blog.eberly.org— A jpeg is good for a lot of things, but a live data feed is not one of them. In fact it is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Oct 12, 2006View in Crawl 4
One of the useful things I've found for the real-time dispatch is to know in almost current time what the arson activity is in my neighborhood. I would not have known this without the log -- and there has been arson activity in my neighborhood this summer. No one from the city has ever alerted the neighborhood residents about this activity. Having the log in text format provides much more flexibility in reading, including the ability to increase the font size for worsening eyes.
hahaha..."putting the information in text (data) format allows people to pipe the data into other computer programs to instantly analyze patterns. An image makes that very difficult"It also makes a 1MB jpeg that needs to be downloaded by each hit! What this tells me is that the site doesn't get used because if it did they would quickly return to text based because it would seriously impact their bandwidth usage. Bandwidth isn't free for anyone and that is using about 100x more than an ascii based interface to display the same exact data (html or clear text).
@gateshareThe bad guys could see a large police concentration on the far side of in their precinct (or that of a bank, rival drug dealer's turf, ex-wife's house etc), but far enough away that one could presumably get away with something with a probability of slower police response time.I may have just completed some sort of rorschach test in the speculating.
Closed AccountOct 13, 2006
It's slightly ammusing they acctualy took the site down, and linked to an article saying what a stupid idea someone thinks it is (Or was)..- Ben
radiorangeOct 13, 2006
One of the useful things I've found for the real-time dispatch is to know in almost current time what the arson activity is in my neighborhood. I would not have known this without the log -- and there has been arson activity in my neighborhood this summer. No one from the city has ever alerted the neighborhood residents about this activity. Having the log in text format provides much more flexibility in reading, including the ability to increase the font size for worsening eyes.
zacmccormickOct 13, 2006
hahaha..."putting the information in text (data) format allows people to pipe the data into other computer programs to instantly analyze patterns. An image makes that very difficult"It also makes a 1MB jpeg that needs to be downloaded by each hit! What this tells me is that the site doesn't get used because if it did they would quickly return to text based because it would seriously impact their bandwidth usage. Bandwidth isn't free for anyone and that is using about 100x more than an ascii based interface to display the same exact data (html or clear text).
romulusnrOct 13, 2006
I suppose lots of people should be encouraged to download that jpeg. And refresh often to get the latest data.
madeingermanyOct 15, 2006
@mrneutron:They are on to us!Quick, change the format of the file to gif!
broderOct 15, 2006
@gateshareThe bad guys could see a large police concentration on the far side of in their precinct (or that of a bank, rival drug dealer's turf, ex-wife's house etc), but far enough away that one could presumably get away with something with a probability of slower police response time.I may have just completed some sort of rorschach test in the speculating.
russnelsonOct 15, 2006
Just open up the page and keep it open. Let's Slashdot them. Er, um, Diggdot. Well, whatever; you know what I mean.