intoxication
Latest
The Daily Grind: What little events do you celebrate?
It's Saint Patrick's Day, and if you're in the US that means a celebration of Irish culture... or at least, it means a celebration of wearing green clothing and drinking an exceptional amount for the middle of the week. And while it's not the biggest holiday, some people look forward to it as much or more than major seasonal events. A few games even celebrate the event, such as Fallen Earth with a pub crawl and Everquest II with its Brewday celebrations. It's a holiday with no real overarching purpose except enjoyment, and that's hardly a bad goal. Every game has little events that keep running long after they're no longer hugely pertinent. Every gamer has anniversaries or dates they remember, or holidays that they feel are important even if the game doesn't have a holiday event. So what small holidays or events do you observe in your favorite games? Do you make a point of memorizing important in-game lore dates and celebrating their anniversaries? Do you take part in no-longer-vital elements, such as the Elemental Invasions in World of Warcraft? Or do you just take the opportunity on days like today to outfit your Star Trek Online crew in green uniforms and hang around drunk?
TruTouch 2000 promises to detect intoxication with a finger scan
TruTouch Technologies has been working on various non-invasive means to detect intoxication for quite a while now (like the rather elaborate TruTouch Guardian pictured at right), but it looks like it's set to simplify things even further with its new TruTouch 2000 device, which has apparently passed though clinical tests with flying colors. Like the Guardian, the TruTouch 2000 uses near infrared light to detect possible intoxication, but it's apparently able to do that by simply scanning your finger instead of your entire forearm. Quite the leap, to be sure, but TruTouch says that the device is able to 'produce accurate results in less than 15 seconds," and that it packs a built-in biometric identification system to ensure the test results are legit. No timeline for an actual deployment of the device just yet, but it looks like TruTouch has its eye on applications far beyond the expected law enforcement uses -- including even vehicle safety systems, and "Alcohol Point-Of-Sale Liability Reduction Systems."
