Live data from Hacker News

Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

postmediadriving.wordpress.com

171–180 of 375 posts

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#171
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t “first come first serve” fair?

Imagine a doctor working at two hospitals who has to move his car from one location to the other mid-day between surgeries. Is it more fair for him to have a worse parking spot and take longer to get to the operating room because he didn't park there earlier? Or should spots be given based on need?

Repeat that but with a cleaner who is struggling to get by with 2 jobs while studying and is providing for kids. It seems much more likely given the location in this story too.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing density is precisely what we must do, because the alternative, car-centric kind of living is this close to giving us an expiration date that’s perceptibly on the horizon.

I'd rather deal with climate change than have every nice woodsy town turned into Manhattan-lite.

Towns are fine, it's suburban sprawl that's the problem. If you like the outdoors and wilderness, you should want more people to live in the city so they don't tarnish the countryside. I would really like to see hunters start getting along with urbanists, they have more in common than they know.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you have to draw the line somewhere. Do we pay for all food students eat? The clothes they wear? The houses they live in? The cars they drive? Obviously not... some schools might provide some of those things, but all schools will draw the line somewhere (I don't know of any schools that provide clothing) Why is it anymore of a slippery slope to say "the college won't subsidize student parking" than "the college…

Because one of those is a result of attending. If the college required a uniform, it might be reasonable for them to provide it.

Colleges generally do require you to wear clothes to class.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing density is precisely what we must do, because the alternative, car-centric kind of living is this close to giving us an expiration date that’s perceptibly on the horizon.

I'd rather deal with climate change than have every nice woodsy town turned into Manhattan-lite.

That's easy to say when you are largely insulated by the effects due to wealth, which not coincendentally was derived from an economic system that created the crisis in the first place.

That cavalier attitude cannot be adopted by the estimated 300M refugees climate change is projected to create over the next few decades.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#175
post #73
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not celebrating people who park selfishly, we're celebrating people who use a clever hack to defeat a harmful solution to the problem of people parking selfishly. The point of DeCSS and qrpff, for instance, was not that piracy is a good thing but that DRM is a bad thing.

How is this a harmful solution? Releasing it legally is simple and easy and non destructive

And buying a licensed DVD player is simple and easy and non-destructive.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didnt a court recently rule that someone taking off a GPS tracker (and throwing it away?) was not theft? My memory is fuzzy on that one.

How is that analogous to hacking a device so you can tether to it and use its data plan to avoid costs yourself?

They gave it to him. They put it on his car.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who commuted to college parking illegally is just something you have to do. I had parking fines I had to pay before receiving my diploma even though I made the grades and such. Parking and universities is a mess.

>parking illegally is just something you have to do driving to college is not something you have to do . it's something you choose to do. parking is a side effect of driving, not a god-given right.

You must live in a city...

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#178
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not celebrating people who park selfishly, we're celebrating people who use a clever hack to defeat a harmful solution to the problem of people parking selfishly. The point of DeCSS and qrpff, for instance, was not that piracy is a good thing but that DRM is a bad thing.

Driving an individual vehicle and parking it at a college is the first-order bad thing here. The parking spaces occupy useful land and the cars pollute the campus air. Everything else is about people trying to avoid being asked to take responsibility for the impact of doing that.

Paying for a parking spot isn't actually taking responsibility for doing that - how does it solve any of the problems that illegal parking causes?

Also, what exactly would taking responsibility entail? How can individuals build public transit any more than they can redesign the movie industry? Holding individuals responsible for their single car's pollution sounds like holding then responsible for their plastic straws while ignoring the impact of major corporations on pollution.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from and I agree that people should pay what they owe, but just to split hairs... Paying for parking isn't a "fair" way to distribute it. What is meant to happen is that paying for it funds the creation of more parking (ground level parks are converted to multistories etc). So paying is a necessary evil to create and maintain enough of something to go around. With a monopoly supplier, like h…

20% fewer drivers benefits everyone, so that's not a bad policy.

Only if there is good infrastructure such as quality public transportation to support the cut drivers.
Post reply on HN