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

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

#191

Post by chrisseaton »

geofft wrote: post #178
chrisseaton wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 straw…

> Also, what exactly would taking responsibility entail?

I'm just sure it doesn't involve:

- failing to follow parking rules which you presumably agreed to when you matriculated

- refusing to pay charges and fines you presumably agreed to

- vandalism

- theft

- dumping of cars

- squatting on parking spaces

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

#192

Post by JCharante »

the8472 wrote: post #116
xyst wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meh - one can argue with the advent of the internet the entire college system is a farce. College at this point is just for building your network and securing that “dream job” because employers like to check off those boxes instead of actually finding qualified applicants. Although there is one thing that you can’t teach or learn which is having common sense or the ability to apply theories in practice.

People still need motivation to learn. Just because the knowledge is available doesn't mean they'll ingest it on their own. College may provide a structured environment helping with that. Or in this case a different kind of motivation to learn.

Although online tutors/teachers are pretty effective since you usually don't make physical contact with your teachers but they still provide the motivation and structure. Oh, I suppose that's what an online degree is. You'd just have to work on making exams cheat resistant.

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

#193

Post by rkhacker »

Thanks so much to the university for coming up with the barnacle or I would have missed these really brilliant hacks that seemed to keep improving one after the other. Parking 12 scrappy car was so low-tech and yet so effective but juicing the sim card for months has to be appreciated for going the extra mile.

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

#195

Post by StavrosK »

nimbius wrote: post #32

When I first saw these touted a few years ago I'd imagined they would be fairly trivial to bypass. - light oil or penetrating oil can be used to bypass the gasket. If it will remove decals or stickers, this thing doesnt stand a chance. - exploiting the coefficient of expansion for gasses (as these brilliant students did) is absolutely an option. - keeping your windshield wipers up would prevent use of the device. - r…

> keeping your windshield wipers up would prevent use of the device.

Until the person putting the thing on just raised them.

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

#196

Post by gonehome »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #69
gonehome wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If if I was trying to solve this problem and actually cared about the students I would do some capacity based pricing. Almost always free, as you approach parking capacity price increases. You could probably also set up a system to text people who have been there more than X hours that they will start to be charged due to high capacity.

> You could probably also set up a system to text people who have been there more than X hours that they will start to be charged due to high capacity. Your plan is to have pricing that is not knowable in advance, and assess it against the students retroactively? I'm not sure it's possible to come up with a worse plan.

You can still know a range in advance and you can alert people on their phone before charging them - I'd much prefer this to having to pay all the time even when capacity is low.

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

#197

Post by quaquaqua1 »

emptybits wrote: post #183

I spent a decade in the parking technology space. (Co-founder PayByPhone -- don't hate me, I genuinely tried to make things more civilized and convenient, I swear!). Anyways, I miss hearing about hilarious and genius hacks and escalations like this. The brilliance deployed to work around parking regulations is amazing. Not condoning, but here's a (naive?) though experiment if the Barnacle shows up in use again... Par…

The problem is not paying for the parking I use. That is an easy problem to solve, as long as the price is "reasonable".

The problem I have with parking authorities is fraud. When the meter employee gives me a ticket for a different meter, or when the parking ticket fine is $200 instead of say $30, or when the restrictions are absurd/vague ("You can park here for 2 hours m-f except holidays except 9-11 except in green spots except you have to display the ticket in your window except you need to be 6 inches but not 12 inches from the curb except except except except")...

... then this is the part where I start to suspect I'm not paying for the parking I'm using, but instead I am paying for someone else's large and undeserved profit.

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

#198

Post by ratww »

rectang wrote: post #114
bredren wrote: post #98

My SUS company, EasyALPR focuses on commercial parking enforcement / vehicle control. First, the people who get "in trouble" are often absolutely brazen in their unfair use of common parking. They're warned multiple times and even when given a "last chance" notice they'll just keep breaking rules. At that point you have to TOW them. And let me tell you, a TOW is something you can't lampoon or get free internet off of…

Not all heroes wear capes. Thank you on behalf of all those administrators having to deal with the abuse! PS: Do you have stats on the overlap between parking violators and people who refuse to pick up after their dogs?

> Not all heroes wear capes

The best ones do, however:

http://heroesinthenight.blogspot.com/2012/08/angle-grinder-m...

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

#199

Post by geofft »

chrisseaton wrote: post #191
geofft wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 straw…

> Also, what exactly would taking responsibility entail? I'm just sure it doesn't involve: - failing to follow parking rules which you presumably agreed to when you matriculated - refusing to pay charges and fines you presumably agreed to - vandalism - theft - dumping of cars - squatting on parking spaces

None of that sounds like taking responsibility for the impact of occupying useful land and polluting the campus air, which is what you claimed to care about.

(Even squatting on parking spaces doesn't show a lack of responsibility for the impact of parking spaces occupying land - it's a calculated use of a small amount of a resource in order to aim for more of that resource in the future. You may as well say that someone who invests their money instead of keeping it safely buried in the ground isn't being responsible with their money.)

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

#200

Post by gnopgnip »

emptybits wrote: post #183

I spent a decade in the parking technology space. (Co-founder PayByPhone -- don't hate me, I genuinely tried to make things more civilized and convenient, I swear!). Anyways, I miss hearing about hilarious and genius hacks and escalations like this. The brilliance deployed to work around parking regulations is amazing. Not condoning, but here's a (naive?) though experiment if the Barnacle shows up in use again... Par…

The parking lot would just tow you then
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