[filmscanners] Re: CD Labeling (very OT)

["Arthur Entlich" <artistic-1@shaw.ca>]

Well, I don't know about the US, but here in Canada, we had
"Photo-Radar" for several years.  In fact, for several provinces,
including the one I live in, one of the reasons a right wing government
was voted in was because they promised to scrap it.

People were selling all sorts of devices to supposedly confound the
radar cameras when they were in use.  Special covers for your license
plate that supposedly made it record as a blank area on the photo image,
reflective tape that supposedly confused the cameras.  The best one I
heard about was a set of instructions you could buy for $5 that
guaranteed they would prevent you from getting caught by photo-radar.
As was later reported, apparently it consisted of a piece of paper on
which was printed "drive at or below the speed limit!!!"

However, the most effective method of not being caught by the photo
radar system ended up being provided by the police.  They were so inept
with the equipment that they ended up pointing the camera so it took
pictures of the road surface, with no car visible, or they used the
wrong shutter speed and the license plates were blurred, etc, and
apparently well over half of the image that indicated above threshold
speeds had to be tossed because they were unreadable.

I never liked the concept myself, because it was a deterrent that you
found out about 3 months later when a ticket arrived in the mail, and
since it was a fine with no points connected to it (since they couldn't
prove who was driving the car) it ended up a deterrent for the poor, who
found the $100+ ticket hard to deal with.  Wealthier speeders (like the
president and CEO of the provincial car insurance corp.) and several
government MLAs racked up many of these tickets and just paid them or
had them paid as an expense.

So now we have a right-wing government here, and, as promised, the
photo-radar is gone.  So are the revenues... To make up for it, they
hired on police to do more hand held radar checks, and have been
installing intersection cameras to catch people going through red lights
instead.  How innovative those right-winger are! They couldn't even sell
the Photo-radar equipment so that was a complete loss, and now they are
investing in intersection cameras. I feel safer just knowing they are
keeping the legislative seat warm with their tight-assed butts!

The good news is that we have recall legislation here, after they have
served 18 months.  Well, its 19 months now, and it looks like I may just
be busy after Christmas seeing if I can motivate the 70 something
percent in my riding who want them out...

So, to answer your question... no, here in BC Canada we don't believe in
CD-R reflectors to defeat photo radar devices, but we do seem to have
short lapses when we believe in the tooth fairy and vote in right-wing
governments to "protect" our economy from children, the disabled and the
poor and sickly.  However, we're slowly awakening from that nightmare,
and hopefully, we'll all get out our garlic, mirrors, silver crucifixes
and wooden stakes and put an end to this night of the living dead.

Art


Alessandro Pardi wrote:

>>Arthur Entlich wrote:
>>
>>Well, I always wondered what to do with the coasters I had from bad
>>burns, and I wanted to figure out something creative to do with them.
>><snip>
>>
>
> Well, here in Italy I've seen CDs attached to cars' rear windows. I was told
> that this is somehow supposed to make police autovelox photographs unuseful
> (you know, the device that takes pictures of cars exceeding speed limits).
> Strangely enough, no one was able to give any technical explanation why :-)
> Do you in the US have this kind of superstition, too?
>
> Alessandro
>
>
>


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