

Licensed to Bill - omnibrain
http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp

======
jlgaddis
A few years ago, I formed an LLC to "own" a few projects I was working on.

In trying to come up with a suitable name, I had decided that I wanted it to
be "$something Ventures" but I wasn't sure about the $something part. Finally,
"null" popped into my head and it seemed like a good fit since the company
didn't really have much of a "real purpose". Thus, Null Ventures LLC was born.

Since that time, I've received countless pieces of snail mail where the
company name appears as " VENTURES LLC" \-- note the space at the beginning.

I still giggle every time I see one and I often wonder if I've just screwed up
some application somewhere and, if so, how bad.

~~~
viraptor
Nice one. I keep collecting my name badges from various conferences. I'm
always registering with my properly spelled name which contains a non-ascii
character. So far I've got: square, circle, ?, multi-byte code as separate
bytes, and completely different letter instead of the ł. Also one just
finished before the character.

Yeah... they were tech conferences.

------
edent
Mr Prawo Jazdy is the worst driver in the whole of Ireland.

Anyone who speaks Polish will understand why, for the rest of us:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7899171.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7899171.stm)

------
jackgavigan
Reminds me of the SQL injection attack licence plate:
[http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-
hopes...](http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes-to-
foil-euro-traffic-cameras)

~~~
ToastyMallows
Haha there's no way this worked. Cool idea though.

~~~
mathattack
Still valuable as a joke. :-)

------
jlgaddis
From 2003-2011, I worked at an .edu and until 2009 or so, the "student
information system" was an old terminal-based ("green screen") application --
written in COBOL and still running on a mainframe.

There was a "data warehouse" piece of the overall system and I was often
tasked with writing batch jobs to pull various data out of it. The resulting
files were in either fixed-width or CSV format and so we "massaged" them a bit
before writing them out to .xls files that the end-user could work with.

The purpose of most of these was to build a mailing list so that something
could be sent out (via snail mail). The criteria were often along the lines of
"I need a list of all <PROGRAM> students who haven't registered for the next
semester" and such.

In each and every resulting data file that was downloaded after the job
completed, we had to filter out records for the name "ERROR, ERROR" (last,
first). I never found out why but apparently the registrar's office had for
years been putting names in as "ERROR, ERROR" when it was
illegible/unavailable/whatever. Thousands of these had accumulated over the
couple of decades they'd been doing this.

(Side note: they really regretted it once a new upgraded system was being set
up. They had to manually review each and every one of the "ERROR, ERROR"
records.)

------
leephillips
Off topic but funny:

Here in Virginia we have many special thematic plates to choose from. One of
them is a colorful, fingerpaint-themed plate that says "kids first" at the
bottom. Some guy ordered one of these as a vanity plate that said "Eat the".

He had the plate for years, but last year someone at the DMV somehow got clued
in and took his plate back, claiming that it had potentially obscene
connotations.

EDIT: See the picture of the kids theme in bentcorner's reply.

~~~
bentcorner
Here's a picture with a similarly amusing plate:
[http://flic.kr/p/4zwVB](http://flic.kr/p/4zwVB)

------
mortov
The difference between a NULL entry and a sentinel value. And poorly designed
systems.

Anyone with a correct understanding of the problem domain would know you have
to cope with missing plates by indicating they are missing and not by using
(many) different sentinel values. The fact each city/county/state uses a
different value indicates the whole ticket processing system is a screwed up
mess.

The North American system of plates essentially identifying a person and not a
vehicle is weird. The UK still allows vanity plates but they are bound to the
vehicle (and to a current keeper - when you sell it the plates go with the
vehicle to the new keeper unless you make special arrangements). I still find
it odd to take the plates off a vehicle being sold and to have to get them put
on to the new one.

A vehicle without plates in violation of traffic/parking laws should be towed
(or in some places it could be blown up as a security threat - Northern
Ireland that used to be a regular event and a joy-riders post-drive fun to
remove the plates and wait for the fireworks).

At least if it is towed, the fines can be sorted out before the return of the
vehicle rather than wasting time (and money) on a no-hope chase of some
unidentifiable owner unless some schmuck happens to have a vanity plate
matching your chosen sentinel value [in which case you then have the extra
expense of wasting time cancelling the ticket or even wasting court time
before it gets dismissed].

~~~
sbov
In California plates stay with the vehicle. Not sure how it works in other
places in North America.

And sentinel values aren't just a problem of the system, but there would also
be a human element. Even if you had a "no plate" option some would likely
continue to write noplate. The current system might even support null values
for all we know.

~~~
mortov
In Alberta I had to get plates for a vehicle and had to keep them when I sold
the vehicle (and the purchaser put their plates on to drive off). There are
even regulations about how long you can have different province plates if you
move leaving you technically with 2 plates for 1 vehicle (I think you're
supposed to return the other plate to the original province but is more
complex if you are moving around for short term work contracts of a few months
and them coming back before the plate expires).

I just figured this is how people end up with license plates on their wall
from their first vehicle etc.

However this is another aspect of my point - there is no clear uniformity on
the relationship and handling of vehicle registration, plates, ticketing and
enforcement. When things are poorly defined, you get inconsistent
implementation and Bad Things(tm) happen as a result.

Considering just the wasted postage alone, thousands of dollars of public
funds were wasted sending out obviously stupid and invalid tickets - totally
avoidable if someone had stopped and thought about what they were doing.

Enforcement systems like this are always in danger of running away as a result
and some schmuck being bankrupted or jailed (if states allow that) despite
being able to demonstrate conclusively that they have done nothing wrong and
are not responsible for any of the tickets. Public bodies are not good at
admitting they are operating a fundamentally flawed system and it is always
easier to ignore the small numbers of victims of their failure and hope no-one
else notices. It does not take a lot of research to find examples of flagrant
miscarriages of justice in these sorts of situations.

~~~
BuildTheRobots
> I just figured this is how people end up with license plates on their wall
> from their first vehicle etc.

I always assumed other people ended up with a plate on the wall in the same
way I did; by removing them from the car after your X drove it into a cliff-
face and wrote the vehicle off.

------
chaz
A little subtle, but one additional problem is that the vehicle is being
matched to a ticket by the plate number's string. The result is that old
tickets are being keyed to whoever currently has that plate number. A proper
system would lookup that vehicle's registration_id at the time of the
violation and store that as the foreign key.

------
malka
Seems very difficult to create a checkbox with the label 'no plate' or
equivalent on the fine.

~~~
treerock
I can imagine that conversation.

> Well, they can just leave the number blank and we will allow NULL on the
> database.

> No can't have that. Staff are lazy and won't bother entering the number. We
> must make it mandatory and force them to enter a number.

> Okay, how about a tickbox they can tick to indicate that no number was
> present.

> Nope. We'd have to re-design the form. And that means re-designing the OCR
> system. Costs too much.

> Ehmm. We could have them enter a special, 'NOPLATE' code. Of course, you'd
> have to choose a code that isn't currently used, and inform your colleagues
> that it is reserved, so it isn't assigned to some joker. Ha.

> Oh that would never happen. Okay, we'll put it down on the Project Risk
> Register. Someone remember to do that.

...

------
RyanMcGreal
Similar story from Ireland:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171....](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm)

------
mseebach
Obligatory XKCD re. clever license plates:
[http://xkcd.com/1105/](http://xkcd.com/1105/)

~~~
speedyrev
There's a car in my town that has a mix of B's and 8's. Almost impossible to
tell which is which.

~~~
mikeash
I saw one on the road the other day that was basically that xkcd license
plate, a mix of I and 1. I'm sure that even if they aren't already known to
the local police, the license plate search system is smart enough to handle
it.

~~~
viraptor
I hope it is. If you try to remember the plates of some car driving off,
you'll most likely going to remember the first couple letters and maybe what
colour it was. They really should have a way to deal with queries like that.

------
revnja
This happens to my father in law here in Alaska with the plate, "NO TAG".

------
osteele
Would the Road Runner’s license plate have been “Blanc”?

~~~
BuildTheRobots
Probably, but as the speedometer is just painted on...

------
blueskin_
I wonder what would happen if I changed my name to null.

~~~
venomsnake
Better change it to "'; DROP TABLES --;"

