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ID Tech May Mean an End to Anonymous Drinking
Anonymous Howard writes "If you visit a lot of bars and restaurants, you've likely crossed paths with driver's license scanners — machines that supposedly verify that your license is valid. In actuality, many of these scanners are designed to record your license information in addition to verifying them, and those that authenticate against a remote database are creating a record of when and where you buy alcohol. Not only that, but they're not even particularly effective — the bar code on your license uses an open, documented standard and can be rewritten to change your age or picture. Collecting our driver's license information is one thing, but collecting data about our personal drinking habits is not only a violation of, according to the ACLU representative quoted in the article, privacy and civil liberties, but this 'drinking record' could also create problems for people in civil and criminal lawsuits as proof of alcohol purchases in DUI cases or evidence of alcoholism in divorce lawsuits."
This is easy to work around -- just mark the bar code with a sharpie. The machine won't be able to read it, and they'll be forced to check your ID the old fashioned way.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
From Wikipedia:
Main Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_alcohol#Ancient_period
And yes, the article cites its sources.
Living With a Nerd
Just read this article from the paper a few weeks ago: Maltby's bigger concern is the total smoking ban, which he views as a fundamental civil-rights issue, since it extends beyond the workplace into an individual's home. He notes that 29 states and the District of Columbia have so-called lifestyle-rights laws that protect employees' rights to smoke when they're not at work.
But not Florida. "When I found out it was legal to discriminate against smokers [in 2002], those were my marching orders," said Westgate's chief executive, David Siegel, who gave his tobacco-using employees a year's notice before the total ban went into effect.
[...]
Siegel, who says his brief flirtation with cigarettes ended in 1959, is so strongly opposed to the habit that he would like to see smoking banned completely. Short of that, he hopes his company's smoking ban -- effective in Florida and every other Westgate location where it's allowed by state law -- becomes a model for other employers.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
Personally, I don't like marijuana either. I'm with you on industrial hemp, though.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I knew a bartender I worked with in NC who was red-carded (basically, failed a spot-check for not carding someone who came in to buy a drink...so many red-cards and you lose your ability to serve liquor) when a lady obviously in her 50's was not asked for her ID. How did she know she was of age? Attire, Hair, Grey hair, Wrinkles...Oh, and the single biggest thing the bartender could tell she was over 21....She ordered a drink that nobody has seriously drank since the 70's. Definately not a trendy or strong underager kind of drink.
"Wouldn't the driver's BAC be the "smoking gun" in most DUI cases?"
.08% you should be taken to the hospital to have blood drawn for a blood test. But since this is too much of a pain in the ass for law enforcement, the legal system decided to give these machines the power to determine your guilt or innocence.
Pfft... Yeah, OK, you just keep on believing that. Just so you know, under the best of conditions the registered BAC is only accurate to 20% of it's real value. If a breathalyser suggests you are over the legal limit of
This is just another attempt to infringe upon your liberties and other hysterical and unconstitutional laws passed in the name of DUI. As far as the constitution, president Bush thinks "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Sorry, but, no, I'm not.
You are welcome to your opinion of what justifies breaking a law; that's completely irrelevant to the point on which you claimed I was mistaken.
Civil disobedience is refusing to comply with a command of government (including, but not limited to, a law) as a way of protesting the injustice of either the command/law, or the claim to authority of the government issuing the command/law. Whether civil disobedience is justified, either in general or in any specific case, is a matter of opinion, and irrelevant to the discussion of what civil disobedience is.
No, its not. Neither Gandhi nor the Civil Rights Movement took the stance that the injustice of law cannot justify breaking them; both, to the contrary, to the position that the illegitimacy of law (either because of the illegitimacy of the authority issuing it, in the case of Gandhi's anti-colonial movement, or because of the injustice of its content, in the case of Civil Rights Movement) could justify breaking it in certain, non-violent ways.
Unlikely. At least, none of the ones I interacted in the course of getting a Bachelor's degree in the field ever had your rather unique views on those movements. Perhaps you should consider, though, some more direct source material, like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail":
The act proposed upthread may fail to be proper "civil disobedience" because it isn't open defiance of the law with acceptance of the consequences, but it certainly doesn't fail because it is breaking the law. If it wasn't breaking the law, civil disobedience would instead be called "civil obedience".
Have you ever TRIED obscuring a bar code?
It's not easy. The readers don't read black/white, they read relective/not-so-reflective.
I've wholly obscured bar codes with a sharpie before and a reader can read them. So if you can come up with a clear coating that reflects red/near-infrared light (which most BCRs use), you'll be rich! It will be even better if you can clear-print a totally different bar code on it which will be almost invisible.
"Right-o, Mr. G.W. Bush of 1600 PA Avenue, come on in!"
My degree is in religious studies, so I feel this is one area I should chime in on. He is kind of correct. In Judaism, since ancient times, drinking (both to get drunk and not) has not only been allowed, but during the holiday of Purim you are in fact instructed to drink every time the name Haman is spoken when repeating Esther's story. That name is said a hell of a lot, and it is expected and encouraged that you drink a bit too much and enjoy yourself. Monks invented many types of beer and brewed a lot of it, but mainly due to the danger of drinking the unclean water.
If you want to see what's on your barcode, check this site out:
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/swipe/barcode.html
Keep in mind that the 2D barcodes have a fair bit of redundancy. You can check the results of your handywork using a scanner and the aforementioned website.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
True for the most part? You sir, are mistaken. The US brews more specialty beers than anywhere. If you're here and you're drinking canoe beer, it's your own dumb fault for thinking US beer sucks.
If you live near a BevMo, go there looking for beer. Screw your head on tight and GO!