um, if you did the walking test flawlessly, why did the cop even ask you to do a breathalyser? A common misconception regarding Field Sobriety Tests is that the officer is trying to determine if the driver is drunk or not, and that if you are sober, you will pass an FST.
In reality, the FST is used to help the officer establish probable cause to arrest you. It is also used to make you look silly on camera doing awkward acrobatics, and the video will be used against you at your trial.
If a cop ever asks you to do an FST, chances are he has already decided to arrest you. Your best bet is to refuse the FST and ask for a lawyer. You're gonna need one.
Most states have an implied consent law, so you shouldn't refuse a blood/breath test. But the FST? Don't waste your time. The only difference between taking an FST and not taking an FST is 20 extra minutes before the handcuffs come on.
Don't forget it happens to be legal to be in an intersection with the light red. Specifically, if you have entered the intersection while the light was still yellow, the light may turn red while you are in the middle of the intersection, and that is a legal situation.
Some red light cams are video cameras, and some take multiple photos. Incidentally, many also record the vehicle's velocity. A buddy of mine got a red light cam ticket, but the ticket said he was going 90+ mph. We don't have photo speed enforcement in my state so the state had nothing to say about that, but his wife was pissed that he was going 90+.
How come there is never a third option? The "Call customer service and see what's going on" option?
It turns out this whole thing was a bug in OUP's website. A 5 minute call to OUP would have elicited a fix and an apology, and no one's feathers would have had to have gotten ruffled.
If you look at Oxford University Press's response to him, it seems this is nothing more sinister than a bug with OUP's website. They are working to fix it.
Seriously, what a jerk. This whole thing could have been solved with a 5 minute phone call to OUP's customer service line. Instead, he raises holy blogosphere hell (which, at the end of the day, is nothing more than a waste of time, of course). I hope he feels all self-important today.
I guess Hanlon's razor lives on: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
2) If publishers are really contributing nothing to academic publishing, and just charge high prices and force you to sign away your rights (which I think is a fair characterization), here's a crazy idea: stop publishing through them! Set up your own journals and charge nothing or a token amount for access. If scientists are so bigoted they only deign to acknowledge work published in overpriced, unnecessary, exploitative publishers' journals, the problem is on the scientists' end. The fact of the matter is there is significant overhead associated with publishing in an academic journal. The biggest cost is the peer review process (yes, that article you read was peer-reviewed before publication). So, yes, the research may have been funded by a grant, but the peer-review and publication were not.
Also realize that the publication cost is spread amongst fewer paying customers. You might think that that article you wrote on "Electron microscopy reveals transformation of mitochondria during apoptosis" is the most compelling thing ever written, but I can assure you that most people would rather read the latest Harry Potter book. This is why the price per article looks absurd. Of course, most readers of these articles are members of a subscribing institution, so they don't pay that cost, anyhow.
One avenue that you could pursue for raising funds for your legal defense, is to bring a civil action against Circuit City. As you already know, they had no right to detain you. Also, their pockets are large.
Good luck, and good for you for standing up for yourself.
I always thought that for clearance-related background checks, youthful indiscretions were not a concern as long is they are all currently water under the bridge.
Q: Ever do anything sexually deviant? A: Well, when I was in college I participated in the occasional gangbang. Q: Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick! Your wife know about this? A: She was the woman. Q: Oh. Well, all right then.
I've spent a lot of time in NYC, and I know my way around. I have never had a taxi intentionally take any route other than the most direct route without asking me first.
A few times, I've had drivers take a wrong turn. They have always realized that they screwed up (they're human, too), apologized, and turned off the meter.
The motherboard is typically about 3/8" from the case. Maybe he was pointing to the motherboard all along?
I would have given him double or nothing on the location of the power cable. After all, why does he need to know where the motherboard is to say, "Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? What version of Windows do you use?" all day long?
These are computer-printed coupons. The link that I posted before was to a computer-printed coupon.
and contain little more than a bar code and basic text, maybe a corporate logo (which is protected by trademark, and thus cannot be protected by copyright. If you click on the link, you'll see that it's way more than a barcode, text, and logo. Anyhow, is the layout of the coupon itself, as delivered by the graphic artist, "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works"?
I wouldn't be surprised if this were largely uncharted territory. I'd be shocked if this is anything other than uncharted territory. Coupons are promotional materials. Who wants to restrict the distribution of their own promotional materials?
As someone who pays way more than $75k/yr in federal taxes, I do not object to paying taxes. I do, however, object to the government wasting my money.
I work hard for what I earn and I do not waste money. When my government takes my money under threat of sending large men with guns to my home to collect it, I'd appreciate it if they'd at least take a little care with how they spend it.
Basically, copyright was designed to protect creative works. [...] If ever copyright existed, it doesn't belong to Coupons.com. Take a look at this specimen. Clearly, this is more than mere "forms whose wording is functional and virtually identical to millions of other forms."
You can see the copyright statement on the coupon, and I see no reason that it shouldn't enjoy copyright protection. It's obviously a creative work.
More than that, a coupon is not copyrightable. That was my first thought as well, but then I reconsidered.
For starters, nearly all coupons contain company and product logos, which I realize are trademarks, but none the less are protected.
And then you get into the coupon design, which is done by a creative department. The usual rule of thumb is that an artist's output is generally copyrightable.
So while it seems silly that a coupon could enjoy any type of copyright protection (obviously a mere coupon code would never be copyrightable), I can't jump to that conclusion that the layout, as done by the artist, could never qualify for copyright protection.
I did some quick looking around at online printable coupons, and they all seem to assert copyright protection. Take a look at this coupon. You can see the copyright statement at the bottom, and just looking at the coupon, it's obvious that it's a creative work, and as such, should enjoy copyright protection.
Ok, but where do we find out how to get the real numbers? If not in a marketing class, then where? I dunno, Marketing 102, perhaps? Did you learn everything there was to know about computer science in CS 101? No, you just covered a broad array of topics with no depth.
Wow, cluefulness. Could you tell me what it feels like? Is it nice? Well, in fairness, I wouldn't want to speak for my wife, but she seems to have a high level of job satisfaction.
I've worked for megacorps and small businesses. They're all stupid for different reasons. No company or work environment is ever perfect. My wife came home one day last winter and said that her group's budget just got reduced to zero. Apparently their division got a new VP who did not yet have a good grasp of the business. She did, however, know that my wife's group was expensive, so she just cut it. Obviously she was able to get some budget back or she would have a different job right now, but stupid decisions happen everywhere.
So, in your estimation, what's a good industry to get into? I went for a business degree in school because I figured it would be flexible. I'm good with computers so I figured I'd just angle into the IT side of wherever I was at. I would never pretend to be able to give you informed advice on what industry to pursue based on two slashdot posts. I have no idea what you are interested in or good at, and I have no idea what the market conditions are in Florida (anyhow, FL is a big place. I bet life in Miami doesn't much resemble life in, say, Pensacola).
Also, it seems your definition of "sane" and mine are very different. Personally, I would go insane if I ever had to work for a company whose owner was someone other than myself.
Going out on a limb, how about IT work for hospitals, nursing homes, etc? You never mention this, but I hear Florida has some old people.;) I did some work in the managed care industry a while back, and that went well.
Well, it doesn't surprise me for a minute that your teacher told you to make up some numbers. You said it yourself: the goal of the project was making a presentation, not the analysis itself. Market research, while important, was tangential to what he was trying to teach at that moment.
If you'd like, I can see your anecdote and raise you one. My wife works for a large company doing new product development. She manages an army of market researchers, business analysts, and data analysts. When they are launching products, there is a ton of market research that goes into it: focus groups, beta testers, the works. Business analysts and data analysts forecast the response rates based on marketing channel and population.
Numbers are scrutinized at all levels, and heads roll if they are off in either direction. Too little response and you have squandered marketing budget and diluted your brand. Too much response, and you overwhelm the operations department, turning away customers and turning off customers who aren't being attended to promptly. This type of forecasting is a serious financial discipline, but it's way beyond the scope of Marketing 101.
The same tracking is done of response rates, and models are constantly tweaked.
Your experience in industry is unsurprising. Home builders, and certainly dot.coms are notorious for flying by the seat of their pants. Catalog companies just spam everybody. But in the real world, marketing is a serious financial discipline. Definitely not a place for uneducated ex-jocks.
Hopefully, the merge tracking being implemented for SVN 1.5 will make SVN a real/complete scource code control system. Don't get your hopes up.
"Merge Tracking in Subversion 1.5.0 is roughly equivalent in functionality to svnmerge.py, recording and using merge history to avoid common cases of the repeated merge problem, and allowing for cherry-picking of changes." -- http://subversion.tigris.org/merge-tracking/
I remember those stupid career assessments. Some ignoramus guidance counselor playing a game of 20 questions and at the end telling you what you should be when you grow up.
When I did that, my counselor honestly, with a straight face, told me that the best career for me was to become a circus clown. I can't make this up.
I wish I could find that lady now and let her know how wrong she was. I am not a circus clown at all. I am a consultant!
My HS shop had an *expensive* dark room. Complete with rotating door to keep out light... In me and my siblings 9 years there, no one had once used it for anything more than storage. And now I'm having to back pedal trying to figure out what the heck all these settings are on my fancy new SLR. That darkroom wouldn't have helped you with settings on your DSLR.
It might help you figure out all them funky photoshop filters, though.
Is that per dose, or per month? As I'm sure you are aware, Tysabri is administered once per month, whereas Avonex is administered weekly, and Rebif is administered three times per week.
Also, Tysabri is an IV drip instead of an injection, so it must be administered in a provider office. Avonex and Rebif are typically self-administered (or administered by a spouse, parent, etc.)
For What It's Worth, I've never used Joomla, but I do have a few Drupal sites. Druapl definitely takes the security of the platform seriously, and they fix up vulnerabilities quickly.
Over the security mailing list, I haven't seen an SQL injection attack in as long a I can remember. Lately, it's all been XSS. Anyhow, they're good about getting the word out to Drupal admins whenever anything is discovered in Drupal core or contributed modules.
Joomla probably has something similar, but I don't know about such things.
My family do laugh about MS I'm not sure how this is possible.
Like I said before, I considered MS from all angles and failed to find any opening for humor. Not even in the context of a cure having been found and looking back on the challenge of the time.
It's usually funny to look back at some challenge you faced and see it as humorous. Example: "Remember that time we were in Vietnam and we were looking for... which Wat was it? I don't even remember... anyhow, we got out at the bus station and there was this map of the town, but it lacked a 'you are here' sign and we just wanted to know where we were on the map so that we could orient ourselves. We kept trying to convey to locals through various charades and dances and hand signals our predicament, to no avail. Boy, was that funny."
Now let's try it with MS: "Remember that time when you went blind in one eye? Except the eye didn't go 100% dark, it instead went 100% bright and if you opened your eye, it was so bright it looked and felt like you were staring into a wall of 1,000 suns. Remember how painful that was? And how you had to wear that patch on your eye for everyone in the world to see and ask how you injured it, and you had to explain it dozens of times despite how badly your head was throbbing? Wasn't that funny?"
Yeah, not so funny. Lousy stand-up material, for sure.
I'm unclear as to why you took so much offense to the GP's attempted humor.
His joke itself, of course, was not funny. It's a play on the wording of the title. Instead of parsing it as a DNA vaccine against MS, he parsed "DNA Vaccine" as a vaccine against DNA. The attempted humor being, if you don't want to be "infected" with DNA, use a condom.
You somehow interpreted his joke to imply that MS was caused by unprotected sex. I didn't read the post that way, and anyhow, I have never heard anyone suggest, either credibly or in jest, that MS is an STD.
In fact, I found the "joke" to only be making fun of the article's title, and not MS itself. As hard as I try, and as many angles as I search, I am unable to come up with any situation in which MS could be humorous.
One thing that is "nice" about MS, is that there is a large enough population of affected people that a lot of research is being done. This is compounded by the cross-application of many therapies between MS and Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc. At least it isn't some obscure disorder that doesn't get any research at all.
Biogen Idec definitely has a great thing going from a balance sheet perspective, I'll grant you. But they know that if some other pharmaceutical company comes up with a vaccine, there won't be any more Avonex or Tysabri customers.
My big nightmare if they moved it from ".08 is the legal limit" to "shows evidence of impairment" is the subjective way that would be assessed..08 is.08, even if.08 doesn't mean the same thing for everybody.
That's the thing. It's even worse than that.
First of all, breathalyzers are only accurate to within.02. So that.08 reading could be.1, but could also just as easily be.06. Also, the way the machine measures BAC uses many assumptions regarding the individual's size, weight, health, and other biological characteristics. Google up on it. I'm not an expert.
You say ".08 is.08", but it really is not. Two people could test at.08 on a blood test, but have wildly different results from a breath test.
My big nightmare if they moved it from ".08 is the legal limit" to "shows evidence of impairment"
I'm sorry if I was unclear, but moving from BAC to "well, huh huh gee whiz, ya'll looked purty drunk to me!" is not a policy shift that I advocate. We already have "reckless driving" laws to deal with those who can't seem to make good decisions behind the wheel.
Mind you, most arrests for DWI/DUI are as a result of an officer seeing erratic behavior.
Ever been to a sobriety checkpoint? I have. And it had nothing to do with whether or not I was driving erratically. I hate those things so much. Makes me feel like I live in a 3rd world military dictatorship. Maybe I do?
(or it's the end of the quarter and they're handing out tickets)
You put this is a lowly parenthetical, but really, issuing citations based on the time of the month doesn't make you even the slightest bit angry? I can think of a lot of things upon which I'd base giving citations, and "some officer's quota" is not one of them.
Anyway, for me it comes down to this: The best way to avoid getting a D/D charge is to not drink and drive, period.
Well, I can't think of anybody who advocates driving drunk. But in real life, things are seldom in black and white. We live in a society where drinking is allowed and driving is allowed, but driving drunk is not allowed. How do we define driving drunk?
You say "Not even a little bit, not even just one.", but drinking is going to occur in life. How long does one need to wait between drinking and driving? This is an important question, and it cannot be taken lightly because the penalties for driving drunk are severe (as they should be). So if I have a glass of wine with dinner, how long do I have to wait before I can drive? You say I should not drive after having one glass of wine, but is that really realistic? I mean, who gets drunk from a glass of wine? Who can't metabolize the alcohol from one glass of wine within an hour?
As to knowing the law in a particular state, it's been held that ignorance of the law is not a reasonable excuse and doesn't let a person off the hook if they violate it. If it were a reasonable excuse, then you'd have an awful lot of people getting exonerated due to the incredibly Byzantine nature of our laws.
Well, that's a matter for another discussion. But do you really expect people to be experts in the law, the relevant case law, and the local practices for every jurisdiction in the world? Even lawyers don't know the law that well. That's why they have paralegals and lexis.
What we have now isn't perfect, not even close. But I haven't heard an alternative that isn't worse from a standpoint of prevention and fairness.
Ok, how's this?
Have two tiers of DUI: 0.10 to 0.19, and 0.20+. Punishments for the first tier should be a reckless driving citation. Before you object, realize that reckless driving is a serious offense, punishable by high fines and jail time.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality, the FST is used to help the officer establish probable cause to arrest you. It is also used to make you look silly on camera doing awkward acrobatics, and the video will be used against you at your trial.
If a cop ever asks you to do an FST, chances are he has already decided to arrest you. Your best bet is to refuse the FST and ask for a lawyer. You're gonna need one.
Most states have an implied consent law, so you shouldn't refuse a blood/breath test. But the FST? Don't waste your time. The only difference between taking an FST and not taking an FST is 20 extra minutes before the handcuffs come on.
Don't forget it happens to be legal to be in an intersection with the light red. Specifically, if you have entered the intersection while the light was still yellow, the light may turn red while you are in the middle of the intersection, and that is a legal situation.
Some red light cams are video cameras, and some take multiple photos. Incidentally, many also record the vehicle's velocity. A buddy of mine got a red light cam ticket, but the ticket said he was going 90+ mph. We don't have photo speed enforcement in my state so the state had nothing to say about that, but his wife was pissed that he was going 90+.
How come there is never a third option? The "Call customer service and see what's going on" option?
It turns out this whole thing was a bug in OUP's website. A 5 minute call to OUP would have elicited a fix and an apology, and no one's feathers would have had to have gotten ruffled.
If you look at Oxford University Press's response to him, it seems this is nothing more sinister than a bug with OUP's website. They are working to fix it.
Seriously, what a jerk. This whole thing could have been solved with a 5 minute phone call to OUP's customer service line. Instead, he raises holy blogosphere hell (which, at the end of the day, is nothing more than a waste of time, of course). I hope he feels all self-important today.
I guess Hanlon's razor lives on: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Also realize that the publication cost is spread amongst fewer paying customers. You might think that that article you wrote on "Electron microscopy reveals transformation of mitochondria during apoptosis" is the most compelling thing ever written, but I can assure you that most people would rather read the latest Harry Potter book. This is why the price per article looks absurd. Of course, most readers of these articles are members of a subscribing institution, so they don't pay that cost, anyhow.
One avenue that you could pursue for raising funds for your legal defense, is to bring a civil action against Circuit City. As you already know, they had no right to detain you. Also, their pockets are large.
Good luck, and good for you for standing up for yourself.
I always thought that for clearance-related background checks, youthful indiscretions were not a concern as long is they are all currently water under the bridge.
Q: Ever do anything sexually deviant?
A: Well, when I was in college I participated in the occasional gangbang.
Q: Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick! Your wife know about this?
A: She was the woman.
Q: Oh. Well, all right then.
I've spent a lot of time in NYC, and I know my way around. I have never had a taxi intentionally take any route other than the most direct route without asking me first.
A few times, I've had drivers take a wrong turn. They have always realized that they screwed up (they're human, too), apologized, and turned off the meter.
I have never had a dishonest NYC taxi driver.
The motherboard is typically about 3/8" from the case. Maybe he was pointing to the motherboard all along?
I would have given him double or nothing on the location of the power cable. After all, why does he need to know where the motherboard is to say, "Is it plugged in? Is it turned on? What version of Windows do you use?" all day long?
As someone who pays way more than $75k/yr in federal taxes, I do not object to paying taxes. I do, however, object to the government wasting my money.
I work hard for what I earn and I do not waste money. When my government takes my money under threat of sending large men with guns to my home to collect it, I'd appreciate it if they'd at least take a little care with how they spend it.
You can see the copyright statement on the coupon, and I see no reason that it shouldn't enjoy copyright protection. It's obviously a creative work.
For starters, nearly all coupons contain company and product logos, which I realize are trademarks, but none the less are protected.
And then you get into the coupon design, which is done by a creative department. The usual rule of thumb is that an artist's output is generally copyrightable.
So while it seems silly that a coupon could enjoy any type of copyright protection (obviously a mere coupon code would never be copyrightable), I can't jump to that conclusion that the layout, as done by the artist, could never qualify for copyright protection.
I did some quick looking around at online printable coupons, and they all seem to assert copyright protection. Take a look at this coupon. You can see the copyright statement at the bottom, and just looking at the coupon, it's obvious that it's a creative work, and as such, should enjoy copyright protection.
Also, it seems your definition of "sane" and mine are very different. Personally, I would go insane if I ever had to work for a company whose owner was someone other than myself.
Going out on a limb, how about IT work for hospitals, nursing homes, etc? You never mention this, but I hear Florida has some old people.
Well, it doesn't surprise me for a minute that your teacher told you to make up some numbers. You said it yourself: the goal of the project was making a presentation, not the analysis itself. Market research, while important, was tangential to what he was trying to teach at that moment.
If you'd like, I can see your anecdote and raise you one. My wife works for a large company doing new product development. She manages an army of market researchers, business analysts, and data analysts. When they are launching products, there is a ton of market research that goes into it: focus groups, beta testers, the works. Business analysts and data analysts forecast the response rates based on marketing channel and population.
Numbers are scrutinized at all levels, and heads roll if they are off in either direction. Too little response and you have squandered marketing budget and diluted your brand. Too much response, and you overwhelm the operations department, turning away customers and turning off customers who aren't being attended to promptly. This type of forecasting is a serious financial discipline, but it's way beyond the scope of Marketing 101.
The same tracking is done of response rates, and models are constantly tweaked.
Your experience in industry is unsurprising. Home builders, and certainly dot.coms are notorious for flying by the seat of their pants. Catalog companies just spam everybody. But in the real world, marketing is a serious financial discipline. Definitely not a place for uneducated ex-jocks.
"Merge Tracking in Subversion 1.5.0 is roughly equivalent in functionality to svnmerge.py, recording and using merge history to avoid common cases of the repeated merge problem, and allowing for cherry-picking of changes." -- http://subversion.tigris.org/merge-tracking/
I remember those stupid career assessments. Some ignoramus guidance counselor playing a game of 20 questions and at the end telling you what you should be when you grow up.
When I did that, my counselor honestly, with a straight face, told me that the best career for me was to become a circus clown. I can't make this up.
I wish I could find that lady now and let her know how wrong she was. I am not a circus clown at all. I am a consultant!
Hey, wait a minute...
It might help you figure out all them funky photoshop filters, though.
Well, whatever it takes to hit that button in the Rebiject, that's what you should think about. :)
Is that per dose, or per month? As I'm sure you are aware, Tysabri is administered once per month, whereas Avonex is administered weekly, and Rebif is administered three times per week.
Also, Tysabri is an IV drip instead of an injection, so it must be administered in a provider office. Avonex and Rebif are typically self-administered (or administered by a spouse, parent, etc.)
For What It's Worth, I've never used Joomla, but I do have a few Drupal sites. Druapl definitely takes the security of the platform seriously, and they fix up vulnerabilities quickly.
Over the security mailing list, I haven't seen an SQL injection attack in as long a I can remember. Lately, it's all been XSS. Anyhow, they're good about getting the word out to Drupal admins whenever anything is discovered in Drupal core or contributed modules.
Joomla probably has something similar, but I don't know about such things.
Like I said before, I considered MS from all angles and failed to find any opening for humor. Not even in the context of a cure having been found and looking back on the challenge of the time.
It's usually funny to look back at some challenge you faced and see it as humorous. Example: "Remember that time we were in Vietnam and we were looking for... which Wat was it? I don't even remember... anyhow, we got out at the bus station and there was this map of the town, but it lacked a 'you are here' sign and we just wanted to know where we were on the map so that we could orient ourselves. We kept trying to convey to locals through various charades and dances and hand signals our predicament, to no avail. Boy, was that funny."
Now let's try it with MS: "Remember that time when you went blind in one eye? Except the eye didn't go 100% dark, it instead went 100% bright and if you opened your eye, it was so bright it looked and felt like you were staring into a wall of 1,000 suns. Remember how painful that was? And how you had to wear that patch on your eye for everyone in the world to see and ask how you injured it, and you had to explain it dozens of times despite how badly your head was throbbing? Wasn't that funny?"
Yeah, not so funny. Lousy stand-up material, for sure.
I'm unclear as to why you took so much offense to the GP's attempted humor.
His joke itself, of course, was not funny. It's a play on the wording of the title. Instead of parsing it as a DNA vaccine against MS, he parsed "DNA Vaccine" as a vaccine against DNA. The attempted humor being, if you don't want to be "infected" with DNA, use a condom.
You somehow interpreted his joke to imply that MS was caused by unprotected sex. I didn't read the post that way, and anyhow, I have never heard anyone suggest, either credibly or in jest, that MS is an STD.
In fact, I found the "joke" to only be making fun of the article's title, and not MS itself. As hard as I try, and as many angles as I search, I am unable to come up with any situation in which MS could be humorous.
Wife diagnosed in '05.
I'm sorry to hear that you have become cynical.
One thing that is "nice" about MS, is that there is a large enough population of affected people that a lot of research is being done. This is compounded by the cross-application of many therapies between MS and Crohn's, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc. At least it isn't some obscure disorder that doesn't get any research at all.
Biogen Idec definitely has a great thing going from a balance sheet perspective, I'll grant you. But they know that if some other pharmaceutical company comes up with a vaccine, there won't be any more Avonex or Tysabri customers.
Good luck!
My big nightmare if they moved it from ".08 is the legal limit" to "shows evidence of impairment" is the subjective way that would be assessed. .08 is .08, even if .08 doesn't mean the same thing for everybody.
That's the thing. It's even worse than that.
.02. So that .08 reading could be .1, but could also just as easily be .06. Also, the way the machine measures BAC uses many assumptions regarding the individual's size, weight, health, and other biological characteristics. Google up on it. I'm not an expert.
.08", but it really is not. Two people could test at .08 on a blood test, but have wildly different results from a breath test.
First of all, breathalyzers are only accurate to within
You say ".08 is
My big nightmare if they moved it from ".08 is the legal limit" to "shows evidence of impairment"
I'm sorry if I was unclear, but moving from BAC to "well, huh huh gee whiz, ya'll looked purty drunk to me!" is not a policy shift that I advocate. We already have "reckless driving" laws to deal with those who can't seem to make good decisions behind the wheel.
Mind you, most arrests for DWI/DUI are as a result of an officer seeing erratic behavior.
Ever been to a sobriety checkpoint? I have. And it had nothing to do with whether or not I was driving erratically. I hate those things so much. Makes me feel like I live in a 3rd world military dictatorship. Maybe I do?
(or it's the end of the quarter and they're handing out tickets)
You put this is a lowly parenthetical, but really, issuing citations based on the time of the month doesn't make you even the slightest bit angry? I can think of a lot of things upon which I'd base giving citations, and "some officer's quota" is not one of them.
Anyway, for me it comes down to this: The best way to avoid getting a D/D charge is to not drink and drive, period.
Well, I can't think of anybody who advocates driving drunk. But in real life, things are seldom in black and white. We live in a society where drinking is allowed and driving is allowed, but driving drunk is not allowed. How do we define driving drunk?
You say "Not even a little bit, not even just one.", but drinking is going to occur in life. How long does one need to wait between drinking and driving? This is an important question, and it cannot be taken lightly because the penalties for driving drunk are severe (as they should be). So if I have a glass of wine with dinner, how long do I have to wait before I can drive? You say I should not drive after having one glass of wine, but is that really realistic? I mean, who gets drunk from a glass of wine? Who can't metabolize the alcohol from one glass of wine within an hour?
As to knowing the law in a particular state, it's been held that ignorance of the law is not a reasonable excuse and doesn't let a person off the hook if they violate it. If it were a reasonable excuse, then you'd have an awful lot of people getting exonerated due to the incredibly Byzantine nature of our laws.
Well, that's a matter for another discussion. But do you really expect people to be experts in the law, the relevant case law, and the local practices for every jurisdiction in the world? Even lawyers don't know the law that well. That's why they have paralegals and lexis.
What we have now isn't perfect, not even close. But I haven't heard an alternative that isn't worse from a standpoint of prevention and fairness.
Ok, how's this?
Punishments for the second