You're dealing with many variables (a person's mass, their metabolism, etc), and those variables have different values for different people.
A BAC isn't really something depends on an "algorithm". Of course different people will have different BACs even after the same amount of alcohol - but that's irrelevant, since "DUI" is a measure of your BAC, not how much you've had to drink. The reason this is done is precisely/because/ different people have different metabolisms, etc.
It's well-known, for example, that women will blow higher on a breathalyzer than a man simply because they're generally smaller.
Of course they will, but that's irrelevant...
Similarly for LIDAR (laser speed detection), the underlying principle is using distance and time to determine rate. Sounds straightforward, as d = r * t, but how do you know you've got the right values for d? It's been shown that rapid movement of a LIDAR gun can cause even inanimate objects to register a rate. How do we know the LIDAR gun measured the distance your car traveled over a period of time, rather than the distance of your car at one point in time and the distance of some other reflective object (say, a much closer stop sign) at a different point in time?
In theory, the software in the machine discards "anomalous" readings (eg: ones that would say a car is travelling at 500km/h).
At the distances in question, we're talking sharpshooter skills as a requirement for using a LIDAR gun, but it seems that every cop on the force has one. Can they expect us to believe that every cop is a sharpshooter, or that several cups of coffee won't induce shaking in the cop's hands that could cause false readings?
It's even worse than that - at 500m the "beam spread" on a LIDAR is 1 - 1.5 metres, so it's quite feasible that the LIDAR is making it's calculations based on one part of the beam that bounced back from, say, the driver's sunglasses and another that bounced back from the numberplate (or one part on car A and another part on car B behind it).
That said, LIDAR's aren't *ridiculously* inaccurate - if they read a speed, it's almost certainly going to be correct to within +/- ~10km/h. So if you get pinged doing 150km/h in a 100km/h zone, trying to use the inherent innacuracy of the LIDAR equipment as an excuse is pretty questionable (although it may well work, legally speaking).
Then again, given how ridiculously low the average highway speed limit is, if you can get off (and you weren't driving dangerously), more power to you.
It's a good precedent, forcing the breathalyzer source to be opened to inspection, but the assumption is still that the underlying algorithm is accurate when it's not.
But it is. The data might not be 100%, but the algorithm is fine. Determining an object's velocity given it's displacement over a known timeframe is a pretty well-tested algorithm:).
I don't understand why courts continue to rely on technology such as the breathalyzer or the LIDAR gun when there are better, proven tests that could be used instead (blood tests, RADAR or pacing with a calibrated speedometer).
Because blood tests are hard to automate and administer quickly (and in some jurisdictions might not be doable by an officer on the side of the road for legal reasons)[0], because LIDARs are more accurate, less error-prone and less avoidable than RADARs (hence the reason LIDAR replaced RADAR) and because pacing with a calibrated speedo implies significant possibility for human error, not to mention vastly cutting down on the number of vehicles than can be checked per hour.
[0] At least in Australia, a breathalyser test can't get you convicted - it carries no legal weight. A positive breathalyser test is simply justification for a blood test to be taken. Only the results of the blood test can be used in court.
But if the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested and verified, not being open source should not be a reason to let a drunk driver off the hook, in my opinion.
Here in Australia, the breathalyser result is only used to determine whether or not to take a blood test, and it is the result of the blood test that is actually used in court - the reading on a breathalyser carries no legal weight (at least in terms of a DUI conviction).
At the very least, software developers who want the protection of copyright should be required to lodge their source with a central library, to ensure it can be released when copyright expires.
In fact, if copyright must exist, this should apply to *all* things protected under it. Copyright should be an opt-in system that requires the lodgement of the work to be protected in a "public information store" to be valid.
Also, since copyright is primarily used for giving "intellectual property" actual financial value, the length of a work's protection under copyright law should be linked to how much "value" it generates, but I digress...
It's also better because you dont have a single point of failure. Hose and INI file and you've hosed 1 application. Hose the registy and your OS is fucked. Huge, huge difference.
Spoken by someone who has never had their/etc disappear.
Windows almost always forces you to be administrator in order to do most tasks. Also, you cannot even upgrade your account temporarily to apply patches/run games - you have to log out and log back in as administrator.
Bullshit on both counts.
So regardless of whether it was a bug in a third-party application or not, it boils down to the fact that the OS "forced" the user to run as administrator, thus leading to the breech.
Application developers are the ones who "force" users to run as Administrator. Windows has nothing to do with it.
Windows wasn't an operating system 20 years ago, it was only a DOSShell, it turned into an operating system in 1995 (not really an operating system but it got bigger, but still a layer on top of DOS)
Actually from Windows/386 (ca. 1988) onwards, it took over almost all "OS" tasks from DOS when loaded (memory management, scheduling, hardware drivers, etc). It was certainly closer to an operating system than a simple shell.
Well, to say that, I only have to look at the TONS of Windows magazine explaining lots of trivial things that should have been simple in Windows, and yet people buy these again and again.
Do you seriously think these books wouldn't exist for any other platform with a similar user demographic ?
I only have to remember that AS SOON AS I stopped providing support (and other illegal things) for Windows to my vicinity, they all stopped using Windows or computers altogether.
So they stopped using compulter *completely* because you wouldn't help them with Windows, and you consider that an argument for alternate platforms ?
The people you know who switched, do you support them on whatever they switched to ?
I can't wait for the competively priced and performing Intel based Macs [...]
I don't understand why people think x86 Macs are going to be any cheaper. Macs aren't expensive to buy because they're expensive to make, they're expensive to buy because Apple has the highest profit margins in the industry.
I see a lot of that and it's a total crock of shit. Can you tell me how price fixing and other anti-competitive practices did this?
This being one of the main arguments *against* the idea of Microsoft price-fixing and other anti-competitive behaviour....
While obsoleting your computer every two or three years, they also make sure no one can sell you a new one that does not put money in their pocket.
Given the *extensive* effort Microsoft puts into legacy support (of both hardware *and* software), claims that they "obselete your computer every two or three years" are laughable.
Winmodems, for example, are cheap because a single chip is cheap but they are ultimately more expensive than they have to be because no two are the same and they all require expensive software to work and performance is poor.
Who sells Winmodems without drivers ?
Imagine that industry had stuck with scsi and had slowly moved to firewire instead. We'd all have cheap but higher quality hardare then the absolute garbage IDE and USB junk we have now.
No, we'd have had crappy SCSI drives just like we do crappy IDE drives.
Hint: drive mechanics and interfaces are two different things.
DMA would not be so painful if Intel was not doggedly supporting Microsoft's legacy crap.
WTF are you talking about ? DMA is only painful on broken hardware like VIA chipsets. On decent hardware, it's been common and trivial to use for a decade or more.
Other chipmakers got abound Intel's DMA DOSyness but were slammed out of market share by vendor manipulations.
You mean the free market ?
The paradoxical result of Microsoft's anti-competitive bend is a kind of "standardization" around the worst kinds of hardware paractices. The designed result of their anti-standards bend is the destruction of excellent hardware which works with "competing" software.
You've got serious issues with paranoia, a really nasty case of rose-tinted-vision and a _massive_ chip on your soldier. I suppose you think the people at Microsoft eat babies, as well ?
This is the second time I've seen this claim this week. As far as I know, it's utter nonsense. How did Microsoft make the PC a commodity?
By selling a cheap OS for it.
Surely the single crucial factor was the IBM clones being given the legal go-ahead through the IBM vs Phoenix lawsuit, which Microsoft had nothing to do with.
And without a cheap OS - DOS - there wouldn't have been a market for PC clones in the first place.
Microsoft made computing cheap? So Microsoft created all those IBM PC clones which were in competition to IBM's own products and therefore forced the prices down?
No, they sold a cheap OS to actually make your computer useful.
The reason why computers got cheap wasn't Microsoft. It was IBM building a PC from standard parts without making exclusivity deals on any vital component, thus opening up the market for PC clones (something they most certainly didn't intend:-)).
A market that wouldn't have existed without a cheap OS to make those computers useful (ie: DOS).
And are you really sure if MS would have had relatively low DOS prices if there had been no competition (DR DOS)?
Of course they wouldn't (and at the time, the competitor was CP/M) - but neither would anyone else, so I'm not entirely sure what your point is...
Here's 3 links on articles on how MS fired an employer who posted in his blog that Mac G5s were being delivered to MS.
You know what ? I've heard there's actually AN ENTIRE DEPARTMENT at Microsoft that does nothing else except write software for Macs. Imagine how much trouble *those* guys are going to be in when Bill finds out !
Dude, I've known about tools like Cygwin and Interix for years, prolly since before Unxutils existed. The point I'm making above is, what comes with the OS?
Dude, the only people who care about what does and doesn't "come with the OS" are facetious idjits making asinine comparisons on Slashdot.
Actually if you take a look at your registry while trying to remove all references to IE, you will notice that your Explorer window can call a URL. This cannot be removed without crippling your system. You can remove all references to IE but Windows will still default to it's install of IE 4.0.
Try it sometime.
How surprising, that the system shell uses the system-provided browser component...
You will see just how integrated it is and you will spot several interesting items that allow yoyu SYTEMlevel access through the browser.
Then you shouldn't have any trouble quoting them, and how to exploit them.
That's as may be, and you're right that I don't know the implementation details, but I would still say that making them the same program, so that you can type either a file system URL or an internet URL in the address bar, is not a good idea, even if only from a psychological perspective.
My whole point is that they're *not* the same program - in any meaningful sense - any more than being able to open PDFs in Firefox mean Firefox and Acrobat are "the same program".
Explorer is the Windows *shell*. If it doesn't make sense to have that sort of functionality in the *shell*, I'm not sure where you might think it makes sense to put it.
No, I don't. Part of the Registry "concept" way back in Windoze 3.1 was to setup a place to locate control parameters about the OS and installed hardware, software, what DLL's it uses, how to uninstall, how to work with other apps, etc.
Rrrright, but your implication earlier was that the purpose of the Registry, and the objective in creating it, was to restrict what the user could do. This is not even remotely true. The Registry is a system database, largely used for static and dynamic configuration data.
The fact that the Registry does not contain "rights" information now does not mean it wouldn't in the future. In fact that's the logical place to put it! HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT_USERS would be where the "rights" for programs are established if the current structure was kept.
There are already Group Policy settings that can control what a user can and can't execute.
Slashdot Mirror
A BAC isn't really something depends on an "algorithm". Of course different people will have different BACs even after the same amount of alcohol - but that's irrelevant, since "DUI" is a measure of your BAC, not how much you've had to drink. The reason this is done is precisely /because/ different people have different metabolisms, etc.
It's well-known, for example, that women will blow higher on a breathalyzer than a man simply because they're generally smaller.
Of course they will, but that's irrelevant...
Similarly for LIDAR (laser speed detection), the underlying principle is using distance and time to determine rate. Sounds straightforward, as d = r * t, but how do you know you've got the right values for d? It's been shown that rapid movement of a LIDAR gun can cause even inanimate objects to register a rate. How do we know the LIDAR gun measured the distance your car traveled over a period of time, rather than the distance of your car at one point in time and the distance of some other reflective object (say, a much closer stop sign) at a different point in time?
In theory, the software in the machine discards "anomalous" readings (eg: ones that would say a car is travelling at 500km/h).
At the distances in question, we're talking sharpshooter skills as a requirement for using a LIDAR gun, but it seems that every cop on the force has one. Can they expect us to believe that every cop is a sharpshooter, or that several cups of coffee won't induce shaking in the cop's hands that could cause false readings?
It's even worse than that - at 500m the "beam spread" on a LIDAR is 1 - 1.5 metres, so it's quite feasible that the LIDAR is making it's calculations based on one part of the beam that bounced back from, say, the driver's sunglasses and another that bounced back from the numberplate (or one part on car A and another part on car B behind it).
That said, LIDAR's aren't *ridiculously* inaccurate - if they read a speed, it's almost certainly going to be correct to within +/- ~10km/h. So if you get pinged doing 150km/h in a 100km/h zone, trying to use the inherent innacuracy of the LIDAR equipment as an excuse is pretty questionable (although it may well work, legally speaking).
Then again, given how ridiculously low the average highway speed limit is, if you can get off (and you weren't driving dangerously), more power to you.
It's a good precedent, forcing the breathalyzer source to be opened to inspection, but the assumption is still that the underlying algorithm is accurate when it's not.
But it is. The data might not be 100%, but the algorithm is fine. Determining an object's velocity given it's displacement over a known timeframe is a pretty well-tested algorithm :).
I don't understand why courts continue to rely on technology such as the breathalyzer or the LIDAR gun when there are better, proven tests that could be used instead (blood tests, RADAR or pacing with a calibrated speedometer).
Because blood tests are hard to automate and administer quickly (and in some jurisdictions might not be doable by an officer on the side of the road for legal reasons)[0], because LIDARs are more accurate, less error-prone and less avoidable than RADARs (hence the reason LIDAR replaced RADAR) and because pacing with a calibrated speedo implies significant possibility for human error, not to mention vastly cutting down on the number of vehicles than can be checked per hour.
[0] At least in Australia, a breathalyser test can't get you convicted - it carries no legal weight. A positive breathalyser test is simply justification for a blood test to be taken. Only the results of the blood test can be used in court.
Here in Australia, the breathalyser result is only used to determine whether or not to take a blood test, and it is the result of the blood test that is actually used in court - the reading on a breathalyser carries no legal weight (at least in terms of a DUI conviction).
Note that "the US doesn't want the UN to control DNS" is not the same as "the US wants to control DNS".
Because "computers" consist of more than just CPUs.
*raises hand*
Nope, I didn't notice anything homosexual about the way he acted either (which is to say, I did notice the whole /heterosexual/ thing with Rose).
For those who did pick up on a bisexual undercurrent, is there any particular episode I should watch again to notice it ?
In fact, if copyright must exist, this should apply to *all* things protected under it. Copyright should be an opt-in system that requires the lodgement of the work to be protected in a "public information store" to be valid.
Also, since copyright is primarily used for giving "intellectual property" actual financial value, the length of a work's protection under copyright law should be linked to how much "value" it generates, but I digress...
Like, say, /etc ?
The reason OS X "just works" is because Apple were smart enough to either leave behind or disguise most of the unix part.
Spoken by someone who has never had their /etc disappear.
Bullshit on both counts.
So regardless of whether it was a bug in a third-party application or not, it boils down to the fact that the OS "forced" the user to run as administrator, thus leading to the breech.
Application developers are the ones who "force" users to run as Administrator. Windows has nothing to do with it.
There's an awfully long list of "improperly" designed OSes then.
But since applications have to have write access to everything on Windows...
False.
Actually from Windows/386 (ca. 1988) onwards, it took over almost all "OS" tasks from DOS when loaded (memory management, scheduling, hardware drivers, etc). It was certainly closer to an operating system than a simple shell.
Do you seriously think these books wouldn't exist for any other platform with a similar user demographic ?
I only have to remember that AS SOON AS I stopped providing support (and other illegal things) for Windows to my vicinity, they all stopped using Windows or computers altogether.
So they stopped using compulter *completely* because you wouldn't help them with Windows, and you consider that an argument for alternate platforms ?
The people you know who switched, do you support them on whatever they switched to ?
I don't understand why people think x86 Macs are going to be any cheaper. Macs aren't expensive to buy because they're expensive to make, they're expensive to buy because Apple has the highest profit margins in the industry.
This being one of the main arguments *against* the idea of Microsoft price-fixing and other anti-competitive behaviour....
While obsoleting your computer every two or three years, they also make sure no one can sell you a new one that does not put money in their pocket.
Given the *extensive* effort Microsoft puts into legacy support (of both hardware *and* software), claims that they "obselete your computer every two or three years" are laughable.
Winmodems, for example, are cheap because a single chip is cheap but they are ultimately more expensive than they have to be because no two are the same and they all require expensive software to work and performance is poor.
Who sells Winmodems without drivers ?
Imagine that industry had stuck with scsi and had slowly moved to firewire instead. We'd all have cheap but higher quality hardare then the absolute garbage IDE and USB junk we have now.
No, we'd have had crappy SCSI drives just like we do crappy IDE drives.
Hint: drive mechanics and interfaces are two different things.
DMA would not be so painful if Intel was not doggedly supporting Microsoft's legacy crap.
WTF are you talking about ? DMA is only painful on broken hardware like VIA chipsets. On decent hardware, it's been common and trivial to use for a decade or more.
Other chipmakers got abound Intel's DMA DOSyness but were slammed out of market share by vendor manipulations.
You mean the free market ?
The paradoxical result of Microsoft's anti-competitive bend is a kind of "standardization" around the worst kinds of hardware paractices. The designed result of their anti-standards bend is the destruction of excellent hardware which works with "competing" software.
You've got serious issues with paranoia, a really nasty case of rose-tinted-vision and a _massive_ chip on your soldier. I suppose you think the people at Microsoft eat babies, as well ?
Actually, Windows 3.0 would run (well, walk) on an 8086 or 8088.
By selling a cheap OS for it.
Surely the single crucial factor was the IBM clones being given the legal go-ahead through the IBM vs Phoenix lawsuit, which Microsoft had nothing to do with.
And without a cheap OS - DOS - there wouldn't have been a market for PC clones in the first place.
No, they sold a cheap OS to actually make your computer useful.
The reason why computers got cheap wasn't Microsoft. It was IBM building a PC from standard parts without making exclusivity deals on any vital component, thus opening up the market for PC clones (something they most certainly didn't intend :-)).
A market that wouldn't have existed without a cheap OS to make those computers useful (ie: DOS).
And are you really sure if MS would have had relatively low DOS prices if there had been no competition (DR DOS)?
Of course they wouldn't (and at the time, the competitor was CP/M) - but neither would anyone else, so I'm not entirely sure what your point is...
Of course, moving from Word to Wordperfect gifted the typical user with a lot less reasons to ask "why has it done that"... (and "what has it done").
You know what ? I've heard there's actually AN ENTIRE DEPARTMENT at Microsoft that does nothing else except write software for Macs. Imagine how much trouble *those* guys are going to be in when Bill finds out !
Dude, the only people who care about what does and doesn't "come with the OS" are facetious idjits making asinine comparisons on Slashdot.
How surprising, that the system shell uses the system-provided browser component...
You will see just how integrated it is and you will spot several interesting items that allow yoyu SYTEMlevel access through the browser.
Then you shouldn't have any trouble quoting them, and how to exploit them.
My whole point is that they're *not* the same program - in any meaningful sense - any more than being able to open PDFs in Firefox mean Firefox and Acrobat are "the same program".
Explorer is the Windows *shell*. If it doesn't make sense to have that sort of functionality in the *shell*, I'm not sure where you might think it makes sense to put it.
Rrrright, but your implication earlier was that the purpose of the Registry, and the objective in creating it, was to restrict what the user could do. This is not even remotely true. The Registry is a system database, largely used for static and dynamic configuration data.
The fact that the Registry does not contain "rights" information now does not mean it wouldn't in the future. In fact that's the logical place to put it! HKEY_USERS and HKEY_CURRENT_USERS would be where the "rights" for programs are established if the current structure was kept.
There are already Group Policy settings that can control what a user can and can't execute.
Until you minimise and restore a few more windows (that all look the same) and change the order of the window list, that is.
The Dock is a UI freakin' train wreck, and no amount of flashy graphics will change that.
People forget that Apple's designs are created to be usable first and sexy second.
They *used* to be. However, it's plain to see that OS X/Aqua was built to be flashy first and usable second.