Stop Microsoft

Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: davidnix71 on 16 May 2009, 22:55

Title: alcohol breath testers give known false readings
Post by: davidnix71 on 16 May 2009, 22:55

The company that markets the roadside tester tried to hide their code, claiming it would hurt business.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/software_proble.html (http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/software_proble.html)

Error checking is disabled, the results are not averaged correctly and precision is trashed by downsampling.

Title: Re: alcohol breath testers give known false readings
Post by: Lead Head on 16 May 2009, 23:54

Nuts that they even bothered including the hardware capable of relatively high precision, only to pretty much throwout most of the data. I guess more software does indeed need to be open source. While you shouldn't be drinking and driving regardless, only around 4 bits of accuracy can be the difference of going home free, or getting busted for a DUI.