London Hacked Its Own Traffic Lights To Make Sure It Got the Olympics 202
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timothy
from the much-less-inspiring-than-vangelis'-music dept.
from the much-less-inspiring-than-vangelis'-music dept.
bmsleight writes "Does it count as a hack if you change your own system? Vanity Fair report that during the bidding process for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the London Streets Traffic Control Center followed each vehicle using CCTV, 'and when they came up to traffic lights,' [bid committee CEO Keith] Mills said, 'we turned them green.'"
Reminds me of the Italian Job (Score:5, Funny)
...except without all the crashes and explosions and mini-coopers with gold bricks in them.
Re:Reminds me of the Italian Job (Score:5, Funny)
They are talking about the "bidding process". What makes you think there where no mini-coopers with gold bricks involved?
But personally, i'd prefer a mini-cooper with a Charlise over the gold bricks anyway...
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But personally, i'd prefer a mini-cooper with a Charlise over the gold bricks anyway...
What if someone had made this choice 50 years ago?
Re:Reminds me of the Italian Job (Score:5, Insightful)
(Article Submitter)
The person who wrote the first Italian Job got the idea from London's first traffic control system.
Re:Reminds me of the Italian Job (Score:5, Interesting)
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But the _Houses_Of_Parliament_ signals were stand alone. Just working at that junction.
The first traffic control system - were the signal were co-ordinated in London was ~1960s
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Who said they couldn't do both?
At least the Olympics worked (Score:3, Insightful)
and some of those silly Americans want Mitt to be President
I don't particularly want Mitt to be president.
I just want they guy who took a ton of money from BP and Goldman Sachs to NOT be president.
Did Mitt bribe anyone to get the olympics? Possibly. But child's play next to the things Obama has done with funds going to "green" energy companies run by large Democratc donors that were doomed to go bankrupt in the end... not to mention Obama using all our money now and in the future to bail out his pals at G
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So? Its a simple fact that politics across the globe is so fucked up that you can't get anywhere without being corrupt and in the pocket of some well funded group.
Every person who takes that office will end up screwing you so pointing out "look hes the same as everyone else" is just a waste of time. Why blame the pieces when the rules of the game are broken?
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Because emphasizing specific individual pieces allows one to feel like the flaw doesn't go down to the core of the system. They can then feel better about interacting with it; they feel their participation is worthwhile. They feel like they have some control. It is an emotional defense of sorts.
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standard operating procedure (Score:5, Interesting)
Every Olympic bid since Sydney's bid for the 2000 games has done the same. This isn't anything new.
Re:standard operating procedure (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Standard procedure is to close down the roads and block off the intersections, so it doesn't matter if the lights are green or not since the convoy will be the only ones on that road.
After the mess that makes out of traffic changing the traffic lights for the few minutes needed is only a minor disrupt to traffic, no more than if an ambulance or police vehicle had their lights/siren running and needed to run light.
This seems like the least annoying method compared to ones used in the past.
Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Brits? As in we, the people? Do you honestly think we asked to be spied upon? Protip: Nobody here really gives a crap about the Olympic games. It's been made a mockery of all over the media for wasting public money and for the fact that we're hosting the events and nobody actually knows anybody else that's allowed to go. It's going to cause mass disruption to the transport systems for millions of commuters, not to mention the mess the visitors themselves are going to make, and it's also predicited that the majority of new buildings and structures being created for this joke of an event will go to waste as soon as it's over.
So I ask you again... do you truly believe that the British public volunteered to be spied on, just to increase the odds of having this happen to them? If you're talking specifically about the government, please say so, but I can guarantee ours isn't that much different to anyone elses.
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, you mean British citizens also don't want to be held accountable for their government's actions, just like American citizens? Who knew?
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Brits? As in we, the people? Do you honestly think we asked to be spied upon?
Yes, you did it just as we in the USA asked for the TSA... we did nothing when they foist it upon us. We didn't even fucking stop flying, let alone holding some kind of protest. You and we both deserve what we've got in the sense that we have more to do to prevent it.
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Hint: whoever you vote for, it is always a politician that gets elected!
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The police don't bother with the central traffic control, they just flip their lights on to make all the lights turn green for them.
I figure it means Krispy Kreme just turned on their sign.
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In Auckland, New Zealand, the reason your light is red is because there's a late bus coming in the other direction - our buses are GPS equipped and if one is running behind schedule and is approaching a traffic light, the system will either short-phase the other directions to fast-track a green light for it, or hold a green light past the end of a phase for it. Funnily enough, emergency services vehicles do not trip the lights.
Then again, if you speed enough to attract the attention of a police officer whi
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No, You're confusing the UK for the EU, please list one thing the EU has done that smacks of big brother, and no the EU data retention directive doesn't count (Tony BLiar was responsible for that one!) They have rejected ACTA too! The very law that your dumbass president signed! go figure!
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We're going to do this again?
I've been lucky enough to do a fair amount of traveling, to nations wealthy and poor. I've sat through little chats with foreign ambassadors, members of parliament, UN representatives, and local political leaders on a few continents (no, I'm nobody special). I've lived with families in four countries with dramatically different ways of life, sleeping in their homes, eating breakfast with them, going grocery shopping, playing soccer, taking the goats out or hanging laundry in o
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Excellent point. But this:
everyone has a neighbor that's a jackass.
did remind me of that old joke. "Everyone has a neighbor who's a jackass. So, look around. Are any of your neighbors jackasses? If not, then you're it!" :D
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OR ELSE what, actually?
Any EU member state is free to leave EU at any time. That liberty is not extended to member states of the US - they're there whether they want it or not, so all talk about "vested powers" is BS - the power is not yours to vest if you can't politely ask for it back.
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Informative)
Americans that never venture out of America tend to think a free national health service is a terrible thought. Americans that actually come and live in Britain tend to realise quite quickly how good it is and come to love the NHS like the natives do.
It's the difference between ignorant and worldly wise.
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Calling it a free health care system is ignorant. Those who are worldly wise would call it government-required health insurance funded by taxes.
I don't really care where people stand on the health care debate. I can see either private or public systems working to a certain extent. But characterizing government-sponsored health ca
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since we're on Slashdot, and aware that there isn't just one definition of free, lets start with:
It's free as in beer.
Somebody is playing for it. Probably some person(s) or company that can easily afford it has paid for it. Maybe in the bigger scheme of things you might have put in a contribution. But at the time you draw the draft of frothy ale, no one is asking you for change. If you don't have your wallet with you, you still get the beer. If you're too poor to afford it, you still get the beer. Everyone gets beer.
Of course with beer that's a trivial thing. And you might argue that not everyone deserves it.
But everyone does deserve to be treated if they are seriously ill or have had an accident. It's an uncivilised country which if affluent, yet doesn't give proper medical treatment to the poor. It's an uncivilized country if you can lose your right to be treated if you lose your job.
But free as in beer is not what we call it. It's "healthcare free at the point of delivery". And it's the sign of more civilized country.
And what does it cost Americans for their uncivilized approach to healthcare. They pay 2.5 times as much per capita as Britains do. And it's still doesn't treat everyone. It's an uncivilized AND more expensive system. How dumb is that?
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Americans that actually come and live in Britain tend to realise quite quickly how good it is
I've travelled all around the world, and lived outside the U.S. for a few months.
I still think the idea of private insurance combined with some public support for people who cannot afford insurance, is the best possible system.
Anyone who thinks a national health service run the by the government is the "best system" is to my mind suffering Stockholm Syndrome, and willfully ignoring the many negative stories coming
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The people abusing our healthcare system are the politicians trying to parcel up and privatize 'profitable' sections of it, the managers who make up so many layers of dead weight in the organisation, and the people who would see it as a business and not a medical institution. Authorising vast expenditures on legal cases to prosecute whistle-blowers rather than investigating the issues raised is the behaviour one expects from a business with face to save, not an organisation where providing the best quality
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasingly, it's the difference actually getting proper healthcare and dying because you can't afford the treatment or preventative care you need.
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Which is why the british system owns the hospitals and government trys to keep their budget cut back. The thought of private hospitals/schools urks me. Take for example here in the UAE they have the American Hospital and Canadaian Specialist Hospital - although I am sure they are decent hospitals neither are in any way American or Canadian by anything but name. They are both very expensive beautiful buildings, but seem more like businesses then hospitals... are they businesses or hospitals? Same with the sc
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Or, it's the difference between wishing to be a self-reliant human being or being tended to by the nanny state from cradle to grave.
Or, it's the difference between logging in because you believe in what you're saying, or not logging in because you're a coward who lacks the courage of his convictions. Or, you know, a troll. Lots of those, coward.
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Funny)
So your real name is drinkypoo? Not logging in means his beliefs aren't sincere or that he worries about hurting his rep on Slashdot? Really? Drinkypoo?
drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com>
reading you fail it
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you'll be rejecting any help from the nanny state fire service if your house is burning down. And the nanny state police if you're a victim of crime. After all you're a self reliant human being.
No, I didn't think so.
That's right, there is NO difference between providing these 3 public services as state services or private services. Yet you accept two of them and call the third names.
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So you'll be rejecting any help from the nanny state fire service if your house is burning down.
There's nothing nannyesque about the fire department (well apart from them driving away things like the use of fireworks).
And the nanny state police if you're a victim of crime.
The police, when seconds count only minutes away. I've had a few things stolen from me, never recovered... pretty much all interactions with police have been failures. So yes, I could do with them being greatly reduced.
After all you're a
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So... get BUPA or some other private health care insurance. No-one will stop you. But imagine for a second you didn't have the cash: In the US you're out on your ear (until the infection becomes life threatening I presume and then requires expensive emergency treatment rather than a cheaper preventative treatment - but hey if you run a business that's the kind of work you want right), in the UK you'd have to sit and wait a bit - the horror! It's a good thing we love a good queue. I guess that in your f
Re:Good reason not to go there... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's certainly not ethical, and could be argued as fraud since you're not demonstrating the normal operation of the traffic grid.
Given the amount of special treatment they've given to Olympic transport (e.g. their own special lanes), this was probably quite representative of what they could expect. Frankly, when they found out the car they were being driven around in wasn't made by one of the officially-permitted Olympic sponsors, the guide probably agreed to have it set on fire and a new £250,000 replacement delivered from the nearest appropriate dealership pronto.
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Using CCTV (Score:5, Interesting)
using CCTV to change traffic lights (apart from showing just how widespread the coverage in London is) is almost minor compared to some of the other bid stunts - they took the motorcade through the (at that time, not yet opened) railway tunnels from St Pancras to Stratford, as if to demonstrate how easy it was to get to the Olympic site - provided you didn't see any of that "get in the way" stuff. Like the city...
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Overt use of power is less frightening than unchecked covert abuse of surveillance equipment.
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Didn't I read a year or two ago that UK was planning to put cameras at every intersection everywhere in the country? If so, I would say that certainly meets the 'unchecked' part, if not the 'covert' part. While at present most of those cameras are probably not being 'looked through', if it's everywhere it's just as frightening as if it's hidden. A major characteristic of dictatorships and police states everywhere is that one never knows if someone is watching and listening.
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Didn't I read a year or two ago that UK was planning to put cameras at every intersection everywhere in the country?
If you did, it must have been somewhere like The Onion. More probably you misremembered. Every motorway intersection, perhaps.
Re:Using CCTV (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I learned that I went from keeping my disinterest to myself and just not paying any attention to the proceedings to actively telling people that fact (people tend to either be shocked or simply refuse to believe it) and making sure I know who the sponsors are (aside from us tax payers that it) so when I have a choice between two products I pick the one that isn't involved in the thing.
(Petty, yes, but in the absence of decent victories to speak of I enjoy my petty little stabs.)
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New Zealand had to do the same for the Rugby World Cup, and by comparison to the Olympics it's a bake sale. Basically we included laws on the books preventing ticket scalping (but only for major international events - nothing local), preventing the use of even non-trademarked phrases which might be potentially interpreted as endorsement (such as the word "Rugby") in advertising, preventing any local businesses advertising anywhere near the stadiums hosting it (even sausage sizzles by scout groups could hav
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There is a full team of people who go around the stadia and their local area putting stickers over all brand names. Even maker's names on toilet seats.
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Odd that that quite long exposé of the bid didn't mention it. Do you have a citation?
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/photo_galleries/4252721.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Olympics 2012 bid: London visit
Picture 5:
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40841000/jpg/_40841379_oly_tunnell300.jpg [bbc.co.uk]
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Great. Thanks.
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I would say "no problem", but it was harder than I thought to track down a link, so "almost no problem!" ;-)
It's not "hacking". (Score:5, Insightful)
It's "Potemkin village".
Still better than (Score:5, Insightful)
closing down the whole street for the convoy.
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Congestion nightmare without hacking it? (Score:3, Interesting)
It was really difficult to find which cars they allowed through in Vanity Fair for those who don't feel like reading the rest of the article about the most boring subjects on the planet: olympic sports, and London
"Near the end of the application process, an I.O.C. evaluation committee was permitted to visit London. Bid-committee officials knew that London’s transportation system was a weak spot on the city’s application. “Our nightmare was it would take forever to get to the venues,” Mills recalled. A bid-committee team planned the routes that I.O.C. members would travel around the city, and G.P.S. transmitters were planted in all of the I.O.C. members’ vehicles so they could be tracked. From the London Traffic Control Center, near Victoria Station, where hundreds of monitors display live feeds from London’s comprehensive CCTV surveillance system, each vehicle was followed, from camera to camera, “and when they came up to traffic lights,” Mills said, “we turned them green.”
Re:Congestion nightmare without hacking it? (Score:4, Funny)
Pick one.
A. During the Olympics, traffic will be a nightmare
B. During the Olympics, all traffic lights will be green
C. Both A and B
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D. The Olympics is a nightmare.
It starts soon after your city has won their bid to host. It sucks the soul out of local culture, as all sponsors start saving up for the event. It makes people super greedy as they think everybody will become mega-rich off the Olympics. It sucks the money out of the city and the country to put into "security..." And after the event, you keep on paying for all those new venues that have little use outside the Olympics, for many many years until they fall apart from disuse.
If y
Re:Congestion nightmare without hacking it? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's...
D. Traffic for Londoners and visitors will be a nightmare. But olympic athletes, officials and VIPS have designated lanes all over London that will be kept free for them to get around quickly.
Fines for using these lanes without a permit are £200. Even for cyclists - which will be interesting, as London cyclists mostly disregard traffic laws and ordinarily are not dealt with.
Re:Congestion nightmare without hacking it? (Score:5, Funny)
It already is. Last week Tuesday, the A406 was closed for 24 hours because of an accident. This happened very close to the Olympic park. The emergency services have no plan at all for handling traffic accidents which are absolutely certain to happen, however, they have Rapier missiles (what could possibly go wrong?) in case of terrorist attacks! and sonic cannons in case of Somali Pirates (we have a few rivers, and quite a lot of Somali run Internet cafes in East London, so it is not impossible one of them may launch a ship-born act of piracy on the Olympics, but I think the take-away food is probably a bigger risk.
Can you imagine the marketing possibilities? (Score:2)
While I think thats immoral, I can see legislators drooling over the possibility of allowing drivers to pay to get more green lights.
I am not surprised that London had to resort to CCTV to achieve that. (The movie Brazil comes to mind).
Help eliminate speeding tickets [wikispeedia.org]
Re:Can you imagine the marketing possibilities? (Score:5, Funny)
You can already pay to drive over the limit, it's called a fine :)
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This idea would be especially enticing if the price was right. If the fuel savings were to come out to more than the price of admission, I'd buy in!
Just a quick napkin calculation on that . . . morning commute is 20 miles each way, making 40 miles a day, 200 miles a week . . . My fuel economy is 29 MPG at worst case (hit every light and worst traffic) and 38 at best (all green lights and no congestion), so . . . worst case is 200/29 = 6.9 gallons; best is 200/38=5.3 gallons; difference is 1.6 gallons per w
All's fair (Score:5, Informative)
I consider this fair play.
fact, this is one of the capabilities that the Olympic Committee should specifically look for. The ability of a city to dynamically change its traffic lights and alter traffic flow to deal with a special situation is an important one in a city hosting an major event like this. It means that if they manage it properly, they can reduce congestion around the site, get atheletes and fans in and out quicker and have a better chance of having everything go on schedule. It's also a safety issue. If there are emergencies (and there always are when you have that many people in one place) you can get emergency vehicles in and out quickly.
London can probably do this better than most cities in the world because of its Big Brother system of pervasive security cameras. The cameras can be used for good, too, if they use them to reduce traffic congestion, detect that the crowd is starting to leave the event so they can begin adapting the traffic flow before people even leave the parking lot, etc.
Emergencies and little people (Score:5, Insightful)
As for emergency vehicles, I live in a small city right now that manages to give them green lights without a special CCTV system. Each traffic light has a sensor that detects sirens/flashers and changes the light appropriately; it may sound surprising, but this is actually a reliable, well-engineered system.
We have big events here too -- the college football team's games draw big crowds from neighboring towns. CCTV is not needed for that either; police can simply disable traffic lights at appropriate locations and direct traffic as needed. Perhaps this is more than London could be expected to do, given how large of a city they are, but somehow I doubt it -- they have a much larger police force than we have.
Really, the benefit of the CCTV system for traffic control is overstated here. What London is really showing the world is that when important people are in their city, they can give those people priority as if they were an emergency vehicle, and they can do so discretely. People might complain if police officers started waving through businessmen and politicians, but nobody can complain about the light changing, and there is no need for rich people to attach flashers to their cars.
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Disrupting traffic flow by manipulating light patterns will simply result in ever increasing levels of failure due to complexity. Once traffic jams occur, a green light has no affect as the road in front beyond the traffic light is blocked by other traffic.
To bias every light in a single individuals simply generates a traffic jam in the perpendicular direction obstructing other individuals. In more rush hour just one car break down at critical points can generate a traffic jam that delays people half an
Parent is speaking rubbish. (Score:2)
Absolute rubbish. Change the "green lights", behind the jam/incident will slow the flow into the congested area. Making it easier to get relieve the congestion. This with the use of VMS, encourages people to take alternative routes. Also upstream from the incident long green times will help traffic get away from the congestion.
Guess what - it is complex, but computer system and good algorithm can handle complexity.
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As for emergency vehicles, I live in a small city right now that manages to give them green lights without a special CCTV system. Each traffic light has a sensor that detects sirens/flashers and changes the light appropriately; it may sound surprising, but this is actually a reliable, well-engineered system.
Man, I love those. I miss them terribly. We used to have them in Santa Cruz, but they took them out because we all figured out you can trigger them with your brights, especially if your headlights are misadjusted.
Like China (Score:3)
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It was not false advertizing. They delivered the blue sky for the people whatching the games, didn't they? The fact that a few days latter the sky was brown again isn't relevant for those visitors.
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This is only true if they have a system to make systemic alterations like this easy. If it takes a man on the control of every traffic light, it won't work... and from TFA, this was a completely manual and centralized to one person task, so it demonstrates no ability to scale up to managing the lights for the whole city.
"Hurry Call" in the UK (Score:2)
Traffic Signals can be designed this way - it is called priority "Hurry Call" in the UK.
However, it is counter-initiative in that a crash change to the approach where the Emergency vehicle is heading may (for example) cause the middle of the junction to not clear - making it harder/long for the Blue light vehicle to get through and cause more congestion for subsequent emergency vehicles.
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Sounds like you're describing the MIRT system that's already in use.
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they have a way to trigger the lights and it's a wireless transmitter on the truck.
Olympics (Score:2, Insightful)
Cancel it, it sucks.
Good Grief Charlie Brown (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Giving IOC Observers the lights didn't "Make Sure" that London got the Olympics. A major overstatement to be sure. /.ers. Not only do we do it with packets, we already to it on roads. Vehicles with sirens and lights have first priority, and at least in tUSA we give funeral parades second priority. Third priority goes to buses which have TSP [traffic signal prioritization] systems, thereby holding a light green or turning it green when a bus approaches. Last priority: us regular users. Giving a higher priority to IOC Observers might not be a great use of taxpayer dollars or appropriate for fairness, but that's a local political decision and certainly not a novel application of technology.
2. While London may have used CCTV, it surely wasn't necessary. A few motorcyclists or taxi drivers with mobile phones and headsets could have just as easily kept tabs on the IOC Observers [so could GPS, though perhaps not as accurately as humans].
3. The idea of prioritizing traffic in a network should not be novel to
But hey, the story involves CCTV, traffic lights, and sports which don't always involve a ball or a puck. Perfect fodder for a silly /. article.
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They were using a combination of GPS and CCTV. For the Olympics the system is automated, afaik - I'm fairly sure the ability is already there for emergency vehicles to use anyway, so they're probably just giving official Olympic vehicles the same doobie they have.
It's not hacking... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not hacking...it's optimization.
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It's not hacking...it's optimization.
Actually ... it's cheating.
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It's not hacking...it's optimization.
Actually ... it's cheating.
well.. apparently such green light hijinx is a necessity for getting the chance to host the olympics. it's sort of a hack/crack/cheat if they told the olympic officials the system was automatic though.
legally I don't get though why one organization at bidding stage should get such favorites - who would I need to call to get in on the action? - though but they're moving the army for the thing too so..
The Zil Lanes are a repression too far (Score:4, Informative)
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250 miles of (arguably) the most congested roads in the world being zoned off for use of executives of BMW and McDonalds could finally trigger mass civil disobedience on a scale that's simply too big to suppress.
Uh, the unused bus lanes didn't do it, why would this?
which unused bus lanes? (Score:2)
which unused bus lanes? the ones in Hackney have buses in them. Which ones do you mean?
Someone's gotta be thinking this... (Score:2, Troll)
Since nobody's yet posted the comment (or it's below my viewing threshold):
Premise: The International Olympic Committee's job/duty during the selection process is (at least officially) to make sure a place will be decent for those going to see the Olympics to stay and travel in. Also, it's supposed to check for logistical concerns relative to safety, access to venues, etc. A place that's not suitable is to be rejected, and a more/the most suitable place chosen.
Premise: Allowing bidders to "rig" a showing
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Fair enough. (Though I don't see why my post above was moderated, "Troll.")
Were they driving BMWs? (Score:2, Funny)
They must have been driving BMWs, they always have green lights - or their driver behaves like they had.
Nice to know (Score:2)
A: Traffic system can be hacked (from inside but these days how hard could it be?)
B: CCTV can be used to track cars and most likely people
C: CCTV solves and/or prevents almost 0 crime (See Wiki)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television [wikipedia.org]
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/united-kingdom/090328/living-under-the-cctv-gaze [globalpost.com]
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C: CCTV solves and/or prevents almost 0 crime (See Wiki)
Yes, I did. It confirms that your claim is wrong. And indeed we see stories everyday of crimes that have been solved by CCTV footage.
"A more recent analysis by Northeastern University and the University of Cambridge, "Public Area CCTV and Crime Prevention: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," examined 44 different studies that collectively surveyed areas from the United Kingdom to U.S. cities such as Cincinnati and New York. The analysis found that: 1) Surveillance systems were most effective in
Hacking? (Score:3)
That word definitely lost all its meaning... since when does manually intervening in an automated process (and that through interfaces there by design for this purpose) can be thought of as "hacking". From all editors in the world, those on Slashdot should know better.
The goal of this action has nothing to do with whether you can call it hacking or not. In this case, I believe "fraud" would be more appropriate. This is a textbook case of it.
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What they did most definitely qualifies as a hack. It's an awkward short term solution to a very particular and non-standard problem. I'm not saying it's not _also_ fraud, but it's de
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Sorry, but I must disagree with you here. Modifying traffic light sequences to give priority to certain vehicle or convoy is a standard procedure that was most likely implemented by design in London (I assume the obvious here). They simply applied this standard procedure for dignitary/Queen/Emergency response for a fraudulent purpose. How is that a hack or a kludge? How is it an awkward shot term solution to a problem if said solution is implemented by design?
It is true that many tend to forget that a word
Olympics games are dead (Score:2)
Samaranch killed them. Please shut them down for good.
The IOC and their behaviour are disgusting and should be illegal. (no taxes, influencing and hampering the national sovereignty, monopoly, frivolous law suits, bribery, etc, etc, etc.)
I hate the "new" IOC (post-Samaranch) and the stupid olympic games. It is completely contrary to the original olympic idea.
It's Hackling (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my favourite definitions of hacking : Using things in a unique way outside their intended purpose is often perceived as having hack value [wikipedia.org]. (It's not me who posted this on WP).
They did is a hack with their CCTV+green-lights.
Re:Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Big companies like Apple and Google can do similar things of course: governments all over the world tweak employment and tax policies in order to make themselves more attractive ares to invest in, but the difference there is that (IMO at least) the benefits (employment and commercial investment momentum) are likely to hang around for a far longer term.
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technically Transport for London..
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Actually that doesn't follow. In any system of reasonable complexity, (using this example) sometimes a long wait for one car at one stop will optimize the overall performance of the system - even if there is apparently nothing going on in the opposite direction. You can't look at the problem solely as a static, one-intersection problem. It's akin to n-dimensional queuing models, where n is the number of intersections and the number of possible interactions is n! Or see neural networks.
Not say that their
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In any system of reasonable complexity, (using this example) sometimes a long wait for one car at one stop will optimize the overall performance of the system - even if there is apparently nothing going on in the opposite direction.
Uh, you can both be right. We've all sat there waiting for long periods while lights cycled for no reason. With more intelligence in the system you WOULD have less of these wait periods. It's expensive to put more intelligence in there, though; adding a sensor ain't cheap, and they don't necessarily last forever either. We're more likely to get good traffic management when drones become commonplace :)