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Hoboken, NJ vs. Giant Parking Robot
markwalling writes "Wired News is running a story about Hoboken, New Jersey's battles with robotic parking. A legal battle over the license had shut down the garage, essentially trapping hundreds of cars inside. Bill Coats has recommended that the parking garage be run off open source software: 'Vendees are going to become more sophisticated in the deals they enter into.' Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."
Another great example for adopting F/OSS. Somene get on this. CARS WANT TO BE FREE!
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Coats even sees this as a driver of open source software. 'If you can get (open source software) you can't be shut down.' But that's harder to do in highly custom applications."
Er...BECAUSE it's open source, it's easier to customize. That's one of the major selling points.
Maybe someone missed that memo.
Subject change; This company is based in Clearwater, FL. Anybody else get a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with scientology?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
FTP:the city of Hoboken had police escort the Robotic employees from the premises
Isn't it the robots usually escorting the humans from the building...?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Maybe I haven't been following robotic parking closely enough, but this article blurb doesn't make any sense. What license? Parking robots? What does this have to do with open source software? I could read TFA, but something that was coherent would help me decide if I really wanted to know more.
This is a serious contender in the most non-understandable posts on slashdot ever. Aren't you supposed to be able to understand what it's about without reading the linked article?
Maan
Who will they extract their kickback money from if they went open source?
--- It's not my fault this post looks redundant. I just type too slow.
Wait, let me get this straight. Local government has the police escort the company agents off the premesis because negotiations broke down. Basically, they figured "we already have the garage, so we don't need you any more. Bye, losers!"
And then complains because it breaks?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
...welcome our new valet overlords. Huzzah!
It should be easier to get the source to highly customized software. I mean, what's going to happen if I download the robot garage software? I'm not about to start competing with them.
You would think the major cost would be building the actual garage. Not writing the software to run it.
I, for one, welcome our closed source car trapping Giant Robots overlords
Substitute cars with documents and "robotic parking lot" with DRM and you have the same result.
Do we really want to be held up for ransom by some company that has locked our data into their container ?
See also this article where vital information is held up if you do not pay... the point is that it is my data, not somebody else data !!!! as if since I put some money in the bank then the bank can refuse to give my money back or to stop moving to another bank. (I hope I am not giving new ideas to banks here...)
The article on locking medical data is here
Wow, there is no end to the usefulness of open source.... http://www.thesecondchancemovie.com/_site/mediapla yer/index.php?id=59a362eacbeaeda153f8e3fdf493c508
$5500 a month? For software to manage the garage? That's roberry, plain and simple. And not only that, but robbery of a public organization that is likely not too well funded. When it somes down to brass tacks, this $5500 fee was cooked up arbitrarily by the Robotic. That works out to $66,000 a year. They could pay their own devel to make software to keep that place running AND add new functionality as needed as long as the hardware specs are available (which you know they aren't). Considering that a standard parking lot to house as many cars would require more land and probably some staffing that get paid minimum wage, I don't think it's not cost effective to have in-house development in this case.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Bait and switch! Bait and switch! It could have at least thrown a few cars around and eaten somebody, but no!
Tokyo was never attacked by a software license, I'll bet.
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
I initially read the title of the article as "Hoboken Ninja vs. Giant Parking Robot", which would have made a much more interesting story than the actual article. Who cares about legal battles? Give me real ultimate power!
09
Am I the only one seeing the lack of distinction here? There are open source apps you still have to pay to use, aren't there? And if you fail to pay, you lose your right to use the software, no? Just a nit-pick, I suppose, but just because it's open source doesn't mean it's public domain. Come on, guys, why am I of all people (a Windows Systems Admin) the first one to point this out?
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
I'm rooting for the giant parking parking robot. (joke)
I don't really understand what a robotic parking is. I read the part of the article that sort of explains it, and all I can imagine is that a robotic parking attendant is actually an automated forklift of some kind that shuffles cars around. Is that about right?
Perhaps customers weren't tipping?
..this time the issue had nothing to do with the drivers.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
This is what you get when Ronbots create Robots. Hubbard didn't like Asimov, so he has his clones ignore the 3 rules.
They should look for the secret Xenu backdoor, tho.
*punches buttons*
I am now telling the software company _exactly_ what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocalate.
The insanity is driving me crazy.
Have you read my journal today?
...welcome our Giant Parking Robot overlords!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The Hoboken garage is one of a handful of fully automated parking structures that make more efficient use of space by eliminating ramps and driving lanes, lifting and sliding automobiles into slots and shuffling them as needed
This sounds pretty cool. Anyone have any pictures of this thing?
"Especially in cases of vital infrastructure, like hospitals and power utilities, an overly restrictive license might not hold up in court."
I enjoy contemplating the possibility that the COO of Robotic Parking might need to undergo surgery using the latest technology...
"Well, Mrs. Clarke, the bad news is that due to a software license dispute our robotic prostate surgery machine has just stopped working right in the middle of your husband's operation... but the good news is, the overly restrictive license might not hold up in court."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You get what you negotiate.
Like the garage itself, this software company has costs, too. There are wages, benefits, a building, taxes, and everything else that a business needs to survive.
It matters not if the city can afford it-- they agreed to it, then threw the guys out. Now it's a matter for civil litigation.
Who needs to be responsible for this gaffe? The city attorneys. I'll be I know what law school they went to, too.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
here comes GIANT ROBOT!!!
Marvin will park your cars for you. He detests it. It's soooo depressing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This just seems like a bad idea. Forget the software, what if the place looses POWER? OK, there a lot of things that are hosed if they loose power, but there is usually some sort of manual overide (you can get out of an elevator stuck between floors if you REALLY have to). How do you get cars stacked on top of each other out when there's no juice?
Assuming the cars were trapped because the software recognized its license had expired and refused to operate (as opposed to merely being fragile and needing constant tweaking and babysitting by Robotic Parking staff), this was an INCREDIBLY stupid stunt to pull.
Absolutely, positively NOBODY with a gram of sanity is going to want to do business with them going forward. Smart move, guys.
The SMART way to timebomb the software (if it truly had to be done) would have been to program a soft landing... enabling the removal of cars already in the garage without restriction, and maybe even allowing new cars to be parked, but adding progressively longer delays (with obvious system messages, like "Delaying for 90 seconds due to software license expiration") to give the garage's owners time to digest the situation and react. Progressively annoying someone into action is one thing... holding them ransom with a metaphorical gun to their head is another matter entirely. I wouldn't be HAPPY with the former, but I'd be positively OUTRAGED over the latter.
With the optional plug-in, the garage can become Carparkatron, defender of Hoboken.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
"PLEASE PRESENT PARKING PASS."
"Here."
"SECOND REQUEST: PLEASE PRESENT PARKING PASS."
"It- it's right here!"
"SUBJECT IS RESISTING, ENTERING KILL MODE."
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Er, I mean, I'm sorry about all those folks that couldn't get their cars, but I really think the big news here is the first robot-police showdown in Earth history - from the article:
"In the course of a contract dispute, the city of Hoboken had police escort the Robotic employees from the premises just a few days before the contract between both parties was set to expire."
Police escorted robitc employees from the premises??? And we're worried about the cars???
[Z?]
We must build a bigger, more powerful robot. Mainly by combining smaller robots that will form into one large one, one capable of taking on this car stealing giant parking garage robot.
That's right - we need Voltron.
Form blazing sword!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Clause 5, Subsection a: Under no circumstance must you take away a human's SUV ...
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
If the software was open source, the city could remove the logic bombs itself, and have a working garage, or at least get the captive cars out of the garage.
I wonder if the car owners have standing to sue the garage builders?
It probably isn't pink, but couldn't they just get Yoshimi to battle the robot?
887321 = 337*2633
The Robotic Parking website has some very agressive language (middle and bottom of page) that summarizes as "You will license this from us." I wouldn't purchase such a thing with these terms. When I purchase an item from the patent holder, I obtain explicit permission to use the item - mainly because I paid the patent holder. A patent is intended to level the playing field with regard to big and small manufacturers, not to allow a manufacturer to extort money from his customers. If I purchase your patented Widget {TM} (c) [Pat. Pend.], once the sale is complete I may grind it into a fine powder should I choose to do so. Your patent does not extend into dictating *how* I may use the product that I now own.
If the City of Hoboken got a purchase discount in exchange for Robo-Parking getting a piece of the action, that's a completely different contractual arrangement. Regardless, this contract is stinky. The elected officials who signed this turd need to be un-elected (and possibly punished.)
The point of this post is in the subject, but I have to write a message body. Thus the following:
Gigantic baboons
Cereal spoons
Philosopher kings
The moon in June
Disney cartoons
The morning sun
Jeff Koons
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I think when the article talks about "Open Source Software" it actually means "Programmers that work for free"... and there's a big difference between the two. Is there a large community of developers with access to a "giant robotic parking structure" [sic] interested in an open source alternative to the software it comes with? I don't think so... So we'd need a project sponsor that can give some willing developers access to a couple of "giant robotic parking structures" for development and testing purpouses... which certainly won't be the company that manufactures them, since they'd rather sell their expensive software license. If the developers get paid (since FOSS doesn't necessarily mean they won't get paid), they'd still make less than the company currently selling the software. So what they want is free or cheaper programmers... get in line.
As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.
I'd like to know where you get your programmers. I can't get a $66,000 per year programmer to write a simple VB Business App correctly.
Here in the D/FW Texas area, you can get competent programmers capable of writing robotic software, or VB bus apps, for $48K/yr all over the place.
Yeah, open source is great and would have solved this problem, but the root of this problem isn't closed source software, it's an insanely stupid purchasing agreement on the part of Hoboken Government. The Wired article talked about open source and legislative remedies, but they nailed the solution to this problem with two words: buyer beware.
If Hoboken had the "Robotic employees" [glad "Robotic was capitalized there] escorted off the premises, presumably Hoboken owns this garage. They must have spent lord knows how much money to build this state-of-the-art robot parking garage they own, and then they plan to indefinitely lease the software by the month, and of course the whole thing is worse than worthless without it.
Who would buy something under those terms? I can't imagine making a major investment where someone else is in complete control of it and gets to re-bill me whatever they want whenever they want or else the whole thing becomes useless.
I don't know what Robotic's terms with their other customers are, but it makes sense to run this the way most things are run- either let Robotic build and run the whole thing, or else pay for the whole thing (including software) and own it all. Don't buy all of it but one critical, irreplaceable part, which you rent.
Sure, there are lots of people who get service contracts from the manufacturer and such, but there are generally alternate vendors available for these. This is like buying a car, and then leasing the copy-proof key for it from the dealer.
Their new deal is for just under $200,000 to lease a piece of software for three years. I don't know how complex this software is, and it's used in an application where it's critical that it not be buggy, but I bet there are a lot of programmers here who would love to develop a project they could lease to each user for $66,000/year, without ever actually selling a license. Especially if it would ruin the user's multi-million dollar investment if they ever stopped paying for the license.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Forget about the licensing costs... how about the poor slobs who had to to pay for three days of parking in greater NY at the daily rate. Ouch.
hang brain.
I would no recommend going OS for a system that prone to critical failures, like large automated parking systems, for number of reasons:
1) Liability - any failure is at large your responsibility, developers can be knowingly negligent and not be liable in any way
2) Support - you OS product might not have any support, if it does its costs are not fixed and you have to tie part of your budget into emergency and contingency funds
3) Standard compliance - forget ISO or any safety/regulations compliance
4) Need for internal support - OS will require you to maintain dedicated personnel capable of troubleshooting the system
OS works well for non-critical wide-use applications but I don't see it moving into other areas in the near future.
...highlight this example to launch a campaign to get laws passed that create liability for harm inflicted by software timebombs like this. Sure, sure, software companies may be entitled to compensation for uses of their software beyond the license, but if their time bomb inflicts greater harms than the compensation for which they would be entitled, then the compensation ought to flow the other way.
People have legal remedies in cases like this; they should not be permitted to use them as an excuse for cybervigilanteism. And this is the kind of thing that is more likely to resonate with the average lawmaker or voter than the kind of software timebombs that may be nearer and dearer to the hearts of the average /.er ...
Come back next week for your car! I'm recompiling the kernel to add support for XGL! This garage would be SOOO much cooler of cars were transparent and made litte ripply effects when they moved! It would be almost like real life!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If the code was written to let the remaining cars out and just not park any new ones, this wouldn't have made the news. Don't overcomplicate this with open source. This is just bad PR.
The article talks about the dispute between the city and the company providing the system, but what about the drivers whose cars were trapped there for three days? I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that taking someone's car and refusing to give it back is a pretty reasonable definition of property theft. If they haven't already, the people who were affected by this mess should file a class-action suit agains the company AND the city for this stupid stunt.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
Since Hoboken wasn't making copies of the software, it is difficult to see how they are in violation of the authors' copyright.
The company is owned by Gerhard Haag. See:
t ml
http://www.amazing.com/scientology/haag-company.h
It seems perfectly reasonable, and logical that a copy of the software should have been sold along with the parking garage. There's no legal reason not to do this. There's only the cultural reason that people believe that software needs a licence. The bricks don't neeed to be licenced. The motors don't need to be licenced. Software is just another component and should be treated as such.
It's been said, but I'm saying it again. For Robotic to knowingly code-in and activate a "time bomb" that results in innocent bystanders having their cars trapped in the garage is, in my mind, tantamount to theft. The software is aware of the contents of the garage at all times, so if you can code in any kind of time bomb, it would be trivial to code in one that allows retrieval of parked vehicles, but disallows parking new ones. Instead, Robotic put in code that they knew would trap the vehicles of people who are uninvolved with, and have no knowledge of (and should not *need* to have knowledge of) the licensing dispute.
That's totally irresponsible on Robotic's part, and I really hope there's some succesful lawsuits against them here. Not to mention, though I try to avoid Hoboken anyway, but I sure won't park in this garage.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
We have a big rotating tower in Glasgow, manufactured by some Swedish company I think. Contract dispute with the council, the manufacturer employees are no longer alowed on site and nobody's allowed up the tower now.
Deleted
...are necessarily true in software you get under an open source license. A buyer could easily put out an RFP requiring that the software be provided under an open source license, and specifying any terms they wanted regarding liability, support, standards compliance, etc. The only thing OS certainly gives you is the right to use the software, the right to modify it (which would, under any reasonable terms, likely invalidate the vendor's liability, etc.), and the ability, if you can find someone other than the original vendor willing to take their place supporting it (costly and difficult as that would probably be for a custom app like this), the option to switch support vendors in the future without losing the right to use the software.
"The only difference is who gets what rights at the end."
Well, YES that's the POINT.
....Hoboken wins.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
This isn't the first time this garage has been in the news. I beleive it was fully built (structurally) but just sat there empty for months on end becasue of some red tape BS (as seems to be all the rage with new construction in Hoboken). The taxpayers were getting all fired up because of all the money the town wasted on this monstrosity. Then a a year or two ago - the robot dropped a vehicle while parking it.
In a cold robotic voice: "License expired." "Parking protocol suspended." "Destruction protocol engaged." "Must... kill.. all.. humans."
Let me give you a practical metaphor for it all. Let's say that Joe Average is fresh out of college, got his new job, and needs a home. So his options are buy a home, or rent a home. Buying it costs waay too much, but Joe can rent a decent home for, say, $1000 per month. So he rents it, pays his $1000 for the first month, and moves in. The first month goes by and Joe decides "wth, I already have the house, why should I keep paying for it?" So he refuses to pay for the next month. He even calls the cops to escort the landlord out, when said landlord tries to negotiate getting his money, and proceeds to sue the landlord and paint him as a monster to the media. Only a monster could extort another $1000 out of Joe, under such threats as kicking him out of his home, obviously.
Do you get the idea that Joe is a complete cretin by now? Does it invoke thoughts along the lines of, "nobody can be _that_ stupid, dude. Everyone would know it doesn't work that way," perchance?
Because that's a literal analogy for what those guys tried to do with the robotics software. What Joe in my example does with the house, the municipality official did with the software. Literally.
The municipality basically _could_ have paid to develop the software and the garage from scratch (F/OSS or not), but I'd bet that it would have been a lot more expensive, took longer, and ran a non-zero risk of ending up over-budget and dragging for years past the deadline, leaving you with a garage that doesn't work. And I really mean a _lot_ longer, because you also have to thoroughly test it, review the code, etc, to be sure it doesn't do something extremely stupid. (E.g., you don't want it to malfunction and move an elevator while a car is only half-way in it, destroying the car in the process.) At that point, you can probably have it GPL'ed or whatever, since you paid for it from scratch.
Or you could do what they did, and buy an _almost_ off-the-shelf solution for a fraction of the price. (Yes, it's not "off the shelf" in the sense of buying it at Wal Mart like you could buy a copy of Office, but still, an existing solution. Or at least something that only needs some small changes, as opposed to starting from scratch.) At which point, you get to take whatever the heck license you can get for those money.
Furthermore, presumably to save some money, they only rented that software for X years. Then when the deadline went, the municipality basically thought "muahahaha, why pay some more when we already have the software? Look at all the money we could save by running the software without a license. Let's shaft the developpers instead." And they even literally call the cops to kick the developper's employees off the premises.
Which, sorry, is just unethical and stupid. I can't feel any empathy for them in that kind of situation.
Furthermore, then when the software stopped working without a valid license, they tried to villify the developpers in the media, as well as drag them to court. As if they had some sacred/constitutional right to run a garage with stolen software, and the developpers were such monsters to deny them this opportunity.
Does it sound like complete slimeballs by now? Because it sure as heck does to me. Imagine that someone ignores your license (GPL or whatever floats your boat), and then they sue _you_, and try to paint _you_ as some monster to the media for trying to enforce your license. That kind of complete sleazeballs.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Pretty much. I question why the City of Hoboken ever involved themselves with these people. It sounds like a real boondoggle; you assumedly pay for the garage/machinery, but then once you get it, you can't operate it yourself, you have to agree to let them come and "manage" the whole thing for you, forever.
And what do you do if they decide to raise their rates? You're S.O.L. -- if you don't like what they're going to charge you to manage your robotic garage, then your garage magically stops working.
It's like the ultimate no-bid contract. There can't ever be any competition for the operation of that garage, because only that one company can do it.
What a load of crap; if I were a resident who had my tax dollars spent on a lock-in like that, I'd be pretty annoyed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A lot of people who otherwise wouldn't give a fuck now understand how dangerous it can be to get trapped with a bad software license.
What do you think the residents of Hoboken or the unlucky visitors that had their cars stuck are going to say to their elected representatives the next time a DMCA expansion is up for a vote in congress? People who wouldn't have given a damn before will be up in arms against it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
So I guess the prediction of automated parking that was shown in "I, Robot" wasn't that far off after all.
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
From http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/index.ssf?/base/ne ws-0/1154154297217660.xml&coll=3
Hmmm, sounds like someone has been taking lessons from Darl McBride ...
And from http://www.hudsonreporter.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=12 91&dept_id=523585&newsid=16980856&PAG=461&rfi=9
I guess 99.99% reliability means only one in 10,000 cars gets totaled.
If that happened to me, I'd report my car stolen.
This isn't an open source issue, this isn't a coding issue, this isn't even a technology issue. This is a contract issue, plain and simple.
The Government should have written their proposal to build the garage and the accompanying contract so that they own code that runs the system. This would also allow them to have it peer reviewed by others without a vested interest in anything other than a successful peer review.
This isn't an open source issue either... While that would give the government agencies access to the code in question, it isn't like armies of engineers are going to be contributing code back to the project (although I guess it is possible). In fact, (at least in my experience with Federal Government contracting), such source code would be considered in the 'public domain', and accessible via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Oh wait - it's Hoboken. Nevermind.
I stick to walls...
Read over 50 comments from local Hoboken residents on http://hoboken411.com/archives/3524/ This debacle continues and despite the heroic statements from our inept town government, it still stinks.
Open Source isn't a magic wand. If the company thought the city was paying for one thing, and the company thought it was paying for something else, there is going to be legal trouble, no matter what.
A contract only exists when both parties come to the same understanding about the same set of terms, and agree to those terms. All Open Source can do is make the contract easier to understand (i.e. the company doesn't get to dictate how the end user uses the product, and both sides know it...) If one side still doesn't understand, well, sorry, no contract...
I mean, who else can we depend on to defend to innocent citizens of New Jersey?
Subject change; This company is based in Clearwater, FL. Anybody else get a sneaking suspicion that this has something to do with scientology?
short answer= NO
the company website is a robopark.com - Needless to say, the site is down intermittently since the mention in wired. Research on the site seems to imply that the company has german roots.
side note
Demographics for Clearwater
total population = 108,787
as seen here: About 6,850 Scientology followers have moved to the Clearwater area, joining the church's 1,400 uniformed employees.
See also this report on religios demographics is Pinellas County
Not everyone in Clearwater is a scientologist. Of course you are free to your opinion. But you seem to panic too easily.
Google is your friend.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's going up to nearly $28,000 a month!
"I left my three-year-old son/puppy/[insert living thing here] in the back seat."
...there ain't no money in the cure. The money's in the medicine. That's how you get paid. On the comeback. That's how a drug dealer makes his money; on the comeback. -Chris Rock
Mayor of Hoboken, NJ presses the Stupid button.
A legal phrase is often used, "in lieu of liquidated damages" that applies there directly.
Don't do the deal if you don't want things to stop freaking cold as frozen carbon dioxide should you decide not to pay. This gives me an exercise-able lean on what you do. I think it's a great thing. Don't like it?
Then don't blow your integrity by purposefully not honoring the contract.
This is very simple. The city shouldn't have signed the deal, in my estimation. And I 100% sympathize with the developers. It's not extortion- it's an inured obligation. There is a huge difference. The ends-justify-the-means is bad policy and poor integrity. It's also cowardly.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Where did you get those ideas. I've RTFA twice, and:
1. I see no mention of the developpers trying to raise the price unilaterally. The only mention is that they switched from renting in bigger chunks to paying monthly, which, frankly doesn't strike me as some unilateral developper action or as something extraordinary or unreasonable. Then at the end of July they refused to pay at all any more and, surprise, they got locked out.
2. The "changing the locks" part doesn't strike me as unreasonable, since the municipality is the entity that tried to play hardball in the first place. I'd appeal to the devs humanity and all, if it was them that just locked down the system and walked away. But after being escorted out by the police, sued, and basically given one big "fuck you, then we'll run your software without a license"... frankly, I can't blame them. In that situation, I too would say, "no, fuck you, you deal with it then. You should have thought of getting the cars out before kicking us out."
I mean, seriously: X tries to shaft Y from a position of power, and X unknowingly shafts himself instead. Hard. I don't know about you, but I'll say "serves the idiot right." It's like watching Will E Coyote try to drop a boulder on the Roadrunner, and getting squashed himself instead. Serves the idiot right.
Plus, the analogy isn't exactly accurate, since the developpers didn't exactly "change the locks" after the contract expired. A more accurate analogy would be that Joe's locks were set to expire if he doesn't pay the rent, and it was in Joe's contract all the time. (Dunno how. Maybe a building which uses RFID locks could do just that.) Normally you _would_ expect the landlord to at least let you get your furniture back, yes. But in this case Joe decided to play hardball with the landlord, kicked him out, and had a "ha ha, I'm already in, I can stop paying and there's nothing you can do about it" attitude. Then discovers that the locks expired and he's just locked himself out. And he _still_ doesn't want to pay, but tries to sue the landlord. Would _you_ still expect humanity out of the landlord in that case? I don't know. I'd just have a hearty laugh in Joe's face there.
3. Speaking of slimeball hardball, if you've RTFA, one lawsuit against the municipality is that they brought another company in and tried to crack the software into working without a license. Sorry, that's just as distasteful as it gets.
If you still want to go by Joe's rent analogy, picture bringing a locksmith to just let yourself back in, after the landlord kicked you out. Sorry, it's the kind of thing that makes you think, "WTF were they _smoking_?"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I fully believe that if the city didn't want to have the vehicle movement held hostage, they should NOT have signed the contract. It's now the City of Hoboken's liability. I hope the voters figure out the stupidity of the mayor's staff, and whomever the city's counsel is and act accordingly.
This is not rocket science, nor is it tough law. Pay the bill or the software, that your operation depends on (just like your freaking light bill) goes dead. Whatever you've done that depends on the software (or your freaking light bill) no longer works, and you're liable for what no longer works, or subsequently (actually consequentially) relies on that fact.
So be prepared to pay, or be denied use of it. Pretty darn simple. I applaud them. The taxpayers should act accordingly. The vehicle owners should, too. The person that signed the deal ought to pay the bill or be prepared to justify why not in a method that satisfies all parties. These are business processes. Stop one, and the entire chain becomes corrupted and ceases to function. So they SHOULD PAY THE BILL. Whew. I'm ok now.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It's a giant CD Jukebox....
...For Cars.
That's exactly what I said. I said the software company has the right to do it, but that it is a horrible deal the city shouldn't have entered into.
They did honor the contract, as per the article. However, it expired and they didn't renew it, so there was no more contract. Now they're paying the consequences for buying software that expires. It's a completely ridiculous concept, and I can't believe anyone agrees to it.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Can you believe these freakin robots Tony?
I dunno Frankie, Robot that big, must have huge balls.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Government records could be locked up by DRM and/or proprietary formats just like all these cars got locked up in this garage. Let this be a lesson to all governments -- or better yet, all organizations of any kind -- that if you care about your property, you need to have all the keys to access it.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
From http://www.robopark.com/productline.html
The Robotic Parking Systems Patented Design: Enhanced, patented design whereby all three movements are separated and handled by individual intelligent components with true redundancy. No single failure will ever result in the garage becoming inoperable.
except when we pull the plug There is absolutely no reason why the system would not allow the cars to come out, no new cars getting in, that's O.K.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Does someone know how these robot parkings perform in rush hours?
No fundamental arguments there. In an ideal world, Hoboken _should_ have just bought the software, but the fact is that they were renting it. They even knew very well that they're renting it, since they had switched to a monthly payment plan by the end of 2005. You don't go tell someone "hey, I want to pay you monthly for it" if you think you bought the software. Noone gets sudden ideas like "Hey, I want to pay monthly for this thing I've already bought."
It doesn't seem right to get fleeced on the monthly plan for a mobile phone, instead of paying for it up front, either, yet people do that all the time. Don't ask me why. Between (A) paying a couple hundred bucks up front for the mobile phone, or (B) getting the phone for almost nothing, but getting fleeced a lot more on the contract, you already know what most people do. Cue similar examples about HP printers and getting fleeced on ink for them, or Gilette razors and paying a (minor) king's ransom on blades, etc. People do that kind of contracts. It's not necessarily logical, but it happens all the time.
And anything that involves elected politicians also has the issue of shifting some of the costs onto someone else, or trying to look good on election years even at the cost of getting a worse deal in the long run. I can very easily imagine a scenario where a politician thought it looks better to pay 5500$ per month in the election year, than pay, say, $100,000 up front and be done with it. The first one looks cheaper on the budget, and your average voter won't go through the contracts to see at what long term price that came.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If the logic bomb is unrevealed to a client, e.g. the client is unaware that there is a remedy outside of the contract for damages, then it *might* be fraudulent or even extortive to have placed the logic bomb in the code. If however, the contract stipulates unrevealed or nebulous recourse (e.g. all kinds of things could happen including the software's functionality ceasing) then the signatories are obligated to the terms and the remedies expressed for breach of those terms.
In other words, unrevealed as a possible remedy, there's a problem. An ambiguous (e.g. non-tort or non-mediated) settlement for breach permits a logic bomb. This is how it works under federal law, your mileage might vary in New Jersey; I'm not familiar with NJ tort law, or even coding there.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I read on www.roboticparking.com :
Company Strives to Maintain Its 99.99% Reliability. (Read "less than")
With half a million parkings in this garage, that means that it fails once most days.
Anybody knows what a failure is?
-Car lost
-Car dropped down
-Wrong car returned
-Car shoved into an already full slot
"Fix it"
Your example isn't really analogous to the situation. In this case, the person who owns the car parking space and the person who owns the key to the lock are two different people, and both need to cooperate for you to get your car. In your car parking analogy, the parking space and lock are controlled by the same person.
So, let's make your analogy truly analogous.
Your friend has a garage. He gets a fancy electronic alarm system installed, with an integrated electrical garage door opener, like the system I have.
Your friend says you can park your car in his garage. Then he decides he doesn't want to pay the agreed upon monthly fee for the alarm system monitoring any more.
In response, the security company turns off the alarm system, which has the side effect of disabling the automatic garage door opener they installed and own. As a result, you can't get your car out of your friend's garage.
Now, do you really think the security company would be found guilty of car theft in that situation? I don't. I think the dispute would be between you and your friend.
It would be up to your friend to get his garage door open somehow and release your car, and if that meant ripping the garage door off or partially demolishing a wall that would be his problem, he'd have to hire builders to do that. And if you didn't like having to wait around to get your car, it'd be your friend you'd be suing.
Similarly, it's up to Hoboken to work out a way to get the cars out of their car park. If that involves a crane, it's their own stupid fault, they should have thought of that before they decided to stop paying for the ability to get cars in and out by robot.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Again, I won't argue too much there. This being the real world, there are few clear-cut "good guys". I don't know if the devs were knights in shiny armour. Probably not. You don't see many of those these days, and you see even fewer getting big contracts. I am, however, saying that the municipality acted like complete idiots there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...was parking and unparking cars up until the point the city sent their hired goons in and escorted the techs off the premises. Well, gee golly gee, the crap stopped working! Whoulda thunk it? answer=anyone who spent two seconds pondering it realistically.
The city signed the contract, then obviously didn't want to pay for it anymore, or not as much or whatever. It's entirely their fault. They chose to use robotic parking, closed source software to run the parking, they signed a termed service contract, they decided they were gonna play hardball and bounce the admins because they didn't want to keep paying. This falls under the 'tough noogies' rule then.
No one said that city governments had to be comprised of masterminds,and they got exactly what they contracted for. FOSS, open standards and alternative for parking have existed for a long time, their hired "experts" deep in the bowels of city IT and law action just dropped the ball and thought they could bully and bluff their way into something cheap. It don't work that way, private business is just as mercenary and capitalistic as they can get away with, that's the way US business works.
The city has lawyers and IT people, it was up to them to realise the ramifications of their "escorted off the premises" deal. They choked in other words, they blew it. If you or I get canned at work, "escorted off the premises", we sure as hell aren't going to be working for that dude anymore,and any projects we are working on become their problem, and no, they don't get to automagically own your stuff just because it's in place there, and in this nation IP is considered "property". You get to go home with your property, in this case, their IP license. Tough noogies for Hoboken. Innocent car owners? They need to get mad at their city goofs, the parking company was still working moving their cars until ordered not to.
Don't like the license or terms of a contract, don't sign it, it's that easy. Can't look ahead and see where you might have some problems, get a different job where you are more capable. Don't want to continue with your contracted service, don't complain when it stops working and you got to figure it out yourself or think about breaking the law to continue. Don't like the laws, don't elect people who think closed source software and patents are a "good idea and good for business". And etc. They system worked as it is designed to work! Elected idiots hired stupid people to contract with people who are using the system where IP is considered very valuable property. And all that falls under voters who don't care, they elect people based on how they look in 30 second soundbites on TV and say the buzz words they want to hear. I got zero sympathy anymore when software decsiions backfire on people when they have shown they don't give much of a crap in the first place.
This is a side issue, but it's the same as anything else in government. I vote third party or independent, and have for a long long time now, the other 99% of the electorate (who keep voting in these D and R people naievely expecting things to change for the better) seems to think I am "wasting my vote", so they can go right ahead and assume complete and full responsibility for governmental screwups like this one and about anything else you read about daily, because I certainly didn't vote for their particular stupid goofball. ha! Double ha!
Frankly, I think this parking garage situation is funny and a prime example of how these closed source situations can bite people in the ass because they just utterly refuse to think ahead a little. I think with another 10,000 situations like this happening across the nation (how about that blackberry RIM job?) that maybe on the federal level they just might realise they might have made a mistake and maybe they might rethink software patents,what software under what license they contract for to run government services,what they pay for stuff, what they might want to pay for in the future, standards and formats, etc.
Maybe it's like alcoholism, the alky has to hit rock bottom before he even sees there's a problem and decides to do anything about it.
Anybody whose car was locked up by Robotic Parking sued them yet? They are innocent third parties in the dispute, and I believe (IANAL) that Robotic Parking is liable for depriving them of the use of their property.
As a Hoboken resident, I can tell you that the parking situation is horrendous. There are many times that the city's very narrow streets are either nearly impassible or just impassible because of the parking problems. At one point a few years ago, the mayor put the city under an illegal lockdown because the parking problems were just so severe.
There are a few major parking garages in the city, and parking is a high premium. Also, there is a college (Stevens Institute of Technology, where I attend classes) that takes up a large portion of the city with its own parking lots. There is a long-standing conflict over the parking the school would provide to the city in one of its new buildings.
The city is very small (approximately 2 square miles) and very dense (approximately 500,000 full-times residents). The reason for the size and density is the city's proximity to downtown Manhattan and the financial district (the city is quite literally directly across the Hudson River from downtown and midtown Manhattan). The road system dates back to the late 1600s and is mostly very narrow streets with limited parking. This is something that I can't stress enough, as its a cause of the traffic and parking problems.
These lots were designed as a means to try to get rid of some blockages and to provide parking to residents. Unfortunately, the effect was relatively limited. The garage was an extra fee on top of an already-required Hoboken-specific decal for parking four or more hours.
That said, with the problems that the city government has had in the past, it doesn't surprise me that something like this would be done. It's not so much an argument of open-source versus closed-source software, as it is about government responsibility. The city, to my knowledge, did not take account of the fact that the contract was to end in a few days, or that there were residents' cars in the lot. Instead of posting notices that the cars had to be emptied on this date (in order to remove the equipment, this just "happened."
City government and its poor planning is to blame for this, not software liscensing and F/LOSS vs. closed source.
freeflux-powered open-source blog
It's not quite clear what the nature of the "software" that is involved here and where it was running from. I can't believe that they didn't have the code that actually ran the machinery isolated on an industrial computer(s) and inaccessable to anyone but technicians. There also ought to be manual controls running on even more dependable hardware and firmware, independent of any front end GUI interface they have for the lot attendants.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I'm not sure I want a robot parking my car. I mean, it's going to have to adjust my driver's seat and it's such a pain to put all of that back the way it was...
Seriously, I did. I had the same idea for a garage a few years ago. I dismissed it as being enormously expensive and inefficient, particularly compared to simply adding floors to the garage.
Also, the possibility of failures crossed my mind...
see topic.
Gravity Sucks
Here is a great open source SCADA program that is released under GPL license: www.pvbrowser.org
Dennis Clarke, general manager of Robotics, said the city has no right to an operating manual. "If you own the copyright, you have a right to use it,"
This is wrong is so many ways. First, the right to "use" is one of the patent rights, not one of the rights in copyrighted works. The exclusive rights in copyrighted works at set out in 17 USC 106, aptly titled "Exclusive rights in copyrighted works." They are: to make copies, to make derivative works, to distribute copies, to perform or display publicly (for artistic works), and to make digital audio transmissions (for recordings).
It is patent rights which say that the patent holder has the exclusive right to "makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells [his] patented invention," as set out in 35 USC 271. They are totally different laws. The general manager of Robotics is wrong, wrong, wrong. (This is putting aside any limitations on the rights which may come about through the first sale doctrine, etc.)
Now the Robotics people may have signed a contract with the city saying who has the right to a manual, etc. I sure as hell hope they do, because if they don't, that speaks volumes about the incompetence of both the lawyers of Robotics and the city's lawyers. But then the issue of whether they have a right to the manual comes down to New Jersey contract law, not copyright.
With great power comes great fan noise.
If Hoboken had specified "Open Source"* software in the original RFP, then they would own the license to use the software regardless of what company they chose to build and manage the garage. A good RFP would also specify that the software include documentation and training for city workers to serve as a backup if the original contractor went out of business or got predatory.
*As in software with an open source license, such as GPL.
From TA:
"This case is about them using software without a license," said Dennis Clarke, chief operating officer of Robotic Parking, in a telephone interview last week."
It doesn't seem like anyone here lives or has lived in Hoboken. A couple facts:
Hoboken is/has been notoriously corrupt.
When the Parking authority board went to Germany to see a robotic garage, they took their families on the city dime.
The Russo administration that negotiated this contract has already been voted out.
Most residents of Hoboken park on the street.
Many residents of Hoboken work in the city, taking public transportation (bus to PA, PATH, Ferries, etc.).
The city cleans the streets. You have to move your car that you don't drive to work at least once if not twice a week.
To people in other places, 'car locked up' means you're screwed.
In Hoboken, it means you don't have to move your car!
This certainly does not sound like something open-source would do. More than likely, an open-souce program but running Windows as the Operating System.
This problem has occured before. On the other hand, the security robots who run the parking garrage are not very friendly either.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Ugh. I will never tip a robot valet with Canadian money ever again!
This page http://www.robopark.com/productline.html on the Robotic website has the following text:
"The Robotic Parking Systems Patented Design: Enhanced, patented design whereby all three movements are separated and handled by individual intelligent components with true redundancy. No single failure will ever result in the garage becoming inoperable."
Except if your software licence is in dispute.
Advertising Software
The real problem here is that the city bought some software with a wonky license. If they'd gotten a permanent license it would have cost more at the start (you'd have to pay for the full development costs up front), but less over time. It also looks like there was a severe lack of performance clauses and transitional periods in the contract. Bad negotiations generally is my reading here.
It also sounds like the company with the software is trying to 'tie' their software to the hardware -- seemingly claiming that the only way to use the hardware is to use their software, and when you toss the software you have to replace the hardware too. Now, if that's really what they're effectively claiming, then I'd be inclined to tell them to stuff that idea where the sun don't shine.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Actually, it's very relevant: if Hoboken had the rights to modify the software ...
Construction workers routinely will take two road-signs and cut/weld them to make a new sign (with a different message). They do this as part of their job... Or they will modify a sign by taping/painting over part of it to show the intended message.
But low and behold, if someone takes two programs and cuts/patches them together to make a new one, all hell breaks loose in civil and/or criminal courts!
I can only wonder at the insanity that would follow if road-signs had EULAs on them.
What's wrong with "buyer" or "purchaser"?
Ydco co
A few factoids I can contribute from having followed this in the local press:
:(Boston Globe article) (http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/200 6/01/30/robodude_wheres_my_car/). I personally know a couple who had the door torn off their car by it. As far as I know, the robogarage contractor paid for the damages.
p olitics-in-hoboken.html#5corruption. Can't claim to know enough to say for sure that source is authoritative. However, based on their track record, my inclination is to believe a good percentage of any charges of corruption or malfeasance on the city's part are justified.
The garage has killed two cars
The robotic parking folks were fighting with the city from day one, when the garage was still under construction. An (openly biased) account of the city's history with the garage is here: http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2005/01/parking-
The US Constitution doesn't mention Copyright or Patent by name, but includes a section that identifies the need for such structures. If we didn't have this, there would exist an entire subculture of predatory corporations who only existed to swipe the inventions of others. So yes, it's supposed to level the field (i.e. you have an opportnity to create/invent without having to fight the IP-swipers.) Unfortunately, it's being abused right now. The Patent system needs an overhaul pretty desperately.
"Based on the fact that if you defraud a mentally retarded person or an old person with alzheimer's out of their money due to their lack of intellect, you're stealing from the handicapped"
Theft and fraud are different crimes (just like theft and copyright infringment are different crimes). The definitions of the two are distinct. If you defraud the handicapped, you are defrauding them. You are not stealing from them.
Where were you when the voynix came?