I have a ThinkPad T42 and a 12" PowerBook, and I love them both. Apple has the sleek, high-end metal look going for them (and not the metal-colored plastic most "metallic" laptops have). IBM (and now Lenovo) has a sleek, simple look that I find appealing.
However, I look at a Dell, Toshiba, or HP laptop, and they just feel cheap and ugly to me.
Well, it's really a matter of opinion. I own a Nokia 770, and while I wouldn't sing praises about the on-screen keyboard by any means, I find it adequate for my needs.
What the grandparent (or great-grandparent, whatever) was pointing out is that, if Nokia were to bundle a hardware keyboard with the 770, its total cost to the buyer would increase to include the cost of the keyboard. And while buying a keyboard separately will probably cost a little more than the added price if it were included, you seem to be assuming/arguing that a hardware keyboard should be included more or less for free. That just doesn't make sense.
The tablet is perfectly "functional" (as you seem to think it's not) as-is. Your problem with it is, well, your problem. If you don't like it, I'm sure you could have returned it within 30 days or more. If you don't own one, why are you complaining?
Re:Interesting story, but...
on
Gmail vs Pine
·
· Score: 1
Apparently it's "in" these days to consider otherwise-singular-sounding company names as plural nouns for subject-verb agreement. Personally I don't get it, and it looks and sounds awful to me, but... there it is.
Er, the article you linked to says "In some countries, April Fools jokes must only be made before midday", without listing any countries, though it makes a reference to Australia later. It links to another article, which gives Ireland and Cypress as examples of countries where there aren't supposed to be jokes after midday. Doesn't sound like the majority of the world goes for this interpretation. I'd actually never heard of the after-midday "rule" until I started reading Slashdot a few years ago.
Anyway, Firefox works sufficiently well with all my banking sites, too. Why do people take rhetorical devices so literally around here? Like five people have pointed out that their bank works fine. My point was that a lot of websites have problems with firefox.
Perhaps that's just our way of saying we have no use for rhetoric. If you want to make a point, back it up. Why would you use something non-true to support your argument? It really makes little sense. And "a lot of websites" really doesn't give your opinion any weight.
And by the way, my bank's website works fine too. (That was a mix of irony and sarcasm, in case you didn't get it.)
This seems a common theme in all the responses I got from my original post. Everybody says "well, X works fine for me on linux." Why are you settling for good enough?
Because, contrary to silly, trite sayings, very often "good enough" really actually is good enough.
If there's something better on Windows, why not suck up your pride and use it?
Why should I spend a ridiculous amount of money on Windows and applications for it, and waste my time changing my workflow for the dubious improvement that switching one application *might* give me?
Do you care more about OSS politics or the quality of your work?
They're completely orthogonal. The only "work" I do where such a quality difference would matter is in programming, and I can get a hell of a lot more "quality" in that area on a Linux box. (Notice a continuing theme with all of the replies to your posts: people have different needs than you do. You'd do well to remember that.)
Yeah, I know that in theory linux can do anything a windows or mac box can. Hell, Turing tells you that! I'm asking about what works best in practice. And you're you're kidding yourself if you say that one OS always works better than another.
I don't really see anyone saying that, except maybe you. Regardless, what works best for me -- and those last two words are the critical part you don't seem to be able to get -- in practice is Linux, overall. My time is far too valuable to me to waste it jumping between three different OSes for anything but fun. So I pick the OS that does everything I need, even if some of those things are possibly done "better" (whatever that means) on another OS. Windows is automatically out of the running there, since it doesn't do everything I need, even if it possibly does a few of those things "better" than Linux.
I was going to mod your original post overrated, but I think I'd rather just reply.
But seriously, what have you found for linux that is better than illustrator or photoshop? If you say GIMP or Inkscape I've already won.
Why? I use GIMP on both Linux, and, when I need to, the Windows laptop issued to me by my employer. I don't need the feature set of Photoshop. GIMP is more than adequate for my purposes, and has a much more attractive price tag.
Have you ever tried to layout a technical paper using OpenOffice, including equations and figures?
No, I haven't. That's not something I do. Just because you have a need for a specialised application on Windows, it doesn't mean the rest of us do.
I doubt it. Word sucks in so many ways, but it actually produces good output, and full-featured equation editors are available.
That may be the case, but every time I try to open a not-completely-trivial Word document with a different version of Word than that which created it, I have to reformat a significant portion of it.
You can cite LaTeX in the linux camp, but good luck doing high quality figures for it without a Windows box.
At least LaTeX output is predictable and consistent. And doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
MATLAB and Mathematica both look like shit on linux, with font (and sometimes keyboard) issues everywhere. In fact, nothing makes linux look worse than comparing software developed for both windows and linux.
I haven't used MATLAB or Mathematica since I was in college, and I'm much happier for it. I'd imagine a good number (maybe even a majority?) of Linux users don't have a need for them, don't care about the aesthetic issues, or only need casual/simple features, and so something like octave is sufficient.
I agree that technically linux is far superior. In theory, linux is great. But in the real world what matters is applications. Linux may have potential over Windows, but the reality is the mess of standards on linux makes it hard to develop for, and it diverts efforts into factions. Linux is a niche market with it's own niches. Imagine how much less support the Mac would get if its paltry market share were further split between two competing desktop APIs.
That's funny, because I can do my job and my fun by only using Linux. Granted, some things -- like talking to an Exchange server -- are much much much easier on Windows. Maybe it's more of a hassle to use Linux, and maybe, in some isolated instances, I'm not using the so-called "best" application for the job, but really, who cares? It works for me, and I'm happy with it. And it costs me significantly less than the Windows counterparts.
Anyway, good luck with your zealotry and all that. I'll keep using what works *best*, and if that becomes linux, I'll happily join you in ridding my drive of its windows partition.
Wow, after all that, you feel that you can call someone *else* a zealot? That's amazing, really.
You don't have to use the absolute #1 best application to get your job (or your fun) done. Sometimes using a mid-range application will do just as well, and sometimes better.
People have different taste, and different needs. You obviously do a good bit of scientific and mathematical computing. I do none, so your arguments and example applications are totally irrelevent to my situation. I'd imagine that's the case for many other people.
Try pulling your head out of your ass, and realise that not everyone has the same needs and wants as you.
For the record, to answer your original question, I have four computers at home. Three of them are Linux-only, and one of them is dual-boot Mac OS X and Linux. The Mac is just for fun, since I've never used the OS before, and I'm curious. Unfortunately, I'm forced to carry around a Windows XP laptop, and IT would kill me if I ditched Windows and put Linux on it. But I would if I could.
Maybe not, but I'm a bit confused now by how you mean to say it "doesn't matter".
Doesn't matter in the sense that we shouldn't care what he says because he doesn't have good ideas? I don't really think that's true.
Doesn't matter in the sense that his opinion in this case won't affect anything? It's true that he's not in control of GPL development, but the GPL architects would be fools to at least not consider what he has to say. He *does* run one of the most high-profile GPL-licensed projects in existence.
Maybe we *should* be hearing more of what ESR, RMS, Theo de Raadt, etc. say. Though I daresay we do here quite a lot of RMS.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, regardles of whether or not what Linus says "matters" or not (however you want to look at it), he does have a valid -- if not "correct" -- viewpoint, and it never hurts to hear what other people have to think. If you're going to just blindly agree with what he says, sure, that's a bit foolish, but I don't think not posting articles about what Linus (or anyone else) says is the solution: the root problem there is that you (generic 'you', that is) are a pushover conformist zealot.
Then... why are you posting here, if it doesn't matter? You disagree with Linus' attitude. Fine. I'm sure he doesn't care and sleeps quite well at night. He's not an activist, a mantra he repeats time and time again. He likes to write software, and jumped on the GPL way-back-when because he thought it was a good way to generate interest in his kernel and require people to give back to it. Not because he's an idealist, or a zealot, or on a crusade to make all software free.
RMS is the idealist. The fact that we have a fully open GNU/Linux system, created in part by the work of idealists and in part by "simple" engineers who just like to work on code just goes to show you that both approaches work and are relevant, regardless of how any of us may feel about RMS or Torvalds.
I really don't understand why so many people get their panties in a bunch about how Torvalds "doesn't care" about open source. Aside from the fact that I'm sure he does care (just maybe not in the way or to the extent that some people want him to), why is he obligated to care?
Actually, 1.4.2-2 is the second *Debian* release of 1.4.2, probably to fix packaging bugs or minor bugs in the software that weren't yet available in an upstream release. 1.4.2-2 != 1.4.2.2. Debian users still need to upgrade when a new package is available.
The Acid2 test covers some rather weird corner-case error handling. About the most you can say about a browser that passes the Acid2 test is that... well, it passes the Acid2 test. Alone, it doesn't make any browser more or less standards-compliant.
Why should I, as a resident of another state, be forced to subsidize your state's government?
To play devil's advocate: because you're buying products from a company that used the resources and infrastructure supported by my state's government.
Having said that, I think this is ridiculous, just not for the reason you outlined...
On the other hand, it's kinda poetic justice. When I lived in NY, I loved how great the prices were at Newegg.com, but now that I moved to CA, where Newegg is based, the prices aren't so great anymore.
This is proprietary software, remember. It takes a lot longer.
Takes longer eh? Is that why Nvidia cards were accerating the composite managers before EXA even had a name?
They were actually accelerating the Render extension. Not composite or composite managers. My point is that proprietary software release cycles generally take longer than OSS. That alone will likely delay nvidia's release, not the actual development time. At any rate, you've picked a poor example here: the reason nvidia is faster than OSS is because OSS developers lack specs for most high-end video hardware.
Personally, as long as it's better, I'll be happy, as nvidia is terribly unstable with composite enabled.
Try the newest drivers. I have not had Xcompmgr crash my system in two weeks! (of course it helps to have the newest xcompmgr too).
I've been using them for a couple weeks; the new drivers are actually worse, on my hardware at least.
Exa is a replacement for XAA, the old X Acceleration Architecture. nvidia's binary drivers do not use XAA. They cooked up their own method for accelerating their drivers, independent of what the X developers were using. Their method is superior to XAA, and it remains to be seen whether or not it's superior to Exa. If so, don't expect them to change. If not, it'll likely be a while before it's implemented. This is proprietary software, remember. It takes a lot longer.
The OSS nv driver in 7.0 does *not* have Exa support. I've tried the currently-available experimental patch, and it crashes X within a few seconds of startup on my hardware. It also breaks XAA on non-AGP cards. Note that an exa-enabled nv may or may not accelerate 2D operations as well or as fast as the proprietary nvidia driver does. Personally, as long as it's better, I'll be happy, as nvidia is terribly unstable with composite enabled.
I love how incorrect information gets marked up as "informative". *sigh*
I have no problem with English as a living language. It changes all the time, sometimes for good reason. In this case, the only reason for the change is so groups like the RIAA/MPAA/etc. can make copyright infringement seem like a worse offense than it really is.
Ironically, it may have the opposite effect: fewer people will recognise it for its old high-seas-crime definition, and the word will simply be diluted.
But I do feel the law is wrong in this case. What automatically makes your opinion more important than mine? What gives you the ability to judge how I, someone you have never met, can handle a vehicle and impose your views as to what is a safe speed for me, personally, to drive?
Every single day I see people like you out there disregarding the law and what's more, you even admit that you will break the law and then try to weasel your way out of it by trying to get out of the fine imposed on you because you broke the law.
You can't have it both ways: if I can legally avoid paying a fine, avoid points added to my license, and avoid exhorbitant insurance fees, why should I accept them? This law that you're advocating is the One True Way allows me to do these things, so which is it: is the law right or wrong? And if the law is wrong in that it allows me to "weasel" out of paying fines, then why is it such a leap of logic that it might be wrong in how speed limits are set?
You admit you're breaking the law AND you refuse to pay the fine.
Nowhere did I say any such thing. If the court requires me to pay, I will pay. Please try to attack my arguments without distorting my words. In point of fact, I have received two speeding tickets, both of which I paid for (the fine itself and the increased insurance premiums). Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to challenge the tickets as I received them on long trips and didn't have the time to drive several hours to appear in court. Had I "refuse[d] to pay the fine" as you suggest, I would have risked being arrested and having my license suspended or revoked. That result didn't seem worth it, given the relatively minor ~$120 fine and ~$40/year insurance premium hike.
That's not civil disobedience -- civil disobedience is refusing to follow a law that oppressess someone or violates their human rights.
I suggest you go look up the term. According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, civil disobedience is "refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government". Searching "define: civil disobedience" on Google gives similar results, with some examples, but nowhere is the definition necessarily tied to human opression or rights violations. Your knowledge of the term appears to be clouded by the most well-publicised uses of civil disobedience, namely to protest human-rights violations.
Civil disobedience is not thinking you have the right to put other people in danger and do whatever the hell you want on public roads and putting people like me, who work within the law, at risk due to your selfish belief that you are somehow above the law.
Again, in your opinion, I'm putting you in danger. My opinion, as well as the opinions of several studies linked elsewhere in posts by others in the/. community, seem to suggest that in many situations (mainly highways, which is what I'm most concerned with; I don't speed on roads where there are likely to be hard-to-see pedestrians present), raising speed limits slightly actually decreases the incidence of accidents, and lowering the speed limit has no measurable effect.
Regarding my personal experience with this alleged danger, in my 9 years driving, I have never caused an accident. That's certainly not proof that I never will, but so far so good.
You're not above the law. And what's more, I don't respect people like you who think it doesn't apply to them and that they shouldn't be called to pay, financially or otherwise, if they break it. You swore you wouldn't break the law when you got a lic
So I take it you'd be ok following a law that you thought was wrong? Do you think we have a perfect legal system, and that our laws are 100% based on what will keep people safe, and there are no ulterior motives, such as revenue collection or political power? I'm not really sure why you're accusing the rest of us of having a holier-than-thou attitude, as that's rather hypocritical.
I'm not saying the police don't have the ability to ticket me for speeding; they certainly do, given current laws. I'll continue speeding, and continue to take that chance, based on the rationale of what I believe to be right: that my speed is still safe. If I do get a ticket, I'll use whatever legal means at my disposal to dispute it, but if I fail, I'll pay the required fine. That's what civil disobedience is all about: violating the law while being willing to accept the consequences.
Not at all. The person who made the libelous changes should be persued. I said Wikipedia itself shouldn't be persued, unless it has been made aware of the content and has done nothing to change it.
And the thing that bothers me more about this article is that Seigenthaler was made aware of his options to track down the author of the libelous passage. From TFA:
... I phoned BellSouth's Atlanta corporate headquarters, which led to conversations between my lawyer and BellSouth's counsel. My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my "biographer."
What's wrong with this? In fact, this is exactly what we (we as in the Slashdot community) insist upon in the case of the RIAA/MPAA tracking down alleged copyright infringers. Why should this case be any different? If he wants to get a corporation to violate a customer's privacy, he's going to have to file suit and get a court order. And yet he still complains that there's no way for him to track down the guy who wrote libelous content. Geez...
Interesting. I actually did a quick search for definitions before posting (I was pretty surprised that someone would make a mistake like that), and didn't come up with that definition. Thanks, I am thus enlightened.
Not a bad idea, but it would probably only help in the worst of cases (which might be worth it, who knows). I know there are some times that I'm mildly inebriated and shouldn't drive, but I'm certainly more than coherent enough to remember and enter even a long PIN.
Failing to make a car payment isn't grand theft auto; it isn't even theft of any kind. It's just a normal breach of contract, and can be handled in civil court. Most (all?) lenders prefer to just reposess the property in question, since that's cheaper than a lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Aesthetics is a funny thing.
I have a ThinkPad T42 and a 12" PowerBook, and I love them both. Apple has the sleek, high-end metal look going for them (and not the metal-colored plastic most "metallic" laptops have). IBM (and now Lenovo) has a sleek, simple look that I find appealing.
However, I look at a Dell, Toshiba, or HP laptop, and they just feel cheap and ugly to me.
Well, it's really a matter of opinion. I own a Nokia 770, and while I wouldn't sing praises about the on-screen keyboard by any means, I find it adequate for my needs.
What the grandparent (or great-grandparent, whatever) was pointing out is that, if Nokia were to bundle a hardware keyboard with the 770, its total cost to the buyer would increase to include the cost of the keyboard. And while buying a keyboard separately will probably cost a little more than the added price if it were included, you seem to be assuming/arguing that a hardware keyboard should be included more or less for free. That just doesn't make sense.
The tablet is perfectly "functional" (as you seem to think it's not) as-is. Your problem with it is, well, your problem. If you don't like it, I'm sure you could have returned it within 30 days or more. If you don't own one, why are you complaining?
Apparently it's "in" these days to consider otherwise-singular-sounding company names as plural nouns for subject-verb agreement. Personally I don't get it, and it looks and sounds awful to me, but... there it is.
Er, the article you linked to says "In some countries, April Fools jokes must only be made before midday", without listing any countries, though it makes a reference to Australia later. It links to another article, which gives Ireland and Cypress as examples of countries where there aren't supposed to be jokes after midday. Doesn't sound like the majority of the world goes for this interpretation. I'd actually never heard of the after-midday "rule" until I started reading Slashdot a few years ago.
And by the way, my bank's website works fine too. (That was a mix of irony and sarcasm, in case you didn't get it.)
You don't have to use the absolute #1 best application to get your job (or your fun) done. Sometimes using a mid-range application will do just as well, and sometimes better.
People have different taste, and different needs. You obviously do a good bit of scientific and mathematical computing. I do none, so your arguments and example applications are totally irrelevent to my situation. I'd imagine that's the case for many other people.
Try pulling your head out of your ass, and realise that not everyone has the same needs and wants as you.
For the record, to answer your original question, I have four computers at home. Three of them are Linux-only, and one of them is dual-boot Mac OS X and Linux. The Mac is just for fun, since I've never used the OS before, and I'm curious. Unfortunately, I'm forced to carry around a Windows XP laptop, and IT would kill me if I ditched Windows and put Linux on it. But I would if I could.
Maybe not, but I'm a bit confused now by how you mean to say it "doesn't matter".
Doesn't matter in the sense that we shouldn't care what he says because he doesn't have good ideas? I don't really think that's true.
Doesn't matter in the sense that his opinion in this case won't affect anything? It's true that he's not in control of GPL development, but the GPL architects would be fools to at least not consider what he has to say. He *does* run one of the most high-profile GPL-licensed projects in existence.
Maybe we *should* be hearing more of what ESR, RMS, Theo de Raadt, etc. say. Though I daresay we do here quite a lot of RMS.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, regardles of whether or not what Linus says "matters" or not (however you want to look at it), he does have a valid -- if not "correct" -- viewpoint, and it never hurts to hear what other people have to think. If you're going to just blindly agree with what he says, sure, that's a bit foolish, but I don't think not posting articles about what Linus (or anyone else) says is the solution: the root problem there is that you (generic 'you', that is) are a pushover conformist zealot.
Then... why are you posting here, if it doesn't matter? You disagree with Linus' attitude. Fine. I'm sure he doesn't care and sleeps quite well at night. He's not an activist, a mantra he repeats time and time again. He likes to write software, and jumped on the GPL way-back-when because he thought it was a good way to generate interest in his kernel and require people to give back to it. Not because he's an idealist, or a zealot, or on a crusade to make all software free.
RMS is the idealist. The fact that we have a fully open GNU/Linux system, created in part by the work of idealists and in part by "simple" engineers who just like to work on code just goes to show you that both approaches work and are relevant, regardless of how any of us may feel about RMS or Torvalds.
I really don't understand why so many people get their panties in a bunch about how Torvalds "doesn't care" about open source. Aside from the fact that I'm sure he does care (just maybe not in the way or to the extent that some people want him to), why is he obligated to care?
Actually, 1.4.2-2 is the second *Debian* release of 1.4.2, probably to fix packaging bugs or minor bugs in the software that weren't yet available in an upstream release. 1.4.2-2 != 1.4.2.2. Debian users still need to upgrade when a new package is available.
The Acid2 test covers some rather weird corner-case error handling. About the most you can say about a browser that passes the Acid2 test is that... well, it passes the Acid2 test. Alone, it doesn't make any browser more or less standards-compliant.
Having said that, I think this is ridiculous, just not for the reason you outlined...
On the other hand, it's kinda poetic justice. When I lived in NY, I loved how great the prices were at Newegg.com, but now that I moved to CA, where Newegg is based, the prices aren't so great anymore.
Exa is a replacement for XAA, the old X Acceleration Architecture. nvidia's binary drivers do not use XAA. They cooked up their own method for accelerating their drivers, independent of what the X developers were using. Their method is superior to XAA, and it remains to be seen whether or not it's superior to Exa. If so, don't expect them to change. If not, it'll likely be a while before it's implemented. This is proprietary software, remember. It takes a lot longer.
The OSS nv driver in 7.0 does *not* have Exa support. I've tried the currently-available experimental patch, and it crashes X within a few seconds of startup on my hardware. It also breaks XAA on non-AGP cards. Note that an exa-enabled nv may or may not accelerate 2D operations as well or as fast as the proprietary nvidia driver does. Personally, as long as it's better, I'll be happy, as nvidia is terribly unstable with composite enabled.
I love how incorrect information gets marked up as "informative". *sigh*
I have no problem with English as a living language. It changes all the time, sometimes for good reason. In this case, the only reason for the change is so groups like the RIAA/MPAA/etc. can make copyright infringement seem like a worse offense than it really is.
Ironically, it may have the opposite effect: fewer people will recognise it for its old high-seas-crime definition, and the word will simply be diluted.
Actually, if you were to facilitate raping, pillaging, murder, and plunder on the high seas, probably a lot worse would happen to you.
Though I suspect you're really talking about copyright infringement.
(Chuckle: it's amusing, really.)
Meh, ridiculous. Wikipedia should trademark their puzzle-piece sphere logo and sue the wikipediaclassaction.org people. That would be pretty amusing.
In other news, 64.942% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
But I do feel the law is wrong in this case. What automatically makes your opinion more important than mine? What gives you the ability to judge how I, someone you have never met, can handle a vehicle and impose your views as to what is a safe speed for me, personally, to drive?
You can't have it both ways: if I can legally avoid paying a fine, avoid points added to my license, and avoid exhorbitant insurance fees, why should I accept them? This law that you're advocating is the One True Way allows me to do these things, so which is it: is the law right or wrong? And if the law is wrong in that it allows me to "weasel" out of paying fines, then why is it such a leap of logic that it might be wrong in how speed limits are set?
Nowhere did I say any such thing. If the court requires me to pay, I will pay. Please try to attack my arguments without distorting my words. In point of fact, I have received two speeding tickets, both of which I paid for (the fine itself and the increased insurance premiums). Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to challenge the tickets as I received them on long trips and didn't have the time to drive several hours to appear in court. Had I "refuse[d] to pay the fine" as you suggest, I would have risked being arrested and having my license suspended or revoked. That result didn't seem worth it, given the relatively minor ~$120 fine and ~$40/year insurance premium hike.
I suggest you go look up the term. According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, civil disobedience is "refusal to obey governmental demands or commands especially as a nonviolent and usually collective means of forcing concessions from the government". Searching "define: civil disobedience" on Google gives similar results, with some examples, but nowhere is the definition necessarily tied to human opression or rights violations. Your knowledge of the term appears to be clouded by the most well-publicised uses of civil disobedience, namely to protest human-rights violations.
Again, in your opinion, I'm putting you in danger. My opinion, as well as the opinions of several studies linked elsewhere in posts by others in the /. community, seem to suggest that in many situations (mainly highways, which is what I'm most concerned with; I don't speed on roads where there are likely to be hard-to-see pedestrians present), raising speed limits slightly actually decreases the incidence of accidents, and lowering the speed limit has no measurable effect.
Regarding my personal experience with this alleged danger, in my 9 years driving, I have never caused an accident. That's certainly not proof that I never will, but so far so good.
So I take it you'd be ok following a law that you thought was wrong? Do you think we have a perfect legal system, and that our laws are 100% based on what will keep people safe, and there are no ulterior motives, such as revenue collection or political power? I'm not really sure why you're accusing the rest of us of having a holier-than-thou attitude, as that's rather hypocritical.
I'm not saying the police don't have the ability to ticket me for speeding; they certainly do, given current laws. I'll continue speeding, and continue to take that chance, based on the rationale of what I believe to be right: that my speed is still safe. If I do get a ticket, I'll use whatever legal means at my disposal to dispute it, but if I fail, I'll pay the required fine. That's what civil disobedience is all about: violating the law while being willing to accept the consequences.
Interesting. I actually did a quick search for definitions before posting (I was pretty surprised that someone would make a mistake like that), and didn't come up with that definition. Thanks, I am thus enlightened.
Not a bad idea, but it would probably only help in the worst of cases (which might be worth it, who knows). I know there are some times that I'm mildly inebriated and shouldn't drive, but I'm certainly more than coherent enough to remember and enter even a long PIN.
Failing to make a car payment isn't grand theft auto; it isn't even theft of any kind. It's just a normal breach of contract, and can be handled in civil court. Most (all?) lenders prefer to just reposess the property in question, since that's cheaper than a lawsuit.