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NULL license plate not such a bright idea

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Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#271

Post by checktheorder »

indianSummer wrote: post #70

I own a rare collector car with a three-digit VIN. This has caused endless hassles at the DMV as well as the insurance office. Sometimes we find success by prepending the necessary number of zeros, before the VIN. Other instances in the same system require appending zeros after the VIN. The true VIN has a hyphen but that never makes it into the DMV's system. One time I got stuck in a particularly nasty loop where the…

>I own a rare collector car with a three-digit VIN. This has caused endless hassles at the DMV as well as the insurance office.

I have a similar problem with my own identity. I was born in Canada's smallest province, PEI, and now live in its largest, Ontario. Some Ontario government software seems to have problems recognizing the relatively low numbers on PEI birth certificates.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#272

Post by russdill »

_lo3k wrote: post #6

When I was a foolhardy college student I figured out that if the cited vehicle make on my city parking ticket didn’t match my registration, I could get appeal the ticket via a web form very easily and succeed every time. Naturally I removed the badges from my car and put on different badges from another manufacturer. After a while they started to cite me as “other” and the trick no longer worked.

I really enjoyed my parkingservices@ email address at my university. Took them many years to catch up and take that alias away.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#273

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

lucideer wrote: post #261
zrobotics wrote: post #246

"Droogie contacted the DMV who told him to change his plate. He refused because he didn't do anything wrong. While they wiped the fines off his record, unfortunately for him, they didn't fix the problem in the system so once again, Droogie has accrued another $6,000 in tickets" So wait, after he knew this was the outcome from using this plate he just decided 'nope, the DMV will definitely rectify this error'? Maybe h…

Its a matter of principle though. Droogie hasn't done anything wrong, and is receiving fines due to errors made by the DMV. You're right that when faced with a choice between acting on principle vs acting pragmatically/for one's own benefit/convenience/need, people often don't have the luxury of (or patience for) choosing the former. But it's nice to see when someone does.

TBH it's a very silly principle to fight for: "I DEMAND YOU HAVE NO BUGS!" And the DMV could just as well argue "Sorry, the bug is that we never should have accepted your NULL plate application in the first place, so we'll send you a non-vanity plate".

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#275

Post by ajross »

lucideer wrote: post #261
zrobotics wrote: post #246

"Droogie contacted the DMV who told him to change his plate. He refused because he didn't do anything wrong. While they wiped the fines off his record, unfortunately for him, they didn't fix the problem in the system so once again, Droogie has accrued another $6,000 in tickets" So wait, after he knew this was the outcome from using this plate he just decided 'nope, the DMV will definitely rectify this error'? Maybe h…

Its a matter of principle though. Droogie hasn't done anything wrong, and is receiving fines due to errors made by the DMV. You're right that when faced with a choice between acting on principle vs acting pragmatically/for one's own benefit/convenience/need, people often don't have the luxury of (or patience for) choosing the former. But it's nice to see when someone does.

> Droogie hasn't done anything wrong

That's arguable, actually. The article states, but doesn't provide evidence, that Droogie "hoped it might confuse automatic license plate readers or the DMV's ticketing system".

If this was done in an attempt to evade enforcement of existing laws, then sorry: that's a crime, folks. You aren't allowed to pen test live systems!

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#276

Post by outworlder »

jopsen wrote: post #237
cortesoft wrote: post #11

I love when people double down out of principle, when the only person getting hurt is themselves. He refuses to change it because he did nothing wrong...sure, but you are also the only one being hurt by it. Is this really the hill to die on?

Yeah, pick your battles. Sure, it would be nice if the systems where patched. But maybe he should just get a job at the DMVs IT department instead :) In the end I would probably rather pay the fines than fix this bug, it's probably a lot of horrible systems barely held together..

> But maybe he should just get a job at the DMVs IT department instead :)

Ew.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#277

Post by marcosdumay »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #254
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #90

Tangentially related somewhat-common bug: YAML files will interpret the literal 'no' as boolean false if it's not quoted, instead of as a string. Many developers have wondered why, when they stuck country-specific configurations in a YAML file, that things suddenly stopped working when they expanded support for Norway.

I don't have a problem with yes/no per se , I just don't like that it also takes true/false

I don't have a problem with any of those representations, and also no problem with all of them at the same time.

But not only the value representation keeps the types ambiguous, also there is no off-channel place to disambiguate the types, and no value-independent rules for deciding on the types. If any of those was different, there wouldn't be a problem.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#278

Post by ddingus »

cronix wrote: post #135
_lo3k wrote: post #6

When I was a foolhardy college student I figured out that if the cited vehicle make on my city parking ticket didn’t match my registration, I could get appeal the ticket via a web form very easily and succeed every time. Naturally I removed the badges from my car and put on different badges from another manufacturer. After a while they started to cite me as “other” and the trick no longer worked.

All we had to do was register our cars in each others names. When I was married, my car was registered to her and vice versa. The redlight/photoradar laws in my state required that the company operating the devices had to match the pic of the driver violating the law, to the pic of the registered owner via the license plate. If they couldn't match them, no ticket was issued as you can't prove who was driving. That's…

Or use Juggolo face paint.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#279

Post by ddingus »

distances wrote: post #248
djsumdog wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew a kid in college who would get a ticket, and then look around the parking lot for another Black Nissan Maxima. Most people don't actually look at the plate number, just the make model. I think he got one ticket paid this way ... guy was kinda an asshole.

I've had a friend do the reverse: parking in illegal spot, and borrowing a ticket from another car that already received one. Upon return some hours later, he returned the ticket to the correct windshield. Quite brazen, and frankly a bit of an asshole thing to do.

Also pure genius. The worst kind, but hey! Gotta credit where some is due.

Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea

#280

Post by paulborza »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #131
paulborza wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you can't have the character '&' on a personalized license plate in WA: https://fortress.wa.gov/dol/extdriveses/NoLogon/_/

That link redirects to the DOL homepage.

Thanks for letting me know. Here's the proper link: https://fortress.wa.gov/dol/extdriveses/NoLogon?Link=Persona...
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