A friend of mine got convicted of drunk driving, and had to have one of these devices installed in her car for a year.
They don't work.
People who claim they do work are either idiots or paid liars who work for the companies supplying them. I spent most of that year waiting for a phone call to come and get her from wherever she happened to be when the device decided she had been drinking. On a couple of occasions, it would demand a random breath sample while she was driving (having decided minutes before she was fine to start the car and drive), and then it would knock out her ignition IN TRAFFIC! Another time, we ate a couple of pepperoni sausages at the local deli. The device decided pepperoni breath = drunk, and wouldn't let either of us start the car. On yet another occasion, it disabled the car and left her stranded on a major highway. The police arrived within minutes and gave her a breathalyzer test, which she passed with flying colours. So the cops stood there and watched while she blew into this fucking device and it said she was drunk.
If I am forced to own a car that has something like this in it, I will find a way to disable it and escape the consequences (because you can bet your bum there will be consequences). But before things go that far, I hope enough drivers rise up in righteous wrath against this nonsense and summarily vote out legislators who allow cars equipped with such devices to be sold in their jurisdiction.
And just for the record, the times I have come closest to being killed by a car involved drivers who were texting instead of paying attention to the road. I've seen drunk drivers. I've even phoned 911 on one. But statistically and anecdotally, they aren't the ones causing most of the carnage on our roads.
"My feet were prepared for what lay ahead. I was not.
I did not expect to see people cleaning human waste from the roads right in the heart of Mumbai, a booming financial capital and the face of modern India."
I wish I could say I'm surprised. India is a country where even in major cities you can see people literally squat and shit in the street. It isn't hard to understand why they have no problem with metaphorically taking a dump right on the doorstep of humanity's gateway to space.
Once again a major corporation leaves its customers twisting in the wind. Why even call them customers? At this point, "Johns" would be a better description, because they're paying money and getting fucked.
And this will keep going on until the courts levy an enormous, damaging fine against a corporation that allows a major data breach due to negligence or other culpable failure. I'd suggest Wells Fargo as a great place to start.
My buddy has a device that plugs into the OBD II port. It comes an app that allows him to make a huge number of performance adjustments to his car.
How long will it take before somebody offers a specific app to disable all Volvo's Big Brotherish performance tweaks for as long as the device is plugged in, then reset everything to the way it was as part of the removal process? I'm betting it will be available about a week after the first "Neutered Volvo" sale for about a hundred Euros.
If I were writing it, I'd call it something like "Volvo's Not the Boss of Me", then sit back to watch the currency roll in.
Even as a kid (what we now call a "young adult") I remember thinking that putting all the money available for manned space exploration into the Shuttle was a huge, huge mistake. Basically, it led to the death of America's space program. Yes, there has been some very good work done, but it's been done on a shoestring. America could almost certainly have had a colony on Mars by now if they hadn't made some disastrous decisions. And I mean an AMERICAN colony with visitors, not an Earth colony paid for by the United States.
It might well be worth a road trip to do exactly that. I remember his "Golden Fleece" awards, and the damage they did to legitimate scientific inquiry. Oddly, the hypocritical prick never had a problem with all the dairy subsidies flowing into his state.
"This is an amazing achievement in American history," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said from the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "These are all capabilities that are leading to a day where we are launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil."
So "leading" back to May 5, 1961, then? I had no idea NASA now has the capability to travel back in time 60 years.
My parents let me stay up to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, and I sent money earned from my first real job to help keep Viking's data gathering operation going after funding ran out. And I was actually in the room at the AAAS conference in Toronto in January 1981, when the pictures from Voyager 1's November flyby of Saturn, showing the braided rings, were released. So I'm old enough to remember what an incredible space program America had, and to understand what world-changing scientific and technological advances it produced.
All I can do now is shake my head. I feel genuine grief over what it has become of the United States since the bean counters and warmongers took over.
Oh, great, another anonymous troll trying to undermine solid science with bullshit and deflection. It's past time to continue being polite to cocksuckers like you.
Let's hope New York's citizen uprising means the beginning of the end for corporate welfare queens extorting taxpayers for a free ride.
The best summary of what really goes on in these "negotiations" was provided by a Toronto real estate lawyer at one of the public meetings held when Amazon claimed to be considering the city for its second headquarters.
The lawyer said people shouldn't get bent out of shape over what provincial and city politicians were promising Amazon, because there was no way they were going to set up shop in Toronto anyway. The sole purpose of talking to Toronto was to see how much the city would offer in concessions. Because they weren't seriously considering Toronto, Amazon could just keep pushing and pushing to see how much they could get. When Toronto finally threw up its hands in disgust, Amazon would take the last offer and wave it under the nose of the next sucker on their list, and say, "This is what we walked away from. What will YOU give us?"
The lawyer's funniest (and probably most accurate) remark concerned how to sort out the places that had some chance versus those that had no chance. "Find out where the CEO has a summer home. Draw a hundred kilometre circle around it. Cities inside the circle have a chance. Cities outside it are sucker bait".
I wonder if YOU ever stopped to consider that a fundamentalist Muslim has a lot more in common with a fundamentalist, Bible Belt Christian than with rational people.
This is all very interesting, but it means nothing until the robot learns to play Aussie Rules Jenga. And for that, it needs to learn how to drink like an alcoholic camel.
It will be good, for once, to see people mostly from Red States paying for something they want, and actually contributing financially in a meaningful way to all the stuff they normally expect sensible, Blue State, taxpayers to fund for them.
Slashdot Mirror
A friend of mine got convicted of drunk driving, and had to have one of these devices installed in her car for a year.
They don't work.
People who claim they do work are either idiots or paid liars who work for the companies supplying them. I spent most of that year waiting for a phone call to come and get her from wherever she happened to be when the device decided she had been drinking. On a couple of occasions, it would demand a random breath sample while she was driving (having decided minutes before she was fine to start the car and drive), and then it would knock out her ignition IN TRAFFIC! Another time, we ate a couple of pepperoni sausages at the local deli. The device decided pepperoni breath = drunk, and wouldn't let either of us start the car. On yet another occasion, it disabled the car and left her stranded on a major highway. The police arrived within minutes and gave her a breathalyzer test, which she passed with flying colours. So the cops stood there and watched while she blew into this fucking device and it said she was drunk.
If I am forced to own a car that has something like this in it, I will find a way to disable it and escape the consequences (because you can bet your bum there will be consequences). But before things go that far, I hope enough drivers rise up in righteous wrath against this nonsense and summarily vote out legislators who allow cars equipped with such devices to be sold in their jurisdiction.
And just for the record, the times I have come closest to being killed by a car involved drivers who were texting instead of paying attention to the road. I've seen drunk drivers. I've even phoned 911 on one. But statistically and anecdotally, they aren't the ones causing most of the carnage on our roads.
Maybe you haven't been looking.
"My feet were prepared for what lay ahead. I was not. I did not expect to see people cleaning human waste from the roads right in the heart of Mumbai, a booming financial capital and the face of modern India."
https://www.cnn.com/2014/10/02/world/asia/india-waste-scavengers/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-33980904
I wish I could say I'm surprised. India is a country where even in major cities you can see people literally squat and shit in the street. It isn't hard to understand why they have no problem with metaphorically taking a dump right on the doorstep of humanity's gateway to space.
Once again a major corporation leaves its customers twisting in the wind. Why even call them customers? At this point, "Johns" would be a better description, because they're paying money and getting fucked.
And this will keep going on until the courts levy an enormous, damaging fine against a corporation that allows a major data breach due to negligence or other culpable failure. I'd suggest Wells Fargo as a great place to start.
But now they're going to make the jump from double A ball to the Majors.
Thanks for your input, Comrade.
If it involves paying large sums to Russia of China, that's ok too?
I'm pretty sure this administration would have no problem with paying large sums of taxpayer dollars to Russia. China, I'm not so sure about.
Where's SAAB when you need it!
My buddy has a device that plugs into the OBD II port. It comes an app that allows him to make a huge number of performance adjustments to his car.
How long will it take before somebody offers a specific app to disable all Volvo's Big Brotherish performance tweaks for as long as the device is plugged in, then reset everything to the way it was as part of the removal process? I'm betting it will be available about a week after the first "Neutered Volvo" sale for about a hundred Euros.
If I were writing it, I'd call it something like "Volvo's Not the Boss of Me", then sit back to watch the currency roll in.
The update intended to fix the buggy update will itself have a bug...and we'll be doubly screwed.
Respecting a long-standing tradition, Microsoft will, of course, insist that the problem is the user's fault.
If I wasn't already commenting on this conversation, I'd definitely give you a mod point for "Informative".
Even as a kid (what we now call a "young adult") I remember thinking that putting all the money available for manned space exploration into the Shuttle was a huge, huge mistake. Basically, it led to the death of America's space program. Yes, there has been some very good work done, but it's been done on a shoestring. America could almost certainly have had a colony on Mars by now if they hadn't made some disastrous decisions. And I mean an AMERICAN colony with visitors, not an Earth colony paid for by the United States.
It might well be worth a road trip to do exactly that. I remember his "Golden Fleece" awards, and the damage they did to legitimate scientific inquiry. Oddly, the hypocritical prick never had a problem with all the dairy subsidies flowing into his state.
"This is an amazing achievement in American history," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said from the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "These are all capabilities that are leading to a day where we are launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil."
So "leading" back to May 5, 1961, then? I had no idea NASA now has the capability to travel back in time 60 years.
My parents let me stay up to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, and I sent money earned from my first real job to help keep Viking's data gathering operation going after funding ran out. And I was actually in the room at the AAAS conference in Toronto in January 1981, when the pictures from Voyager 1's November flyby of Saturn, showing the braided rings, were released. So I'm old enough to remember what an incredible space program America had, and to understand what world-changing scientific and technological advances it produced.
All I can do now is shake my head. I feel genuine grief over what it has become of the United States since the bean counters and warmongers took over.
Oh, great, another anonymous troll trying to undermine solid science with bullshit and deflection. It's past time to continue being polite to cocksuckers like you.
Fuck off and die of cancer.
Great straw man argument. Why don't you at least pretend to inform yourself before you open your ignorant yap.
Start here:
https://skepticalscience.com/
Let's hope New York's citizen uprising means the beginning of the end for corporate welfare queens extorting taxpayers for a free ride.
The best summary of what really goes on in these "negotiations" was provided by a Toronto real estate lawyer at one of the public meetings held when Amazon claimed to be considering the city for its second headquarters.
The lawyer said people shouldn't get bent out of shape over what provincial and city politicians were promising Amazon, because there was no way they were going to set up shop in Toronto anyway. The sole purpose of talking to Toronto was to see how much the city would offer in concessions. Because they weren't seriously considering Toronto, Amazon could just keep pushing and pushing to see how much they could get. When Toronto finally threw up its hands in disgust, Amazon would take the last offer and wave it under the nose of the next sucker on their list, and say, "This is what we walked away from. What will YOU give us?"
The lawyer's funniest (and probably most accurate) remark concerned how to sort out the places that had some chance versus those that had no chance. "Find out where the CEO has a summer home. Draw a hundred kilometre circle around it. Cities inside the circle have a chance. Cities outside it are sucker bait".
I wonder if YOU ever stopped to consider that a fundamentalist Muslim has a lot more in common with a fundamentalist, Bible Belt Christian than with rational people.
Wake up, Snowflake.
You win the Internet. That is truly hilarious!
I should have read your comment first. You beat me to it. Mind you, I was a bit ruder than you to the little slimeball.
Implicit in your ridiculous comment is that you also consider rednecks to be beneath you.
The irony is just too perfect! Thanks for the chuckle, you bigoted, classist prick.
It's a version of the app customized for rednecks. They're going to call it either Tinbred or Tsister.
Excellent point. The thought of a robot with a hangover is...disquieting.
This is all very interesting, but it means nothing until the robot learns to play Aussie Rules Jenga. And for that, it needs to learn how to drink like an alcoholic camel.
It will be good, for once, to see people mostly from Red States paying for something they want, and actually contributing financially in a meaningful way to all the stuff they normally expect sensible, Blue State, taxpayers to fund for them.