New law says computer repair guys in Texas must also be licensed private investigators!!!

If you read the actual law in question (which went into effect in September 2007, apparently), this looks to me like it only applies to the specific case of being hired to poke through someone's computer data i.e. an "investigation". It looked like it specifically did not apply to being paid by an employer to work on the employer's property, and it didn't look like it would apply to having someone bring a computer into a shop to be worked on - unless the shop was planning to "investigate" the computer-owner's data without the computer owner's knowledge.

This might mean that a bunch of Texas legislators are trying to protect their jobs in the event that they forget to erase all the embarrasing and/or illegal porn from their computers when they have to be worked on, but as far as I can tell that's as bad as it gets.

You DO, however, still have to register with the state to buy scientific equipment (specifically lab glassware) though, as far as I know...

Quoting: You DO, however, still have to register with the state to buy scientific equipment (specifically lab glassware)

Pry my Petri dish from my cold dead hands! Only outlaws will have beakers!

No lab glassware??? Somebody say it isn't so. You've got to love politician logic - "that'll stop them from cooking meth in hotel rooms!" I can buy a case of beer, get plastered, and plow into a minivan full of kids without any interference, but that black market test tube I just bought will get me 5-9 in the pokey. Feel-good legislation at its finest.

edit: TC - I'll save you a spot in my desert compound, bring your beakers, I'll defend your right to own lab glassware to the end, I tell ya!!!!

They'll never take us alive, dumper! Them, I mean- I intend to live :)

I'd prefer to survive as well. Not much point in illicit lab glassware if you ain't around to use it . . . for . . . something . . . I guess.

It's true - State Legislator Bob Glasgow won the 1994 IgNobel Prize in Chemistry for this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#...

@DrD: Thanks a lot. Looking through that list completely wheezed my chi. I'll be knotted up all day long now pondering the various ways people spend their lives, documenting and demonstrating the utter absence of common sense.