Sorry this is heading WAY off-topic, but I had to share the insane list of license plate types we have here in Colorado now... and a comment about Mike's 1991 posting about plate lookups containing whitespace...
On Oct 18, 2007, at 12:12 AM, Mike Morris WA6ILQ wrote: > Yep. > Cops have been known to mis-understand ham plates... Colorado now has something like 50 different plate types -- the State legislature went nuts when they realized that the things could make a permanent income for the State, and the more types, the more likely someone will buy one. Every plate is different, completely different. We have pink plates... <http://www.revenue.state.co.us/mv_dir/REGISTRATIONS/breastcancer.htm> And the Bronco's Country plates... in Orange, of course... <http://www.revenue.state.co.us/mv_dir/REGISTRATIONS/ BroncosCharities.htm> And the Columbine memorial plate... (actually a nice rendition of the State flower for a good cause)... <http://www.revenue.state.co.us/mv_dir/REGISTRATIONS/columbine.HTM> And Pioneer plates, for those that can prove a direct ancestor lived in Colorado at least 100 years ago... <http://www.revenue.state.co.us/mv_dir/REGISTRATIONS/pioneer.HTM> Ahh, just go here, and you can click on 'em and see 'em. Tons of 'em... <http://www.revenue.state.co.us/mv_dir/wrap.asp?incl=registrations/ plateindex> If nothing else, it'd be REAL rare to be pulled over for "strange" plates out here, ever again... the cops probably have a hard time even keeping up with all the different types, and probably carry a book to double-check them all, now. I really thought this whole thing started up out here with the mass influx of Californians in the late 90's and early 00's -- I figured they just brought the whole crazy license plate thing with them. Maybe not. > Back in 1991 there was a usenet comment thread in the > computer-risks digest on running ham radio license plates > on DMV computers. My posting to it is here: > <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.risks/browse_thread/thread/ > 2cc5fefb628c6cf7> Most computers nowadays would be querying this from an SQL database behind the user interface with something akin to the "SELECT ___ WHERE LICENSEPLATE LIKE <VARIABLE>" statement... Which (even though that's not proper SQL in the example here, and it's not exactly how you'd do it...) would match all of your combinations today. If it's coded right, the location of whitespace in the string wouldn't matter at all, anymore. (In fact, the query is probably hard-coded into the RDBMS itself, as a stored procedure, and has tons of bounds checking and whitespace removal built into the query.) In fact, the whitespace would probably be stripped out of the plate number BEFORE the database lookup query, in the "bounds checking" part of the user interface code, these days. If it isn't -- they need to hire some professionals to write their software... Sorry... getting way off topic here. Hey, if you guys don't have wild and crazy plates like the massive list we have here, you could recommend it to a State Senator and make your state some big bucks! (GRIN) It's a fairly common thing to see cars with one of these custom plates on it and less and less of the standard Colorado plate. The Amateur Call Letter plates (as they call them) are one of the only ones that isn't graphically customized... they also only cost $2 a year, though. Interestingly, all of them also have a bar code on them nowadays, but I've never seen an officer use a laser reader or anything like that to scan them. I think it's just there for authentication if the plate is made fraudulently, but I don't know. It's also badly positioned, so that many license plate holders partially cover it. -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
