls with a credit card and a little transponder in the front of the car). Some people who happen to go between two toll booths a bit too fast, get speeding tickets mailed to their homes.

As annoying as this may sound, they at least warn you when you sign up that this is a possibility and give you the option to opt-out (at least the PA turn pike does, don't know about others).

-CPM

You can track vehicle positions. It's much harder to track which roads have been used.
I've done a bunch of work with GPS-based vehicle tracking systems--and it is entirely feasible to track vehicle positions. However--it is something else entirely to track which roads a given vehicle has used. The problem isn't with GPS--the problem is with the accuracy of map data: sometimes there's a pretty substantial difference between where GPS reports are, and where the actual roadway is supposed to be. (A very common instance of this is service roads--the roads that typically parallel a limited-access highway in urban areas. Is the truck on I-78 or on the adjacent service road?

This is a ridiculously expensive way to charge tolls.
This problem has already been solved in the U.S.: you can travel from Massachusetts to Virginia using EZ-Pass. And the EZ-Pass system costs lots less to implement. For starters, the on-windshield transponders cost a few bucks; substantially less than even the lowest-cost GPS vehicle locators (which use cellular telephone control channels to report).

So why dream up such a boondoggle?
Oh...that's right. Because the Galileo system is just an out-of-this-world waste of money. So the European Space Agency needs to dream up problems for their solution to solve. And the Europeans wonder why their economies are stagnant.

Well at least they are coming out and saying it. Here in the US they trick us into using EZ-Pass because without it, some of these highways are brutal to navigate. Sure, it only pays your tolls, for now. Sure, it's only optional, for now.

Hate to break it to you.. Your car registration is tied to your VIN, and your license plate is tied to your registration, and your ezpass is tied to your license plate... Yes, virginia, they could even track your visits to Mickey D's...

Or were you being sarcastic?

We pay when we get flogged by pop-ups. I pay for my connection. It's the same gripe I have about going to a movie theatre, paying $8.50 for a ticket, then being plastered with Coke and Nokia and car ads before the previews. And yes, previews ARE ads, but at least they are something we WANT to see, since most of the time they are exclusive, pre-TV release ads. I would have no problem with those ads if they took several $$ off the price of my ticket.

If I have to pay to access sites that I am already paying to have the ability to connect to, that also is ridiculous.

However, this was supposed to be a discussion about micropayments, not a rant, so if micropayments are a must, the solution is easy. Do the same thing that EZPass (and other) tollbooths do. Have a $30 account credited. When you use that up, another $30 is automatically charged. EZPass would never work if each time you went through the tollbooth it charged your credit card $1.

done.

Here in the US (pennsylvania), we have EZ-pass. Basically you put a small (3x3 inches or so) box on your windshield and whenever you travel on the turnpike (toll roads) it charges the toll against your account. It supposedly works interchangably with other state's systems.

Here in the US (pennsylvania), we have EZ-pass. Basically you put a small (3x3 inches or so) box on your windshield and whenever you travel on the turnpike (toll roads) it charges the toll against your account. It supposedly works interchangably with other state's systems.

Well, on the east coast, with all our turnpikes and toll highways, there is a big push for people to use transponder tags to pay their tolls (via the EZPass and compatible systems, primarily).

So it gets interesting when driving on many of the most travelled roads and bridges subjects you to tracking, and not just the occasional bridge as on the west coast. And since these tags are used to pay tolls, they need some sort of identification scheme, and simply cannot be anonymous.

At any rate, requiring people to have a tag in their car simply for the purpose of tracking traffic is a complete violation of privacy. There would probably be a fair number of volunteers for such a program that would make it worthwhile, but to require that all citizens subject themselves to tracking while driving on open-access freeways is just not kosher.

dumbass. that's e*Z*pass. Sorry bout that.

Some McDonald's in the area accept EZPass, but I don't think they do Speedpass around here.

EZPass is tied to your credit card, too, but it's 'mounted' in your car and so precautions against getting your car broken into prevent your EZPass from getting stolen, too.

As far as recovering a stolen EZPass tag, if someone uses it (or goes through a toll without covering it with the anti-RF mylar), you'll know where they are and when. And there's surveillance at toll points.

Question: EZPass has recently asked me to send in my tags for an 'upgrade:' Anyone know what they're upgrading?

Can't say it enough, working in your chosen field during college gives you a huge advantage in this regard. I work in embedded development, and my work experience during school was invaluable in jumpstarting my professional career.

During my junior and senior years, I worked at a laser printer manufacturer, maintaining and upgrading code for older products. It wasn't super glamorous, but I also wasn't just getting coffee for people, and I learned more in that year and a half than I did in the entire rest of my academic career.

After graduation, I had no trouble getting exactly the kind of work I wanted. I went to work on transportation projects at a major defense contractor for a few years, went back into the printer industry for a few years after that, and am now a senior engineer at a consulting firm working on several traffic management and wireless messaging solutions.

When I graduated in 1994 the market was already fairly competitive, and someone who had real experience working in a team with other engineers, burning ROMs, documenting software, and producing embedded code which ran in real products, had an obvious advantage over someone whose experience consisted solely of implementing linked lists and writing papers on finite automata. With today's large numbers of out of work developers, and the proportionately larger number of CS graduates entering the market, it's incredibly important to distinguish yourself.

Actually, most of the examples given miss crucial points; either you have to use your credit card each time, or the "tab" you run up must be recorded and entered by the server. A couple of closer matches to Amazon's 1-click "patent" would be the transponders in Mobil SpeedPass and E-Z Pass (for paying tolls w/o stopping). You have something that lets you charge a credit card w/o having to present the card each time.

Admittedly, with SpeedPass this is not necessarily easier than using your card to pay at the pump, but it does take the credit card out of the loop. The E-Z Pass is a lot more like it. Drive through, and you're automatically charged.

I commute from Boston to Framingham each day. I used to be averse to passing on the right, but it makes me feel so good. I like to drive between 75 and 80 mph and stay in the left lane. I can't stand people who drive the speed limit in the left lane. If someone is coming up behind me who is moving faster than me, I pull into the middle lane and let them by. I wish that more people did this.

The only purpose that tolls serve is to give people something to do. Most toll plazas are poorly laid out. With FASTLANE open for the length of the masspike (why does their site need Java?), things have not gotten better. FASTLANE has removed one lane (typically) from each toll station that was previously used by people paying with Real Money (TM). At Exit 13, the FASTLANE replaced one of the two 'double server/single queue' lanes (two toll booths in the same lane). Either pike officials realized that the ds/sq system was inefficient, or they aren't really concerned with efficiency. I would like to get a FASTLANE transponder, but I refuse to. I'm waiting until the fall, when, supposedly, the system will be compatible with the EZPass system. EZPass is better (IMHO) for two main reasons:

- To get a FASTLANE transponder costs $27.50, including a refundable deposit. An EZPass transponder requires a $10 deposit, unless you start your account with a credit card, in which case the deposit is waived.

- EZPass is bank agnostic. A FASTLANE account requires a $50 deposit. Unless you are a BankBoston customer and you pay tolls through your checking account. EZPass requires a minimum deposit of $25 for everyone. Both systems require a minimum balance (FASTLANE requires $20). Why do both systems need to have some of my money all the time?

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that FASTLANE needs a corporate sponsor? I have to pay a toll, and the Commonwealth is either taking money from BankBoston, or BankBoston is getting free ads in exchange for some service they are providing the Commonwealth (administration of accounts?) About a year ago, I noticed a FleetBank ad on the reverse side of a toll schedule. I do not need spam in my car.

And what about the areas not frequented by commuters? There are typically fewer toll booths, one of which is now replaced with a FASTLANE. What incentive is there for the people in those areas who don't use the highway that often to get a transponder. Is the goal here to get a "transponder in every car"? For what purpose? Will we start getting speeding tickets in the mail based on the data collected from the transponders (distance between tolls divided by elapsed time equals average speed)?

I could take the commuter rail to get to work but I don't. I would either have to get up earlier than I want to, or I would not be to work at an acceptable time. I also have meetings outside of work that I have to go to and the commuter rail schedule does not give me the flexibility (or reliability) that I need for my schedule. Just today, my roommate was 20 minutes late coming home becuase a lightning strike disabled switching on a four mile section of track, stopping traffic in both directions.

I wouldn't mind being a particle. Travelling at relativistic speeds my commute would take one millionth of a second. I could get eight hours of sleep a night and still go to bed at 1am!

Or maybe one to ride shotgun and clear a path for me on the 'pike everyday.

- What's that officer? FastLane is for paying tolls?

[still waiting for EZPass because it's bank agnostic]