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Realistically, you should very rarely need the high-voltage "level 3" charge. Again, to equate EV charging stations with gas stations is a very big mistake as the two operate in very different ways.

Though I agree that range extension vehicles like the Volt are a good concept, but pretty meh in practice.

The guys at MSNBC decided to drive one from Seattle to San Francisco and got only mid-40s for fuel economy. That's pretty underwhelming considering the hype and cost.
=Smidge=

We here in the States have much more pressing issues at the moment... Science is for pagans and heathens

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40166219/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

Why? Who knows. Does it really matter?

and if it wasn't for the man made disaster that was our levy system,

You mean, if it wasn't for the greed and corruption that left the levee system unmaintained and ready to fail.

And of course there's the fact that the levee system was rated for a category 3 hurricane, while Katrina was actually a Category 4 - in other words, exceed the specs, expect failures.

I've visited NO. It's a decent place to visit. Wouldn't really want to live there till they get out of the Poverty-Pimp business though.

Who are these so-called "scientists"?

As any reputable scientist can see it is obviously swamp gas.

Piracy funds the Mexican drug cartels

From the BBC article: "In such species, all known examples of babies that are the product of parthenogenesis are male, carrying a ZZ chromosomal arrangement."

But from the MSNBC article: "One other interesting fact about these snakes is that if the offspring can reproduce sexually, all offspring they produce will be female," Booth said. "They are genetically incapable of producing male offspring. Only by their female offspring can males be produced again."

Doesn't that contradict each other?

You're welcome.

Well, if you liked those, here are some other links accumulated from some years of homeschooling/unschooling... :-)

At a somewhat older age, this site on learning to read is interesting:
http://www.starfall.com/

We also like the original Electric Company with some episodes available on DVD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Electric_Company_(1971_TV_series)
And it looks like there is a new version but I don't know how good it is:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28675624

But don't sweat "early reading". A kid is learning all the time. If they learn to read nature and computers and blocks and people and social situations and sand and water and pets and so on for seven to ten years (while listening to you read stories and other information aloud), they are learning in general a lot more than they would by trying to learn such things from books and other print media on the computer. If a kid wants to learn to read early (age two to four), fine. And of course, all kids should probably be exposed to reading material and the power of the written word (like adding things to shopping lists, or making signs). But if you go back two hundred years, learning to read at a later age was quite common, and kids catch up very fast. Don't let a stupid schooling lockstep age-focused paradigm harm your kid. Some kids also learn best to read by writing first (John Holt talks about this -- and how if you kid expresses an interest in writing, even just by scribbling stuff with no relation to regular letters, build on that). Note also that late reading in a homechooling/unschooling situation (where kids make their own choices) is different than late reading in a school-based print-based academic environment (where late reading is often a sign of some underlying health issue or just a broad, often justified, rejection of the authoritarian school paradigm, and problem piles upon problem if you can't read).

Contrast the probably true as far as it goes for compelled schooled children:
"Waiting Rarely Works: Late Bloomers Usually Just Wilt"
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/11360
"In the simplest terms, these studies ask: Do struggling readers catch up? The data from the studies are clear: Late bloomers are rare; skill deficits are almost always what prevent children from blooming as readers. This research may be counter-intuitive to elementary teachers who have seen late-bloomers in their own classes or heard about them from colleagues. But statistically speaking, such students are rare. (Actually, as we'll see, there is nearly a 90 percent chance that a poor reader in first grade will remain a poor reader.)"

with what happen when early reading is not emphasized because the environment is more flexible:
"Children Teach Themselves to Read"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read
"In marked contrast to all this frenzy about teaching reading stands the view of people involved in the "unschooling" movement and the Sudbury "non-school" school movement, who claim that reading need not be taught at all! As long as kids grow up in a literate society, surrounded by people who read, they will learn to read. They may ask some questions along the way and get a few pointers from others who already know how to read, but they will take the initiative in all of this and orchestrate the entire process themselves. This is individualized learning, but it does not require brain imaging or cognitive scientists, and it requires little effort on the part of anyone other than the child who is l

You're right; anything critical of Google is obviously biased. It's just a big coincidence that Google dodges millions in taxes, has Obama over for dinner, and gets a stamp of approval from the FTC in the span of a week.

Here are left-leaning media outlets reporting the exact same things as Brietbart and the Washington Examiner:

MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39784907/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/

San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/10/21/businessinsider-googles-marissa-mayer-to-host-president-obama-for-30000-a-head-fundraiser-2010-10.DTL

Really? The Reagan administration is sitting on funding and permission for the United States Air Force to go ahead with a program in 2009 and 2010?

Mainly because of a bill passed in 2007 by the Democratic majority that came into Congress following the 2006 elections.

Zombie Reagan has more power than I thought.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/30/air-force-liquid-coal-fuel

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0109/013009kp1.htm

"We don't want new sources of energy that are going to make the greenhouse gas problem even worse," House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said in a recent interview.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23811258/

LOL, Faux News was linked as proof that a story is real. National Enquirer gets more stories right than Faux News do.

Believe it or not, it was the least sensationalist of the pages I could find covering the story. Most of them were titled like "Man Arrested for FART! ROFLMAO! *RASPBERRY*", even on slightly more respected news sites.
BTW, it's hard to get arrest records wrong, since they're written down and easy for press to obtain. The rest of the story is that the prosecutor dropped the charges but it's something to think about; TSA guards might "think" you're trying to blanket the terminal with a gas-bomb and tazer you. "I smelled an odor similar to ricin, and concluded the suspect was breaching the canister."

Reminds me of moronic and illegal paper 'butterfly ballot' used in Florida not that long ago. Can't we get competent people to design these things?

[citation needed]

If the design were so horribly illegal, someone would have objected when they were published in news papers prior to election, no?
Or maybe we need to do more to educate voters than rounding them up at retirement homes and yelling "VOTE FOR 2" at them.

Speaking of illegal, we should all just stick to slashing tires.

I read a great article a couple years back about seniors moving into retirement communities close to university campuses and since then I've known how I want to retire. It makes perfect sense too - universities get another source of income and a really interesting new dynamic in class and on campus, and the older folks benefit from the non-stop hum of activity a university represents and the huge range of services they provide. I know when I was a student there were multiple university-sponsored events occuring every day, pretty much every hour too, and that's excluding the toga-parties et al. If the elderly are looking to keep their minds active it just seems a really good idea.

Not quite. The Spoof has an article with fake quotes talking about the crocodile attempting to pilot the plane. It was published on October 22nd, 2010.

Other sources include more details, and appear to be legitimate. Some predate the Spoof article.

It's not the incident that The Spoof fictionalized. It's just the details.

"I like having a police and fire department." It was quite recently that one particular homeowner discovered the downside to not paying for a fire department. In a 100% Republican-controlled county, his town opted to not pay for fire coverage via taxes, instead allowing individual residents of the rural surrounding areas to voluntarily subscribe to the firefighting services of the nearby town. This guy didn't, and then was terribly upset that his offer to pay the fee while his house was burning was rejected. Sorry, buddy. You want fire coverage? That's what taxes are for. If your political philosophy objects, elect people who let things like this happen, and you can deal with the consequences. It's the on-your-ownership society.

The mind has to do with sex because people have a right to choose who they have sex with. That's what society decided, and I'm glad for that. Otherwise I'd be forced to have sex with people I don't like and there'd be nothing to stop that. That's why you have to have a mind to consent. And that goes for children too.

Also, keep in mind that when sex is forced on the unwilling, the unwilling develop PTSD and psychological problems. It's well documented.

And yes, when you have sex with someone under the influence, you've technically not acquired consent, as one can not consent to something in a state of diminished capacity. So you are opening yourself up to criminal liability to put yourself in such a situation.

It's not to say that you will be automatically convicted. A jury of your peers is usually a bunch of judgmental morons. They even let this serial-rapist psychopath go who deliberately drugged and raped women, although I think the judge ruled otherwise, I think:

"Plenty of women were attracted to [Jeffrey Marsalis], but this guy was aroused by the very idea of nonconsent."

I guess it could be argued that animals lack the mind and never will have the mind to either consent or be harmed from the experience. I'm not so sure about that. They really don't have a say in the matter, so it's unfair, and selfish to jump to such conclusions as to what they enjoy.

Yes, it's considered taboo, but, there's also a logical reason why it's mostly wrong, which derives itself from consent, which we value so dearly. Therefore, I think it's going to stay that way, because it simply makes sense.

Humans are animals too but that's not what was meant by 'animal', making that equivocational fallacy.

And by the way, didn't the "two guys one horse" thing result in no convictions because they couldn't prove the horse was harmed? Although the guy who got fucked died. Perhaps he'd have faced charges. I'm not a legal expert on bestiality, so I'm not sure what the ramifications are exactly.

I don't think trees care, but no one cares about tree sex.

NPR has been wrong a lot lately

Late to the party, but I wanted to point out an interesting study done by a couple of Boston University economists which found that the all-in marginal tax rate of
every American is roughly 40%.

This means all the arguing over progressive income taxes is meaningless because state and local entities simply eat up the would-be tax savings of the lower quintiles.

References:
Summary article by Scott Burns
Study Abstract

-l

Actually, evolutionarily, the chicken came first.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science/ [msn.com]

The chicken would have had to have the mutation necessary to lay the egg in the first place.

Here are a few citations:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/102.php
http://politics.ohio.com/2010/10/osu-study-suggests-misinformation-and-fox-news-are-linked/
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/08/19/4431138-first-thoughts-obamas-good-bad-news

I know I read one a few years ago that I couldn't seem to find from a quick Googling...anyway, the trend is significant and has been going on for quite some time.

Dependence on Mideast oil? That's bullshit. The majority of U.S. comes from Canada, Mexico and Nigeria. It could stop importing oil from the Mideast tomorrow if it really wanted to, but doesn't probably for political reasons.

You don't really know what you're talking about.

1. Nigeria is highly unstable and is currently #14 on the list of failed states (up from #22 in 2006).

2. OPEC

3. Saudi Arabia has a unique position in the global oil market, in that they are the only country with excess production capacity worth talking about.
When FUD causes oil prices to spike, only Saudi Arabia has enough capacity to try and bring prices down.

Remember how embarrassing this was? And a month later?
"Saudi Arabia will raise oil production to record levels within weeks in an attempt to avert an escalation of social and political unrest around the world."

Even if the USA stops importing oil from the Mid-East today, the world market (that includes the USA) is still dependant on Mid-East oil.

That's bullshit. There have been plenty of rescued miners in China. Here's 115 coming out after a week underground in April:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36157561/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

That's not to say it isn't a dangerous industry, though:

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/1014/China-applauds-Chile-mine-rescue-avoids-awkward-safety-comparisons

We don't only find the monster ones.

We commonly track asteroids under 500 feet wide; much smaller than a planet-killer.

It will be comparatively easy to detect a planet-killer sized asteroid and determine its trajectory in plenty of time to launch a deterrent mission.

A surprise impact by anything with major destructive capability is vanishingly unlikely at this point. Improvements in detection shouldn't be prioritized, but should be allowed to continue at a normal pace.

Deciding how to minimize the destruction should be the focus, and we don't really know how to do it with a high degree of confidence, yet. So deflection technology should be prioritized.

``If you use a commonly used metric to describe an attribute of your car and that commonly used metric doesn't mean anything close to what you're using it for, you're being deceitful.''

Problem is, they couldn't have. The EPA had not established a standard test cycle for the kind of car that the Volt is. So as far as using the commonly used metric the way it's commonly used (i.e. reporting performance on the EPA test cycles), it could not have been done. This has been known pretty much from the beginning. Now, they could have done any number of things. They could have tested their car on one of the already established EPA test cycles. They could have claimed "MPG? For most city driving, you won't be using any gasoline at all!" They could have cooked up some kind of equivalence formula. Or they could have waited for the EPA to come up with a test cycle for their kind of car, and gone with that.

According to many sources on the web, the 230 miles per gallon figure was based on preliminary/draft specifications for a new EPA city test cycle developed specifically for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, with final ratings to be determined by testing after the EPA test cycles for PHEVs would be determined. Does that strike you as GM being deceitful?

The "free municipal systems" aren't really free, you know, they just spread the cost to everyone, even those who have no interest in getting "the internet" and those who already pay for their services. Yes, this is a great deal for those who don't want to pay for their own service, until you consider all the other things that people have the government provide "for free" that they don't want to use.

You mean like fire service?

I mean...being paid that much money is like winning the lottery. The trouble I see with this is that many of the folks who won the lottery are not happy at all if this story or this one are to be believed.

I would have wanted Apple to pay me some regular good cash making me fluid till my last days on planet earth. How about that?

Those are the most important skills I've ever learned. My parents taught me them, not the school system. The problems I see in our school system are three-fold: writing, research, science, and sports. First, writing. And by writing, I don't mean handwriting, cursive, etc., that's a dying business. I mean writing documents, such essays, technical documents, articles, etc. This has to be done on a computer, like it or not. Pen and paper is just too slow and too inefficient for the purpose of writing massive papers. It will be expensive too. It will take forever to grade the student papers - ask a professor. Second, research. Students have to learn how to use google, libraries, wikipedia(!) and other tools that can teach them things. If students don't know how to learn on their own, they cannot function in today's society. Third, science. We don't teach science. We teach chemistry, biology and physics, but we never really teach science. Students have to learn the real principles of science. How do you design an experiment? What criteria invalidate a study? What methods can evaluate something? They have to be able to answer these questions. I want second graders asking people what the control condition is. Fourth, sports. Get rid of them. All of them. Sports don't serve any purpose in school. They waste time, money, and create a culture in which people who can throw a ball around are the most valuable. They also are causing obesity, not preventing it, because, students only spend 16 minutes active in gym class. If you believe that the causes of obesity are inactivity, you should push to get rid of PE classes. You could get better results if you ripped out all the sports, shortened the school day, and let kids just play in the newly freed time.

Actually, evolutionarily, the chicken came first.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The chicken would have had to have the mutation necessary to lay the egg in the first place.

Is this the same collision that was reported here on January 19, 2010: Slashdot Science Story | A Hyper-Velocity Impact In the Asteroid Belt??

It looks like the picture is from February 2, 2010: Two asteroids suspected in space collision - Technology & science - Space - Space.com - msnbc.com

When I clicked TFA link, I immediately recognized the image from somewhere. I think it's nice to have references to where you may have seen this before, if just to assure you that you have not gone as crazy as you may fear.

Better yet, email the .exe to the entire class.

Are you insane?!? Absolutely DO NOT DO THIS!!

The gap between my suggestion and what those researchers did is pretty wide. My idea:

o Doesn't involve bilking people out of their private credentials; o Would be limited to a class studying malicious software (how's that for an appropriate context) o Involves a known-harmless teaching payload; o Would be fully understood and removed by students at the end of the class.

Actually, it's not as wide as you think. The researchers did not collect any of the personal data. They simply provided a message that this could have been a scam. So the "payload" there was also harmless. The outrage wasn't about any stolen data. The outrage was completely about the deception. Even after the administration placated fears that the students had about identity theft, the uproar continued. Also, the class isn't focused on malicious software. That's just the topic of this lesson. The class is a 101 introduction to computing. If this were a more advanced class...maybe...given the circumstances. But this is absolutely not the right audience for this kind of lesson.

As for the harmless payload, how does the student know that? All the student sees is that they clicked on something and the teacher infected their computer. Sure, during the lesson, you point out how to delete the file. But how does the student know that was the only file you installed? You could have embedded a keylogging rootkit within that virus for all they know. By falling for your trick, they lose a little bit of trust in you. As a result, some of them (especially those who are not doing well and think it's because you "have it out for them") will remain suspicious and think that you've planted something nefarious on their computer. Without that trust, you can't convince them otherwise.

As for the lesson being "fully understood [...] at the end of the class," that's just wishful thinking. After all these years, everyone now knows not to click on email attachments, right? Apparently not. I remember reading some commentary once (I think it was Adam Shostack) that pointed out that user education doesn't work. Many, many people who have undergone security training get phished, install viruses, etc. Why is phishing still a problem? Because it works. Social engineering is effective. All you have to do is surround that link with some text about getting rich fast, seeing celebrity X naked, losing 50 pounds in a week, etc., and you will get some hits. Even from people who have been trained to know better.

Most likely, some of these students will (in the short term) not click on anything they get via email, even if it's legitimate. After a while, though, the lesson will fade, they'll become complacent, start clicking on things...and we're back at square one. Many of the students will still click on attachments, thinking they're safe. After all, this attachment isn't called "CS101-Example.exe" so it must be safe, right? "What do you mean I got a virus? All I did was open this .doc file. It wasn't a .exe!"

Deception is inherently disrespectful, even if it is done with good intentions.

What may seem like a "harmless infection" to you demeans the students, because you're encouraging the instructor to abuse the trust that their students have placed in him. In short, what you are proposing causes harm to the teaching profession.

I have a hard time understanding why any real teacher in this fellow's position would abstain from imparting one of the most critical lessons a student can learn about security: that they themselves are the weakest link, no matter how smart and prepared they think they are, and no matter how much theory they c

Never mind the summary. I think we all might want to read the actual article which clearly states that the satellite is "millions of miles" away, hence the need for a laser to convey the power.

"The guy forgot to pay $75, offered to make good on it"

The county's policy has been in place for 20 years. In another article, the homeowner is quoted saying, "I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong." In other words: HE KNEW. And as the mayor put it, if the fire department accepted payments when your house was already burning, then nobody would pay until then.

I think the law should be amended, though. People could pay $75/year up front, OR they could pay for the full actual costs of putting out the fire, as well as covering all the firefighters' damages and injuries sustained during the firefighting. Because that's what it comes down to. Firefighter's insurance will not cover their injuries/damages unless they meet the requirements of the insurance policy. There are plenty of cases where a house on a county line starts to burn, and fire companies from adjacent counties are called in. The company from across the border may just stand there and watch it burn because the house is outside its insurance's geographic limits.

Brian Williams said, “It’s just nice to know that if we screw this place up badly enough there is some place we can all go.” Tell NBC News how dumb and upsetting this comment is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29104230/

Yeah, I think there is some confusion here. The MSNBC article states "If the planet has a rocky composition like Earth's, it would be 1.2 to 1.4 times as wide as our own planet, qualifying it as a "super-Earth.""

That's the problem with science articles on the general web, many skip facts that others contain. Even PhysOrg didn't seem to bother with this estimation but god only knows who's predicting this kind of thing too.

In any case, we are much too early on to think about sending anything it's way. We have so much we can do with observation today before we go launching anything. And in just a few years we'll gain even more insight from James Webb once it's in place. Let's no go off half cocked on this.

It's better than the "IQ" test if it predicts behavior.

It's better than the "drug" testing because not every drug user is a drug addict.

It's highly focused on what actually matters.

Like other tests, these tests are hogwash. The only, and I mean ONLY, way to know how a person will act or react is by observing them it specific situations. That foolish person always taking risks and being cocky may very well start weeping when the bullets are whizzing overhead. And that meek or cowardly seeming person may be the hero when those bullets are flying.

If you are rational you won't go online saying and doing stupid things in a way in which it's linked to your workplace persona.

If you are rational you won't go online and say stupid things, things that can get you in trouble, period. Wasn't HP caught spying on board members? Nor will they spend a lot of tyme doing things online at work they shouldn't be doing. Emailing or chatting with the spouse during lunch is one thing but spending even five minutes perusing pornography websites while you're on the clock is something else. As is spending lunch doing so in an open area. Nor is it good to be on Slashdot while working unless it's work related.

Falcon

What does the DNC-NBC say about it?

Nothing.

I'm guessing that's some regurgitated joke about MSNBC. If it is, you didn't even bother to check their front page. They seem to be running the regular AP story about it. Look, when the New York Times are the only ones willing to get off their asses and actually do some work in order to garner eyeballs, it's hard to find other sources. Even the Fox News article appears to be entirely based off the New York Times article. Even the MSNBC article (and I'm guessing AP at large) cites them:

The Times said the Obama proposal would ... The Times said that some privacy and technology advocates say the regulations would create weaknesses in the technology that hackers could more easily exploit.

In both situations it becomes the same thing. You have someone familiar with the combat perspective and someone with the tech perspective.

What does it matter which comes first? This is like a chicken and egg argument which doesn't make any sense.

Sorry, that mystery has been solved.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38238685/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Pics or it didn't happen.

No seriously, where's the picture of the actual skull? I want to see it.

(Even more seriously though, the picture of the skull itself can be found here)

You sound like a fundamentalist Christian wack job

I don't subscribe to any religion, but thanks for the judgment anyway.

Given that we're close to or past Peak Oil at this point, does it really seem so far fetched that the Iranians want a different energy source?

Of course not. I don't doubt that Iranians want nuclear power. But that doesn't mean that they also don't want nuclear weapons. Those goals are not mutually exclusive.

Even if they are building a bomb, they are a long way from having a delivery system.

What, like a truck? There have already been many attacks where a donkey cart has been used as the delivery vehicle. They don't exactly need a missile. There are nukes that can be carried in a suitcase. I don't think they're trying to build the largest bomb ever produced. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that Iran does in fact have missiles that can reach Israel. So, that does sort of sound like a delivery vehicle to me. The missile doesn't care if its warhead is nuclear or conventional.

Look at that, news from today: Iran's Revolutionary Guard gets new missile.

Iran has been pushing to upgrade its missile arsenal, which is already capable of hitting Israel and other parts of the region.

Even if they get a delivery system, they are unlikely to use it for the reasons stated.

I don't buy it. You would be unlikely to use it because you don't want to die and you don't want to get blamed. I don't think they share those same concerns. They don't care about dying as long as they kill the enemy. Preservation of life is not their primary goal, destruction is.

What makes you think that the the Arabs are any more likely to do so in the Middle East?

Well, I suppose the fact that they believe they will be divinely rewarded has something to do with it.

wrong

so wrong there's a graph.

• Study 1
• Study 2
• Study 3
• Study 4
• Bonus article

Let me know when you're done with those and I'll find some more.

Man, I was stunned this summer when I saw that someone had invented fried butter, and I subsequently heard of fried coke.

Fried beer is a special case of fried coke I giess... but, damn, I bet people lined up to get some of that!! It's beer, and it's fried ... in Texas. Bacon wrap that sucker, and I know some people who would crawl over cut glass to taste it.

They arnt going to give you a waiver... I just read an article about how prisons cant get permission to do it, what makes you think a teacher will get one?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39155679/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

Everything you eat and drink was once pissed or shit out of something else. That's why you can't dump chemicals into the environment without eventually experiencing the consequences.

The further up the food chain you go, the more concentrated the toxins become. I suspect that's one of the reason's we're all dying of cancer.

"By the best count, only 1.5 percent of the nation's roughly 6,000 hospitals use a comprehensive electronic record." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31766190/

"If these results were to hold for all hospitals in the United States, computerizing notes and records might have the potential to save 100,000 lives annually,"
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136847.php

Yes, the availability of a specialist to treat a patient globaly is a huge advancement in the field. However making changes in the way we do simple paperwork can save thousands of lives localy.

Did you know that there were 550 metric tons of yellowcake taken from Iraq and sent to Canada? Of course not.

In fact, the reference I found on Wikipedia to that yellowcake, under the entry for Iraq War, maintains that the claims were false, if not an outright lie.

I don't know if yellowcake qualifies as a WMD, but I'd argue it shows that the intent was there to build these weapons. Whether that stuff justified the way is another argument all together.

Facts sure can be a pesky, can't they?

The others have already responded to the claims, dumping the fault right back at BP. This is going to be interesting

What I was also going to say is: If I was a counter-intelligence chief and particularly one in a country where the government could force their will internally easier than the US, and I was concerned about a device being used to spy, I'd push to have the device banned. We'd work to get rid of them and run public education campaigns letting people know that they could be spied on using them.

This is actually what France did three years ago, not that this worked very well. Some French officials (and heads of companies) are still using their Blackberries in secret, because the replacements the French government gave them didn't even work properly. Plus, there is also the problem of family members and mistresses using Blackberries. Those may not directly leak national/trade secrets, but they can leak information that could still be leveraged against the officials/CEOs they're connected to.

In many states, mine included(IL), its not legal at all to drive in the left lane, unless you are passing, or in congested traffic. If you are the only car in the left lane, and have the ability to switch to the right lane, YOU are the one breaking the law. Some states will even ticket you if you are going the speed limit, in the left lane.

"At the start of the summer, the Washington State Patrol began pulling people over for violating the state's left-lane law, which prohibits "impeding the flow of other traffic." http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar/left-lane-slowpokes-drive-you-crazy.aspx?vv=800

It says it's an entertainment site. But I found a better source anyway; TFA probably cut and pasted from the AP (or from another site that paid the AP for publication) anyway.