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London Hacked Its Own Traffic Lights To Make Sure It Got the Olympics
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.'"
Last thing any sane person would want is being constantly followed. Now we know the Brits are willing to do this if they think they can get something out of it. So far for privacy. Oh and next time you're in the car with your pregnant wife trying to get to an hospital but can't because the lights are red... Well, the police chief is probably on his way home and needed the lights to be green...
It's "Potemkin village".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
closing down the whole street for the convoy.
Cancel it, it sucks.
It's not hacking...it's optimization.
The little people get to wait for the important people -- like the Olympic committee, or in the future perhaps anyone with enough money -- when the city changes its traffic patterns for them. After all, it is not really equality if the important people have to wait for red lights just like everyone else, right?
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.
Palm trees and 8
(Article Submitter)
The person who wrote the first Italian Job got the idea from London's first traffic control system.
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?
Changing traffic lights is small fry. To even be permitted bid, potential host countries must enact laws to protect the commercial interests of the Olympics. I find it quite distasteful that we are paying billions (which could be much better used, especially in the current economic climate) to host their little jamboree and we bent over the barrel and let us dictate tweaks to part of our legal system.
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.
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 your city wins the bid to host the Olympics, my advice: Move Out.
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.
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 Goldman.
You may complain about Mitt's naive political corruption, but you are ignoring the elephant sitting on your face to do so - forgive us if your complaints seem a bit muffled.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.