Grand River Transit

[ijmorlan]

So, think of the average user, the average user doesn't even know what a password manager is, let alone how to use one.  But also, this entirely defeats the purpose of the security questions, the purpose being that in the event you lose your password (for example, if your password manager database is lost), you are able to securely identify yourself another way by knowing this information about yourself independently from your password.

Not that it's a great system anyway, these questions are both guessable and also hard to remember.  Security questions should be a relic of the past.

Leading many to use a single password for all purposes.  Terrible practice, but what can they do?

There is a huge and fundamental difference between a single password which is revealed to numerous entities, and storing multiple secure passwords in a single password store that are all unlocked by the same secure password. Note too that the password store password is never sent over the network at all.

My bugaboo is the inability to set a randomly determined password consisting of, say, 8 lowercase letters. Note the “randomly determined”. 8 random lowercase letters give way more password choices than the usual “my dog’s name with a capital letter, digit, and punctuation appended” sort of password choice mechanism, and are way easier to type.

Also some sites don’t even allow Safari’s randomly-chosen password, which consist of several blocks of upper- and lower-case letters and digits, combined with dashes.

So the correct way for a password system to work is to allow Safari’s (or your favourite browser) password store to auto-generate its passwords. If a higher level of security is truly needed, issue two-factor tokens. If it’s too expensive to do so, then the higher level of security is not obtainable, full stop. OK, not full stop, I continue to say that it probably isn’t actually needed. Any situation where the higher level is needed probably has enough resources floating around that two-factor is feasible.

A site can also allow Facebook/Google/… logins. That is especially appropriate for relatively low-security situations like a transit agency fare account login. This avoids all the issues associated with storing and updating passwords — essentially you outsource an entire section of the application, and avoid cluttering people’s lives with yet more rarely-used passwords.

[isUsername]

Good news! A Google-derived anti-bot system has been added to their security!

[ijmorlan]

Good news! A Google-derived anti-bot system has been added to their security!

Please tell me this post was meant for April 1.

[Canard]

LLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[danbrotherston]

Anyone else find it ironic that the iXpress 200 takes about 50% longer to go from Conestoga Mall to DTK than the #7 milk-run. Now, yes, the 7 is a much more direct route, but it's also the same time as the #6 which also goes far out of the way.

[Markster]

Anyone else find it ironic that the iXpress 200 takes about 50% longer to go from Conestoga Mall to DTK than the #7 milk-run.  Now, yes, the 7 is a much more direct route, but it's also the same time as the #6 which also goes far out of the way.

Yeah, the construction detours really killed the 200s schedule. It's always been faster to take the 7C from downtown than the 200, but it's gotten much worse.

Route 6 has always been a bit of a secret. It's not excessively out of the way, and it runs on much faster roads, and makes fewer stops due to fewer passengers. If you're going between downtown and Conestoga mall, it's actually a very sane choice! If it's bad weather, it's almost certainly going to be more reliable than the 7.

[danbrotherston]

Anyone else find it ironic that the iXpress 200 takes about 50% longer to go from Conestoga Mall to DTK than the #7 milk-run.  Now, yes, the 7 is a much more direct route, but it's also the same time as the #6 which also goes far out of the way.

Yeah, the construction detours really killed the 200s schedule. It's always been faster to take the 7C from downtown than the 200, but it's gotten much worse.

Route 6 has always been a bit of a secret.  It's not excessively out of the way, and it runs on much faster roads, and makes fewer stops due to fewer passengers.  If you're going between downtown and Conestoga mall, it's actually a very sane choice!  If it's bad weather, it's almost certainly going to be more reliable than the 7.

Yes, although ironically, a friend of mine says he doesn't like the 6 because it's like a milk run.

[KevinL]

So there's been a change to the design of paper schedules (again!) - Last year they changed from having a flush-to-the-corners design to one with a bit more free space, presumably to improve readability, but they still maintained an 'abstracted' map design - a thematic map with just the roads relevant to the route, rectified and straightened, as they've had fro the last 5-7 years or so.

But now they've started to introduce accurate maps - actual geographically correct route maps, no abstraction allowed.

And the absurd part is, all of these designs are currently in use to some degree or another, depending on the specific route - I pulled these fresh off the rack at Charles Street. Yikes.

[danbrotherston]

So there's been a change to the design of paper schedules (again!) - Last year they changed from having a flush-to-the-corners design to one with a bit more free space, presumably to improve readability, but they still maintained an 'abstracted' map design - a thematic map with just the roads relevant to the route, rectified and straightened, as they've had fro the last 5-7 years or so.

But now they've started to introduce accurate maps - actual geographically correct route maps, no abstraction allowed.

And the absurd part is, all of these designs are currently in use to some degree or another, depending on the specific route - I pulled these fresh off the rack at Charles Street. Yikes.

I would say that they just have old prints lying around, but clearly not the case since the design is quite old by now.

I actually prefer the edge to edge design, but the map depends on what I'm looking for.  In some context and on some routes the simplified map is better, on others the geographically one is the best.

[Elmira Guy]

I much prefer the accurate maps and hope those become the standard again.

[dunkalunk]

GRT has installed new route signs at Fairview Park Mall. Odd, since they'll
be moving in less than a year.

[dunkalunk]

RE: Maps Making text follow a stroke is not a hard thing to do in any graphics program. Also, if you're meant to rotate the map to orient yourself north, why wouldn't you orient all the labels that way? The Conestoga Parkway label is upside-down.

[ijmorlan]

Good.

The simplified maps are atrocious and in a number of instances, inaccurate. The route 22 map for instance suggests that Activa becomes David Bergey, and Rittenhouse is nonexistent.

Which is weird, since the whole point of simplified maps as far as I am concerned is the ability to clearly show every feature of the route. For example, a route like the 7 which goes along King for a very long distance, with some complexity downtown and near Fairview, can have the long straight part shortened and the rest given sufficient space to see all the turns. If they omit parts, then what’s the point?

Several years ago they used to have large geographically-accurate maps which really were just extracts from a city map, showing every street (albeit emphasizing and labelling only the major streets), with stop locations indicated right on the map very accurately as little dots labelled with the stop number. These new maps look like sort of a half-way where it’s a small map but to scale. I’ll be interested to see if there are any routes where this leads to strange results.

[dunkalunk]

New vs. Old and the truck that was blocking bays while changing them during rush hour.

[trainspotter139]

The signs will be moved to their new location and new vinyl decals installed to account for the route changes that come into effect when ION starts.