One of the side effects of the rise of weblogging is that companies are becoming keenly interested in what people are saying about them.  People are increasingly turning to search engines to gather information about the experiences of other customers before they consider doing business with a company.  This has led to the growth of reputation management services that “mine” weblogs, message boards, and any other relevant websites to find what is being said, and in some cases to “counter” that information with their own. 

Sometimes that strikes me as a bit “big brotherish,” but I suppose as long as the company joins the “conversation” (as these reputation managers/miners like to call it) in a honest fashion, it’s probably not too bad.  At least it gets them talking.  It’s when companies try to astroturf blogs or message boards that I find the practice reprehensible. 

It was almost by accident that I discovered these services.  I tend to review my referrer logs frequently in an effort to block abusive spam referrer entries.  I don’t remember the name of the service anymore, but it showed up because it was using its own robot to spider my site, and it was hitting the site frequently enough that it looked abusive.  Because there are so many robots already hitting the site, I tend to block anything that hits the site too often, other than Google, Yahoo, and MSN (and even for those I use robot.txt directives to slow them down to prevent performance impacts).  So whenever I discover one of these services hitting the site I just block its referrer, user agent, and/or IP, because I don’t trust them to obey robots.txt.

But this morning I discovered another service through an almost accidental referrer entry.  It’s called Conversation Miner and it’s from a company called Converseon.  In this case they appear to be using Google’s cache to get my page data, thereby circumventing the need for a robot of their own, and also preventing me from easily blocking them (or at least that’s how it appears to me, as I didn’t see any obvious activity in the past few days that appears to be a Converseon robot).  It’s actually a smart strategy.  Since Google is already spidering the web, and monitors blogs, why bother reinventing the wheel and having to index and store all that content?  It’s simpler to just mine Google’s database by searching for information that’s directly relevant. 

Anyhow, the way I discovered this was with this referrer entry:

http://72.51.39.238/~jdoak/converseon/ pagerecord.php?id=436647


Curious as to what that was, I attempted to follow the link and was greeted with an HTTP authorization prompt for “Conversation Miner.”  A quick search on Google took me to Converseon’s page on the product.  But when I checked the logs, I discovered that the page at the above link was just loading my CSS file and nothing else.  This is an indicator that it’s using a cached copy of the content, but that the cache was not scrubbed to remove all external references.  I often see similar entries for users who hit the Google cache for my page (it only loads CSS and graphics, and the graphic file loads cause entries in my image hotlink log that are very distinctive).  In this case they seem to be ignoring images and just loading the CSS, though.

The only other information I could glean is that the IP is a server hosted by Server Beach and the IP of the user (not shown here) was from a Speakeasy DSL user in Los Angeles, CA.

Whomever you are, ~jdoak, I’d be really interested to know why you’re monitoring my site and/or what triggered Converseon’s interest in it.

My old Palm Tungsten T3 is on its last legs.  Or, more accurately, its battery is on its last legs.  It’s mostly my fault, as I tend to keep it in the cradle all the time, which encourages battery memory and increasingly diminishing charge capacity.  Right now it won’t last more than a day away from the cradle. 

Even when it was working well, though, I wasn’t that impressed with the T3 (at least compared to my ancient Vx).

I had difficulty finding a hard case for it that wasn’t too bulky to carry.  The Vx was good in this respect, since I had a good clam-shell case that fit well in my pocket.  The T3’s case was significantly thicker as it somehow had to allow for the top of the T3 to slide up and down without hitting anything.  I gave up on the hard case and sold it to someone else who had a T3 and just used the leather flip cover.  The problem I’d find is that this didn’t protect against the buttons on the side getting pressed in my pocket, so in several instances I’d pull it out to find it in voice memo mode, or worse, frozen hard.  I’d have to reset it by pressing the stylus in the hole on the back (fortunately it never lost any data, though, since I didn’t have to invoke the full cold reset procedure).

So now I’m trying to figure out where I want to go from here.  As I see it, my options are:

• Buy a replacement battery and perform risky open-Palm surgery to try to revive the T3
• Buy a full-featured replacement
• Limp along until August when I can get an upgrade to a smart phone with Verizon
• Get a cheapo bottom-of-the-line model that just does appointments and address book (i.e. the Z22).

The battery replacement option might just keep it alive for a while, but eventually I’m probably going to need a new one.  Looking at replacement models, though, I see just a few current Palm models, as well as some PocketPC models (mostly HP/Compaq).  But I think the writing is on the wall for the PalmOS, so I suppose it’s time to consider the PocketPC.  At the same time, though, I’m having a hard time with the prices I’m seeing (i.e. $299-$499 for iPaq’s).

And while I’m also tempted by some of the smart phones, I’m also having a hard time justifying to myself the $79.99 monthly fee for the associated data/voice plan with Verizon.  The other problem with the smart phones is that is would seem hard to use the PDA/email functions while also talking, unless you use a Bluetooth headset (which I find dorky and annoying; most ear pieces interfere with my glasses).  Further, I don’t really *need* email or most data functions.  What I really need is calendaring and contact management.

For now I guess I’m going to continue to muddle through, since I can’t make up my mind.  Although every now and then I check to see if there’s something on eBay that’s not too expensive that might do what I need.  But at some point soon I’m going to have to come to a conclusion, since my T3 is pretty much useless for travel, since it dies within about 12 hours of leaving its cradle.

In February, Dreamhost moved my sites to a different server as part of what they called “our efforts to spread load and make your hosting experience more pleasant.”  So far, I have not experienced any of the “more pleasant” part, but I do seem to be experiencing the load spreading bit.

In 2005 I got a nastygram from Dreamhost telling me that I was using too many resources on my shared server account and that if I didn’t fix it I would have to move to a dedicated account.  What I discovered was that referral spammers and other lowlifes were hammering the server.  I took steps to correct the problem and I use some fairly aggressive .htaccess blacklisting to keep it from even hitting PHP and EE.  Those steps helped a lot, and my server usage decreased quite a bit. 

Then, late last year, I undertook a comprehensive review of how I was using Expression Engine and made quite a few changes to streamline things.  I increased the EE template caching interval and disabled unneeded tags.  This had the effect of getting the main page render time down to under 1 second, which was pretty good. 

But ever since my sites were moved to the new server I’ve been seeing horrible page render times:

This page has been viewed 970582 times
Page rendered in 6.5218 seconds
38 queries executed

And that’s a fairly good one!  The problem seems to be someone else on the server, because whenever I log into the system to check, the load averages are very high (it was 60 when the above was generated; one day I saw it at 300) and it’s not being caused by me.  Ever since the nastygram incident I’ve had resource monitoring enabled on my account, and my account usage never goes above about 9% of the CPU and consistently seems to hover around 5% (they used to say that anything under 10% was great).

After dealing with it for so long and hoping that Dreamhost would get onto the people causing the problem like they did to me, I finally opened a rather annoyed problem ticket today.  Let’s hope they do something about this soon. 

I’m not expecting to have the equivalent of a dedicated server, given what we pay for Dreamhost.  But I do expect to be able to actually use the damn service that I’m paying for. 

What especially irks me about this is that my sites were doing just fine on the old server and I did not ask to be moved.  They undertook the move on their own and now I’m paying the price in crappy performance. 

My last post about the NSLU2 was prompted by the fact that I’d started looking into an alternative method for handling all of my data storage needs.  I presently have a “media server” in my office that I use for storing all my important files as well as my music collection.  It’s got a RAID5 array, but that’s only good for a single drive failure.  After having several (fortunately consecutive, not parallel) drive failures, I set up a second system to use to backup the primary.  The second system has two 300GB IDE drives in a RAID1 configuration.

However, all of these systems are loud, produce a lot of heat, and take up a lot of space.  The media server has 8 fans and sounds like someone parked a 737 in my office.  The other system is better, but only slightly (it only has 4 or 5 fans).  But it’s inhabiting a corner of my living room, which makes it more annoying.  So I’ve decided to take a more simple approach. 

First, if I’m going to have a second system to backup the first, why use RAID on any of them?  It just seems to add more complexity and more components to fail (a design point that Boeing took for the 777 as their rationale for two big engines instead of four medium engines).  So I’ve decided to scale things down and replace the primary server with one that uses a single 500GB drive (the current 750GB array only has about 200GB used, so 500 should be more than sufficient).

I’m also going to move to a microATX form-factor and an all-in-one motherboard.  The new case (I’m thinking of naming the new system Minilith) will be about 2/3 of the size of the current server and should be a lot quieter, use less power, and generate less heat.  Interestingly, the cost of all the necessary components is 1/3 of the cost of the original server (which was mainly driven by the cost of all the hard drives; those drives were more expensive than the entire system I’m now building).

That leaves the backup system.  That second system is working fine, but I’d like to cut down on the noise and space usage there.  For storage backups, I’ve decided to use the NSLU2 and a 300GB USB drive that I’ve got laying around (put together from some parts that were on sale on Black Friday at Fry’s/Outpost.com).  The only problem is that since I had the system, it was simple to add the scanner and modem to it when I was playing around earlier, so it’s doing more than just backing things up.

I’m sorely tempted to install Debian/NSLU2 on the slug to see if I can get it to perform all the functions of the current system.  It looks fairly promising, since I could connect a USB hub, then connect two USB-Serial converters and a USB audio device.  Icecast and ices are available in the Debian build, so all that remains to be seen is how well the the USB hardware would work with the Slug.

Just curious, but would this now be a RAIS (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Systems)?

For a long time one of the standard Slashdot jokes about any new hardware announcement was, “But will it run Linux?”  It seemed like people were trying to load Linux on everything, including a wristwatch.

Because of the structure of the code, it’s fairly easy to recompile for various hardware targets, and as new processors come along people will port Linux to the new platform.  This is either done because they have a pet project for that architecture, or in some cases by companies who want to use it in embedded products.  For just the costs of the port the company can have a full-fledged operating system that can scale from just a bare-bones kernel implementation all the way up to a full-fledged desktop (with X11R6 and KDE or Gnome). 

One of the first such projects to get widespread attention was probably the conversion of the Linksys WRT54G to run other firmware.  Due to the GPL, Linksys had to post their kernel modifications, so people had something to use to get started quickly with the hardware. 

One such example is the OpenWrt project, which provides a Linux distribution for the WRT54G (and its cousins, such as the Asus WL500G Deluxe).  It provides more AP/Router/Firewall features than the stock firmware, with the ability to choose additional packages and functions.  Of course there’s a limit to what you can do, since the system has limited RAM and flash.  Depending on the hardware revision, it has a 125MHz, 200MHz, or 216MHz processor with 16MB of RAM and 4MB of flash (unfortunately, v5.0 and later reduced the RAM and flash, which makes them much less flexible).

But it turns out that Linksys has another device, the Linksys NSLU2, which is a “bring your own drive” NAS (Network Attached Storage) device.  It has a 266MHz xScale processor (ARM), 8MB of flash, and 32MB of SDRAM.  The USB storage capability opens up more possibilities, since it’s now possible to store a much larger set of operating system files.  The flash memory can be used for the bootloader, which would then load the OS off of the USB storage device.  A fairly robust community for the NSLU2 (also known as “the SLUG”) has sprung up, with people using them for a variety of purposes such as a low-power/quiet media streamer or as a car computer.  Others have used USB hubs to add various devices, such as audio and webcams.

It seems that these development efforts are driven by the twin desires to have a cheap computer and to be able to tinker.  Their work has allowed for some fairly impressive accomplishments with some inexpensive hardware (the NSLU2 typically sells for about $80, and the WRT54G for about $50).

I keep all of my music in MP3 files (when I get a CD I rip it and put the original CD away).  With the right playback software this makes it much easier to listen to my collection.  Otherwise I’d have to flip through about 500 CD’s to find anything.  It also lets me listen to the music on a variety of players, from my iPod to my Slim Devices Squeezeboxes.

I bought the original wireless version a little over three years ago.  Since then I’ve upgraded to the latest version (the v3), but the original one still lives in the bedroom for streaming net radio.  The thing about the Squeezebox is that it’s highly expandable.  The Squeezebox itself is just some decoder hardware with a CPU, networking hardware, and a display.  The main logic is handled in the server.  Slimserver is written in Perl, has multiple API’s for expanding its function, and is open-source so you can modify it as much as you like.  In fact, you can use it even if you don’t have a Squeezebox.  It does basic MP3 streaming to any player that can connect to it (such as WinAmp, iTunes, or Windows Media Player).  If you set up your home firewall right, you can access your Slimserver from anywhere you have Internet access and stream your music to that location (I’ve done this on business trips, using WinAmp on my laptop through the hotel’s Internet connection).

Anyhow, by adding plugins to Slimserver, you can stream other information on the Squeezebox while it’s idle, such as stock quotes, sports scores, or weather.  I do this for the one in the living room, which is constantly streaming current weather conditions and the forecast for the next day using the SuperDateTime plugin:

Another neat feature is that they also provide a Java-based software version of the Squeezebox, called SoftSqueeze, which you can use as an emulator.  I used SoftSqueeze for the above screenshot.

Early this week I was fiddling around on the site and came across instructions from someone who used Linux and a modem to get Caller ID on his Squeezebox display.  Since I had a couple of old modems laying around and a Linux system running for my scanner stream, I figured this should be pretty easy to get going.  Since the COM ports were already being used by the UPS and the scanner, I plugged in a USB-Serial adapter.  I was amazed and how easy it was, as SuSE 10.1 auto-detected the device as /dev/ttyUSB0 and I was quickly communicating with the modem using minicom.  This is where I ran into a lesson on modem chipsets and how they’re implemented in various modems. 

There is a fairly standard AT command for enabling Caller ID, and almost all chipsets support it.  Unfortunately, they also require some special circuitry on the modem’s board.  Without that circuitry the chipset can’t read the CID information without taking the line off hook.  So even if you query the chipset for CID support, it effectively lies to you by saying that it’s available, even if it isn’t.  Since neither of my old modems would work, that put a bit of a snag in my plans for quick and free CID display.  After some confusing research into which modems really support Caller ID, I found a model on eBay for $15 including shipping.

Once I had the new modem, I decided I didn’t like the idea of having a mgetty running on the line, and since I don’t need to use it for calling out, I decided it’d be easier to just use a dedicated program to monitor the modem.  I found a script online that someone wrote using Perl and modified it slightly to format the Caller ID info and invoke the script that was used in the mgetty example.

So now my Squeezebox players display the Caller ID when someone calls and they automatically lower the volume:

My next project will be to add the IRBlaster that lets the Squeezebox control my receiver.  This will allow me to set up the Squeezebox (through an IR plugin in the Slimserver) so that when I turn it on it automatically turns on the receiver and changes to the correct input (and turns the receiver off when I turn off the Squeezebox).

It looks like Apple didn’t get all its legal ducks in a row before announcing the iPhone.  Cisco, the holder of the trademark for iPhone (it’s held by a company Cisco acquired, which registered it in 1996), has decided to sue them over it.

Cisco Systems has filed a lawsuit against Apple accusing the company of infringing its iPhone trademark, the networking company said Wednesday.

The suit also accuses the iPod maker of using a front company to try to acquire rights to the name.

Cisco accused Apple in a suit filed in United States District Court for the Northern District of California of willingly infringing its trademark when it announced the new iPhone at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Cisco said in the complaint that Apple had attempted to get rights to the iPhone name several times, but after Cisco refused, the company created a front company to try to acquire the rights another way, according to the lawsuit (click for PDF).

Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel at Cisco, said in an interview that the companies were close to finalizing a deal Monday night that would have allowed both Cisco and Apple to use the iPhone name. One aspect of the agreement called for some sort of technical interoperability between Cisco’s Linksys Internet telephony products and Apple’s cell phone. Chandler said the hope was that by making the products interoperable, it would help alleviate confusion among customers, who would likely be target consumers for both products.

The companies left the negotiating table at 8 p.m. Monday with only a few points left to negotiate, Chandler said. Then on Tuesday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Macworld Expo and, amid much fanfare, unveiled the new “iPhone.”

“We indicated that it was important that the negotiations be completed before the launch of their product,” Chandler said. “Our expectation was that our name wouldn’t be used without permission. And it is a surprise when any large company announces a product using a name they don’t have a right to use.”

I can’t help but wonder just what Apple was thinking by going forward with the announcement.  Perhaps they think that they own iEverything?  Or maybe it’s just iArrogance?  Cisco, being twice as large as Apple, has plenty of money for lawyers, so Jobs may end up having his iCrank fed into the iGrinder if he’s not careful.

Apple finally put an end to all the annoying speculation today by announcing the iPhone.

As I followed along with Engadget’s coverage I was increasingly interested.  This might finally be the device I’ve been looking for:

• It integrates an organizer, phone, camera, internet communications, and iPod all into one device.
• It works with POP3 and IMAP (includes free Yahoo Push IMAP account).
• It has a new touch interface to avoid having to deal with all those annoying little buttons
• It uses OSX for full-featured applications.
• It uses a real web browser and has the resolution needed to get away with it.
• It works well with Google maps (Jobs demonstrated calling a business directly from the Google map results).
• It handles movies (i.e. the “video iPod”) and pictures.

Nice form factor, good bright and colorful interface:

What’s that in the upper left corner?

Nevermind, they’re talking about more nice features.  Five hour talk time.  Sixteen hours of audio playback.  Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0.  It’s a quad-band GSM and EDGE phone.

Uh oh, they said EDGE.  My enthusiasm began to fade a bit.

Sure enough, reading on I found that Apple and Cingular have made an agreement.  You can only get the iPhone with Cingular.

Oh well…  I guess I can keep waiting for the perfect converged portable device.

Somebody wake me when an iPhone is available on a real network (fewest dropped calls, my ass).

It seems a bit of Ego Googling has brought some life back to the comments on my post about MADD’s plan to embed passive alcohol detection devices in all cars.

I suspect it might be a bit annoying to Mr. Murray that the comments page for that post is the Number 1 hit on Google for the string “MADD Florida Murray.”

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

   — C.S. Lewis

Offensive beyond words

So I see this morning that the good folks at MADD have announced their latest Utopian idea to prevent drunk driving.

In a bold new effort designed to eradicate one of the nation’s deadliest crimes, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) today launched its national Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving, which aims to literally wipe out drunk driving in the United States.

…

*  Exploration of advanced vehicle technologies through the establishment of a Blue Ribbon panel of international safety experts to assess the feasibility of a range of technologies that would prevent drunk driving. These technologies must be moderately priced, absolutely reliable, set at the legal BAC limit and unobtrusive to the sober driver;

Proving once again that advocacy organizations sometimes go off the deep end in their obsession with a problem, the above means that they want every single vehicle to have an interlock device to prevent it from starting should the driver be “impaired.”

The first commenter thinks I misunderstood what the devices would be like, since I used the term “interlock.”  I fully understand that this is a passive technology.  That doesn’t change the fact that in engineering terms this device would still be an interlock, which is a device that serves some protective function by disabling the mechanism when certain conditions are observed.

I’m not sure I have words to express my disgust with the idea of being treated like a potential criminal every single time I start my truck!  It offends me on a level that’s difficult to express.

Now before I get a lot of hate mail from the MADD folks who will likely end up here eventually from the good offices of Google as part of their astro-turf campaign, I need to say that I absolutely despise drunk drivers.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to put up with being treated like a potential criminal at every turn and being forced to prove my innocence to go about my daily routine. 

I’m actually the last person who would need an interlock.  I’m usually the designated driver for my friends when we go somewhere.  But MADD would have me treated just the same way as someone who had killed someone by driving drunk and force me to prove my sobriety every time I get in the truck. 

Does anyone else see how offensive this is?  Am I the only one?  Have we become a nation of damn sheep who meekly roll over for whatever “safety” demand that comes forth from whatever advocacy group is the media darling today? 

Real Punishment

If we’re really serious about stopping drunks, we should be concentrating on removing the chronic drunks from the road and making examples of the first-time offenders.  Current law in Texas makes drunk driving a Class B misdemeanor with only a 72-hour minimum confinement.  A Class B misdemeanor carries a maximum jail term of 180 days and/or a fine not to exceed $2,000. 

How about we start getting serious with these jokers?  Maybe a mandatory 6 month sentence for first-time offenders (no parole, no early release, etc), followed by interlocks (I don’t mind interlocks for someone who’s already shown they can’t be trusted).  A second offense gets you two years and permanent loss of license.  Of course, these drunks don’t seem to mind driving without a license, so maybe a third offense is worth 10 years or something. 

My hope is that the threat of real jail time instead of deferred adjudication or other coddling would help a lot.  It certainly addresses the problem WITHOUT treating the innocent as criminals until proven otherwise.

The technology problem

Ok… so let’s say this technology does get pushed on us whether we want it or not.  Just how reliable does it have to be?  MADD claims they want it to be “absolutely reliable, […] and unobtrusive to the sober driver”.  That would appear to me to require 100% reliability.  What do you want to bet that if someone comes up with a 99.5% reliable device that MADD decides that it’s just reliable enough?  What?  You won’t take that bet?  Smart move since we know how these advocacy groups work.

A 99.5% reliability rate means a 00.5% failure rate.  Doesn’t sound too bad, does it?  Well, let’s do some hypothetical calculations.  I’m going to base it on my own driving habits, but you can substitute your own numbers if you like. 

First, let’s consider how many times I start my truck per year:
– I generally take one trip per day, every day of the year, which means two starts per day:  365*2 = 730
– I also generally take a second trip at least once per week (grocery runs, etc): 52*2 = 104

So, that comes out to 834 starts per year.  At a 0.5% failure rate, this means that I will be stranded by my truck approximately 4.17 times per year.

Doesn’t sound so good now, does it?  Can I call Glynn Birch (national president of MADD) to come get me each of those 4 times my truck arbitrarily decides not to start each year? 

Note:  For those that would accuse me of attacking a straw man, I will certainly admit that the 99.5% reliability rating is somewhat arbitrary, but I think the argument is still sound.  I work in a technology-based business and I understand the ways in which systems can be flawed.  Making a system that is foolproof and that can stand up to use by hundreds of millions of people without any failures is a very tall order.

Now consider that spread across 133.6 million automobiles (2000 number, see link) and the potential for false positives becomes staggering.  For the sake of argument, lets boost the reliability to 99.99% and assume that those vehicles are solely used for trips to and from work on week days.  Let’s further assume that these drivers get two weeks vacation.

This means that each vehicle is driven on one trip per day, five days per week, for 50 weeks per year.  There will be two starts per trip (one at the beginning of the day and one when leaving work).  So, that’s 5 * 50 * 2 = 500 starts per year per vehicle.  With 133.6 million vehicles, that comes to 66800000000 starts per year (yes, that’s 66.8 billion).  At a failure rate of 0.01%, that comes to 6680000 denied starts per year.  So people will be arbitrarily stranded by their vehicles 6.68 million times per year.

Still think it’s a minor inconvenience and worth the hassle?  After all, it’s always worth it even if it saves just one life?  Right?

Can we all call you for a ride when the system arbitrarily denies us the use of our own property and leaves us stranded?

The friendly camel’s nose

So what’s the big deal, some will say?  Don’t you want to stop drunk driving?  It’s for your own good.  Relax and go with the flow…

The question becomes, “Where does it stop?”  Of course the current advocates of this sort of thing will tell you that you’re being silly and paranoid.  But whenever you propose something like this, it’s best to stop and think for a minute about whether you want to live in a world where this type kind of power is given to your worst enemy.

So let’s say we get nationalized health care.  Will your car measure you against your ideal weight and decide you should walk today?  Is you job nearby and would the busy-body urban planners decide you should walk there? 

Let’s imagine that to combat drive-bys that your car won’t start if it detects gunpowder or a firearm?  How does a law-abiding citizen go to and from the range?  What if you got powder residue on your shoes yesterday during a legal trip to the range?  (Meanwhile the gang-bangers are driving their illegally modified cars to and from their drive-bys…)  Do you have to call the cops to get an override code so you can go to work?  (Prepare to assume the position, as you get treated to a felony stop because you called and mentioned guns and cars.)  What about legal concealed carry?  (Of course if we get this nannified, I guess concealed carry would be right out.)

It doesn’t hurt to consider these things now.  The original proponents of Social Security said that the SSN would never be used for an identifier and that such objections were ill-founded.  I’ve lost track of the number of places that now demand it or they won’t do business with you.

Making enemies

Up until now I’ve regarded MADD as a bit obsessive, but ultimately not worthy of much further thought.  At first I was even with them, since I hate drunk drivers.  But this has gone too far.  If they pursue making this technology mandatory I will make it my mission to vote against any politician that sides with them.  I will boycott any business that supports them.  Whatever it takes to try to stem the tide of statist, intrusive technology into every facet of our lives.

A slow wave of stupidity

I have a very bad feeling about this.

   —Luke Skywalker

Unfortunately, MADD’s announcement that this is a 10-year project is actually a good bit of strategy on their part.  It allows the idea to slowly infiltrate the population.  Combined with a regular drumbeat from the media who will just run MADD press releases as news, people’s defenses will slowly be eroded.  Ultimately, those of us who find it offensive to be treated as criminals until proven innocent may be ground under the swell of popular opinion.  I really do fear that we’ve become a nation of sheep who will accept any level of intrusion for that illusive little bit of extra safety.  It’s hard to maintain opposition over a long term against those who paint you as hating “the children” and being in favor of getting people killed because you won’t support their pet program.  Against all that, liberty is a hard sell.

At times like this I really fear for our Republic.  Forget the Islamofascists.  We’re going to nanny ourselves to death.  We’ll go out not with a bang, but with a soft baby-like whimper.

Coda: Private vs Public actors (added after original post)

One thing that I probably failed to elicuidate in the above is that my concern reflects any legal requirement to include these “passive” devices in vehicles.  If it were strictly a private initiative, such that one could purchase the device as an option and receive an insurance discount, I would be less bothered (although I would still be concerned that it’s the camel’s nose under the tent in furtherance of legal requirements).  Given MADD’s history, I am not sanguine that it would content itself with a market-driven solution, however.

Update:  Some additional reaction to this technology proposal…
Questions to ask MADD before every car has a Breathalyzer
Drunk Until Proven Sober