During the raid, they took his computer, monitor, speakers and cable modem. None of these were actually required as evidence, not even the computer.

Charles’ blog is hosted on blogspot.com, a Google service. His computer has nothing to do with serving web pages. During a normal investigation, the police would subpoena Google to get the IP address of the poster, then subpoena the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to get the owner of the IP address’s account. That is all that is needed as proof. Even with the PC, there is no way they can get any more proof that it was actually Charles sitting in that chair typing those words. In fact, assuming he used the online post editor, there would likely be no trace at all on his computer. Even if they needed to access the computer, there are forensic tools available that will make an image of the hard drive on-site, without the need for a complete seizure.

This is clear evidence that our court system does not understand technology at all. This will be abused. We now know that someone can have IT equipment removed at the mere accusation of libel. How often will we see this being used as an intimidation tactic?

All of the screenshots below were copied from the Android Market page as Android phones don’t have the ability to take screenshots (unless they are rooted).

The opening screen implies that this app won’t just be for bus tracking. Hopefully we’ll see some more services on there soon.

Here we have the main menu. The bus tracker is the important part of the app, the route planner just takes you to your phone’s built-in Google Maps Transit navigation service, the schedule just goes to the city’s web site.

Here, we can choose which route to track. For a really good test, you can click “all routes”

And here’s the main screen. The first issue that jumps out is that we see the fleet numbers in the bus icons. This is because they are getting their data from the dispatch system. The fleet numbers are very useful for dispatchers, but not that good for the general public. If you click on one of the icons (like you see above), you’ll see the route numbers listed. Trouble is, as in the example above, you see two route numbers and no direction (N or S). If you’re waiting for a specific bus, you won’t actually know which one is yours until it is close enough for you to see the destination sign.

Great start, but needs some work.

Future plans?

At this time, nothing has been divulged. One hopes that they are able to fix some of the issues above before they go out of beta. For that to happen, they would have to have access to the dispatch schedules to determine which actual run the bus is doing. From there, they could determine how long you have to wait for the next bus at any particular location. That would allow for a phone (text or IVR) interface as well as other innovations such as display signs.

It would also be nice if they indicated the accessibility level of the bus. They could display an icon for a low-floor bus.

Once that is complete, the next step would be to open the data so it could be used by anyone. Don’t want to support an obsolete phone platform? No problem, let someone else do it instead. Want to let a business make their own transit info sign? No problem!

It’s a great start, hopefully the momentum continues and allows the app to get better.

Update: iOS version now on iTunes

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/12/07/nb-macknight-volunteer-speeding-616.html

A few things that may be at play here:

People are always complaining that speeding is an issue in their neighbourhood. The police are probably tired of hearing all the complaining so they came up with this proposal.

There is a perception that the police just don’t do enough enforcement of traffic laws. You perceive this every time you are stopped behind someone in a merge lane, or stuck at a blocked intersection. Sometimes you’ll see a cop car just sit there while this happens. Don’t forget all the media attention that the bicycles on the sidewalk got.

The city doesn’t receive a penny from the speeding fines. There is no incentive for them to write more tickets. This causes it to be considered a cost, instead of being revenue-neutral.

So where do you see speeders pulled over? Knowledge Park Drive, because it’s really easy. The speed limit is 50, yet the road just goes through the middle of the woods with no houses or businesses on either side. All of the officers can fill their ticket quotas on the first of the month on that street.

Maybe there’s more to this story than what we are hearing. Perhaps this is a hidden request by the police to have their budget increased? Isn’t the budget coming up for vote next week? Hmmmm. In any case, the Fredericton Police Force has an image problem, this will just make it worse. Stop coming up with questionable plans and start writing tickets.

Trouble is, there are a lot of places where it isn’t safe. Let’s have a look at our example intersection below, it looks like many in the city, particularly Exit 5 and Wilsey Rd (where I have witnessed this happen many times).

Driver A sees that there’s a long line of cars behind B who are waiting to turn left. He feels sorry for them waiting and decides to wave driver B out. Driver B can’t see driver C because of the long line of cars behind A, so he pulls out.

Both drivers B and C will need a clean pair of pants, or worse.

Yes, it’s nice to let people out, but please, don’t do it on roads that have more than a single lane.

1. It wasn’t cheap. Costs weren’t made public, but I can’t imagine it would have been cheap to equip every bus with it. As Fredericton Transit doesn’t seem to care that much about passenger amenities/comfort, they just decided not to spend the money.

2. It didn’t really work that well. During the test period, they had a live webcam attached to one of the buses. As that was using the same connection as the wifi, the connection could be tested without having to go on that specific bus. If you watched it for any period of time, you’d see that the camera image wouldn’t update if the bus was travelling more than 60km/h. It also had reception issues on some areas on the north side, including Marysville. They may have been able to fix them, but that could have been expensive.

Sadly, that also means that there won’t be any real-time GPS-based updates. That system came with the wi-fi. For the time being, you’ll have to call the transit info line for real-time updates. (Of course, that line is closed for most of the morning and evening rush).

• It does a better job of detecting motorcycles
• It can see cars coming from 100ft away and trigger the light change earlier
• If the light’s about to change, it can hold the green for you if you’re less than 100ft away
• It tracks the direction of traffic so someone turning left too tightly won’t trigger the lights for the cross-traffic
• It works in all kinds of weather
• It sits on the pole so the road won’t have to be dug up when it breaks

$15,000 sounds like a lot, but compared to digging up the road to install an underground metal-detector loop, it’s a bargain.

They again failed to look at the relatively inexpensive option of designating certain regular transit routes as being accessible. How easily can they do this? For the past eight years, Fredericton Transit has been purchasing low-floor accessible buses. They already have enough to guarantee that some runs will only use those accessible buses. This will easily allow them to move the least impaired people onto the regular system while keeping the para-transit for the riders that need it the most.

Yes, it will take longer to load passengers, but remember that 10 out of 30 minutes of a Fredericton Transit bus’s run time is idling at King’s Place or the Regent Mall, so it won’t greatly affect on-time performance.

At this point, about half of the fleet is already low-floor. They could start with route #16, which goes by the medical clinic and the hospital. At some point (the year 2029), the entire fleet will be accessible, but until then, they can slowly add routes to the accessible list as the older buses are retired.

So who has access to this data? The 13 elected members of council, and nobody else. How fair is that? They get to see the full thing where the rest of us get to see a press release that’s full of spin.

It makes it difficult for new people to get involved in municipal politics when the people at the top make it hard to get in.

I propose a compromise:

Allow bicycles on sidewalks when the following conditions are met:

• The cyclist must give right-of-way to pedestrians and cars entering/exiting driveways
• When coming up on someone, the cyclist must slow down and pass slowly
• Certain areas (such as downtown) will be walk-your-bike zones and will be signed
• Cyclists must choose either the road or the sidewalk and not weave on and off the road

The police/park patrol must actively enforce the new rules or else there will continue to be resistance to bicycles on the sidewalk

And throughout the city, not a tear was shed. (The new building will be much nicer)