- Feature Articles
- CodeSOD
- Error'd
-
Forums
-
Other Articles
- Random Article
- Alex's Soapbox
- Announcements
- Best of…
- Best of Email
- Best of the Sidebar
- Bring Your Own Code
- Coded Smorgasbord
- Mandatory Fun Day
- Off Topic
- Representative Line
- News Roundup
- Editor's Soapbox
- Software on the Rocks
- Souvenir Potpourri
- Sponsor Post
- Tales from the Interview
- The Daily WTF: Live
- Virtudyne
Admin
Thank you for the reference to prior art. TRWTF is that the patent office took something that belonged to everyone and gave it to IBM.
Admin
Its a scary thought that in several years, that the captcha-bot arms race will make captchas work again: bots will always get it right, humans will always get it wrong.
Admin
Admin
Admin
I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but all of you people need to stop thinking like programmers sometimes. In the real world, ESPECIALLY government, the problem is usually a lot of red tape and politics. That tremendously increases the scope.
Want to implement a web service that supplies data from a government system? Ok, just make sure the network and all systems in between are compliant with our regulations first.
Or, we could just use the web cam system we have in place already, which is already compliant.
The best solution? No. A working solution that was probably way cheaper and easier to implement, and really gives you the same info? No.
Granted it's probably not compatible with all devices, but do you think they really care?
Admin
Ah, it's clbuttic! When you have to pay a ticket in Bulgaria or you need some other service from the traffic police, you go get a number and wait 'til your turn comes.
There are electronic boards showing the number to be serviced next and on which desk.
This takes 1-2 hours, so the police put up a system so you can check online how numbers are going.
This is what they came up with:
https://www.i-kat.org/index.php?action=cameras
Admin
Why do you think that getting access to the source of the two numbers is easy for the department/person tasked to provide them on a website ?
If you think so, you've probably only worked in small organisations with a single IT department. Sometimes, even in a single company, screenscraping an internal website happens because getting access to the underlying database is next to impossible for the one doing the screenscraping. Global vs local efficiency. In government that can be even more difficult.
This webcam looks cool (important for funding),is highly immune to changes in the encoding and it makes it crystal clear to everyone when a problem with datasource is NOT the responsibility of the reporting site.
Admin
I doubt either side will convince the other, but the argument is fun.
Sure. And with something as complex as a national economy, it can be difficult to really prove anything. Like: Unemployment and national debt have gone up since Obama became president. That's simple fact. But is that because his policies made the problems worse? Or would things be even worse than they are now were it not for his policies? You could argue that sort of thing endlessly.
Wellll .... Things like police and military are in a different category because they inherently rely on force. A free market economy is based on the idea of voluntary interactions between people: I buy a widget from you because I want a widget and an willing to pay the price you demand. If I don't want a widget, you can't make me buy one, and if I don't offer you enough money, I can't force you to sell it to me. We have police precisely for those situations where someone tried to break this basic rule and force another person to do something he didn't want to do. Like, if you break into my house and try to take my property without paying a mutually-agreeable price, I call the police to stop you. The nature of police is that they are dealing with people who use violence, and so they must use violence. In theory you certainly could have a private police force, and their are libertarians who advocate this. But that creates problems, because who decides when such a private policeman is allowed to use force? Either there's a higher-level policeman, in which case we're right back to having a government-run police force, or we end up with rival gangs fighting it out.
Mass transit does not inherently rely on force. You could have a private bus service that transports people who are willing to pay the charge. This does not involve any inherent problems.
If people are unwilling to pay a fare sufficient to keep the bus service in business, then by what standard do you say that the bus service is contributing to the economy? It reduces traffic congestion? Yes, I suppose so. But most people find driving their own cars more convenient than taking the bus. What is the relative value of the convenience of setting your own route and schedule versus the inconvenience caused by traffic congestion? There is no single, definitive answer to such a question.
Thus the capitalist says, Let each person decide for himself whether he wants to drive or ride the bus, paying the full cost for his choice himself. The socialist says, We the elite have decided that more people should ride the bus than the number who will ride when they must pay the full cost, thus the cost must be subsidized using money tkaen from people whether they like it or not (i.e. taxes), so that people who don't ride the bus are forced to pay for people who do ride the bus.
Admin
What a curious argument. When did I say that I think my decisions do not affect others?
Is it necessary to point out that an argument that I only oppose subsidized mass transit because of my ideology could easily be countered by saying that you only support it because of your ideology? Such statements contribute nothing to rational debate of the pros and cons.
Admin
The other obvious consequence is: lower taxes.
But your statement "well, you don't have to" is completely false. If the buses are subsidized with higher taxes, then I do have to pay. If I refuse, pretty soon men will come to my house with guns to demand I pay, and if I still refuse, I'll be locked in a room with bars on the doors and windows. Taxes are, by definition, not voluntary.
THAT is the key problem with socialism. By it's nature, it relies on one group of people deciding what is good for society, and then imposing their decisions on the rest, literally at gunpoint. Without the guns, it's impossible to consistently collect the taxes, and without the taxes, you can't subsidize the government-approved projects.
If you want to take up a voluntary collection to subsidize a bus service, I have no objection at all. If the bus service is to, say, help elderly people get to the hospital, or to help poor people get to the unemployment office, I'll happily contribute.
Admin
Which is not a bad starting point. I wouldn't call anybody an idiot for wanting to explore how well that works as it sounds reasonable. The problem is that this doesn't work well in practice because you can't get to that ideal position where each person can choose without impeding the choice for the others.
In any densely populated urban area you will see traffic congestion. Each vehicle is impeding each other vehicle. They are not only paying the full cost for themselves but imposing a cost in money and time on other vehicle users. Consider the impact on the bus operators. A bus route that takes 15 minutes in clear traffic takes 45 minutes in heavy traffic. Labour and fuel cost is pretty much tripled per journey so the user is looking at a more-or-less tripled bus fare for a slower, crappier journey. In the pathological situation the whole system seizes up completely and nobody goes anywhere, in any kind of vehicle, for hours on end. Also it should be pointed out that we all get to breathe the fumes from that traffic jam whether we are in a bus, a car, on foot or just within a few miles of the damn thing. Essentially it is a game of Prisoner's Dilemma. The choices of the participants interact and can not be seen in isolation.
It is rare that a free market can be supported in public transport anyway. If two bus companies try to run on substantially the same route the result is almost certainly that each gets half the passengers and half the revenue that they would get alone. Given that it is hard enough to run one bus company and scrape by the obvious, rational outcome is for the companies to come to an agreement. They either merge their services into a single non-competing service to save running costs or they separate their services so that they do not overlap significantly in the hope of tapping different user bases. Of course, for a person needing to get from A to B, a bus from C to D is not an option. The result is a monopoly on almost any given journey option. It is is normally the same for car travel options. Sure, there may be several routes from A to B but only one or two of those will be sane choices. It is impossible to see how to fit a competitive free market in road provision into this. Anybody who has been on the receiving end of a private bus or toll-road monopoly will know that they have all the negative points of a government monopoly plus plenty all of their own and no elected overseers you can complain to or vote out. If you can't achieve competition at the point of service delivery then the whole idea fails.
So, like I say, I would not call anybody an idiot for starting from your position but I would begin to wonder if somebody continued to adhere to it after examining how it badly pans out in practice, particularly if they have seen the a better alternative system working and rejected it solely on the ideological ground that it somehow smells of socialism.
The challenge is to find the solution that offers the maximum real, not theoretical, choice to the traveller. This will vary from place to place but in an urban environment it will almost certainly mean encouraging the use of public transport for most journeys in order to free the roads up so that traffic can flow freely and people can get where they need to go. After all, that is the freedom people really want from transport; To be able to get where they are going in a reasonable time. If they don't have that then any other transport choices are just meaningless window dressing.
Admin
I don't think they're that clever.
Admin
So is it all being recorded remotely on videotape for use in court: to prove that the sign was on, the price displayed.
TRWTF is the resolution on those government spycams, just look at those leaves.
captcha: μxor - mutually exclusive OR
Admin
Which is, of course, a simplistic dogma that is, itself, in direct contradiction with reality.
Thus proving that you are not only an ideologue, but a fairly stupid and unimaginative one.
Admin
The first webcam ever was just pointed towards a coffee machine so they didn't had to walk 10m to check...
Admin
Quite the zinger, but incorrect anyway.
Admin
If the toll is only 3 cents why even bother charging? Seems like a waste of resources.
Admin
I can't help but wonder if this was actually a well thought out design decision?
Use Case 1: Mr. "the guv'mint is trying to steal my money" logs into his Pentium II and sees a nicely formatted web site that says that the fare is $1. An hour later he's actually driving down that road and the fare has changed to $2. He then starts writes frothing letters to the editor.
Use Case 2: Same guy sees a picture of the "same" billboard that he sees when he's driving down the and, in his mind, they are the same thing...
Admin
I think this is brilliant. No, not trolling. Consider this, you look up the price then get in your car and drive. When you hit the bridge the price is double. Because you saw the sign it's reasonable to assume it changed. If the value had been text then there could be suspicion/accusation of deceit.
The web cam view is inherently more easy to trust. (not the same as trustworthy)
Admin
I think this is a great way to do it! Two major benefits: live views drive home the practical relevance of this piece of IT ("tax dollars working for you") and drivers will immediately be convinced that what they're seeing on the site is the same thing as what is shown on the sign.
Admin
Except that in the UK, we have 26 miles of lovely, free-flowing toll motorway bypassing one of the most congested bits of the free motorway network...
...except that nobody (well, hardly anyone) uses it because they resent having to pay £5 (or significantly more if they're a truck) to use it - even if the free alternative is badly congested and gridlocked.
Admin
Actually, the captchas here are some of the most legible 'conventional' captchas I've seen.
Then again, there are some unconventional ones around - I've seen ones based on Figlet fonts (good luck to the computers trying to decode a bunch of punctuation marks and spaces into letters) and even simple mathematical problems (e.g. 11+1, 26/2, 13*4).
Oh, and this comment's Captcha? nisl
Admin
Looking at the 'realtime' board now. It's raining so I can't read it. Nice.
Admin
You're all wrong. This is a clear example of government providing incentive for private entrepreneurs to make a buck scanning the picture, extracting the information, and making the extracted information available in more useful formats. A win-win government-private enterprise partnership!
Admin
My kinfolk was just a-lookin' o'er my shoulder 'n wanna know if this is a video game 'n can they shoot summa them hippies on them motersickles?
Admin
Clearly they need to adjust their pricing if potential users refuse to "use" even in situations where it would be sensible for them to do so. £5 does seem a bit steep for 26 miles of road use - but I've seen worse! (In Florida there's a relatively short "high-speed" road where they stop you every mile or so for another two-buck toll. It's called "The Tourist Road" :-).
Admin
"Fairly unique..." Argh. Not qualifiable: A thing is unique, or not unique.
Admin
Bah. The trendline on that experiment says we're due for another drop to fall any year now. That's downright exciting compared to the Livermore Firestation Bulb; no telling when that's going to burn out.
http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm
Admin
I recall there was a Stilton Cheese webcam that recorded the amazing agin process. The highlight was when the cheese master turned the cheese after something like 180 days.
Admin
as a nonprogrammer, I think this is a good idea that is, if you care about users cause all the users probably drive this road, and are familiar wit that sign, so when they see it, their brains can easily process the info.
of course if you wanna go fancy, and make something that is ubercodecool, but user unfriendly , go right ahead
Admin
This makes sense. Given I'm likely to travel on this road, if I've seen the sign before then it's going to help the "ahhh I'm on the right track" thoughts.
Admin
But isn't that precisely what they would want? Lowest price = lowest traffic. They are lowering the price to make people WANT to drive there, so they should make it super simple for anyone to get that information.
Admin
It works especially well at night: [image]
Admin
Sadly, while this post was (probably) tongue-in-cheek, it's probably pretty close to the truth.
Admin
My thoughts as well. Present data that's not data. Perhaps I'll coin the word nata for this. Deliberate effort to reduce or eliminate the utility of information beyond human passing consumption. "By golly, that data is worth something - we can't just give it away!
Admin
The entire point of the system is that they want people to travel during the times the tolls are lower; that's why they lower the tolls at those times.