philosecurity

Guerilla Public Service

Jul 31st, 2008 by sherri

The city of Cambridge got a spelling lesson this week from my remarkable friend Steve, who writes:

Not far from my house is one of those temporary trailer-mounted variable message signs, which for the past several weeks has been advising motorists that

	 ALBANY
	 CLOSED
	@PACIFIC

and that they should therefore

DETOUR VIA BROOKLIN

[There is a "Brookline" street, but the sign had an 8-character limit.] Even knowing that there’s nothing in the area named “Brooklyn”, I still managed to read it that way at first.

Then a day or two ago someone “fixed” it; the second screen now read

DETOUR VIA BROOKLYN

…which is just wrong.

Now, as it happens,

(a) the enclosure on the sign’s trailer containing the control
electronics was unlocked,

(b) programming the sign requires a password,

(c) the password — “ABCD” — was helpfully written on the inside
of the enclosure in black marker,

(d) programming also requires a standard PC keyboard (not supplied),

(e) I’d correctly guessed that this might be so, and had brought
one with me, and

(f) no one (let alone Da Police) stopped me while I was tinkering. So:

(g) The second frame in the sequence now reads

DETOUR VIA BR'KLINE

Much better.