Happy Coincidence

This morning, I woke up, checked the paper and discovered that Toronto's commuters (from which I am happily excluded) got a nasty surprise today: the TTC has gone on a surprise strike they are calling a wildcat due to its lack of legality. Crowds of people were huddled in bus and streetcar stops making phone calls to try and arrange a ride. Taxis were few and far between--it would be a bad morning for a cabbie to sleep in from a financial standpoint! Colleagues of mine missed flights, and cancelled meetings--surely a common occurence all over the city. The strike has come about because drivers are protesting their lack of security among other things on a list of items to be renegotiated wrt their contracts. Last week, no one enforced TTC fares to protest the security issue.
Most Torontonians still paid--which, in a day when all you hear on the news is the next story about who got shot and how the killer got away--is a welcome bit of information. "Toronto the Good" is still in existence.

The title of this post is Happy Coincidence because although transit is out for an undisclosed amount of time, today also happens to be the beginning of Toronto's bike week. Bike Week started in 1988 to get commuters out of their cars and onto the more environmentally friendly mode of transit, cycling. There is nothing more aggravating than sitting in traffic with thousands of cars with only one occupant. It would be nice to put all of those people on bikes...or in streetcars.

Stephen Harper does not eat babies. Glad we got that cleared up.

from the Star:

Harper doesn't eat babies: GO Transit

Rail authority apologizes after mischievous rider hacks into electronic message board

May 2, 2006. 07:47 AM
PHINJO GOMBU


Gerry Nicholls thought he was hallucinating as he kicked back in his seat to take the 35-minute GO train ride to his Oakville home.

About every three seconds, the scrolling electronic sign that usually carries transit updates and advertisements had a very different message that he just could not keep his eyes off.

"Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," the message kept repeating.

"No one (in the car) seemed to be reacting to it," said Nicholls, who happens to be vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, the same conservative think-tank formerly headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"You go home and you are trying to rest from work and all of a sudden where they usually talk about Ticketmaster, all of a sudden you see this thing say `Stephen Harper Eats Babies,'" Nicholls said yesterday. "I wasn't even sure when I got off the train. Was I hallucinating?"

Turns out he wasn't.

An ingenious hacker, who boarded the Lakeshore GO Transit westbound train, made sure that on Thursday, Friday and yesterday, suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message

His weapon of choice was a remote control device that can be bought at a Sam's Club and used to discreetly program scrolling electronic signs found commonly in shop windows — and in every GO Transit train car — from about two metres away.

When Exclusive Advertising, the company that sells interior advertising on GO trains, installed the LED signs about nine years ago, the signs, which have to be individually programmed, couldn't be password protected, said company president Greg Donohue.

The company sells advertisers $8,690 of space a month to play 15-second messages with 52 characters on a three-minute loop.

Donohue said the hacker appears to have always gotten on the train at the third car from the locomotive and used the upper levels of the train.

"We have never had any problems until now," said Donahue.

GO Transit spokesperson Ed Shea called it "a case of electronic vandalism."

"Unfortunately it's a slur, it's an offensive message," said Shea. "We regret it happened and we're sorry if anybody was offended, including the Prime Minister."

To prevent it from happening again, GO Transit will have to power down all the signs on their cars and use special software that is being couriered from the United States to password protect 790 such digital signs.

The whole process will take about three days.

Meanwhile, Nicholls said he's still not sure what to make of the whole episode, except to say that he was more startled by the over-the-top attack than anything.

"I kept waiting for the kicker," he said. "There's got to be something to this. It's a joke, they're going to explain it. It's an ad for baby food or something like that. It just kept going over and over again and I realized that this is something that could be pretty serious.

"I'm sure a lot of people could take offence, and I guess the other point is what other message could they put there?"

Asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: "I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he in that time eat a baby."