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Comment Re:is it really bad in the first place? (Score 1) 342

Speaking of using misleading statements, you should make clear that NIH article states that THC does impair, although with the disclaimer that pot smokers tend to be able to compensate for their impairment:

"Detrimental effects of cannabis use vary in a dose-related fashion, and are more pronounced with highly automatic driving functions than with more complex tasks that require conscious control, whereas with alcohol produces an opposite pattern of impairment. Because of both this and an increased awareness that they are impaired, marijuana smokers tend to compensate effectively while driving by utilizing a variety of behavioral strategies. "

This bears out some of the anecdotal evidence from LEOs in the thread above.

Comment Re:is it really bad in the first place? (Score 1) 342

For a very drunk person a curve in the road or a traffic light turning yellow constitutes "something unusual" occurring. Weaving in and out of lane or running a light is a pretty sure indicator and will get you pulled over by any cop that sees you. The breath test is really just the extra bit of "scientific" evidence to back-up the officer's initial probable cause. Or another way of looking at it, the DWI charge is just an enhancement of the actual crime of failing to maintain a lane or running a red light.

Of course, when they set up sobriety checkpoints and they stop you without probable cause, they also catch the folks who aren't particularly impaired but have have alcohol on their breath and fall above the magic 0.10 or 0.08 blood alcohol threshold.

The thing is that alcohol is proven to impair most people's driving, in many cases severely - to the point where it's worth catching them before they drive erratically and risk other peoples' safety. You can argue whether 0.08 BAP is too low, but there should be some threshold. For pot, the evidence is less clear. The THC threshold in Washington's law is most likely a political bone thrown to conservatives who abhor the idea of legalization in the first place.

Comment Re:is it really bad in the first place? (Score 1) 342

Yeah, playing is a matter of performing a known task. No reaction time required because you can plan your moves ahead.

The danger in driving is that you have to react to the unexpected. Anything that slows your reaction time down or delays the start of the reaction, whether you're drunk, texting or just looking in the rear-view mirror, is a risk. I don't know the evidence for measurement of reaction times when high or stoned, so I won't comment on the reasonableness of the law.

Comment Re:100 year old survival knowledge in PDF files??? (Score 2) 272

A lot of assumptions in both of these models. And climate change is only one failure mode of civilization that could be applicable here.
1) Global Thermonuclear War
2) Global Pandemic
3) extinction event (meteor/volcanic eruption)
4) mass civil uprisings from the 99%

This type of device _would_ be viable for specific locations where survival becomes an issue - say refugee camps or other civilian groups in war zones/famine zones, etc.

Comment Re:100 year old survival knowledge in PDF files??? (Score 2) 272

You're assuming that an apocalyptic event would take hundreds (or at least dozens) of years before people were able to figure out how to turn these things on. There are plenty of plausible situations where the infrastructure of civilization is gone, but the relics could still work - given enough power (massive global "super-Ebola" outbreak, for example).

OTOH, you don't want to have to spend a lot of time post-apocalypse maintaining one of these. The necessity of scrounging for acid-free paper or building and maintaining a lead-acid battery and generating infrastructure make this more of a tool for groups who already have power and/or paper available for other needs.

Comment Re:Time for a revolution (Score 1) 424

Trusting in Bitcoin to avoid civil forfeiture is like trusting in TOR to avoid NSA or FBI surveillance. It's necessary but not sufficient by itself. The same kind of network analysis that the NSA does from telecom and ISP metadata can be done with transfers between Bitcoin wallets and location-based data between the computers handling the transfer.

Comment Re:Please Microsoft... (Score 1) 347

This.

IT isn't "overhead", it's what keeps modern businesses running. If an IT dept. is being treated as overhead or janitors, that means that business is just treading water on existing tech and is failing to take advantage of new capabilities. If you're in IT and being treated like a janitor, you probably don't want to invest in the company stock plan.

OTOH, I've also run into some IT departments where the development teams think they are gods and treat the test teams and operations teams with the same condescension that comes from PHBs. "Teamwork" is such an inane term, but if you don't treat your co-workers with respect (at least outside of your inner thoughts) it has an erosive effect on your company's success. This applies both to the IT user who f-s up their computer AND to the guy who has to deal with that user both to fix the immediate issue and (with luck) educate the user just enough to prevent future disasters.

Comment Re:Please Microsoft... (Score 3, Insightful) 347

Yeah, if they reorganize the "PC Settings" into categories where we have to read the minds of the MS development team to figure out what category the applet runs under,it'll be another C-F. How many IT folks here _don't_ switch the current control panel to "Classic" view on Win Server 2003/2008 or Win7? Don't force folks into an extra layer of memorization to figure out how to get to the WIndows Services dialog, etc.

Comment Re:Conflict of interest is just what they do (Score 2) 83

Actually, if this is truly a private company, he's in clear violation of Federal anti-corruption laws. At least that's what they keep hammering at us in the corporate "pin the liability on the employee" training.

From my POV the more likely explanation is that "private" security firm is an NSA front. I doubt this company would get much business outside the US, with so many NSA ties already known. So my guess is that they use it to funnel NSA technologies and data to other government agencies that can't obtain them (legally) by other means..

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