Perhaps not automated, but it wouldn't take much trouble. Convert MP3 to WAV, re-encode to MP3 -- setting your encoder to wait XX seconds before recording (most encoders have such an option). Voila. Done. --- seumas.com
There is no way I would consider listening to this 'free' music. Hearing a jingle selling Tampax or Trojan condoms or Ex-Lax ever three or four minutes would just completely ruin the mood.
Besides, why would someone listen to a free release with a commercial from a record company when they can just get MP3's from online or their friends? Duh!
I wonder how artists will feel now. If I start hearing advertisements for Burger King before For Whom The Bell Tolls I will consider Lars and the gang to have officially and irreperably sold out. I mean, what self-respecting artist would want to participate in this scam? --- seumas.com
We have the corporate players. We have some musicians. We have some web guys. Um. I don't see any consumers? Consumer advocates?
Oh well, it could be worse. At least we don't have actors from Hollywood getting involved like they do in everything else. "I once played a musician in a movie and am thus qualified to provide professional commentary to this committee on the subject at hand."
Once it hits congress, it's all down hill from here. --- seumas.com
Hm. But if someone leaked information to, say, the Washington Post and the Washington Post printed it, nobody would do jack to the Post -- they would look for the leak and deal with it. Seems a bit unfair to do otherwise. --- seumas.com
Aren't rumors some sort of protected speech? If not, then why hasn't every radio station, television station and magazine and news paper publisher been shut down by now?
Unsubstantiated lies suggested to be fact with the intent to mislead, decieve and defame is libel. Rumor is... well, it's nothing. "Hey, so and so might decide to possible do this or that".
Doesn't sound like it has a foot to stand on. --- seumas.com
Everyone moves their servers and hosting out of the states, the net economy within the states suffers and grinds to a halt, those tiny islands in the middle of nowhere become wealthy techno-states while America regresses into a puppy suckling at the teat of the the world's technology, and we all turn into people from a bad MadMax/Water World flick. --- seumas.com
And exactly what is the purpose of this information? Are they going to put a contract out on your head? Are they going to start harassing you? Black list you with employers? Threatening you? Subscribe you to dirty magazines and order pizzas to your house?
Damn. $5,000, eh? Someday, I'll be able to afford free speech. --- seumas.com
Sounds like you might be refering to 'smtprewritestyle', or something similar -- to allow a search for potential local accounts to be run against a UID, address@localdomain or a combination of the two. I don't see why it couldn't be used to route to bounce it elsewhere.
But my commentary in response to your first message was not with regard to passing the buck. It was with regard to handling the incoming, in whatever manner, yourself. --- seumas.com
Depending on your server. If you happen to use an older version of a server that will only reject post SMTP, you're not going to save much, since you still have to accept and parse the message before rejecting it.
You could also, using your postSMTP UBE filter, apply a rule to not only reject messages sent to 'nospam.mydomain.com', but to rewrite the headers so that the message is delivered back to the postmaster of the IP's found in the envelope.
Of course, envelopes can be forged, too -- so you run the risk of pissing uninvolved parties off. --- seumas.com
Perhaps, but what can you do? Piping your email to someone elses domain (eg: @nospam.com) is still wasting bandwidth. Perhaps an uninvolved entity's bandwidth, at that.
Seriously, I would prefer no control over government control, when it comes to spam. As much as I hate spammers, I hate government beauracracy and scheming more.
Besides, the government can't do anything more than those of us who actually use the internet can do. We can take it upon ourselves to deal with spam - report it, log it, prosecute it (based on existing not-quite-net-related laws) and pressure the spammer into ceasing his behavior.
A government only has control over it's physical jurisdiction -- but users of the internet have absolute control. We can, in numbers, put a crimp in the activities of people in places where their governments (or lack thereof) allow them to continue their spamming.
The problem with this is that there are so many organizations out there working on this, but none of them are working together. If we had an army of 100,000 volunteers worldwide, we could do some serious damage.
This is a bunch of dreamy -- in the perfect world sort of stuff following, so take it all with a bucket of salt. I'm allowed to day-dream, right?
100,000 out of the the combined global 'net population is less than one one-hundredth of a percent (.01).
If 100,000 people each processed 10 spam messages in Usenet or email per day, you suddenly have millions of people being ratted-out to their ISP's and upstream providers on a weekly basis. From experience, I know that you have a 10% chance of toasting someone's account when you bring to light their infringement of the provider's TOS. Those are decent odds, if you have enough people to pursue them.
And we aren't talking a lot of time. Not all of us can sit at our computers fighting spam each day, but if we knew we were actually helping out (a lot of us feel like people have given up, so who gives a fuck if we try), that two minutes per email would be well worth it.
And just imagine if we could get a full percentage of netizens to do the right thing and help out? We'd be talking 100,000,000 small skirmishes conducted; almost a billion per week.
There are two concerns with this, of course. The first is "won't this alone generate a lot of wasted bandwidth?" and "what about rogue ISPs?"
The answer to the first question is, yes. A lot of bandwidth, but with a legitimate purpose. Further, the amount will decrease as success is made and spam in general is diminished.
The answer to the second question is a bit complex, because there will certainly be some people who will continue to spam, no matter what ever happens.
If you have 7,000,000 messages processed each week (or in the better case of a full percent of users fighting spam, 1,000,000,000), we could imagine that perhaps 50% of the messages are duplicates. That, is 3,500,000 (or in the best case, 500,000,000) unique messages. The higher the number processed, the higher the number of duplicates, of course.
So with the lower number of 3.5 million messages (generating higher response for duplicates, in the neighborhood of 7 million), let's say that half come from every day John Q Public's who haven't quite figured out that spamming is BAD. The other half come from the top 100 known spammers.
The John Q Public half has a higher chance of being incinerated, because their 20$/mo ISP isn't going to cut them much slack when several dozen complaints are filed. Whammo. Figure a 20% success rate on that alone, minimum. Say goodbye to 300,000 spammers.
The rogue-ISP and known-spammer half is a lot more difficult. We'll figure we have what... a 1% chance of shutting them down? If 3.5 million messages are sent to these top 100 and their providers or upstreams, (we're talking AOL and upstream providers from rogues), it's only 35,000 messages per entity. Not a lot to deal with. Even over a year, it's only a couple million messages and complaints each.
This is where that fraction of a percent of anti-spammers would have to recruit people to help out, until we had that full percent battling with us. That full percent cranks that 35,000 into 3.5 million per week, per entity. This is a lot of mail. I believe it would crunch all but the actual spammers themselves, who have absolutely to reliance on other servers or services for the processing of their own spam, into submission. Jim Bob, running a box at a co-lo will be shot into flames by the service giving him the feed pretty damned fast. Jill Bob with her own server and own direct connection is going to be black holed in a heartbeat by all the other admins and postmasters watching their mailboxes fill with complaints each day. At some point, the entrace points for messages to be propegated and stuffed into your mailbox will be squeezed into a trickle for these people, which is as good as none for a lot of us.
But, as I said -- this is all a utopian, let's do this ourselves -- all it takes is some time and a group of people who give a fuck, idea. I don't actually expect it to ever happen. --- seumas.com
Hey, if those VC Vultures want to take everyone's misdirected spam, be my guest!
If you're concerned that someone may send you important email and accidentally forget to remove the 'nospam' or whatever other element you've dropped into your email address, set your domain up so that it has an appropriate subdomain such as: nospam.mydomain.org, where 'mydomain.org' is your domain. Then route everything that comes into 'nospam.mydomain' right to/dev/null. Get's rid of your spam just as well as the other alternative would have, but without the possibility of having any of it fall into someone else's hands.
I used to think I got a lot of spam. Perhaps a dozen or two dozen messages a day. But compared with the almost two hundred messages per day from customers I support, spam isn't quite such a big deal to me.
I used to take the time to track spammers down and collect a few severed heads, but with such a busy life, few of us actually have time to do so -- even with fairly reliable services like spamcop.org.
I guess it's the price we pay for having as free an internet as possible. I dislike it, but I feel better knowing that it's all part of dealing without legislation. And that's fine with me. --- seumas.com
Oh, I don't know, you might start with talent and a message that people want to hear.
Unfortunately, what most people want to hear has nothing to do with what needs to be heard. Look how long it took for violence in schools to become a topic. It wasn't new at all. It wasn't new to my generation, it wasn't new to the one before it and it certainly isn't new to the current generation. Until now, nobody wanted to hear it. And, unfortunately, most people don't -- until it's quite late. --- seumas.com
Form, DaimlerChrysler, and BMW are expected to offer Sirius Satellite Radio receivers in certain models beginning in 2001, with the subscription fee rolled up into the monthly lease or finance payment in some cases.
Man, and people have conspiracy theories over the OnStar service that some vehicals come with. "Now Big Brother will not only know where you are, but what you're listening to!". Oh man.
I would assume that you aren't forced into the service if you buy those cars and that it is considered a negotiable 'option' that you can refuse and, thus, not be charged for? Oh well, who cares -- apparently the service will only be available in yuppy cars. And only yuppies will fall for this gimmick in such droves as to make this a successful endeavor whatsoever. The same high-fashion wannabe yupsters who whip out that cell-phone at every chance will now have a new toy to impress the ladies and their friends. "I may have a teeny weeny, but I have digital radio!"
Of course, if you already have a car, you can purchase the Sirius receiver system for about $150. Hm. Suddenly, this service doesn't sound so cheap as $9.95/mo. --- seumas.com
I don't intend to provoke flammage, but someone has to say this at some point:
Is this a joke? Or R U SIRIUS?
Okay. Now that I've got that out of my head (it was like one of those horrible songs that you have to get out of your mind or you'll go mad... thank you for understanding). --- seumas.com
Now we'll have thousands of hack Dr. Lauras, Gordon Liddies, Rush Limbaughs, Michael Reagans, Joy Browns and Art Bells instead of a few.
Part of me thinks that this is a great idea. Hell, some form of competition to the tradtional forms of transmission and media usually is. I'm just not convinced it will offer anything I will care to pay for. I have my CD's and MP3's. What else do I need? If I want non-stop Industrial music, I'll pop a bunch of discs into my changer or fire up a decent playlist in my MP3 player.
I would think the lure of targetted demographics would be enough to land some advertisers and, by removing any subscription free, they would find that they could gain a pretty hefty base of listeners.
Then again, look at all the idiots who actually pay for Cable because they feel it's such a necessity that they'll croak without it. --- seumas.com
Well, as the article indicates 'has elapsed for three months'. Well, as far as I understand, NSI bills in yearly increments. So, would it not be safe to conclude that the end of a billing cycle would be one year from the date that registration expired? --- seumas.com
It would be much easier to setup a competing DNS system that is completely open. Have an automated system to track registry of domain names.. first come, first serve with checks to make sure a person doesn't register more than X number of domains without putting them to use...
Dude, shush!
Don't try to talk people out of this, I want my damned impeniterable DNA-altering friggin' nannites!;) --- seumas.com
Through use of the nanotechnology described in John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles, a well-funded and scientifically composed group of do-gooders could produce impeniterable nannites, with a payload of templates for a modified human genome map. The alterations of this map would reduce or eradicate the greed and idiocy genes of all involed at NSI.
While this may seem an expensive endeavor, indeed, I believe that selling these expired domains back to their original owners (or to the public thereafter, should the offer be refused) at a reducced price should raise sufficient funds for such a project.
For further humiliation, and as a warning to those who would follow in the footsteps of NSI, I also propose that sequences of genes be altered stamp all affected with the encoded phrase You have been owned by the Domain Name Liberation Front. This, of course, is purely optional and at the discretion of those who would lead this proposition to fruition. --- seumas.com
Right, but if you required that people not have any mental distractions whatsoever, conversation with passengers, radios and children would be banned, too. --- seumas.com
Until drinking, eating, holding and viewing a map, reading a book, shaving, putting on makeup, getting dressed, putting a tie on and other dangerous behavior is similarly fined, I don't see any excuse to punish those who use cellular phones while driving.
The problem with cellular phones being used while driving is that they occupy not only your attention but your physical capacities. So do these other activities which people are frequently engaged in while on the freeway.
I hate new laws. I hate throwing a law at every problem or question, but I don't see any way around this, since there is a direct connection between the behavior and the resulting accidents -- just like putting a 'WIDE LOAD' sign on the back of a long semi carrying a mobile home. Why is that sign there? Because carrying a house tends to make it a bit dangerous for the guy behind you!
But how do you come up with a reasonable list of things that you can and cannot do while moving (note that I don't see a problem with snacking away or shaving in your car if you're in gridlock))?
Shaving, putting on makeup, reading a book, getting dressed -- really bad thins to be doing while driving. They demonstrate absolutely horrible common sense on behalf of the driver. But drinking... It seems a little strong to say that I'm not allowed to have a few sips of my soda while I'm on the road. Should I have to pull over to the side of the road each time I get thirsty? Maybe not. Probably an acceptable thing to do, compared to unwrapping a big-mac and sinking your teeth into it, removing your concentration from the road.
Cellular phones are fine, if you have a hands-free system. If you can call-up a number and have your system dial it and, further, have yor conversation, without physically having to removing your concentration or hands from the wheel, then great. And I think we're moving closer to this, as technology becomes available.
You also have other issues, such as sleeping. Being extremely drowsey is a massive cause of accidents. In fact, it is generally accepted that if you've been awake for over sixteen or seventeen hours straight, you are operating at an impaired level similar to having a blood/alchohol mix of.05 percent. Almost a legal limite in many states.
But driving while sleepy isn't illegal. We don't pull you over and ticket you if you're caught yawning.
It's a difficult line to draw, but I think that for the attempt of safety, lines do need to be drawn. Where possible, alternatives need to be advanced and used. If you can do something in a safe manner while on the road, that's great -- cellphones with speakers and hands free operationg. If you can't do it safely -- trying to hold your phone, dial it, hold it between your ear and shoulder as you tilt your head sideways and converse and drive in this position -- then that's not so great. Should be an offense that can be fined. The same can then be applied to several other well-known hazards that drivers engage in routinely.
People will dislike the changes and scream that they are having their rights invaded, but people need to realize that while it seems to them that they're just pitting their foot on a pedel and moving a little wheel to the left and right, they're actually still responsible for a piece of metal and fiberglass, several tons in size, rocketing down the freeway at seventy or more miles per hour. --- seumas.com
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps not automated, but it wouldn't take much trouble. Convert MP3 to WAV, re-encode to MP3 -- setting your encoder to wait XX seconds before recording (most encoders have such an option). Voila. Done.
---
seumas.com
Besides, why would someone listen to a free release with a commercial from a record company when they can just get MP3's from online or their friends? Duh!
I wonder how artists will feel now. If I start hearing advertisements for Burger King before For Whom The Bell Tolls I will consider Lars and the gang to have officially and irreperably sold out. I mean, what self-respecting artist would want to participate in this scam?
---
seumas.com
Oh well, it could be worse. At least we don't have actors from Hollywood getting involved like they do in everything else. "I once played a musician in a movie and am thus qualified to provide professional commentary to this committee on the subject at hand."
Once it hits congress, it's all down hill from here.
---
seumas.com
Hm. But if someone leaked information to, say, the Washington Post and the Washington Post printed it, nobody would do jack to the Post -- they would look for the leak and deal with it. Seems a bit unfair to do otherwise.
---
seumas.com
That should be MacOS Rumors, of course
---
seumas.com
What does a website have to do with NDA's? Why would the guy who runs MacOS sign an NDA with Apple?
---
seumas.com
Unsubstantiated lies suggested to be fact with the intent to mislead, decieve and defame is libel. Rumor is... well, it's nothing. "Hey, so and so might decide to possible do this or that".
Doesn't sound like it has a foot to stand on.
---
seumas.com
"Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated . . . And will be prosecuted with a lead foot and a gleeful smile."
---
seumas.com
Everyone moves their servers and hosting out of the states, the net economy within the states suffers and grinds to a halt, those tiny islands in the middle of nowhere become wealthy techno-states while America regresses into a puppy suckling at the teat of the the world's technology, and we all turn into people from a bad MadMax/Water World flick.
---
seumas.com
Damn. $5,000, eh? Someday, I'll be able to afford free speech.
---
seumas.com
But my commentary in response to your first message was not with regard to passing the buck. It was with regard to handling the incoming, in whatever manner, yourself.
---
seumas.com
You could also, using your postSMTP UBE filter, apply a rule to not only reject messages sent to 'nospam.mydomain.com', but to rewrite the headers so that the message is delivered back to the postmaster of the IP's found in the envelope.
Of course, envelopes can be forged, too -- so you run the risk of pissing uninvolved parties off.
---
seumas.com
Seriously, I would prefer no control over government control, when it comes to spam. As much as I hate spammers, I hate government beauracracy and scheming more.
Besides, the government can't do anything more than those of us who actually use the internet can do. We can take it upon ourselves to deal with spam - report it, log it, prosecute it (based on existing not-quite-net-related laws) and pressure the spammer into ceasing his behavior.
A government only has control over it's physical jurisdiction -- but users of the internet have absolute control. We can, in numbers, put a crimp in the activities of people in places where their governments (or lack thereof) allow them to continue their spamming.
The problem with this is that there are so many organizations out there working on this, but none of them are working together. If we had an army of 100,000 volunteers worldwide, we could do some serious damage.
This is a bunch of dreamy -- in the perfect world sort of stuff following, so take it all with a bucket of salt. I'm allowed to day-dream, right?
100,000 out of the the combined global 'net population is less than one one-hundredth of a percent (.01).
If 100,000 people each processed 10 spam messages in Usenet or email per day, you suddenly have millions of people being ratted-out to their ISP's and upstream providers on a weekly basis. From experience, I know that you have a 10% chance of toasting someone's account when you bring to light their infringement of the provider's TOS. Those are decent odds, if you have enough people to pursue them.
And we aren't talking a lot of time. Not all of us can sit at our computers fighting spam each day, but if we knew we were actually helping out (a lot of us feel like people have given up, so who gives a fuck if we try), that two minutes per email would be well worth it.
And just imagine if we could get a full percentage of netizens to do the right thing and help out? We'd be talking 100,000,000 small skirmishes conducted; almost a billion per week.
There are two concerns with this, of course. The first is "won't this alone generate a lot of wasted bandwidth?" and "what about rogue ISPs?"
The answer to the first question is, yes. A lot of bandwidth, but with a legitimate purpose. Further, the amount will decrease as success is made and spam in general is diminished.
The answer to the second question is a bit complex, because there will certainly be some people who will continue to spam, no matter what ever happens.
If you have 7,000,000 messages processed each week (or in the better case of a full percent of users fighting spam, 1,000,000,000), we could imagine that perhaps 50% of the messages are duplicates. That, is 3,500,000 (or in the best case, 500,000,000) unique messages. The higher the number processed, the higher the number of duplicates, of course.
So with the lower number of 3.5 million messages (generating higher response for duplicates, in the neighborhood of 7 million), let's say that half come from every day John Q Public's who haven't quite figured out that spamming is BAD. The other half come from the top 100 known spammers.
The John Q Public half has a higher chance of being incinerated, because their 20$/mo ISP isn't going to cut them much slack when several dozen complaints are filed. Whammo. Figure a 20% success rate on that alone, minimum. Say goodbye to 300,000 spammers.
The rogue-ISP and known-spammer half is a lot more difficult. We'll figure we have what... a 1% chance of shutting them down? If 3.5 million messages are sent to these top 100 and their providers or upstreams, (we're talking AOL and upstream providers from rogues), it's only 35,000 messages per entity. Not a lot to deal with. Even over a year, it's only a couple million messages and complaints each.
This is where that fraction of a percent of anti-spammers would have to recruit people to help out, until we had that full percent battling with us. That full percent cranks that 35,000 into 3.5 million per week, per entity. This is a lot of mail. I believe it would crunch all but the actual spammers themselves, who have absolutely to reliance on other servers or services for the processing of their own spam, into submission. Jim Bob, running a box at a co-lo will be shot into flames by the service giving him the feed pretty damned fast. Jill Bob with her own server and own direct connection is going to be black holed in a heartbeat by all the other admins and postmasters watching their mailboxes fill with complaints each day. At some point, the entrace points for messages to be propegated and stuffed into your mailbox will be squeezed into a trickle for these people, which is as good as none for a lot of us.
But, as I said -- this is all a utopian, let's do this ourselves -- all it takes is some time and a group of people who give a fuck, idea. I don't actually expect it to ever happen.
---
seumas.com
If you're concerned that someone may send you important email and accidentally forget to remove the 'nospam' or whatever other element you've dropped into your email address, set your domain up so that it has an appropriate subdomain such as: nospam.mydomain.org, where 'mydomain.org' is your domain. Then route everything that comes into 'nospam.mydomain' right to /dev/null. Get's rid of your spam just as well as the other alternative would have, but without the possibility of having any of it fall into someone else's hands.
I used to think I got a lot of spam. Perhaps a dozen or two dozen messages a day. But compared with the almost two hundred messages per day from customers I support, spam isn't quite such a big deal to me.
I used to take the time to track spammers down and collect a few severed heads, but with such a busy life, few of us actually have time to do so -- even with fairly reliable services like spamcop.org.
I guess it's the price we pay for having as free an internet as possible. I dislike it, but I feel better knowing that it's all part of dealing without legislation. And that's fine with me.
---
seumas.com
Unfortunately, what most people want to hear has nothing to do with what needs to be heard. Look how long it took for violence in schools to become a topic. It wasn't new at all. It wasn't new to my generation, it wasn't new to the one before it and it certainly isn't new to the current generation. Until now, nobody wanted to hear it. And, unfortunately, most people don't -- until it's quite late.
---
seumas.com
Of course, that can also be said for *shudder*... MTV. :)
---
seumas.com
Man, and people have conspiracy theories over the OnStar service that some vehicals come with. "Now Big Brother will not only know where you are, but what you're listening to!". Oh man.
I would assume that you aren't forced into the service if you buy those cars and that it is considered a negotiable 'option' that you can refuse and, thus, not be charged for? Oh well, who cares -- apparently the service will only be available in yuppy cars. And only yuppies will fall for this gimmick in such droves as to make this a successful endeavor whatsoever. The same high-fashion wannabe yupsters who whip out that cell-phone at every chance will now have a new toy to impress the ladies and their friends. "I may have a teeny weeny, but I have digital radio!"
Of course, if you already have a car, you can purchase the Sirius receiver system for about $150. Hm. Suddenly, this service doesn't sound so cheap as $9.95/mo.
---
seumas.com
Is this a joke? Or R U SIRIUS?
Okay. Now that I've got that out of my head (it was like one of those horrible songs that you have to get out of your mind or you'll go mad... thank you for understanding).
---
seumas.com
Part of me thinks that this is a great idea. Hell, some form of competition to the tradtional forms of transmission and media usually is. I'm just not convinced it will offer anything I will care to pay for. I have my CD's and MP3's. What else do I need? If I want non-stop Industrial music, I'll pop a bunch of discs into my changer or fire up a decent playlist in my MP3 player.
I would think the lure of targetted demographics would be enough to land some advertisers and, by removing any subscription free, they would find that they could gain a pretty hefty base of listeners.
Then again, look at all the idiots who actually pay for Cable because they feel it's such a necessity that they'll croak without it.
---
seumas.com
Well, as the article indicates 'has elapsed for three months'. Well, as far as I understand, NSI bills in yearly increments. So, would it not be safe to conclude that the end of a billing cycle would be one year from the date that registration expired?
---
seumas.com
Dude, shush!
Don't try to talk people out of this, I want my damned impeniterable DNA-altering friggin' nannites! ;)
---
seumas.com
While this may seem an expensive endeavor, indeed, I believe that selling these expired domains back to their original owners (or to the public thereafter, should the offer be refused) at a reducced price should raise sufficient funds for such a project.
For further humiliation, and as a warning to those who would follow in the footsteps of NSI, I also propose that sequences of genes be altered stamp all affected with the encoded phrase You have been owned by the Domain Name Liberation Front. This, of course, is purely optional and at the discretion of those who would lead this proposition to fruition.
---
seumas.com
Right, but if you required that people not have any mental distractions whatsoever, conversation with passengers, radios and children would be banned, too.
---
seumas.com
But for this blasted dial-up, I would generate my legion of SlashMonkeys!
Maybe I'll just wait until "The Human Genome" comes out on audio-tape so I can hear it recited by James Earl Jones.
---
seumas.com
The problem with cellular phones being used while driving is that they occupy not only your attention but your physical capacities. So do these other activities which people are frequently engaged in while on the freeway.
I hate new laws. I hate throwing a law at every problem or question, but I don't see any way around this, since there is a direct connection between the behavior and the resulting accidents -- just like putting a 'WIDE LOAD' sign on the back of a long semi carrying a mobile home. Why is that sign there? Because carrying a house tends to make it a bit dangerous for the guy behind you!
But how do you come up with a reasonable list of things that you can and cannot do while moving (note that I don't see a problem with snacking away or shaving in your car if you're in gridlock))?
Shaving, putting on makeup, reading a book, getting dressed -- really bad thins to be doing while driving. They demonstrate absolutely horrible common sense on behalf of the driver. But drinking... It seems a little strong to say that I'm not allowed to have a few sips of my soda while I'm on the road. Should I have to pull over to the side of the road each time I get thirsty? Maybe not. Probably an acceptable thing to do, compared to unwrapping a big-mac and sinking your teeth into it, removing your concentration from the road.
Cellular phones are fine, if you have a hands-free system. If you can call-up a number and have your system dial it and, further, have yor conversation, without physically having to removing your concentration or hands from the wheel, then great. And I think we're moving closer to this, as technology becomes available.
You also have other issues, such as sleeping. Being extremely drowsey is a massive cause of accidents. In fact, it is generally accepted that if you've been awake for over sixteen or seventeen hours straight, you are operating at an impaired level similar to having a blood/alchohol mix of .05 percent. Almost a legal limite in many states.
But driving while sleepy isn't illegal. We don't pull you over and ticket you if you're caught yawning.
It's a difficult line to draw, but I think that for the attempt of safety, lines do need to be drawn. Where possible, alternatives need to be advanced and used. If you can do something in a safe manner while on the road, that's great -- cellphones with speakers and hands free operationg. If you can't do it safely -- trying to hold your phone, dial it, hold it between your ear and shoulder as you tilt your head sideways and converse and drive in this position -- then that's not so great. Should be an offense that can be fined. The same can then be applied to several other well-known hazards that drivers engage in routinely.
People will dislike the changes and scream that they are having their rights invaded, but people need to realize that while it seems to them that they're just pitting their foot on a pedel and moving a little wheel to the left and right, they're actually still responsible for a piece of metal and fiberglass, several tons in size, rocketing down the freeway at seventy or more miles per hour.
---
seumas.com