DUI Defendant Wins Source Code to Breathalyzer 638
MyrddinBach writes "CNet's Police Blotter column looks into a Minnesota drunk driving defendant case with a twist. The defendant says he needs the source code to the Intoxilyzer 5000EN to fight the charges in court. Apparently the company has agreed to turn over the code to the defense. 'A judge granted the defendant's request, but Michael Campion, Minnesota's commissioner in charge of public safety, opposed it. Minnesota quickly asked an appeals court to intervene, which it declined to do. Then the state appealed a second time. What became central to the dispute was whether the source code was owned by the state or CMI, the maker of the Intoxilyzer.'"
What I would do first (Score:5, Funny)
state==public domain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thus if the state's call to block it was predicated on their claim to ownership, it would fall through.
-nB
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Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Interesting)
You were trying to be funny, but there actually was a time when the White House was more or less open to the public. In the 1800s Presidents would even entertain the public at the White House after they were inaugurated.
Granted, I'm not sure how feasible that would be in this day and age, but the whole imperial presidency, (large staffs that border on the royal courts of old, the praetorian guard^W^W^Wsecret service, people more loyal to the man then the law, etc, etc) seems to run counter to the ideals of our Republic doesn't it?
Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've said it before tho...and this does differ in many states, but, if I got pulled over, and knew I'd blow more than the ridiculously low 0.08, I'd do what a lawyer told me. Not say a word, not take any field tests, just hold my hands out for the cuffs and refuse to take any tests. All those field tests do is allow them to collect evidence on you on camera. With no evidence...they can't prove you were intoxicated. In many places, yes, you'll lose your license for a year...you'll probably get hit with wreckless driving....but, you won't get a DWI on your record which can nowdays hurt you on job applications, credit...and certainly your insurance.
If you're drunk...you are going to jail...but, you don't need to help them collect evidence against you.
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Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, you need to cite some sort of source for a statement like that. (A review by Fell and Voas [nih.gov] reports that reducing the legal limit from 0.10 to 0.08 reduced alcohol-related crashes, injuries, and fatalities by between 5% and 16% in the United States; they report further statistically significant reductions in fatalities in jurisdictions that have moved to a limit of 0.05.)
Second - as other posters have noted - how prepared are you to deal with a surprise abnormal condition?
Third, nice weasel word--below any 'significant' level of impairment? What does that mean?
Fourth, I should hope that the limit would be below the level of significant impairment under any condition. There's no compelling reason why anyone should have to drive with any alcohol in their blood; any limit ought sensibly to include a margin of safety.
Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I once had wreckless driving put on my record. My insurance premiums blew through the cellar.
Re:state==public domain? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say dealing with the inconvenience of finding another way home is much better than being potentially responsible for crippling another human being. Then again, what do I know? I'm not a self-centered asshole who thinks she has a right to get behind the wheel of a 2 ton machine after doing Jell-O shots. There's no - ZERO - reason to get behind the wheel of a car after you've been drinking. Ever. If you have somewhere you urgently need to be and can't wait around or sleep it off, then maybe you shouldn't have been drinking in the first place.
My best friend on the planet has a non-functional right leg thanks to some guy who was convinced he was fine to drive. After helping her through getting her life back together over the course of years since her accident, I'd be just fine if they threw drunk drivers in jail and told their cellmates that they were child molesters.
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I hope you're just venting, bec
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First, as you say, locking someone away obviously protects the rest of society from the consequences of their actions for the duration they're locked down. If this was the only concern though, all punishments would be jail forever, which ain't the case.
Secondly, we hope that being punished for a certain action, makes you less likely to do it again. For many notorious criminals this is quite doubtful, for oth
Never say never (Score:5, Interesting)
My mom was a juror for a drunk driving case. The defendant (who had only came into town that day) met someone who invited him to a party. He went, and after he drank some alcohol, the others there assaulted him. He went outside, but they followed him.
Being in immediate physical danger, and there not being anyone sober around who wasn't threatening him, he had no choice but to drive.
Was he foolish? Yes. Criminally so? No. He could not have anticipated the urgent need to drive by himself, and the risk of causing death or injury by driving wasn't nearly as high as the risk would have been if he had stayed and let them pummel him.
BTW, I've never drunk alcohol and never will, so don't write me off as someone carelessly excusing his own foolish hobbies.
Re:state==public domain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll bite. You are an AC Cave Troll. You are scum.
I have lived past friends who thought they could drink and drive and worse, friends who were the victims of others who thought they could drink and drive. Nothing quite brings this whole issue home like the death of an 8 year old child. He was in the back seat on the way home rom a late visit to his grandparents in northern Indiana. His parents never saw the driver coming. He had his lights off. He hit them at about 60 miles per hour. T-Bone right where their son was sitting. He lasted about a week without ever gaining consciousness before he died.
While in California, I was able to do a drink and drive course. I don't know if they do those anymore, but it was very educational. Alcohol impairs your ability to perform any function. Period. It is not a question of what it does, but how badly it does it. The law allows a few drinks over time. I would allow none.
It is irresponsible, selfish and childish to drink and operate any machinery that could be dangerous. I would like to see much stiffer sentences for drunk and/or impaired driving and tickets for anything that impairs a person's driving. There is no excuse for it. You can argue with me all you want. You can call me names, you can hate me, but none of that brings back my dead friends.
InnerWeb
Re:state==public domain? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why I want to see all DUI laws revoked entirely. Same for cell phone laws.
If you get tagged for being an asshat on the road, and it turns out you had an aggravating factor that YOU CHOSE, then go ahead and increase the penalties.
This would cover kids, lack of glasses, drinking, cell phones, make up, and trombone playing without getting the government into "well,
It's like they say with children... punish the behavior, not the child.
If you aren't holding your lane position, braking/accelerating erratically, changing lanes suddenly without warning, etc... punish that.
If the above happens because of something the person chose to do, then bump it up.
Just how big are you anyway? (Score:4, Funny)
Sure you can, just as long as the car is sitting perfectly still in the parking lot.
For my weight I can legally drink around 7 beers/drinks before I hit the .08 limit.
According to this chart [ohsinc.com] you weigh, oh, about 600 pounds. Or you drink very slowly and don't seem to do much else besides hang around in bars and post on slashdot. Either way, I'd suggest professional help.
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Florida's Driver's Licenses states right on the front "Operation of a motor vehicle constitutes consent to any sobriety test required by law"
Maine law is that "Under Implied Consent, you automatically agree to a chemical test (blood, breath, or urine) at any time authorities have probable cause to administer it. If you refuse to take such a test for alcohol or drugs, your driver's license will be immediately suspended. The suspension could be
Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, that is close to the reality.
In the case of drunk driving, most states have adopted the law that if you are driving a vehicle, you have then given consent to submit to the approved test to find out if you're driving under the influence of alcohol. When you are stopped and you're not sure of what your alcohol level is, you cannot refuse to take a breathalyzer test. As soon as you got your drivers license, you gave consent in advance to do this. If you refuse, you will find yourself in bigger trouble than you would have by submitting to the test. This implied consent is automatic in the case of anyone who drives a vehicle. From: http://www.lawcore.com/dui-dwi/what-is-implied-co
So, you've agreed to it in advance by having a driver's license. You get to pick your poison in terms of what kind of test it is.
Re:state==public domain? (Score:5, Interesting)
You will find yourself in bigger trouble if you refuse then if you just take it? I'm sorry, but did you find that on a prosecutor's website or MADD?
If you refuse the test you are denying them evidence to use against you in a criminal proceeding. You will have to deal with the civil punishment from DMV (typically a suspended license for a period of time and some civil $$$ penalties) but you are denying the state evidence to use against you at a criminal proceeding.
In most states they can't force you to submit to a chemical test of any kind (breath, urine, blood) except for a few limited sets of circumstances (accident involving injury or death, you previously agreed to the breath test and now they want blood, etc, etc). Yes, you will lose your license for awhile, but they probably won't have enough evidence to convict you of drunk driving. Whereas if you had submitted to the test you will probably be convicted (criminal record) and lose your license anyway.
Refuse the test unless you are 100% proof-positive that you aren't intoxicated. This doesn't even mean 0.08. In many states they can hit you with lesser charges at 0.05.
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1) Get in touch with Bin Laden
2)
3) Prophet!
Sigh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Really this seems like a win-win for everyone involved.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What is so bad about alcohol testers? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are always going to be borderline cases, and machines do a shit job at resolving them.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were convicted by evidence from defective equipment, it SHOULD be thrown out. That is a founding principle of our system of justice. We as a society prefer that the guilty walk rather than imprison the innocent; or at least we as a society used to think that... and I still do... but I don't think I speak for society anymore.
That said, even I don't think a found bug should be an automatic acquittal. After all it could be reading lower than it should have been! But yeah, if they find a bug that caused it to read double the actual amount under various circumstances then I would have no qualms about throwing out any DUI convictions it caused.
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Breathalizers should never have been used as a tool to convict. There's some new technology that uses a subcutaneous laser to actually measure the concentration in your blood -- that would give you a true BAC without having to stack up a number of assumptions like the breathalizer has to.
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Actually... the breathalyzer can very easily be wrong... it takes an extremely small sample size, then extrapolates up from that. Look into some of the known science of it... if a speck of spittle gets into the device, it will push your measured BAC up much higher then it actually is. The science behind it is already questionable, and the courts have not allowed a case on the scientific basis of the device.
Nephilium
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Read this before you think you can be sure about that. They can be wrong, especially the older ones.
Link [wikipedia.org]
Or the the machines may not have been tested properly:
Link [nwsource.com]
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
They have on average a 20% margin of error (a
lung capacity
got diabetes, you are far more likely to create acetone which breathilzers may read as alcohol. Further a low blood sugar reaction may produce impairment results outwardly similar to driving drunk.
physical activty. get the blood pumping right before the test and the levels drop.
Many breathalyzers assume that the tested individual is an average person and do not take into account sex, height, weight, metabolism and whether that person has just eaten. Furthermore, many breathalyzer tests assume a specific ratio (2100:1) between BAC and breath alcohol content in order to make its conversions. As this actual ratio for a particular individual may vary between 1700:1 and 2400:1, a reading of 0.08 could actually mean a blood alcohol content of between 0.65 and
Submit evidence that you don't fit to those norms and you may get off. Anyways defendants in drunk driving cases are charged with two offenses: (1) driving under the influence of alcohol and (2) driving with a blood-alcohol level in excess of a given level. They aren't actually charged with poor driving, though it may be a symptom of the impairment. Per http://www.california-drunkdriving.org/alcohol_to
Law enforcement tends to charge people with easy crimes, such as speeding or having a high BAC, while ignoring people with truley reckless behaviour: large differentals in speed, failure to signal, aggressive lane changes, and following too closely. I'm not defending those who drive after drinking, but feel it is important to note that the typical way that evidence is collected is flawed.
Why oppose it? (Score:2)
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I think it also goes along with general cop/police state mindset where you don't want to give away anything, especially something like DUI automatic conviction machines.
SCO? (Score:4, Funny)
The source code? (Score:3, Interesting)
Source Code Revealed (Score:5, Funny)
10 print "U R DRUNK!!!"
20 GOTO 10
DUI defendant would have been better off (Score:3, Insightful)
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No way is there a meaningful bug. Those things are calibrated constantly and someone would have noticed it. Unless he got pulled over at midnight on January 1, 2000 or something like that.
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That's not true. Even if the source is 100% bug free, the assumptions [1800duilaws.com] they use to model the physical systems in question may be in error. Breathalyzers are good at measuring alcohol content in air, extrapolating that to alcohol content in blood is a tricky business since no two people are exactly the same.
Owner (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hmmmm..I think you're on to something!
1) Perform incriminating act involving proprietary device.
2) Get Caught.
3) Demand Source Code to said device.
4) ???
5) Profit?
err or something like that
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-Rick
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heh, exactly. Asking for the calibration records was the old way of getting out of speeding tickets, but now we can ask for both calibration records AND the source. And since NO software source is bug free, I predict an end to prosecutable crimes where the evidence is machine-based.
I wonder if I could setup a business with a lawyer where all I do is find bugs in software use
I just love this quote (Score:5, Funny)
Source code not enough. (Score:2)
Voila, reasonable doubt.
"reasonable doubt" & further (blood) tests (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, but if "the possibility, however remote, that a device, at the time at which it was used, did not operate according to specification" makes for 'reasonable doubt', then you would never see another speeding ticket, DUI ticket, etc.
Back on-topic.. don't people who get caught with a breathalyzer (is what they're more known as over here) get taken to the station for a more thorough and accurate, possibly blood, test to determine the blood alcohol level, before going through the steps of fining? As far as I know, the breathalyzers for that exact reason are set up to be moderately lax, as false positives would just be a giant waste of time + money on both the part of the government -and- the person who got tested, causing collateral damages everywhere.
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no, not at all. as a matter of fact, quite the opposite. in most states you will never be informed that you can in fact have a blood sample taken. you will blow on a machine like this and that will be all she wrote for you. had i know thi
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Actually, it's more complicated than that. Most of the breathalyzer machines actually measure the absorption of light sent
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The toxylizer that was used to mark him needs to be confiscated and reverse-engineered to see if the code running on it, is effectively produced by the source code in question
Nonsense. You could take your argument to the next level and say there's something different about the hardware in the machine. Black-box testing of this thing should prove that it works (and ultimately is a better test than looking at source code).
I can't believe this thing is all that complicated as far as inputs go (like a guy blo
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And in the over all "good" side of this argument, more eyes can make better software. Even if this guy gets off with nothing due to the source, it can on
Language? (Score:5, Funny)
Brainf**k maybe...
Re:Language? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for editing out that nasty word, or reading that might have fucked up people's brains.
This joke brought to you from Larry Wall, courtesy of Bluesman Slashdot Posting, INC.
Does the unit differentiate acetone from alcohol? (Score:5, Interesting)
Before you hang the guy, perhaps we should consider he may be on a low-carbohydrate diet and the unit fails to distinguish acetone from alcohol.
Just four months ago a Virgin Atlantic pilot was arrested and taken off the aircraft he was the pilot of for a flight from Heathrow to JFK. Several days later, all charges were dropped when the results of the blood tests proved him innocent.
Pilot arrested on drink charge [bbc.co.uk]
Diet clears drinking-arrest pilot [bbc.co.uk]
Yes, it probably does... (Score:4, Informative)
From your college chemistry course acetone has a C=O bond, while alcohol is a C-OH bond.
Cheap breathalyzers will use a chemical reaction to detect the alcohol in your breath -- often potassium dichromate (these are the ones that go from red to green with alcohol).
More advanced models (such as the ones the police would use, would use essentially spectroscopy to try to measure the resonant absorbance of the C-OH bond. This would not be fooled by acetone, which has a much different absorbance of the C=O (approximately 1700 cm-1 IIRC). There are also variants of this method.
If you are ever innocent and accused, get a blood test, which really is a quantitative direct measurement and can be confirmed, with very little chance of being fooled.
If you are not innocent, **IN THEORY** the easiest way to lower your reading is to silently hyperventilate prior to blowing. This would prevent equilibration of the alcohol in your bloodstream with the air in your lungs that you just breathed in and out. It is far from perfect, and I would strongly advise to never drive drunk, nor rely on this method.
Additional references: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Could_elevated_ketone_l
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I was a chemistry major; I have seen an OH peak, and know the range, and am intimately familiar with spectroscopy... The points you raise are well taken -- yes, the local environment would depend somewhat. However, when running a typical IR spec, how much do these things affect the absorbanc
Source code will show ways to defeat the device? (Score:2)
If all breathalyzers work in the same manner it would throw DUI law enforcement for a loop.
The good old fashioned blood test? (Score:3, Insightful)
When early electronic breathalizers first came out here years ago they either didn't detect the alcohol at all, or they false alarmed by detecting toothpaste and aftershave. The blood test is conclusive. Why should we trust these new tech devices? I mean people here successfully challenged the accuracy of speedcameras and other such devices. We want to be sure.
Additional info (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe thats what he wanted.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I bet the reason there was resistance.. (Score:5, Informative)
..has nothing to do with this case, and little to do with who holds the copyright. What if he does find flaws, and others have already been convicted using output from the same machine? Suddenly, all those past cases come back up.
I guess the lesson here is: the source should already have been public and heavily scrutinized. I don't want my government spending my tax money and wasting time in court, to get convictions based on evidence from mysterious unaudited machines. Why? Because sooner or later, some defendant is going to want the mystery peeled back. Some defendant is eventually going to want a fair trial. Might as well give that fair trial to the first one, so that a bunch of expensive shit doesn't have to get re-done (or so that a bunch of guilty people don't end up walking free, simply because the cops used a defective machine that ended up collecting untrustworthy "evidence").
Keep mysteries out of court, from the start. Don't let a big list of convictions that depend on them, build up. The chances of the device being defective are probably pretty low, but you know there's gotta be some prosecutors with pits in their stomachs.
Responsibility in DUI Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, breathalyzers have a +/- 20% error [duiblog.com], which is rather unfortunate.
Ignition interlocks have a
We need to deal with the drunk driving problem responsibly: provide good public transportation options (Boston, extend trains until after 2am, you listening?), encourage designated drivers, and provide massive roaming police enforcement, looking for erratic driving and dangerous behavior (substantially more effective [abionline.org] than roadblocks).
Just don't open your mouth (Score:4, Informative)
Looking at the source code could very well be the basis for a very solid defense that beats whatever state statues and ordinances the defendant is suspected of violating. We have no idea what's in the code so why not? Crappy programmers probably wrote the software and it probably wouldn't be hard to find something that doesn't function right or doesn't map just right to a state issued requirement for the system.
If this gun reading is the states main piece of leverage it's because this device conforms to some strict requirements defined by the state. So maybe looking at the code will show that it doesn't and that the machine is in fact illegal.
Lastly, if you ever get pulled over for something like this, don't talk. That is when they ask if you've been drinking, always say no. What does "drinking" mean? Well, it's not up to you to define this at that time. Let your lawyer handle it. Never tell a cop you might be breaking the law. Because once you've admitted that you have been drinking, they can ask you a whole bunch of other questions that can only hurt you. How much? For how long? Where at? Where are you going? With who?
Here's a sample:
Officer: Have you been drinking?
You: No.
Officer: I smell alcohol.
You: I haven't been drinking, officer.
He'll still ask you to get out and do his little tests. But you've never admitted to anything. This can help a lot down the road. In short, never say anything you don't have to.
I'm shocked they upheld this! (Score:5, Interesting)
This will probably lead to hundreds of implied consent motions being decided in favor of the driver (which means he gets his license back, and doesn't relate to the criminal charges) and it remains to be seen how courts will hold in criminal matters, but I'm guessing many of them will follow the Underdahl court in forcing the state to disclose it.
As I've explained to my judge: essentially, states needs to learn that it is a very bad idea to sign contracts to acquire closed source devices to which they will have no access or ability to test. The same goes for voting machines.
Personally, I'm VERY conservative when it comes to DUI cases, and I very, very rarely side with the driver. But in this case, I've decided it's worth it to throw out a few of them if it means fixing "the system", not just for the intoxilyzer code, but for more important things like the voting machines.
On another note, I'll be writing a more thorough order requiring the use of the source code, and as one of the few law clerks around that has a CS degree, it'll get used by plenty of other judges. So if anyone has any suggestions on good, succinct public-policy based rationale, I would certainly like to read them.
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Answer: have judge Fine the comapny $10,000.00 a day until they relesae the source code to the court. The company is clearly in contempt of the court. I would go as far as issuing a warrant for the CEO's arrest for contempt as well.
That would probably get you the source code within 5 days.
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I can't tell you how many pieces of both code and hardware I have seen sent back or scrapped entirely because they passed every test with flying colors and then failed subtly and silently in the real world. Including life-critical medical machines and other extremely rigorously tested devices.
If it's so well-tested and fool-proof there should be no problem opening up the source and as part of the rigorous testing, it should have been open
DUI exception to the constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as the DOL is concerned, you are GUILTY based on some arbitrary number the machine spits out. Your right to "due process" is bypassed at that point, a person who works for the DOL then becomes prosecutor and judge and inevitably suspends your license. When you have little or no money, you just flat out get fucked in the ass with a un-lubricated utility pole. DUI law today has NOTHING to do with curbing drunk driving, it has everything to with nothing but raking in revenue. duiblog [duiblog.com]
Why it might actually matter (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't seen anyone point this out yet, but there is a very interesting piece of information that matters here that he can get from the code. That is the assumptions about the blood-gas partition constant in use. What the machine is measuring is alcohol content in his breath (actually, content of a number of organics, but alcohol is usually the only relevant one). What it is reporting is the alcohol content of his blood. To get from one to the other requires a number of assumptions, most importantly about a number called the blood-gas partition coefficient -- which relates to how much of the alcohol evaporates out of blood in the lungs. The problem is that this number varies significantly from person to person, and even in one person over time. It is entirely possible he has a reasonable argument to make that the machine's assumptions about his partition constant are not correct. IIRC, the constant can ary over a factor of 2, occasionally more. So the question is, how conservative are the assumptions? How well do they match him?
It's a question of measurement accuracy, not just software bugs, and the software can inform greatly about how the measurement is taken.
components of products in question (Score:4, Interesting)
Ignoring the reason for the case, drunk driving, Im looking at what they wish to use as evidence. In this case the testing equipment used, IE the breath tester. If a test, breath test, blood test, etc, is to be used in a court case, the equipment used for said teast could also be called into question and itself be on trial. How the equipment is handled or mishandled, manufactured, operates, used, etc, can all be called into question, in whole or part.
What if this turned out to be a physical component that was in question? Would the state have the same objections to the defence wanting to review the product in question?
For an example, say this was a car, not a breath tester, that was in question, and this car was known to have a faulty gas tank. Would the state say "No you can not get this information from the manufacturer, becase the state owns that car and it is all ours now." or would they let it through?
The way I see it, the software a device runs on is just as much a part of said device as a bolt or a battery. If they can give legal reasons for questioning a screw that holds something together, or a gear that turns a part, then they can question the software that runs it also. Copyright does not factor into this at all, which is what the state is trying to say.
This is not being done to illegaly reproduce the code, this is not being done to copy the work done into another product, this is being done to anaylise its effectiveness, see where bugs are, etc, for a case already in a court of law. If they were trying to copy the code, resell it illegaly, or use it as part of another product, I could see copyright applying. Not in this case.
Just my point of view in this case.
Belunar
No different than e-voting (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, I develop embedded systems software for a living, I have run across strange and subtle bugs before, and I have no objection to having somebody reviewing my work for correctness.
Re:What about (Score:5, Funny)
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Even Isaac Newton got it wrong. [google.com]
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
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According to the article,
he's got this guy. [minnesotamonthly.com] Looks expensive.
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Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
I am all for lowering the limit even below 0.08, not because I want more "gubermint" in by business, but because it's just safer for everyone.
Now bring on all the people who say, "but..but...but, it's the same thing with cell phones."
Yep - ban them too! :-)
Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be "just safer for everyone" to require that you don't drive for a week after drinking alcohol, and to wear a helmet whenever you do, and yet it's not a law.
Doing things in the name of safety while ignoring the cost is a bad way to do anything.
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Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, a little planning also can go a long way
Re:What about (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What about (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
We could save way more lives by giving out free annual checkups or something. Try losing your insurance and needing $2m worth of health care and see how much your life is worth. Hell, try needing $20k worth. You'll find your life is worth very little. We constantly place a value on human life, and the value is extremely low. Life is full of cost/benefit tradeoffs and I truly don't understand why some of these are so insanely tilted. We're prepared to throw away trillions in certain areas for little to no benefit while adamantly refusing to spend enough on the huge bang-for-your-buck things.
That 16k/year statistic is bogus. Most of those accidents would have happened anyway. Obviously alcohol is not necessary for an accident, and nobody has proved that further lowering the BAC saves lives. Besides, most of the drunk driver related deaths were already against the law. Lowering the BAC further won't stop any of those deaths. Those drivers were already willing to break the law. Tweaking the law won't make them more responsible.
I really don't get your attitude. You act as if it is wrong to place a dollar amount on human life. Well it is done all the time. The dollar amount is quite low, too. When designing roads, cars, traffic rules, etc. a tradeoff must be made.
We could save 50k lives/year if we banned cars, but we as a society have decided that a human life isn't worth that much. We could probably save 40k lives/year is the speed limit was 25. Society has decided that that much lost time isn't worth a human life. We could give everyone a free safety upgrade to their car complete with 5-point restraint, interior crash protection cage, and so forth and probably save 30k lives/year but it just isn't worth it.
People get stupid about certain risks. They are prepared to spend unlimited amounts of money and lost time for zero demonstrable gain if it is about terrorists, child molesters, drunk drivers, violent video games, many other things. Yet many other greater risks are ignored or given low priority.
So many times I hear "You can't place a value on human life" or "If it saves even one life." That is so untrue and dishonest it makes my teeth hurt.
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't we just bring back prohibition while we're at it?
Having spent time in North Italy (Lots of mountain roads), I can say that I saw many people out to lunch split a bottle of wine between 2 or 3 people, and drive back to work. In all my time there, I didn't see one wreck. Not one.
I come back stateside and in one day see 10 obviously fatal wrecks on one road. Flat dry pavement.
Speed doesn't kill. Some alcohol doesn't kill. An extremely lax drivers education/training/licensing policy coupled with general distraction and self-ceneredness (I'm the king of the road get the hell out of my way so I can get my snot-nosed brats to soccer practice) absolutely does. Speed and alcohol can make that worse, but they are far far from the boogieman many idiots in the US make them out to be.
I say fix the real problems, and roll back the levels to where they were in the 70s, enforce those levels effectively, and shut the hell up and stop harassing relatively innocent tax payers.
My $0.02US.
Re:What about (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What about (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with your argument is this.
The people who are killing or injuring or severely maiming others are not people who had two beers and hopped in a car to go home. It's being done by the people that HAVE a PROBLEM and are downing a case of beer and covering one eye to make it to the next bar.
Lowering the legal limit from .1 to .08 and further down to .06 or whatever DOES NOT SOLVE ANY PROBLEM. The difference in human beings with a BAC of .06 and .08 is impossible to distinguish and measure. All it does is increase government revenue and keep good people down.
This country needs to come to grips with is that Americans DRINK. Drinking is a part of our society and is not going away. The problem that everyone keeps overlooking is that there is no way to evaluate how intoxicated you are and if you are beyond the legal limit, there IS NO WAY TO GET HOME!
I tell you what, if I KNEW that I was at .09 right before I hopped into my car, I wouldn't drive. I would wait 15 minutes. But how the hell do I know that because there are no consumer devices that accurately tell me and there is nothing at drinking establishments that tell me. I went to a bar in Windsor, Ontario and was blown away by the greatest invention. They had a freakin 25 cent breathalyzer that told you exactly how drunk you were! That's BRILLIANT!
Furthermore, if you live in a city with public transportation, you are fine. But what happens if you live in an urban area, where there is no reliable or cost effective transportation. I invite anyone to come to the Detroit Metro area and try and find a cab ride home. You are going to pay 30 - 50 dollars. Forget about the bus. Forget about the train.
Sure, if you live in downtown New York, this argument doesn't hold water. But how many drunk driving accidents do you have in New York? I wonder how much of that is due to the subway system? Hmm....
So what are doing with all the extra cash we get from persecuting people who had one beer too many? Certainly not building up our infrastructure to SOLVE THE PROBLEM.
Re:What about (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. My brother spent 2 days in jail (with no record of it or the infraction--that's why he did it) for having ONE PINT which he drank over the course of 30 minutes and then drove home. He was pulled over for speeding, was breathalyzed, blew a .07, and was taken in for DWAI (DUI Jr.). When he went to his punitive alcohol class, he found that that was absolutely expected given his weight. If he'd waited like 15 minutes, he would have been fine.
But come ON. Who is impaired after ONE BEER? That's now my personal limit if I'm driving anywhere, though, and I wait an hour. Not because I'm too drunk to drive, but because the US is a police state.
I live in Japan now, where the limit is... anything over 0. This seems really draconian, until you see that there really is no reason to even worry about driving if you're going to be drinking. There are buses, there are trains, there are cabs, and there is even this really great service where if a night out for dinner "accidentally" becomes a night out drinking, 2 guys in a little tiny car come to where you've parked and one gets out and drives you home in your car while the other guy follows. It costs about the same as a cab ride (cabs here are expensive), but you AND your car get home safely! I have never really felt inconvenienced by the law here, even though it is much stricter than it is in the US, where I OFTEN feel inconvenienced, if not terrified.
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Driving is a privilege (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:What about (Score:4, Insightful)
From reading the article you can see that getting the source code is not about proving it accurate or not, but that cases have been thrown out previously because the company refused to release the source code. In this case the defendant is probably very unhappy that the source code was released. This is a pretty clear case of a defense backfiring. Hopefully he will find any bugs in the software so they can be corrected, but that probably won't stop him from being convicted.
Accuracy of technical equipment (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever seen someone from a good old german "Eichamt" turn up in your grocery store and check alle the balances? It's really fun, when he pulls out all those gauged weights and then tells you your balance is wrong (by
Are you sure you buy 500g of strawberries, if that's what it says on th
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if ($input > $limit)
{
execute(arrest);
}
else
{
execute(warning);
}
} catch( ex ) {
display( "999" );
}
I've seen worse examples.
History of these machines in Minnesota (Score:3, Informative)
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I can think of a very good reason: no government is going to be buy a device to catch drunk drivers if it doesn't indicate the presence drunk drivers. Remember, gov't officials aren't too bright. If they were testing competing devices, they may have just gone with the one that turned up more drunks, regardless of whether or not they *were* actually drunk. I'll admit its of the same paranoia that gets us the "Symantec must be making viruses
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I doubt very much it's a simple num>X check. The source probably contains either lookup tables or fitting parameters to map values recorded from the har