showproc advocacy/778 advocacy/779 advocacy/781 /home/mjd/bin/mailpager /home/mjd/MH-Mail/advocacy/778 Return-Path: mjd-advocacy-return-312-mjd-advocacy-deliver=plover.com@plover.com Return-Path: Delivered-To: mjd-deliver@plover.com Received: (qmail 25047 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 20:57:03 -0000 Delivered-To: mjd-advocacy-deliver@plover.com Received: (qmail 25036 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 20:57:02 -0000 Mailing-List: contact mjd-advocacy-help@plover.com; run by ezmlm Delivered-To: mailing list mjd-advocacy@plover.com Received: (qmail 25024 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 20:57:01 -0000 Message-ID: <20010524205701.25023.qmail@plover.com> To: mjd-advocacy@plover.com cc: mjd@plover.com Reply-To: mjd-advocacy-reasons-41@plover.com Subject: Round 41: Traffic signalling devices Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 16:57:01 -0400 From: Mark-Jason Dominus Traffic lights in *my* country use lamp position, rather than color, to indicate stop and go. When the lamp on top is lit, that means 'stop', and when the lamp on the bottom is lit, that means 'go', regardless of whether the lamps themselves are red, green, or chartreuse. This is much better than your ridiculous traffic signals, because.... ---------------------------------------------------------------- Submit to mjd-advocacy-reasons-41@plover.com by 6PM Monday 28 May,please. /home/mjd/bin/mailpager /home/mjd/MH-Mail/advocacy/779 Replied: Thu, 24 May 2001 17:28:01 -0400 Return-Path: jason@cs.rochester.edu Return-Path: Delivered-To: mjd-filter-deliver2@plover.com Received: (qmail 25238 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 21:05:23 -0000 Delivered-To: mjd-filter@plover.com Received: (qmail 25233 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 21:05:22 -0000 Delivered-To: mjd@plover.com Received: (qmail 25230 invoked from network); 24 May 2001 21:05:21 -0000 Received: from gate.cs.rochester.edu (192.5.53.207) by plover.com with SMTP; 24 May 2001 21:05:21 -0000 Received: from femto.cs.rochester.edu (femto.cs.rochester.edu [192.5.53.180]) by gate.cs.rochester.edu (8.9.1b+Sun/W) with ESMTP id RAA24998 for ; Thu, 24 May 2001 17:05:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from jason@localhost) by femto.cs.rochester.edu (8.9.1b+Sun/Q++) id RAA16545 for mjd@plover.com; Thu, 24 May 2001 17:05:26 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 17:05:26 -0400 (EDT) From: jason@cs.rochester.edu Message-Id: <200105242105.RAA16545@femto.cs.rochester.edu> To: mjd@plover.com Subject: Re: Round 41: Traffic signalling devices Point of clarification. Do you mean to suggest that traffic signals in my country do *not* use lamp position to indicate stop and go? Most do, in part because of red-green color-blindness. There are some exceptions, such as flashers at an intersection (one flasher that is either red or yellow depending on direction of approach or time of day) and a fancy subspecies of turn arrow (turns from green to yellow before turning off). But the great bulk of traffic lights use a redundant cue. The same is true of pedestrian lights, which usually combine position, color, and flashing/steady. In other words, I'm confused about what is supposed to be better than what. Others may be too. jason /home/mjd/bin/mailpager /home/mjd/MH-Mail/advocacy/781 Return-Path: mjd@plover.com Return-Path: Delivered-To: mjd-filter-deliver2@plover.com Received: (qmail 25533 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 21:28:04 -0000 Delivered-To: mjd-filter@plover.com Received: (qmail 25485 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 21:28:02 -0000 Delivered-To: mjd@plover.com Received: (qmail 25477 invoked by uid 119); 24 May 2001 21:28:01 -0000 Message-ID: <20010524212801.25476.qmail@plover.com> To: jason@cs.rochester.edu cc: mjd@plover.com, mjd-advocacy@plover.com Subject: Re: Round 41: Traffic signalling devices In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 24 May 2001 17:05:26 EDT." <200105242105.RAA16545@femto.cs.rochester.edu> Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 17:28:01 -0400 From: Mark-Jason Dominus > Point of clarification. Do you mean to suggest that > traffic signals in my country do *not* use lamp position to indicate > stop and go? Most do, in part because of red-green color-blindness. Oh, sure they do, no doubt because the designers were somehow dimly aware of the way things Ought To Be Done, but it isn't the primary method of communicating stop and go information. For example, in your benighted country, many traffic lights are arranged horizontally, leaving the hapless driver to intuit the meaning from the color alone. You also use a variety of bizarre and ambiguous signals, such as colored flags and stop signs, again leaving it up to the motorist to discern the meaning from color-related hints. In MY country, the lamps are *always* arranged vertically, and the top one is *always* stop, so that the color doesn't matter. I hope this clarifies my position. ================================================================ ================================================================ ================================================================ -- A -- Because we can piggyback additional hue-based communications on top of our existing stoplight infrastructure. This can consist of anything from easily understood traffic advisories (red for congestion, yellow for clear roads) to high-capacity digital value-add channels featuring news bulletins, entertainment, instantaneous personal messaging, and consumer-tailored targeted Doubleclick advertisements. Thus an ordinary driver can learn not only whether he should stop or go, but also which route to take, where to find a nearby fuel station, and an estimate of remaining travel time, all while a raucous advertisement for the latest 3-D action film blares out of the vehicle's digital sound system, drowning out the driver's hands-free wireless phone conversation with his pregnant, celebrity-obsessed sister. -------------------------------- -- B -- ... because it allows municipalities to save money by getting around patents on particular LED colors. (Just last year in Japan, Nichia Chemical Industries Ltd. sued another company for infringing a patent on its blue-green LEDs -- and won! Imagine the expense when some company comes around to your city council and wishes it had a nickel for every time your city used a blue-green LED. By relying only on position, you can easily switch to teal, maroon, or purple the moment the patent lawyers come knocking. Come on, can you _really_ say that you have a valid patent license for each and every one of those little lights? There must be millions of them! I'm sure you couldn't maintain that kind of documentation without a whole Office of Traffic Signal Intellectual Property Compliance.) Besides, you can avoid the even more severe legal risk of inadvertantly infringing some company's _trademark_ on your traffic light colors. Last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota ruled in _Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. v. Beautone Specialties Co._ that 3M's trademark on the color "canary yellow" was valid. Imagine if one of your traffic lights turned out to use canary yellow for its "proceed with caution" signal. _Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. v. Your City_ could be next! In today's litigious environment, the ability to switch the colors of lights on a moment's notice is critical to avoiding costly court battles. -------------------------------- -- C -- As a member of the city beautification committee, the traffic lights can be color coordinated to improve the decor of the city. The morale of cities everywhere would be lifted by these simple changes in traffic lights. -------------------------------- -- D -- Because in your intelligence- forsaken country nobody every bothers with the goddamn things anyway because they're always driving around fucked up on crack or hepped up on amphetamines. I mean shit! Why the hell do you losers even bother with even the most idiotic traffic devices since everyone is so fucking self-centered that they just drive through every intersection they come to -- even if an ambulance has to wait for them? Everybody in your egoistic, megalomaniacal, intelligence - challenged country should not only be denied the privilege of operating a motor vehicle (a highly dangerous device in the hands of such under-gifted individuals as you and your fellow country-(wo)men), they should be immediately conquered and enslaved by our organization of pet Chihuahuas. Not only do you use color in your traffic signals (which, of course changes not only depending on the eyes of the perceiver, but on the time of day and other light sources around - a fact pointed out even by your earliest scientists, but you were all too stupid to appreciate their warnings), but you use weather-vulnerable pavement for your roads (creating huge dangerous gaping holes into which many of you fall and are never heard from again), painted lines for your lane markers (ignoring the fact that the driver's plane of vision is parallel and higher than the ground and therefore the markers are out of sight unless either looking down through a clear-floored vehicle -- of which none are available in your country and which would also create an incentive to take one's eyes away from where one is headed -- or there is no one else on the road -- in which case the lanes are superfluous anyway), signs and fines for your speed limits (so that the air of prohibition makes speeding into a forbidden pleasure), and driver operated horns for proximity danger alarms (by the time one has any use whatsoever (except in New York) it is far too late to do any good). It is therefore abundantly clear that your country should be denied the opportunity to travel by any means of locomotion that is under your own control and that all of your transportation devices and systems should be immediately melted into scrap metal and used to create a sculpted monument to our superiority. -------------------------------- -- E -- We do not have the colorist assumption that Red dominates Green, with Yellow in the middle purgatory. This has contributed to our more balanced religious system in which we believe that all crosses are made of steak. -------------------------------- -- F -- My positional traffic light system is better than yours because it mirrors inflected grammatical systems, making it much easier to write perl using Linqua-Romana-Perligata. -------------------------------- -- G -- Obviously, it's because it's impossible to distinguish which light is lit from more than about 30 yards away. This forces everyone to slow down to 25 or less when approaching any intersection. -------------------------------- -- H -- Because the 'stop' light can be seen from a greater distance away, giving extra notice that it's time to consider taking one's foot off that accelerator. -------------------------------- -- I -- Because our traffic signals do not discriminate against the colorblind. It is possible to know when to stop and go without being able to distinguish green from red. -------------------------------- -- J -- Because the lamp colors can be used for the national lottery. As a traffic signal goes from go to caution to stop, it chooses a color at random for each light. If, while one's car is at the head of the line, the traffic signal displays 3 identical colors in a row, one wins the national lottery, and becomes the next president. -------------------------------- -- K -- Because this allows us to customize the colors for season, holiday, or to complement the surrounding environment. After all, do you really think that a red light looks good on a forest highway? -------------------------------- -- L -- Because we are much more able to color coordinate the neighborhood, being able to ignore the garish red, green, and yellow lights in favor of more the pleasant aqua, lavender, and indigo. . . -------------------------------- -- M -- Because depending on positional clues forces the traffic signals to be hung vertically - if position was not important, traffic signals could be hung either vertically or horizontally. This would mean that they could resemble the starting lights at a Formula One race, which are always positioned horizontally. Reminding people of Formula One racing obviously leads to them driving faster and more aggressively, which would be irresponsible. Hanging traffic signals vertically saves lives. -------------------------------- -- N -- Because that way colour-blind rednecks will be able to shoot the "stop" light just like their more fortunate cousins. -------------------------------- -- O -- Because recent scientific studies show the great effectiveness of this system. Your countries backward system even allows lights to be placed sideways, causing severe traffic problems! I don't understand why you people just don't "get" the correct way to handle traffic lights. Doesn't any of you think of the children! --------------------------------