.... which makes me question the wisdom of their guarantee policy. I'd imagine that will be revised very quickly when they realize most laptops reported stolen are not actually, and that those that really are won't "live" long enough to report themselves.
This works for cars. It's hard to tuck a car under your arm so they strip it of the easily removed items like tires.
The more organized car heists either go to a chop shop or are put on a boat overseas.
There's no point canibalizing a laptop when it can easily be taken in one piece. What you meant to say was that the laptops are put on a boat for overseas countries within minutes...
Where perhaps they're to be used as spam relay bots?
unless of course it's a windows machine, in which case i've got a good solid 12 minutes to play around with it.
yeah, but after the 12 minutes are up it's not much fun anymore, so then what? Wait for the cops to show up by looking at all them viagra pop up windows?
Absolute Software customers are eligible for a $1,000 guarantee payment when a stolen system is not recovered within 60 days.
1: get a laptop
2: install this "security" software
3: report laptop stolen
4: wait 60 days
5: put in claim for money
6: profit
Just because I claim it's stolen and make sure I don't plug it into the internet for 60 days, or claim it's stolen then wipe the drive clean, does that mean I can make $1000??
It sounds about as ridiculous as
1 - collect underpants
2 - ???
3 - profit
It's a great idea, but I think it should be a function of the BIOS. It's a whole lot harder to bypass a security feature of the bios than it is to wipe the harddrive.
But at what point does it stop coexisting and at what point does it simply take over (a plan for a whole new infrastructure to REPLACE today's global network)?
windows 9x ipx/netbeui drivers loaded by default, TCP/IP was not loaded automatically, now we have windows xp with tcp/ip loaded by default.
When it sank into the minds of the gnomes at redmond that the internet based IP protocol was so widespread, they made the effort to make that the default method of communication.
I can compile and install the IPv6 drivers in linux but did I? No. Why not? because I have no need yet to connect to any IPv6 address.
I'd say any new protocol invented, no matter how clever it is, will be relegated to the fringes of special interest groups simply because this IPv4 behemoth out there is already in everybodys sights. It would take some serious lobbying by certain groups to enact some kind of legislation to replace that, but at the same time, I doubt it would just fizzle out and die without some kind of forced adoption.
The internet might have its problems, but it's here now and everybody is on it. Unless they add a backward compatibility layer (doubtful if they are designing a 'clean slate' architecture), it becomes a chicken and the egg phenomenon, no matter how much better the technology might be. Nobody will want to use this architecture until enough people adopt it, and enough people will need to adopt it before joe average uses it. All the while the existing internet is there.
Don't forget game crack web sites... Given a fresh clean copy of XP with SP1, I can google for "crack search", and before I've picked off the first 10 hits, windows is already infected....
I've conducted an experiment to see what types of sites are the best for infecting a computer, searching for game cracks is on top of the list and I found porn sites to be quite difficult actually.
Yep, and they're not subtle about it either.....My favourite is:
YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT BE INFECTED. RUN OUR ANTIVIRUS UTILITY TO CLEAN IT.
Might be infected? Might be? no shit sherlock. That's like smashing windshields in a parking lot and putting a "We replace windshields while you wait" note on the driver's seat.
That's a complex question... You're asking a time related question and time is relative. It depends how fast the windows computer is travelling.
if: f(fp) is a function of first post and f(wmi) is a function of windows machine infection, without knowing the "bi" in the "a + bi" of each function, it's just a guess.
If I'd have to guess, I'd say first post happens faster since first posters on/. have nothing better to do.
Think of it as a really high tech equivalent to the "whack the gopher" game, only more frustrating.
Talk about frustration, what really pisses me off is why mircosoft can't roll all their critical updates on a weekly basis into a service pack x.y thing. Hell, it's not like they can't automate the process. I know some people who sell computers and thanks to the "automatic updates" method microsoft likes to push, it's far more convenient to connect every new machine to the net one by one and apply critical updates manually to each than it would be to go on a weekly basis for example, grab the latest x.y revision service pack and install the whole damn thing from a CD.
So now instead of a 100-200Mb patch download once a week its 10-40 Mb patch per computer, and it only takes 10 or 20 to waste the bandwidth that an interim service pack would otherwise accomplish.
Personally, I feel I got screwed with the 12 minute windows heist because my ISP blocks port 135 and the MSBlaster like worms never gets to my address. I'd have far too much fun loading up a default honeypot configuration in VMWare with non persistent HD mode and sit there for hours at a time waiting for a compromise, reset, let it boot, wait for compromise... lather, rinse, repeat.
Any illegal declaration placed in a EULA is void in court.
How often are contracts worded in such a way as to give one party an unfair advantage?
e.g. insurance policies might have a clause that essentially says "You're covered by natural disasters", and 5 paragraphs down, it could say, "We reserve the right to cancel this contract in the event of extensive environmental catastrophe" (Ok, I'm not a lawyer and they have their own speak but more or less with that intent).
The point here being that if a metorite were to crash through your front window and set the house on fire, they'd probably cover it, but if a hurricane or tornado goes through which causes millions of dollars, the insurance company might say "We exercise our right not to pay up, so you're screwed buddy.".
I'm just saying that what many people would consider legally one thing, there are enough loopholes in the policy/agreement to favour the one who came up with it.
Technically, you paid for the physical tangible machine, and that is yours. The EULA could be worded in such a crafted way along with the DRM that you risk getting sued by microsoft or any 3rd party just for booting into windows. Of course, microsoft is not just going to go around suing people, but I'm pessimistic enough to believe that just because you clicked on 'yes I agree', it gives them the right if you displease them enough to walk up and haul your computer away without any compensation. I think the EULA is so nasty, you're lucky to get away with simply pushing the start button.
I for one would gladly sacrifice desk space for the refresh speeds of a CRT monitor.
As nice as flat panel monitors are, compared to the CRT, the (pixel) refresh rate (don't jump to the conclusion I'm referring to the vertical/horizontal refresh rates which are meaningless on flat panels) is pretty bad and for movies and games, the last time I checked, there were artifacts and blurring due to the pixel recharge times (or whatever the technical term is).
A CRT is still cheaper and people do want cheaper.
No, I'd say that for probably the next 5 or even 10 years, CRTs will very likely remain as viable monitors of choice for many.
Very valid point. When I first got highspeed 6 years ago, I popped my email to a local mail server with fetchmail every 15 minutes because it was new and exciting. Then as I realized when it came to email I had no friends and spam became more and more on the increase, I changed it to check for mail every hour, then every 3 hours, now it's up to every 6 hours.
I use xbiff that shows a distinct image which is hard to miss. I don't need to check to see IF I got new email, I'm told when I do have new email. I don't consciously make a habit of checking to see if I got new email and when I do get email, most of it is spam and I delete without even reading the email, so on any given day, the amount of time spent devoted to checking for and going through the email is about 15 seconds.
Routine and habit are very likely the main cause. Besides, most people probably multitask to make most effective use of their time. Go to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, turn the computer on, back to the kitchen, put a toast in the toaster, go run the email client, back to the kitchen, spread a condiment, pour a cup, go sit at the computer, have breakfast while doing something that takes little mental effort like reading new emails. For some, doing normal breakfast tasks probably doesn't really "count" as part of the first thing you do in the morning routine, so what else do you do? Oh check for email? Ergo, you're addicted?
Well, I did say it was a nasty thought. I had typed out an entire response which would have been offtopic both as a reply and as the subject in question, dealing more with the ethics of movie downloading so I'm coming up with this one instead which is marginally more on topic.
While I don't condone illegal downloading, I think the MPAA and RIAA could be using p2p (i.e. bittorrent) as the scapegoat for their lost revenue and poisoning an otherwise perfectly good system with FUD.
I've personally been burned too many times in the recent years about the quality of certain movies that of all the movies that come out in a given year, I might only be interested in watching 3 or 4 of them, and of those, I'm now renting them on dvd, and not see them in the theatre and of those about 3 or 4 of them suck bad enough I really want to watch them at double the speed just to get the movie over with sooner.
The village - way too predictable. I was not surprised for one moment that this was a cult tucked away somewhere to escape modern life when it was finally revealed. Attack of the clones - saw it in the theatre and couldn't wait to get out of there Revenge of the sith - Everybody said it was awesome and so much better than the previous ones, so I fell for it again and again coudn't wait to get out of the theatre.
I think most movies made nowadays suck and are filled with pablum type humour designed to appeal to the kids, then the MPAA wonders why I don't go see it in the theatre? Sure. It just has to be the fault of bittorrent and anyone who uses it is evil and is a pirate. Make the movies worth watching and I and probably a lot of other people will start watching them again.
I say to the MPAA, "Don't assume the rise of bittorrent traffic and the downloading of movies/music is the direct cause of lost revenue. It's as silly as saying hurricanes are caused by the beating of butterfly wings."
(And by that butterfly reference, I mean that even though butterflies can create hurricanes, butterflies are not the sole cause of hurricanes. For all I know, being late to work and rushing out the front door of my house could be just as much a cause).
Instead of trying to spoof legitimate traffic on p2p networks in order to throw off the **AA and seeing as how they are starting to use UDP instead of TCP, I'm surprised nobody's come up with a trojan/virus that generates fake data for legitimate torrents and fire them off to ranges of ip addresses at random.
I'd suspect the **AA would have a much tougher time rationalizing their witchhunts if even only 10% of network traffic related to bittorrent was actually false, both in terms of content and in terms of ip addresses.
Given random sector packets of random data content, those packets would either show up as discarded data (packets received for which the client didn't request) or would fail the cluster checksum and would eventually get tossed.
Not only would the **AA need to log the ip address of where it came from but also log the contents of the packets to compare it against the original torrent checksums to determine if it is legitimate traffic. Even if it was legitimate, given that it could theoretically be requested by a bot which then proceed to dole it out to ip addresses at random, the automation of the process would make it harder to say that the traffic was user initiated at all.
If enough machines had these bots, legally, the **AA would be walking on very thin ice since, in order to determine if that person really does have copyrighted material, they would have to examine the computer, but the computer might never have had it in the first place, nor would that person even have wanted it or taken any steps to acquire it. It would be a serious breach of privacy and it would make it tougher for them to justify the beating of the wardrums.
Yeah, I guess the point I really wanted to make was that it wouldn't take a whole lot for a teenager who borrows the parents car to pressure a not drunk buddy to blow into the alco-breath-o-meter-tube to get it to start.
As for the steering wheel sensor, does it stall the engine if it's detected alcohol on the skin after the car has been started, and just how sloshed do you have to be before enough alcohol makes it through the skin to be registered by the sensor?
My guess to the last question is you'd have to be pretty tanked before enough escapes through the skin to be detected and by that point your eye hand coordination would be so bad you'd be lucky to push that second button at all.
I know next to nothing about the effects of alchohol by evaporation through the skin, but I'd say that even if you can detect that, there would probably be simple ways to counteract the detection which makes me question the effectiveness of the device.
I can't remember exactly where this was a reference from. I think it might be from a 'kids in the hall' skit referring to the statistic that 10% of people are supposedly homosexual (and thus ostensibly like to be anal probed).
Am I right on this?
Back to topic, I wouldn't place a whole lot of trust in any statistic. As another poster put it, the wording of the question could sway people to say one thing when they really mean another.
"Some people believe those who claim to have been abducted by aliens have mental problems. Do you believe in aliens?"
Could be a question asked by a telemarketer doing a survey during the most inopportune time of the day and people will half heartedly answer. There are sometimes lead up information that unless you pay full attention could be designed to sway ones answer to reflect whatever hidden agenda the surveyer might have.
Is it really surprising that this poll was commissioned by SETI whose very purpose is to look for intelligent extra-terrestrial life? It would be pretty bad for them if the poll showed only 40% of people believed in aliens.
I don't trust surveys, and I trust statistics even less. As for this topic, I neither believe nor disbelieve the existence of life on other planets, and do not run my life as if the answer would radically change it. Until the answer is definitively proven one way or the other, the sun will still rise from the east in the morning and life will continue to go on here just fine without the answer to that question.
TFA doesn't exactly say how it works, but would it be possible to fool the sensor by wearing gloves or using some hand lotion or something?
If the sensor works by checking the pH of the skin, a lot of things could throw it off (false positives/false negatives). If it works by checking the galvanic properties of the skin, would sweat or lack of sweat not throw it off? If it is looking for a specific molecular signature, wouldn't a good scrubbing of the hands with soap and water just before starting the car not get rid of it?
If all these issues are foolproof, there is still the factor of the alcohol permeating the skin. I'd assume it would take a little while for the alcohol (which has a fairly low boiling point btw, so how much of it would remain on the skin at any given time) to work its way through the dermis and then through the epidermis.
I'm not certain all legally intoxicated drivers would have enough alcohol on their skin to trip the sensor, but perhaps those who could barely stand could be better served with a simple reflex test (get the driver to push and hold one button, wait random amount of time, turn on a light, calculate how much time it takes the person to let go of that button and push a separate button, repeat 10 or 20 times, compute an average and compare it with that driver's norm).
The 'blow in the tube' type checks the alcohol being expelled from your lungs. Since it checks the blood/alcohol level, it's a direct path from the blood to your breath through the lungs and is hard to fool. I don't know how well this through the skin version could realistically work.
Slashdot Mirror
its called fraud.
.... which makes me question the wisdom of their guarantee policy. I'd imagine that will be revised very quickly when they realize most laptops reported stolen are not actually, and that those that really are won't "live" long enough to report themselves.
This works for cars. It's hard to tuck a car under your arm so they strip it of the easily removed items like tires.
The more organized car heists either go to a chop shop or are put on a boat overseas.
There's no point canibalizing a laptop when it can easily be taken in one piece. What you meant to say was that the laptops are put on a boat for overseas countries within minutes...
Where perhaps they're to be used as spam relay bots?
unless of course it's a windows machine, in which case i've got a good solid 12 minutes to play around with it.
yeah, but after the 12 minutes are up it's not much fun anymore, so then what? Wait for the cops to show up by looking at all them viagra pop up windows?
Absolute Software customers are eligible for a $1,000 guarantee payment when a stolen system is not recovered within 60 days.
1: get a laptop
2: install this "security" software
3: report laptop stolen
4: wait 60 days
5: put in claim for money
6: profit
Just because I claim it's stolen and make sure I don't plug it into the internet for 60 days, or claim it's stolen then wipe the drive clean, does that mean I can make $1000??
It sounds about as ridiculous as
1 - collect underpants
2 - ???
3 - profit
It's a great idea, but I think it should be a function of the BIOS. It's a whole lot harder to bypass a security feature of the bios than it is to wipe the harddrive.
But at what point does it stop coexisting and at what point does it simply take over (a plan for a whole new infrastructure to REPLACE today's global network)?
windows 9x ipx/netbeui drivers loaded by default, TCP/IP was not loaded automatically, now we have windows xp with tcp/ip loaded by default.
When it sank into the minds of the gnomes at redmond that the internet based IP protocol was so widespread, they made the effort to make that the default method of communication.
I can compile and install the IPv6 drivers in linux but did I? No. Why not? because I have no need yet to connect to any IPv6 address.
I'd say any new protocol invented, no matter how clever it is, will be relegated to the fringes of special interest groups simply because this IPv4 behemoth out there is already in everybodys sights. It would take some serious lobbying by certain groups to enact some kind of legislation to replace that, but at the same time, I doubt it would just fizzle out and die without some kind of forced adoption.
The internet might have its problems, but it's here now and everybody is on it. Unless they add a backward compatibility layer (doubtful if they are designing a 'clean slate' architecture), it becomes a chicken and the egg phenomenon, no matter how much better the technology might be. Nobody will want to use this architecture until enough people adopt it, and enough people will need to adopt it before joe average uses it. All the while the existing internet is there.
attacks require action on the part of the user
Don't forget game crack web sites... Given a fresh clean copy of XP with SP1, I can google for "crack search", and before I've picked off the first 10 hits, windows is already infected....
I've conducted an experiment to see what types of sites are the best for infecting a computer, searching for game cracks is on top of the list and I found porn sites to be quite difficult actually.
Hogwash. I've been online for over 11 1/2 minutes and I haven't had anCLICK HERE FOR DISCOUNT V1AGR4!!!11
That's too bad. I've been online for 12 3/4 minutes and minIE PERFORMED AN ILLEGAL OPERATION. DO YOU WISH TO SEND A REPORT TO MICROSOFT?
So, those things can install themselves now?
Yep, and they're not subtle about it either.....My favourite is:
YOUR COMPUTER MIGHT BE INFECTED. RUN OUR ANTIVIRUS UTILITY TO CLEAN IT.
Might be infected? Might be? no shit sherlock. That's like smashing windshields in a parking lot and putting a "We replace windshields while you wait" note on the driver's seat.
That's a complex question... You're asking a time related question and time is relative. It depends how fast the windows computer is travelling.
/. have nothing better to do.
if:
f(fp) is a function of first post and
f(wmi) is a function of windows machine infection,
without knowing the "bi" in the "a + bi" of each function, it's just a guess.
If I'd have to guess, I'd say first post happens faster since first posters on
Think of it as a really high tech equivalent to the "whack the gopher" game, only more frustrating.
Talk about frustration, what really pisses me off is why mircosoft can't roll all their critical updates on a weekly basis into a service pack x.y thing. Hell, it's not like they can't automate the process. I know some people who sell computers and thanks to the "automatic updates" method microsoft likes to push, it's far more convenient to connect every new machine to the net one by one and apply critical updates manually to each than it would be to go on a weekly basis for example, grab the latest x.y revision service pack and install the whole damn thing from a CD.
So now instead of a 100-200Mb patch download once a week its 10-40 Mb patch per computer, and it only takes 10 or 20 to waste the bandwidth that an interim service pack would otherwise accomplish.
Personally, I feel I got screwed with the 12 minute windows heist because my ISP blocks port 135 and the MSBlaster like worms never gets to my address. I'd have far too much fun loading up a default honeypot configuration in VMWare with non persistent HD mode and sit there for hours at a time waiting for a compromise, reset, let it boot, wait for compromise... lather, rinse, repeat.
What about the other 50%? does it take another 12 minutes for 50% of that figure?
Does that mean the half life of windows is 12 minutes?
That's funny, I read
i.e. as internet exploder, or AIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!
After reading No girls handy.
/.?
and Reveal you're randy. as Reveal your randy.
Why did I think Burma Shave meant "giving yourself a hand job?
Or could it simply be appropriate being on
Oh wait. It's only the falling expectations of all them SCO investors.
Any illegal declaration placed in a EULA is void in court.
How often are contracts worded in such a way as to give one party an unfair advantage?
e.g. insurance policies might have a clause that essentially says "You're covered by natural disasters", and 5 paragraphs down, it could say, "We reserve the right to cancel this contract in the event of extensive environmental catastrophe" (Ok, I'm not a lawyer and they have their own speak but more or less with that intent).
The point here being that if a metorite were to crash through your front window and set the house on fire, they'd probably cover it, but if a hurricane or tornado goes through which causes millions of dollars, the insurance company might say "We exercise our right not to pay up, so you're screwed buddy.".
I'm just saying that what many people would consider legally one thing, there are enough loopholes in the policy/agreement to favour the one who came up with it.
Was it every your computer in the first place?
Technically, you paid for the physical tangible machine, and that is yours. The EULA could be worded in such a crafted way along with the DRM that you risk getting sued by microsoft or any 3rd party just for booting into windows. Of course, microsoft is not just going to go around suing people, but I'm pessimistic enough to believe that just because you clicked on 'yes I agree', it gives them the right if you displease them enough to walk up and haul your computer away without any compensation. I think the EULA is so nasty, you're lucky to get away with simply pushing the start button.
I for one would gladly sacrifice desk space for the refresh speeds of a CRT monitor.
As nice as flat panel monitors are, compared to the CRT, the (pixel) refresh rate (don't jump to the conclusion I'm referring to the vertical/horizontal refresh rates which are meaningless on flat panels) is pretty bad and for movies and games, the last time I checked, there were artifacts and blurring due to the pixel recharge times (or whatever the technical term is).
A CRT is still cheaper and people do want cheaper.
No, I'd say that for probably the next 5 or even 10 years, CRTs will very likely remain as viable monitors of choice for many.
20 or 30 times a day? You're a slacker. I'm on it for 5 or 10 hours a day....
...
...
...
Oh, hang on for a minute, I have to check my email. I think I might know somebody who actually cares enough to send me email.....
Nope, false alarm.
Very valid point. When I first got highspeed 6 years ago, I popped my email to a local mail server with fetchmail every 15 minutes because it was new and exciting. Then as I realized when it came to email I had no friends and spam became more and more on the increase, I changed it to check for mail every hour, then every 3 hours, now it's up to every 6 hours.
I use xbiff that shows a distinct image which is hard to miss. I don't need to check to see IF I got new email, I'm told when I do have new email. I don't consciously make a habit of checking to see if I got new email and when I do get email, most of it is spam and I delete without even reading the email, so on any given day, the amount of time spent devoted to checking for and going through the email is about 15 seconds.
Routine and habit are very likely the main cause. Besides, most people probably multitask to make most effective use of their time. Go to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, turn the computer on, back to the kitchen, put a toast in the toaster, go run the email client, back to the kitchen, spread a condiment, pour a cup, go sit at the computer, have breakfast while doing something that takes little mental effort like reading new emails. For some, doing normal breakfast tasks probably doesn't really "count" as part of the first thing you do in the morning routine, so what else do you do? Oh check for email? Ergo, you're addicted?
Well, I did say it was a nasty thought. I had typed out an entire response which would have been offtopic both as a reply and as the subject in question, dealing more with the ethics of movie downloading so I'm coming up with this one instead which is marginally more on topic.
While I don't condone illegal downloading, I think the MPAA and RIAA could be using p2p (i.e. bittorrent) as the scapegoat for their lost revenue and poisoning an otherwise perfectly good system with FUD.
I've personally been burned too many times in the recent years about the quality of certain movies that of all the movies that come out in a given year, I might only be interested in watching 3 or 4 of them, and of those, I'm now renting them on dvd, and not see them in the theatre and of those about 3 or 4 of them suck bad enough I really want to watch them at double the speed just to get the movie over with sooner.
The village - way too predictable. I was not surprised for one moment that this was a cult tucked away somewhere to escape modern life when it was finally revealed.
Attack of the clones - saw it in the theatre and couldn't wait to get out of there
Revenge of the sith - Everybody said it was awesome and so much better than the previous ones, so I fell for it again and again coudn't wait to get out of the theatre.
I think most movies made nowadays suck and are filled with pablum type humour designed to appeal to the kids, then the MPAA wonders why I don't go see it in the theatre? Sure. It just has to be the fault of bittorrent and anyone who uses it is evil and is a pirate. Make the movies worth watching and I and probably a lot of other people will start watching them again.
I say to the MPAA, "Don't assume the rise of bittorrent traffic and the downloading of movies/music is the direct cause of lost revenue. It's as silly as saying hurricanes are caused by the beating of butterfly wings."
(And by that butterfly reference, I mean that even though butterflies can create hurricanes, butterflies are not the sole cause of hurricanes. For all I know, being late to work and rushing out the front door of my house could be just as much a cause).
Instead of trying to spoof legitimate traffic on p2p networks in order to throw off the **AA and seeing as how they are starting to use UDP instead of TCP, I'm surprised nobody's come up with a trojan/virus that generates fake data for legitimate torrents and fire them off to ranges of ip addresses at random.
I'd suspect the **AA would have a much tougher time rationalizing their witchhunts if even only 10% of network traffic related to bittorrent was actually false, both in terms of content and in terms of ip addresses.
Given random sector packets of random data content, those packets would either show up as discarded data (packets received for which the client didn't request) or would fail the cluster checksum and would eventually get tossed.
Not only would the **AA need to log the ip address of where it came from but also log the contents of the packets to compare it against the original torrent checksums to determine if it is legitimate traffic. Even if it was legitimate, given that it could theoretically be requested by a bot which then proceed to dole it out to ip addresses at random, the automation of the process would make it harder to say that the traffic was user initiated at all.
If enough machines had these bots, legally, the **AA would be walking on very thin ice since, in order to determine if that person really does have copyrighted material, they would have to examine the computer, but the computer might never have had it in the first place, nor would that person even have wanted it or taken any steps to acquire it. It would be a serious breach of privacy and it would make it tougher for them to justify the beating of the wardrums.
Yeah, I guess the point I really wanted to make was that it wouldn't take a whole lot for a teenager who borrows the parents car to pressure a not drunk buddy to blow into the alco-breath-o-meter-tube to get it to start.
As for the steering wheel sensor, does it stall the engine if it's detected alcohol on the skin after the car has been started, and just how sloshed do you have to be before enough alcohol makes it through the skin to be registered by the sensor?
My guess to the last question is you'd have to be pretty tanked before enough escapes through the skin to be detected and by that point your eye hand coordination would be so bad you'd be lucky to push that second button at all.
I know next to nothing about the effects of alchohol by evaporation through the skin, but I'd say that even if you can detect that, there would probably be simple ways to counteract the detection which makes me question the effectiveness of the device.
10% enjoy anal probes
I can't remember exactly where this was a reference from. I think it might be from a 'kids in the hall' skit referring to the statistic that 10% of people are supposedly homosexual (and thus ostensibly like to be anal probed).
Am I right on this?
Back to topic, I wouldn't place a whole lot of trust in any statistic. As another poster put it, the wording of the question could sway people to say one thing when they really mean another.
"Some people believe those who claim to have been abducted by aliens have mental problems. Do you believe in aliens?"
Could be a question asked by a telemarketer doing a survey during the most inopportune time of the day and people will half heartedly answer. There are sometimes lead up information that unless you pay full attention could be designed to sway ones answer to reflect whatever hidden agenda the surveyer might have.
Is it really surprising that this poll was commissioned by SETI whose very purpose is to look for intelligent extra-terrestrial life? It would be pretty bad for them if the poll showed only 40% of people believed in aliens.
I don't trust surveys, and I trust statistics even less. As for this topic, I neither believe nor disbelieve the existence of life on other planets, and do not run my life as if the answer would radically change it. Until the answer is definitively proven one way or the other, the sun will still rise from the east in the morning and life will continue to go on here just fine without the answer to that question.
TFA doesn't exactly say how it works, but would it be possible to fool the sensor by wearing gloves or using some hand lotion or something?
If the sensor works by checking the pH of the skin, a lot of things could throw it off (false positives/false negatives). If it works by checking the galvanic properties of the skin, would sweat or lack of sweat not throw it off? If it is looking for a specific molecular signature, wouldn't a good scrubbing of the hands with soap and water just before starting the car not get rid of it?
If all these issues are foolproof, there is still the factor of the alcohol permeating the skin. I'd assume it would take a little while for the alcohol (which has a fairly low boiling point btw, so how much of it would remain on the skin at any given time) to work its way through the dermis and then through the epidermis.
I'm not certain all legally intoxicated drivers would have enough alcohol on their skin to trip the sensor, but perhaps those who could barely stand could be better served with a simple reflex test (get the driver to push and hold one button, wait random amount of time, turn on a light, calculate how much time it takes the person to let go of that button and push a separate button, repeat 10 or 20 times, compute an average and compare it with that driver's norm).
The 'blow in the tube' type checks the alcohol being expelled from your lungs. Since it checks the blood/alcohol level, it's a direct path from the blood to your breath through the lungs and is hard to fool. I don't know how well this through the skin version could realistically work.