My recent Sprint to T-Mobile switch was per the need to replace a failing phone, and Sprint's inability to offer a price comparable to what I'd pay T-Mobile on a new activation. I spoke to two different agents, telling them specifically that I'd leave if they didn't offer me a better deal.
In all fairness, I'd previously switched from T-Mobile to Sprint for the same reason.
There must be some accounting reason why both carriers would sooner lose a ($99/mth, auto-paid on time every month) customer rather than offer replacement phones at lower cost to retain them. They both got me to switch by discounting the phones anyway.
This is not how bank fraud should be done. The right and proper way is to become too big to fail, to big to jail, rig the LIBOR rates, create systematic rigging, award oneself huge salaries and bonuses, threaten worldwide economic collapse, hold governments to ransom and get huge bail out money. The master criminals running the banks are dismayed by petty criminals stealing from them.
I believe "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is where I first ran across
“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often when a client says something along the lines of "I couldn't do your job" I'll respond with "I don't know how to do your job either". They usually appreciate that.
We recently invited the local police department's anti-fraud specialist to speak to our local computer users group about this and similar topics in the wake of this scam robo-dialing it's way across our area. The officer gave an interesting talk, and shared several anecdotes about scam methods that were new to me. If you have a local computer users group, civic organization, seniors group, or the like, a presentation like this is a great way to spread the word on scam prevention.
Real world bandwidth use in our cord cutter household of 3 actively used TVs attached to consoles with netflix and hulu accounts peaks in the mid 250GB range, with most months around 200GB, per the bandwidth meter of our DDWRT equipped router. 40+ usable channels of OTA content with many channels offering beautiful uncompressed HD on the primary TV via a media PC also helps.
Imagine a world where the stock market is a small piece of the actual market. It's just a place where the chumps, who don't have HFT, have to trade at a loss. Meanwhile the real markets are competing networks maintained by various deep-pocketed organizations which trade whatever they want to trade at whatever speeds they want to trade at.
The crude oil commodity market (for one) has worked like this for some time, with a "visible" market (NYMEX originally) trading a minority of the futures, and private futures trades dwarfing the volume of the NYMEX.
I was getting worried about our usage at home, since the kids now watch a few hours of Neflix a day along with out other internet usage
Our home likely has above average streaming and Internet use- 3 TVs with actively used Netflix and Hulu streaming devices, 4 active PCs, multiple gaming consoles, etc. The ddwrt wan bandwidth monitor in our router reports our monthly downloads over the last 6 months are in the 110-220GB range, with the average below 200GB.
I've just run the simulator in TFA on my known variables for the last year (I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and had to make some very controlled, measured, changes to my lifestyle which got me back to being healthy).
It said I'd have lost over 30Kg over that year. I actually lost just under 10Kg, but went from being unable to run for more than 100m to completing a 12Km fun-run and confidently entering for a half-marathon in 3 months' time. I also lost about 6inches off my waistline (as in I gained a waist!).
Also, humans are not controlled by variables and equations. The equations describe an average person, who doesn't exist. They're useful approximations, but in the end just approximations.
Glad to hear of your success. Agreed that the simulator is flawed. As one who actively tracked caloric intake, improved food quality, and increased activity in the process of losing over 150lbs in the past 5 years, the simulator's assumptions about caloric intake are way off for me. The simulator's suggested "lose weight" calorie level is my personal "maintain weight" calorie level.
Wrong, I have it and it works (at least the Android client and web interface, I don't use Windows or Mac), enable doc in the control panel or request it to the domain admin, it is the same Google Docs permission
Paying apps user here, not working for me. I visit https://drive.google.com/start#home and get "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." Visit the domain management page> settings> Drive and Docs Settings. "Allow users to install Google Drive for Mac/PC" and "Allow users to install Google Drive apps" were both already checked. Unchecked them, saved, re-checked them, saved. Refreshing https://drive.google.com/start#home still shows "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." I get the same "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." from my Android phone. Guess I'll try later, glad it's working for you...
Also, when is Google going to fix Contacts so that non-domain Contacts can be shared between domain users without resorting to third party workarounds?
A client recently had a PC fail under warranty, so I took it in to the local Best Buy where they purchased it for repair, hoping to save them time and the costs of packaging and shipping. It likely needs a new motherboard. Three times they have failed to repair the verifiable, duplicate able issue, eventually telling me there was nothing more they could do. They've emailed me service surveys where I've expressed my dissatisfaction, and asked to be contacted. They have not contacted me. I ended up sending the machine to the manufacturer, and won't make the mistake of taking a machine to BB for repair again.
Make sure your legs are close enough that you can easily flatten the brake pedal to the floor.
Many times while teaching how to perform panic stops at http://streetsurvival.org/ schools, we find that the young drivers don't or can't push the brake pedal hard enough to activate ABS. In those cases we'll tell them to use both feet.
After seeing websites like "khan academy" it may be that textbooks are obsolete. Why keep reinventing the wheel if there are excellent individual lessons available for free online? Clearly the textbook market is turning into a scam because of the disconnect between buyers and sellers.
Perhaps entities accrediting teaching institutions should begin accrediting textbooks - formalizing the process of textbook selection instead of pushing this crucial decision to the lowest levels.
Another intriguing new system is the http://schoolofone.org/ pilot program in with multiple teaching modes- group lesson, online independant, online with tutor, etc. Lessons are customized for each student daily by an algorithm that measures progress, and adapts lesson mode based on how well each student does with a given subject and mode. Each lesson module is evaluated for it's effectiveness, and under performing modules are identified and updated. This freakonomics podcast discusses it http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/05/12/freakonomics-radio-how-is-a-bad-radio-station-like-the-public-school-system/
If I remember correctly, there was a change at the end of the 90's that changed the way that the oil market was traded, and it decoupled the price of oil from the actual supply and demand model to a speculative model. The reason oil prices jump dramatically whenever Iran sneezes is not because the actual supply changes, but because speculators think it will change. The oil market is very happy when the price goes up now but the supply doesn't actually decrease, because in that window between the 2 events they make a crap-ton more money.
"The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market" By Leah McGrath Goodman is a good recent history of the NYMEX- which became the futures market for oil and petrol, and how the oil futures markets (dis)function.
Skunk Works is a great book with many great stories about the U2, F-117, and SR-71 programs. I got my copy off the shelf to be sure I didn't mis-remember some items. The U-2 flew up to at least 74,500 feet with a 65,000 cruising altitude. Missions could exceed 6000 miles and last 10-12 hours. The window between stall speed and overspeed buffeting could be so narrow that "our test pilots reported that sometimes during a turn the inside wing would be shaking in stall buffet while the outside wing was shaking more violently in Mach buffet.", and the wings were so light that they flapped up and down. The chapter about the unsuccessful hydrogen plane program is titled "Blowing up Burbank"
One of the US crash safety standards required by the NHTSA that adds weight and expense to new vehicles is for "unrestrained drivers", despite the fact that under 10% of US drivers go un-belted these days. The punch line is that the IIHS found the NHTSA test not very useful, because un-bented passengers often aren't held in place in front of the intended safety devices.
Car and Driver recently tested several different cars with lane assist and adaptive cruise to see how far they could drive hands free. None went very far without leaving the lane.
NYT financial columnists Andrew Ross Sorkin's book "To Big To Fail" documents events approx from Lehman Brothers' collapse to TARP.
Chapter 20 details how CEOs of the "big 9" we summoned to an unexplained a meeting by Henry Paulson and told by Treasury that they would all be participating in TARP, and how much each would receive: "Bank of America: $25 billion; Citigroup: $25 billion; Goldman Sachs: $10 billion; JP Morgan: $25 billion; Morgan Stanley: $10 billion; State Street: $10 billion, Wells Fargo: $25 billion." (the book omits who the last two banks were and how much they were to receive) When Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich objected, Henry Paulson to him "Your regulator is sitting right there" "And you are going to get a call tomorrow morning telling you you're undercapitalized and that you won't be able to raise money in the private markets".
Other points of interest in the book- The picture of the $9 billion check Mitsubishi used to invest in Morgan Stanley
Personally, I enjoyed Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" much more.
A good driver, by definition, mitigates the bad driver by taking appropriate actions to reduce the risk. It is not how you drive, its how you manager the drivers around you that makes you a good driver.
You are stopped at a red light, cars are stopped ahead of and to either side of you. Driver approaching behind you is distracted and doesn't see that you are stopped. Any suggestions for mitigating this impending collision?
I wonder if they've had any success with the opposite -- trying to get rid of memories. I bet there'd be a big market.
Yes, inhibiting protein creation while a memory is being recalled, which actually re-creates the memory, can prevent the memory from storing again. There have been human trials. This Radiolab discusses it http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/
Not idiotic at all, you made good inferences. The current popular systems have an optical beam transceiver and reflector pair at both the start and finish lines, which are hard wired to a fairly simple timing box with multiple time displays that can track 2 or more (typically 4) times simultaneously (which also limits how many vehicles can be on course at once), with the oldest time being replaced by the newest time, so timing integrity is not dependent on the PC, but on the "simpler" hardware inside the timing box. As events are timed to the thousandth of a second- with "dead heats" occurring even then, depending on a PC for timing accuracy is not the best choice. At our events, one of the T&S staff's job is "manual time log"- writing every new time down direct from the timer box, along with the vehicle or event causing the trip- tumbleweeds, false trips by workers, rain, snow (which happened this year), etc, to generate an independent audit trail of results. The timing box sends new times to a PC running the T&S software via a serial connection. The T&S software operators enter cars in the start queue into the software, make adjustments for wrong/ missing numbers, false trips, extra trips, etc in real time. Cars are sent onto course approx. every 30 seconds for a safety margin, with runs lasting from 30-70 seconds depending on the size of the course. On a large course, 3-4 cars is about the max on course at a time.
Current optical timing systems for autocross time to the thousandth of a second- and there are dead heats even then. So GPS is no where near accurate enough.
Factoid- prior to national events two parallel timing systems are set up and tested against each other to ensure consistent results. IIRC, anything greater than 5 thousands variation between them calls a timing system into question.
maybe let's at least try to read the article and then the Wikipedia article about whatever we are posting about and at least attempt to flame those that don't. Nobody up for that?
If we look at this a bit further, the obvious alternative to US treasuries would have been AAA rated securities, such as the collateralized debt obligations which more or less caused the current economic crisis. That makes this paper pretty foresighted.
Ok, I've read. From page 1 of the paper "The financial services industry has grown tremendously in this country over the past eight years, and done a very good job of handling growth and the increased risks that accompany it. The industry accomplishes this task most fundamentally by separating risks by type, making them easier to evaluate and price." From this, I question that the paper is "foresighted"
It was the failure to understand CDOs and accurately assess their risks by the issuing banks, S&P and Moodys, and their government regulators that caused the most recent financial calamity. Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" has good insight into the mortgage bond market melt down.
As there was no significant (not just token) firings, prison time, and lawsuits for the banks, ratings agencies, and their federal regulators, another round of this type of economic catastrophe will occur again soon, and on a larger scale.
I'm an autocrosser with experience setting up, maintaining, and troubleshooting both an older T&S system, and the new system used by the SCCA at national events. Ours was the first local region to install the new "national" system, so I'm familiar with the "issues" surrounding the current T&S options.
There are several practical issues with optical systems for automated vehicle recognition- number and class markings are already tough to get consistent without requiring an additional barcode or QR large enough (some competitors would gripe about a huge barcode) to be useful at the 30'+ distance finish line sensors are set back to minimize getting hit by spinning cars. Add in the fact that existing markings some times fall off on course, or competitors in dual driver cars forget to change numbers between runs, and it's tough to be certain you'd have something consistent to try to recognize.
The national T&S system uses a wireless barcode reader operated by a worker in the starting queue to read stickers placed on competitors helmets to register cars in the T&S software. Locally, we position the T&S trailer to allow the operators to manually enter vehicles as they enter the start queue. Human eyes really are the most flexible here "shouldn't 80ES be 180ES?".
I like one of the comments above about a webcam triggered by the finish light taking a picture with a clock display in it. Unless there was OCR to immediately post the result to the software, the results feedback would be too slow for our region- we have real time announcement of finish stats, and the software can post results to a web server real time for smartphone access in paddock. The T&S software uploads a small file to the web server in the 20ish second gap between finishing cars.
Apologies for not offering solutions, but hopefully the extra info about some of the issues can help shape a solution.
Slashdot Mirror
My recent Sprint to T-Mobile switch was per the need to replace a failing phone, and Sprint's inability to offer a price comparable to what I'd pay T-Mobile on a new activation. I spoke to two different agents, telling them specifically that I'd leave if they didn't offer me a better deal. In all fairness, I'd previously switched from T-Mobile to Sprint for the same reason. There must be some accounting reason why both carriers would sooner lose a ($99/mth, auto-paid on time every month) customer rather than offer replacement phones at lower cost to retain them. They both got me to switch by discounting the phones anyway.
This is not how bank fraud should be done. The right and proper way is to become too big to fail, to big to jail, rig the LIBOR rates, create systematic rigging, award oneself huge salaries and bonuses, threaten worldwide economic collapse, hold governments to ransom and get huge bail out money. The master criminals running the banks are dismayed by petty criminals stealing from them.
After LIBOR, it appears that the new big(ger) thing it to manipulate interest rate swaps http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425
“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Often when a client says something along the lines of "I couldn't do your job" I'll respond with "I don't know how to do your job either". They usually appreciate that.
In addition to Micheal Lewis' excellent Moneyball, his Liar's Poker and The Big Short are also great reads.
We recently invited the local police department's anti-fraud specialist to speak to our local computer users group about this and similar topics in the wake of this scam robo-dialing it's way across our area. The officer gave an interesting talk, and shared several anecdotes about scam methods that were new to me. If you have a local computer users group, civic organization, seniors group, or the like, a presentation like this is a great way to spread the word on scam prevention.
Real world bandwidth use in our cord cutter household of 3 actively used TVs attached to consoles with netflix and hulu accounts peaks in the mid 250GB range, with most months around 200GB, per the bandwidth meter of our DDWRT equipped router. 40+ usable channels of OTA content with many channels offering beautiful uncompressed HD on the primary TV via a media PC also helps.
Imagine a world where the stock market is a small piece of the actual market. It's just a place where the chumps, who don't have HFT, have to trade at a loss. Meanwhile the real markets are competing networks maintained by various deep-pocketed organizations which trade whatever they want to trade at whatever speeds they want to trade at.
The crude oil commodity market (for one) has worked like this for some time, with a "visible" market (NYMEX originally) trading a minority of the futures, and private futures trades dwarfing the volume of the NYMEX.
I was getting worried about our usage at home, since the kids now watch a few hours of Neflix a day along with out other internet usage
Our home likely has above average streaming and Internet use- 3 TVs with actively used Netflix and Hulu streaming devices, 4 active PCs, multiple gaming consoles, etc. The ddwrt wan bandwidth monitor in our router reports our monthly downloads over the last 6 months are in the 110-220GB range, with the average below 200GB.
I've just run the simulator in TFA on my known variables for the last year (I got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and had to make some very controlled, measured, changes to my lifestyle which got me back to being healthy). It said I'd have lost over 30Kg over that year. I actually lost just under 10Kg, but went from being unable to run for more than 100m to completing a 12Km fun-run and confidently entering for a half-marathon in 3 months' time. I also lost about 6inches off my waistline (as in I gained a waist!).
Also, humans are not controlled by variables and equations. The equations describe an average person, who doesn't exist. They're useful approximations, but in the end just approximations.
Glad to hear of your success. Agreed that the simulator is flawed. As one who actively tracked caloric intake, improved food quality, and increased activity in the process of losing over 150lbs in the past 5 years, the simulator's assumptions about caloric intake are way off for me. The simulator's suggested "lose weight" calorie level is my personal "maintain weight" calorie level.
Wrong, I have it and it works (at least the Android client and web interface, I don't use Windows or Mac), enable doc in the control panel or request it to the domain admin, it is the same Google Docs permission
Paying apps user here, not working for me. I visit https://drive.google.com/start#home and get "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." Visit the domain management page> settings> Drive and Docs Settings. "Allow users to install Google Drive for Mac/PC" and "Allow users to install Google Drive apps" were both already checked. Unchecked them, saved, re-checked them, saved. Refreshing https://drive.google.com/start#home still shows "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." I get the same "Google Drive is not yet enabled for the XXXX domain." from my Android phone. Guess I'll try later, glad it's working for you...
Also, when is Google going to fix Contacts so that non-domain Contacts can be shared between domain users without resorting to third party workarounds?
A client recently had a PC fail under warranty, so I took it in to the local Best Buy where they purchased it for repair, hoping to save them time and the costs of packaging and shipping. It likely needs a new motherboard. Three times they have failed to repair the verifiable, duplicate able issue, eventually telling me there was nothing more they could do. They've emailed me service surveys where I've expressed my dissatisfaction, and asked to be contacted. They have not contacted me. I ended up sending the machine to the manufacturer, and won't make the mistake of taking a machine to BB for repair again.
Make sure your legs are close enough that you can easily flatten the brake pedal to the floor.
Many times while teaching how to perform panic stops at http://streetsurvival.org/ schools, we find that the young drivers don't or can't push the brake pedal hard enough to activate ABS. In those cases we'll tell them to use both feet.
After seeing websites like "khan academy" it may be that textbooks are obsolete. Why keep reinventing the wheel if there are excellent individual lessons available for free online? Clearly the textbook market is turning into a scam because of the disconnect between buyers and sellers.
Perhaps entities accrediting teaching institutions should begin accrediting textbooks - formalizing the process of textbook selection instead of pushing this crucial decision to the lowest levels.
Another intriguing new system is the http://schoolofone.org/ pilot program in with multiple teaching modes- group lesson, online independant, online with tutor, etc. Lessons are customized for each student daily by an algorithm that measures progress, and adapts lesson mode based on how well each student does with a given subject and mode. Each lesson module is evaluated for it's effectiveness, and under performing modules are identified and updated. This freakonomics podcast discusses it http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/05/12/freakonomics-radio-how-is-a-bad-radio-station-like-the-public-school-system/
Daniel Suarez writes about this in his excellent novels Daemon and Freedom. Here's a video by him along those lines http://fora.tv/2008/08/08/Daniel_Suarez_Daemon_Bot-Mediated_Reality
If I remember correctly, there was a change at the end of the 90's that changed the way that the oil market was traded, and it decoupled the price of oil from the actual supply and demand model to a speculative model. The reason oil prices jump dramatically whenever Iran sneezes is not because the actual supply changes, but because speculators think it will change. The oil market is very happy when the price goes up now but the supply doesn't actually decrease, because in that window between the 2 events they make a crap-ton more money.
"The Asylum: The Renegades Who Hijacked the World's Oil Market" By Leah McGrath Goodman is a good recent history of the NYMEX- which became the futures market for oil and petrol, and how the oil futures markets (dis)function.
I really enjoyed Ben Rich's book on Skunk Works.
Skunk Works is a great book with many great stories about the U2, F-117, and SR-71 programs. I got my copy off the shelf to be sure I didn't mis-remember some items. The U-2 flew up to at least 74,500 feet with a 65,000 cruising altitude. Missions could exceed 6000 miles and last 10-12 hours. The window between stall speed and overspeed buffeting could be so narrow that "our test pilots reported that sometimes during a turn the inside wing would be shaking in stall buffet while the outside wing was shaking more violently in Mach buffet.", and the wings were so light that they flapped up and down. The chapter about the unsuccessful hydrogen plane program is titled "Blowing up Burbank"
One of the US crash safety standards required by the NHTSA that adds weight and expense to new vehicles is for "unrestrained drivers", despite the fact that under 10% of US drivers go un-belted these days. The punch line is that the IIHS found the NHTSA test not very useful, because un-bented passengers often aren't held in place in front of the intended safety devices.
Car and Driver recently tested several different cars with lane assist and adaptive cruise to see how far they could drive hands free. None went very far without leaving the lane.
Chapter 20 details how CEOs of the "big 9" we summoned to an unexplained a meeting by Henry Paulson and told by Treasury that they would all be participating in TARP, and how much each would receive: "Bank of America: $25 billion; Citigroup: $25 billion; Goldman Sachs: $10 billion; JP Morgan: $25 billion; Morgan Stanley: $10 billion; State Street: $10 billion, Wells Fargo: $25 billion." (the book omits who the last two banks were and how much they were to receive) When Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich objected, Henry Paulson to him "Your regulator is sitting right there" "And you are going to get a call tomorrow morning telling you you're undercapitalized and that you won't be able to raise money in the private markets".
Other points of interest in the book- The picture of the $9 billion check Mitsubishi used to invest in Morgan Stanley
Personally, I enjoyed Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" much more.
A good driver, by definition, mitigates the bad driver by taking appropriate actions to reduce the risk. It is not how you drive, its how you manager the drivers around you that makes you a good driver.
You are stopped at a red light, cars are stopped ahead of and to either side of you. Driver approaching behind you is distracted and doesn't see that you are stopped. Any suggestions for mitigating this impending collision?
I wonder if they've had any success with the opposite -- trying to get rid of memories. I bet there'd be a big market.
Yes, inhibiting protein creation while a memory is being recalled, which actually re-creates the memory, can prevent the memory from storing again. There have been human trials. This Radiolab discusses it http://www.radiolab.org/2007/jun/07/
Not idiotic at all, you made good inferences. The current popular systems have an optical beam transceiver and reflector pair at both the start and finish lines, which are hard wired to a fairly simple timing box with multiple time displays that can track 2 or more (typically 4) times simultaneously (which also limits how many vehicles can be on course at once), with the oldest time being replaced by the newest time, so timing integrity is not dependent on the PC, but on the "simpler" hardware inside the timing box. As events are timed to the thousandth of a second- with "dead heats" occurring even then, depending on a PC for timing accuracy is not the best choice. At our events, one of the T&S staff's job is "manual time log"- writing every new time down direct from the timer box, along with the vehicle or event causing the trip- tumbleweeds, false trips by workers, rain, snow (which happened this year), etc, to generate an independent audit trail of results. The timing box sends new times to a PC running the T&S software via a serial connection. The T&S software operators enter cars in the start queue into the software, make adjustments for wrong/ missing numbers, false trips, extra trips, etc in real time. Cars are sent onto course approx. every 30 seconds for a safety margin, with runs lasting from 30-70 seconds depending on the size of the course. On a large course, 3-4 cars is about the max on course at a time.
Factoid- prior to national events two parallel timing systems are set up and tested against each other to ensure consistent results. IIRC, anything greater than 5 thousands variation between them calls a timing system into question.
maybe let's at least try to read the article and then the Wikipedia article about whatever we are posting about and at least attempt to flame those that don't. Nobody up for that?
If we look at this a bit further, the obvious alternative to US treasuries would have been AAA rated securities, such as the collateralized debt obligations which more or less caused the current economic crisis. That makes this paper pretty foresighted.
Ok, I've read. From page 1 of the paper "The financial services industry has grown tremendously in this country over the past eight years, and done a very good job of handling growth and the increased risks that accompany it. The industry accomplishes this task most fundamentally by separating risks by type, making them easier to evaluate and price." From this, I question that the paper is "foresighted"
It was the failure to understand CDOs and accurately assess their risks by the issuing banks, S&P and Moodys, and their government regulators that caused the most recent financial calamity. Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" has good insight into the mortgage bond market melt down.
As there was no significant (not just token) firings, prison time, and lawsuits for the banks, ratings agencies, and their federal regulators, another round of this type of economic catastrophe will occur again soon, and on a larger scale.
There are several practical issues with optical systems for automated vehicle recognition- number and class markings are already tough to get consistent without requiring an additional barcode or QR large enough (some competitors would gripe about a huge barcode) to be useful at the 30'+ distance finish line sensors are set back to minimize getting hit by spinning cars. Add in the fact that existing markings some times fall off on course, or competitors in dual driver cars forget to change numbers between runs, and it's tough to be certain you'd have something consistent to try to recognize.
The national T&S system uses a wireless barcode reader operated by a worker in the starting queue to read stickers placed on competitors helmets to register cars in the T&S software. Locally, we position the T&S trailer to allow the operators to manually enter vehicles as they enter the start queue. Human eyes really are the most flexible here "shouldn't 80ES be 180ES?".
I like one of the comments above about a webcam triggered by the finish light taking a picture with a clock display in it. Unless there was OCR to immediately post the result to the software, the results feedback would be too slow for our region- we have real time announcement of finish stats, and the software can post results to a web server real time for smartphone access in paddock. The T&S software uploads a small file to the web server in the 20ish second gap between finishing cars.
Apologies for not offering solutions, but hopefully the extra info about some of the issues can help shape a solution.