If they can provide so much energy, why do they need the battery to keep going?
I'd wager for the same reason that a car with its internal combustion engine or a space ship with solar cells needs a battery; to keep the "free energy" constant, and to start it up when it's wound down.
I'd be intrigued as all hell if evidence were presented. None was. A lot of hand-waving and some blather about zero point energy were all I got.
In a news report? The fact that they were any numbers at all was amazing! (The msnbc story I read was up on this.)
(Yes, I know zero-point energy is real. No, I don't think this crank from Ireland could even explain the concept.)
How do "know* something is real that's never been demonstrated? All I said was that it *might* happen. (And yes, that's a *might* with the same level of "Wayne might make a living doing Wayne's World" or "Monkeys might fly out of my butt.")
:) Sorry, couldn't resist the Wayne's World reference.
Someday, I'll live in a world where every child grows up with a decent science education and critical thinking is encouraged...
Bah. Science at its most basic *does not* say that the laws can never be changed. It just says that you're probably better off not trying to break them.
A real scientific mind would be intriqued by the concpet of such a shakeup, and could at least spare such a grand hypothesis enough time to think up a suitable experiment or twenty.
Just because magnets are the domain of quacks doesn't mean they don't attract.
If you're going to draw the line, please finish it.
If you require "extraordinary proof" to refute science, why not define what you need? I agree that running a light bulb for three hours isn't that impressive, and this is probably a scam of some sort.
But on the same time, science demands that we ask "what if this is true?". If he really has a free energy device, what amazing thing could he do to prove that it works?
My own suggestion: go to an ivy-league school (heck, any college) and set the darn thing up powering something that causes a healthy drain. (*not* a lightbulb... well, maybe a strobe light or something that really sucks up the juice) and let it go until it stops.
Once the bulb stops, plug it into the wall and see if it starts. If it does, the invention's probably not free energy. If it doesn't, plug in another bulb and see how long THAT one lasts.
A year or so of healthy drain would be enough to prove free energy, don't you think? Or at least, enough to get the damn patent and immortalize the freakish invention.
The military has been sheilding against EMP for years. In fact, equipment that's *vulnerable* to EMP has to be specifically flagged as such. Something about effective delivery of nuclear weapons...
EMP guns aren't that hard to design or build, AFAIK. If they worked agianst the US army, they'd probably have been used by now.
You could, for example, outfit each soldier to be able to move at superhuman speed, and carry a couple of tons of equipment... but wouldn't it make more sense just to give that soldier a jeep? Same capabilities, and lower complexity and cost.
Can you take a jeep into a city building? A tunnel? Thorough a swamp?
There are *definite* beneifts to this. The almost mythical ferocity of the modern american army is demoralizing enough--imagine if the *common soldiers* were tougher as well!
Although if you steal or kill somebody, they won't take your driver's license.
Yeah. You can drive those cars in jail, or buy beer as a deep-fried zombie.:)
Oh, and smoking doesn't hurt anyone else.
Not true at all. Second-hand smoke is *worse* than first-hand smoke--so smoking hurts other people.
As for "smoking pot," well, that's a whole different item. Having an abortion, committing suicide, speeding, setting your own house on fire, polygamy, and a host of other small things that "don't hurt anyone else" are illegal. Most of them are so because someone somewhere taught society that they were bad.
Whatever the motives of that someone, if you want to change that (and please note that I have not said, and am not saying, anything about the *morality* of any of these acts) then you have to figure out a way to convince society that the "bad thing" you want is really a "good thing."
I don't know if all the states gave in, but I'm sure most of them did. California sure did. I haven't smoked habitually since college, more than a decade ago. But this still ticks me off: both the underhanded way the feds foisted it on us, and in the way it takes a perfectly functioning citizen who likes an occasional toke and risks making them unemployed, homeless, or worse. It's the pinnacle of achievement by the narrow-minded, intolerant, party-line towing, drug-war-profiteering rectal sphincters that declare drugs (or anything else they don't like or understand) as "evil." This kind of "solution" renders self-fulfilling the anti-drug crusaders' (erroneous) characterization of pot smokers as nonfunctional.
Well, it *is* illegal. Laws punishing those who flaunt them is one of the basic funcitons of goverment--not entirely unlike a parent punishing a kid who challenges their authority, and almost exactly like a group of people beating on the one contrary person who's about to get them all in trouble.
Or in other words, if you do drugs, cheat, steal, or murder (all crimes), you most certainly do risk becoming "unemployed, homeless, or worse." From a legalstandpoint, "an occasional toke" is no differnet than "an occasional theft" or "an occasional beat-down."
If you don't like the war on drugs, you've got two things to worry about. The first is that the punishment fits the crime; this is what you're complaining about above. Just as the death penalty is overkill for a first time, crime-of-passion, total life-ruination may be overkill for occasional drug use.
The other avenue is to attack the root--to try and convince society that this Bad Thing is really a Good Thing. And as the good folks in Prohibiiton can tell you, it's a very hard task to try and change society's mind about Good and Bad products.
If I knew how to carry out this second part, I'd probably be making myself famous, rather than posting on slashdot.
Are you really sure it would not be easier if that image that is a line drawing of a 3.5" floppy disk (an object you probably don't even use!) instead was the word "Save"?
Not when most schools tell you to "save to disk," and most people were taught to use floppies for quite some time.
It might be time to change that, though, with the different education system. Any ideas on a replacement?
Yea, buttons to click on are great. Putting pictures on them is not so great.
You're forgetting that old cliche', "A picture is worth a thousand words." (oddly enough, a thousand words really isn't all that much... but that's something else alltogether.)
A small picture takes up less pixels than a name--and for a word processor, it also provides a fairly clear distinction between the "work area" and the "tool area." (there's a border of icons in the way.)
It would also help if they got it through their thick skulls that there is no difference between a "toolbar" and the "menubar" and put them together. A "toolbar button" is simply a top-level item on the menu bar that HAS NO SUBMENU.
They have. MS Word 97, 2000 and 2002 both let you customize the gebeezies out of the toolbars--and the "menu toolbar" is just another toolbar. Heck, you can even set all of your icons to text if you really want to.
(You can also turn on or off Clippy, turn on or off that "hide buttons I don't use" feature, and in 2002 there's even a function to save your settings so you don't have to spend three hours re-creating them (or trying to find out how to import them) when you move to a new computer / new install. There are reasons why MS Word is so well used.)
What the hell does that little broom mean? Is it the sweep command? What would "sweep" do to a word document? And come on "draw" should have been an easy icon to come up with - WTF is that little "A" (i think it's an A) with a cylinder and a cube? What does that have to do with drawing?
Little broom... hmm... "gee, i've never seen that before." (moves mouse over to icon) "format painter... ok, whatever that is. At least I know where to look now."
That, paraphrasing, is when I looked at the new toolbar a few versions ago.
As for the "box with an A around it"... I didn't even know that word *had* a drawing feature. I mean, why would I want to draw in a word processor for?;)
That said, I agree. Icons should be standardized. I'd be all in favor of the government creating a "software standardization board" that then gave the industry a few years to standarize on icons. Heck, if they can do it with USB, networking, and hardware, they can do with icons.
The only icons that weren't immediately obvious were the icons of the applications but the fact that they were the only exception made them pretty easy to distinguish and understand. Inside the applications all commands were in text menu's and only selection or drawing tools were indicated using icon tool bars. Even today the Mac UI looks cleaner and is easier to use because they DON'T use icons as much. When Micro$oft made their own GUI it was obvious in many ways that they didn't quite understand what they were imitating - they used icons not just in a few places where a picture was worth a thousand words but in a lot of places where a word was worth a thousand pictures.
I'm not a MS stockholder, employee, or zealot--but I'm going to defend them just this once.
I use MS Word a *lot*. I use it at United Way for work. I use it at home for writing a novel. I've used it for quite some time--and the icons are about as intuitive as they can get. There's even the nifty "tooltip" systme that pops up if you can't figure it out by the shape.
Where the complexity and confusion come it isn't the icons or the interface, though--it's in the design. Concepts like a "Clipboard", "Styles", and all the rest aren't intuitive at all--and these are what people need to be taught.
Of course, a different UI analogy would be nice. I'd like real task-switching, with no overhead for the desktop, if you please.:)
If such a BAL meter were installed, hopefully there would be some sort of override switch that would flag your location to the police but allow you to start the car and drive it, then you could e.g. drive 15 minutes toward town, meet the police escort, and have them drive the rest of the way.
Very good idea. And if all it does is scream out for the cops unless a judge turns it to "full lockdown", no one can really cry foul on this one. --especially if the officers are still required to test. Ooh, I like it.:)
No, I'm saying that the feds _couldn't_ mandate a BAL box. They have to have the power to so legislate BEFORE it's put in place. You can't do it the other way and call it interstate, you bonehead.
So, explain the child saftey latches that were ordered in last year, or the '97 safety requirements, or the federal recalls of all those defective parts...
Furthermore, IIRC, that it is forseeable that something will cross interstate lines is NOT sufficient to put it within the ambit of interstate commerce. (hell, sometimes even crossing the line isn't enough)
Automobiles *do* cross state lines. With the possible exception of concept cars that never leave MI, every automobile model is an interstate product. The federal government has oversight on these, as a matter of fact, and it's a good thing.
And since the Feds have jurisidiction over the automobile industry, with precedent, and they routinely impose "safety" rules (everything from seat belts to airbags to the old national speed limit), adding a BAL law would be, legally, simple.
The politics of this, of course, are something else entirely.:) But/. is hardly the place to discuss politics of getting new federap automobile safety rules.
IIRC, there is no national standard for DWI. It's not something the federal government has authority over, and merely crossing the device across the line probably isn't interstate commerce.
There isn't. But if there was a national BAL tester put in all cars, the Feds are the ones who would that national limit.
As it stands standards are presently set by the crappy ass method of the federal government threatening to withdraw funding for interstate highways unless the state does what it wants. This is about as good of a system of government as handing out swords, IMO. I find it difficult to believe anyone would really want to endorse it.
Hey, the feds handing out swords would be cool!;)
If there was a national box, the feds could place the national limit on it--and since almost every car passes interstate lines at least once in its industry, they have very clear jurisdiction over this. No more legislation-by-funding, but real direct laws. It'd make life a lot simpler, really.
The difference is that the ignition switch and fuel pump are necessary for the car to work, and if the seat belt, speedo, or lighter doesn't work, it's just a minor inconvenience.
So add in Alternator, battery, headlights, timing belt, external key locks, fuel injector, computer, tires, brakes...
There are a lot of systems on the car. Eventually, every one of them will break if given enough time. Almost every one of them (speedometer, seat belt, headlights) are required for the operation of the vehicle, either by law or by reality.
I personally could live without gun battles in the streets. If some "evildoer" (to borrow a Bush term) tries to make me stop my vehicle, I would hope that I had the opportunity to first use skillful driving to escape, in addition to the potential threat of lethal force.
So, you'd rather have high-speed chases and errattic driving than gun battles?
Secondly, if your workplace is a university campus, it's a federal offense to bring a weapon.
Check it with security when you come in. Or get the bogus law changed. Or, better yet, *leave it in your car.* (Your car is equal to your home, and cannot be randomly searched. Even better, it shares a lot of the same metallurgical components of a firearm.)
Installing car-kill switches eliminates option 0 and disarms your most powerful weapon, merely for the convienence of a few officers participating in chases. This is a clear lose in my book: why would a crook buy/drive a car without disabling the car-kill switch?
Maybe because the kill-switch broadcasts its ability to work, and turning it off will draw the attention of every Cop around?
And it's not "convenience." It's safety. Every time someone tries to "getaway" from the law, they will get stopped without a high-speed chase, without causing an accident, and without ignoring all of the smaller crimes that happen "because the copys are busy."
Besides, if you're being followed, *eventually* someone can and will find you, and kill you. Your only options are to get the following never to happen, or to deter it by the strongest means necessary.
Another simple alteration would be to require everyone in a car to have a Fifth Element style identification, and let anyone within 50' identify someone operating anything as dangerous as a car.
1) the car will magically know what the current BAL in the state you're driving in is, particularly when you cross borders
Any interstate device like this will be regulated by the federal government. Most likely a BAL sensor will be set to either a "national standard" that states cannot go over, or be set to the BAL of the state in which it is registered.
2) No one over the BAL in an emergency situation will ever need to drive
Even today they'd be ticketed. Aggrivated DWI is still DWI. And with the GPS "help me God" switch, you'd be able to call for help ASAP, too.
3) They'll never, ever malfunction
Of course they will. And so will the ignition switch in the car, the fuel pump, the seat belt, the spedometer, the ciragrette lighter...
And what happens when a criminal can flip the same switch to carjack you? Or a stalker can more easily catch his/her target? Or Clayton Lee Wagner [google.com] can pull over his next target and kill them in a more rural area than he might otherwise?
1: If there is an officer of the law nearby, you rely on her to keep you safe.
2: If the officer is not present, or is not helping, you rely on the duly licensed and registered assault rifle you have "stored" within easy reach.
3: If you're lacking anything to deter / defeat the criminal, you go along quietly and hope you survive it. If use of the system flags a GPS query, your chance of being rescued go up. Or, at the very least, the stalker's chances of being caught and your death being avenged go up.
I have no problem with installing a breathalizer in the car of someone who has been convicted of DUI/DWI, but it's totally unacceptable to require it of someone who has not even been accused, let alone convicted, of a crime.
Why? If it's a fair device that's applied equally and doesn't give the government any special power, what's wrong with it?
For the record, your new car almost certainly has a governor (to keep the engine from bursting into flames), something to slow down people who tailgate would be a great saftey device, and an auto-kill switch to aid in law enforcement would complety eliminate any high-speed chases. (if the cop can tell you to stop ANYWAY, what's wrong with him flipping a switch that kills your enigne for ten minutes and thus *forcing* you to do what you're legally required to do anyway?)
The "GPS so the gov't can track you" is bad. The "automatic alarm to call help when the car gets into an accident" isn't.
If I can try out Linux tools, and wean myself and my wife to a system that can work all on Linux, we very well might switch. (assuming that I can find good games, and a word processor that fits my needs intelligent spellchecker.)
Trust me; if you can show me an OS that does everything that Windows does that I like, is more stable, AND is free / cheap, I'll switch. But the simple fact is that #1 hasn't been shown to me, and that's really the most important one.
(I have tried AbiWord and StarOffice 6--and they both had very real performance problems, like not counting em dashes as punctuation!)
the human race (analogous to M$) has killed everything, and eventually there will come a species that can not be killed off (in my opinion this will be the sentiet AI that I, err...i mean people will create).
Don't underestimate the ability of Mankind to destroy something. If push came to shove, and AI went Skynet on us, we would be able to (eventually) destroy it. Just like if Linux because universally hated, it would be destroyed.
:) Different things, like Linux and AI, survive only by being useful--or at least, convincing man that they are.
It was a Star Trek Episode, just like ST II-IV were. I actually felt that it was *more* of a Star Trek flick than First Contact, and right up there with Generations.
Of course, Star Trek alternates between "movies that are Star Trek" and "Star Trek that happens to be a movie." And that means that X will be like "First Contact", "The Undiscoveredy Coutnry", "The Wrath of Khan", and all the other even-numbered movies.
Steve Jobs said that, in essence, it's impossible to protect something that's going to be used. This is a very well-known "fact", and a company that's trying to beat it in a world like computer software is just wasting its time.
On the other hand, Apple put "don't steal music" stickers on the iPod. This is just the same sort of thing--they're not using technology to enforce IP rights, they're using advertising and lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
If they can provide so much energy, why do they need the battery to keep going?
I'd wager for the same reason that a car with its internal combustion engine or a space ship with solar cells needs a battery; to keep the "free energy" constant, and to start it up when it's wound down.
I'd be intrigued as all hell if evidence were presented. None was. A lot of hand-waving and some blather about zero point energy were all I got.
In a news report? The fact that they were any numbers at all was amazing! (The msnbc story I read was up on this.)
(Yes, I know zero-point energy is real. No, I don't think this crank from Ireland could even explain the concept.)
How do "know* something is real that's never been demonstrated? All I said was that it *might* happen. (And yes, that's a *might* with the same level of "Wayne might make a living doing Wayne's World" or "Monkeys might fly out of my butt.")
:) Sorry, couldn't resist the Wayne's World reference.
Someday, I'll live in a world where every child grows up with a decent science education and critical thinking is encouraged...
Bah. Science at its most basic *does not* say that the laws can never be changed. It just says that you're probably better off not trying to break them.
A real scientific mind would be intriqued by the concpet of such a shakeup, and could at least spare such a grand hypothesis enough time to think up a suitable experiment or twenty.
Just because magnets are the domain of quacks doesn't mean they don't attract.
If you're going to draw the line, please finish it.
If you require "extraordinary proof" to refute science, why not define what you need? I agree that running a light bulb for three hours isn't that impressive, and this is probably a scam of some sort.
But on the same time, science demands that we ask "what if this is true?". If he really has a free energy device, what amazing thing could he do to prove that it works?
My own suggestion: go to an ivy-league school (heck, any college) and set the darn thing up powering something that causes a healthy drain. (*not* a lightbulb... well, maybe a strobe light or something that really sucks up the juice) and let it go until it stops.
Once the bulb stops, plug it into the wall and see if it starts. If it does, the invention's probably not free energy. If it doesn't, plug in another bulb and see how long THAT one lasts.
A year or so of healthy drain would be enough to prove free energy, don't you think? Or at least, enough to get the damn patent and immortalize the freakish invention.
The military has been sheilding against EMP for years. In fact, equipment that's *vulnerable* to EMP has to be specifically flagged as such. Something about effective delivery of nuclear weapons...
EMP guns aren't that hard to design or build, AFAIK. If they worked agianst the US army, they'd probably have been used by now.
You could, for example, outfit each soldier to be able to move at superhuman speed, and carry a couple of tons of equipment... but wouldn't it make more sense just to give that soldier a jeep? Same capabilities, and lower complexity and cost.
Can you take a jeep into a city building? A tunnel? Thorough a swamp?
There are *definite* beneifts to this. The almost mythical ferocity of the modern american army is demoralizing enough--imagine if the *common soldiers* were tougher as well!
Although if you steal or kill somebody, they won't take your driver's license.
:)
Yeah. You can drive those cars in jail, or buy beer as a deep-fried zombie.
Oh, and smoking doesn't hurt anyone else.
Not true at all. Second-hand smoke is *worse* than first-hand smoke--so smoking hurts other people.
As for "smoking pot," well, that's a whole different item. Having an abortion, committing suicide, speeding, setting your own house on fire, polygamy, and a host of other small things that "don't hurt anyone else" are illegal. Most of them are so because someone somewhere taught society that they were bad.
Whatever the motives of that someone, if you want to change that (and please note that I have not said, and am not saying, anything about the *morality* of any of these acts) then you have to figure out a way to convince society that the "bad thing" you want is really a "good thing."
Good Luck.
I don't know if all the states gave in, but I'm sure most of them did. California sure did. I haven't smoked habitually since college, more than a decade ago. But this still ticks me off: both the underhanded way the feds foisted it on us, and in the way it takes a perfectly functioning citizen who likes an occasional toke and risks making them unemployed, homeless, or worse. It's the pinnacle of achievement by the narrow-minded, intolerant, party-line towing, drug-war-profiteering rectal sphincters that declare drugs (or anything else they don't like or understand) as "evil." This kind of "solution" renders self-fulfilling the anti-drug crusaders' (erroneous) characterization of pot smokers as nonfunctional.
Well, it *is* illegal. Laws punishing those who flaunt them is one of the basic funcitons of goverment--not entirely unlike a parent punishing a kid who challenges their authority, and almost exactly like a group of people beating on the one contrary person who's about to get them all in trouble.
Or in other words, if you do drugs, cheat, steal, or murder (all crimes), you most certainly do risk becoming "unemployed, homeless, or worse." From a legalstandpoint, "an occasional toke" is no differnet than "an occasional theft" or "an occasional beat-down."
If you don't like the war on drugs, you've got two things to worry about. The first is that the punishment fits the crime; this is what you're complaining about above. Just as the death penalty is overkill for a first time, crime-of-passion, total life-ruination may be overkill for occasional drug use.
The other avenue is to attack the root--to try and convince society that this Bad Thing is really a Good Thing. And as the good folks in Prohibiiton can tell you, it's a very hard task to try and change society's mind about Good and Bad products.
If I knew how to carry out this second part, I'd probably be making myself famous, rather than posting on slashdot.
Are you really sure it would not be easier if that image that is a line drawing of a 3.5" floppy disk (an object you probably don't even use!) instead was the word "Save"?
Not when most schools tell you to "save to disk," and most people were taught to use floppies for quite some time.
It might be time to change that, though, with the different education system. Any ideas on a replacement?
Yea, buttons to click on are great. Putting pictures on them is not so great.
You're forgetting that old cliche', "A picture is worth a thousand words." (oddly enough, a thousand words really isn't all that much... but that's something else alltogether.)
A small picture takes up less pixels than a name--and for a word processor, it also provides a fairly clear distinction between the "work area" and the "tool area." (there's a border of icons in the way.)
It would also help if they got it through their thick skulls that there is no difference between a "toolbar" and the "menubar" and put them together. A "toolbar button" is simply a top-level item on the menu bar that HAS NO SUBMENU.
They have. MS Word 97, 2000 and 2002 both let you customize the gebeezies out of the toolbars--and the "menu toolbar" is just another toolbar. Heck, you can even set all of your icons to text if you really want to.
(You can also turn on or off Clippy, turn on or off that "hide buttons I don't use" feature, and in 2002 there's even a function to save your settings so you don't have to spend three hours re-creating them (or trying to find out how to import them) when you move to a new computer / new install. There are reasons why MS Word is so well used.)
What the hell does that little broom mean? Is it the sweep command? What would "sweep" do to a word document? And come on "draw" should have been an easy icon to come up with - WTF is that little "A" (i think it's an A) with a cylinder and a cube? What does that have to do with drawing?
;)
Little broom... hmm... "gee, i've never seen that before." (moves mouse over to icon) "format painter... ok, whatever that is. At least I know where to look now."
That, paraphrasing, is when I looked at the new toolbar a few versions ago.
As for the "box with an A around it"... I didn't even know that word *had* a drawing feature. I mean, why would I want to draw in a word processor for?
That said, I agree. Icons should be standardized. I'd be all in favor of the government creating a "software standardization board" that then gave the industry a few years to standarize on icons. Heck, if they can do it with USB, networking, and hardware, they can do with icons.
(flame away.)
The only icons that weren't immediately obvious were the icons of the applications but the fact that they were the only exception made them pretty easy to distinguish and understand. Inside the applications all commands were in text menu's and only selection or drawing tools were indicated using icon tool bars. Even today the Mac UI looks cleaner and is easier to use because they DON'T use icons as much. When Micro$oft made their own GUI it was obvious in many ways that they didn't quite understand what they were imitating - they used icons not just in a few places where a picture was worth a thousand words but in a lot of places where a word was worth a thousand pictures.
:)
I'm not a MS stockholder, employee, or zealot--but I'm going to defend them just this once.
I use MS Word a *lot*. I use it at United Way for work. I use it at home for writing a novel. I've used it for quite some time--and the icons are about as intuitive as they can get. There's even the nifty "tooltip" systme that pops up if you can't figure it out by the shape.
Where the complexity and confusion come it isn't the icons or the interface, though--it's in the design. Concepts like a "Clipboard", "Styles", and all the rest aren't intuitive at all--and these are what people need to be taught.
Of course, a different UI analogy would be nice. I'd like real task-switching, with no overhead for the desktop, if you please.
If such a BAL meter were installed, hopefully there would be some sort of override switch that would flag your location to the police but allow you to start the car and drive it, then you could e.g. drive 15 minutes toward town, meet the police escort, and have them drive the rest of the way.
:)
Very good idea. And if all it does is scream out for the cops unless a judge turns it to "full lockdown", no one can really cry foul on this one. --especially if the officers are still required to test. Ooh, I like it.
No, I'm saying that the feds _couldn't_ mandate a BAL box. They have to have the power to so legislate BEFORE it's put in place. You can't do it the other way and call it interstate, you bonehead.
:) But /. is hardly the place to discuss politics of getting new federap automobile safety rules.
So, explain the child saftey latches that were ordered in last year, or the '97 safety requirements, or the federal recalls of all those defective parts...
Furthermore, IIRC, that it is forseeable that something will cross interstate lines is NOT sufficient to put it within the ambit of interstate commerce. (hell, sometimes even crossing the line isn't enough)
Automobiles *do* cross state lines. With the possible exception of concept cars that never leave MI, every automobile model is an interstate product. The federal government has oversight on these, as a matter of fact, and it's a good thing.
And since the Feds have jurisidiction over the automobile industry, with precedent, and they routinely impose "safety" rules (everything from seat belts to airbags to the old national speed limit), adding a BAL law would be, legally, simple.
The politics of this, of course, are something else entirely.
IIRC, there is no national standard for DWI. It's not something the federal government has authority over, and merely crossing the device across the line probably isn't interstate commerce.
;)
There isn't. But if there was a national BAL tester put in all cars, the Feds are the ones who would that national limit.
As it stands standards are presently set by the crappy ass method of the federal government threatening to withdraw funding for interstate highways unless the state does what it wants. This is about as good of a system of government as handing out swords, IMO. I find it difficult to believe anyone would really want to endorse it.
Hey, the feds handing out swords would be cool!
If there was a national box, the feds could place the national limit on it--and since almost every car passes interstate lines at least once in its industry, they have very clear jurisdiction over this. No more legislation-by-funding, but real direct laws. It'd make life a lot simpler, really.
The difference is that the ignition switch and fuel pump are necessary for the car to work, and if the seat belt, speedo, or lighter doesn't work, it's just a minor inconvenience.
So add in Alternator, battery, headlights, timing belt, external key locks, fuel injector, computer, tires, brakes...
There are a lot of systems on the car. Eventually, every one of them will break if given enough time. Almost every one of them (speedometer, seat belt, headlights) are required for the operation of the vehicle, either by law or by reality.
I personally could live without gun battles in the streets. If some "evildoer" (to borrow a Bush term) tries to make me stop my vehicle, I would hope that I had the opportunity to first use skillful driving to escape, in addition to the potential threat of lethal force.
So, you'd rather have high-speed chases and errattic driving than gun battles?
Secondly, if your workplace is a university campus, it's a federal offense to bring a weapon.
Check it with security when you come in. Or get the bogus law changed. Or, better yet, *leave it in your car.* (Your car is equal to your home, and cannot be randomly searched. Even better, it shares a lot of the same metallurgical components of a firearm.)
Installing car-kill switches eliminates option 0 and disarms your most powerful weapon, merely for the convienence of a few officers participating in chases. This is a clear lose in my book: why would a crook buy/drive a car without disabling the car-kill switch?
Maybe because the kill-switch broadcasts its ability to work, and turning it off will draw the attention of every Cop around?
And it's not "convenience." It's safety. Every time someone tries to "getaway" from the law, they will get stopped without a high-speed chase, without causing an accident, and without ignoring all of the smaller crimes that happen "because the copys are busy."
Besides, if you're being followed, *eventually* someone can and will find you, and kill you. Your only options are to get the following never to happen, or to deter it by the strongest means necessary.
Another simple alteration would be to require everyone in a car to have a Fifth Element style identification, and let anyone within 50' identify someone operating anything as dangerous as a car.
1) the car will magically know what the current BAL in the state you're driving in is, particularly when you cross borders
Any interstate device like this will be regulated by the federal government. Most likely a BAL sensor will be set to either a "national standard" that states cannot go over, or be set to the BAL of the state in which it is registered.
2) No one over the BAL in an emergency situation will ever need to drive
Even today they'd be ticketed. Aggrivated DWI is still DWI. And with the GPS "help me God" switch, you'd be able to call for help ASAP, too.
3) They'll never, ever malfunction
Of course they will. And so will the ignition switch in the car, the fuel pump, the seat belt, the spedometer, the ciragrette lighter...
And what happens when a criminal can flip the same switch to carjack you? Or a stalker can more easily catch his/her target? Or Clayton Lee Wagner [google.com] can pull over his next target and kill them in a more rural area than he might otherwise?
1: If there is an officer of the law nearby, you rely on her to keep you safe.
2: If the officer is not present, or is not helping, you rely on the duly licensed and registered assault rifle you have "stored" within easy reach.
3: If you're lacking anything to deter / defeat the criminal, you go along quietly and hope you survive it. If use of the system flags a GPS query, your chance of being rescued go up. Or, at the very least, the stalker's chances of being caught and your death being avenged go up.
I have no problem with installing a breathalizer in the car of someone who has been convicted of DUI/DWI, but it's totally unacceptable to require it of someone who has not even been accused, let alone convicted, of a crime.
Why? If it's a fair device that's applied equally and doesn't give the government any special power, what's wrong with it?
For the record, your new car almost certainly has a governor (to keep the engine from bursting into flames), something to slow down people who tailgate would be a great saftey device, and an auto-kill switch to aid in law enforcement would complety eliminate any high-speed chases. (if the cop can tell you to stop ANYWAY, what's wrong with him flipping a switch that kills your enigne for ten minutes and thus *forcing* you to do what you're legally required to do anyway?)
The "GPS so the gov't can track you" is bad. The "automatic alarm to call help when the car gets into an accident" isn't.
If I can try out Linux tools, and wean myself and my wife to a system that can work all on Linux, we very well might switch. (assuming that I can find good games, and a word processor that fits my needs intelligent spellchecker.)
Trust me; if you can show me an OS that does everything that Windows does that I like, is more stable, AND is free / cheap, I'll switch. But the simple fact is that #1 hasn't been shown to me, and that's really the most important one.
(I have tried AbiWord and StarOffice 6--and they both had very real performance problems, like not counting em dashes as punctuation!)
the human race (analogous to M$) has killed everything, and eventually there will come a species that can not be killed off (in my opinion this will be the sentiet AI that I, err...i mean people will create).
Don't underestimate the ability of Mankind to destroy something. If push came to shove, and AI went Skynet on us, we would be able to (eventually) destroy it. Just like if Linux because universally hated, it would be destroyed.
:) Different things, like Linux and AI, survive only by being useful--or at least, convincing man that they are.
Sort of. The only misconception you've got is that *all* of the borg is one singular hive, with a single queen as the "avatar" of that hive mind.
I've got to wonder what makes Humans so facinating for the Borg, though... maybe it's that "evolve into higher beings" thing...
It was a Star Trek Episode, just like ST II-IV were. I actually felt that it was *more* of a Star Trek flick than First Contact, and right up there with Generations.
Of course, Star Trek alternates between "movies that are Star Trek" and "Star Trek that happens to be a movie." And that means that X will be like "First Contact", "The Undiscoveredy Coutnry", "The Wrath of Khan", and all the other even-numbered movies.
I look foward to it.
Me too. But I'd rather be advertised to or have a lawyer write me a "please stop that" letter than pay to give my rights away.
My next computer will be a Mac. The only question is how old.
Steve Jobs said that, in essence, it's impossible to protect something that's going to be used. This is a very well-known "fact", and a company that's trying to beat it in a world like computer software is just wasting its time.
On the other hand, Apple put "don't steal music" stickers on the iPod. This is just the same sort of thing--they're not using technology to enforce IP rights, they're using advertising and lawyers.