NULL license plate not such a bright idea
281–290 of 484 posts
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#282I read years ago in comp.risks about a similar story. A guy in 1979(!) requested a personalized plate "SAILING", with second choice "BOATING". He didn't want a customized plate if he couldn't get those, so for his third choice he put down "NO PLATE". Of course, he ended up with "NO PLATE". He ended up getting 2500 parking tickets, since cars with no plate had "NO PLATE" written on the ticket. References: http://www.m…
I remember a different story where the guy had to fight every ticket in court
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most states do not allow special characters in the plate text.
Depends on how you define "special." I've seen hearts on California tags, and I think some glyphs on Virginia tags, but I might not be remembering that correctly.
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Avoid backticks in passwords. Is there even a reason to include special characters in passwords? They add 10% more security[1] but cause all sorts of issues with systems. Just use an alphanumeric password that's 10% longer, and if special characters are mandatory, use a safe character at the end like _ or -. [1] 6.55 bits per character (all printable ascii characters) rather than 5.95 (only alphanumeric)
bits usually add exponential complexity, so that '10% more' security might mean a password that's a million times harder to brute force..
calculations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20678529
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#287A colleague used an app's "generate secure password" feature to change their ISP's web portal login - which then also became the WAN router's password - which they didn't realise. It was about a week before the router dropped its connection and needed to re-authenticate - and that's when I was called in to investigate the loss of connectivity - which Windows 10 very unhelpfully reported as the network cable disconnec…
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#288When 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…
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#289When 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.
Relevant xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1105/
Re: NULL license plate not such a bright idea
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember a different story where the guy had to fight every ticket in court
On the plus side, he could also contest legitimate tickets unless they recorded other information.
Each day there was a 10-20% chance I would get a ticket on my windshield. I would collect them and take them to the uni security office once a fortnite to have them cancelled in bulk. I actually got pretty friendly with some of the staff there.
At least 4 of them were legitimate tickets because I parked overtime, over a line, etc, but the staff cancelled them anyway (: