TfL Kill Two of My Apps | Hacker News Reader

TfL Kill Two of My Apps

mbarclay.net

65 pointsbensummers37 comments

UPDATE 24/10/2010 @ 6pm: I have been informed that the change was part of a security update & that TfL are working on restoring the service immediately and are also fully committed to open data.

This should be at the top of the post, rather than right at the bottom... (Another case of malice or stupidity--stupidity wins a lot of the time.)

Yea, reminds me of malice vs stupidity http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/stupidity-versus-malice/

TFL are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The blog poster should be able to get answers, documentation etc. through that.

If he really wants to scare the crap out of them he should also issue a subject access request for all data mentioning him, including emails and files. This type of thing sends a government funded agency into a complete tailspin.

Yep.

FOI requests are pretty simple the poster just needs to send them an email saying "I would like to an information request under the Freedom of Information Act, please send me any emails or documentation related to the shutting down of xyz service". They need to sign off with their real name, but that's about it in terms of what you have to put in a request.

The FOI contact information for tfl:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/foi/

If they use a service like http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ it's even easier, it keeps track of the responses and indexes them for other people.

Here in the States, the government knows full well how to deal with uppity citizens abusing our Freedom of Information Act.

We put them on hold for four years, then tell them it'll cost $1 million to get everything together.

http://www.9news.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=157782&...

In the UK the max you can charge is £10 and I assume their is a time limit but not sure about that.

In law the authorities have 20 working days to respond, with a few defined exceptions.

The Guardian newspaper is a big fan of FOI and uses it extensively. I'm sure they'd love to pounce on this one. They're one of the few news services that get the web.

I'm at the Visualising London event that's being held by the GLA on wednesday, I'll see if I can get anything out of any TfL reps that are there.

"If he really wants to scare the crap out of them he should..."

... automatically turn every API request into a FOI-based official inquiry e-mail :)

The concept of "crown copyright" in the UK is stifling to innovation, backward, and shows no respect for those who pay tax.

We should ask our local MPs to do as the US have done, where government created IP is public domain.

>We should ask our local MPs to do as the US have done, where government created IP is public domain.

Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions but I'm thinking that even if the data were PD it wouldn't matter. They still need to get hold of it in the first place. The data is continuously refreshed, presumably, even caching the data returned by the API (for more than a short time) would be bad - trains|buses are delayed, break-down, there are strikes and closures, etc. and so transport services are in constant flux.

Summary:

Developer's app depends on external API to function. He has sold thousands of apps and his customers are happy. Then, external API stops working. So, his app stops working. He wrote a long article complaining about the external API and its failure impacting his business.

(Transport for London) disabled open journey planning API after supplier releases own commercial app.

I don't think you can say "after supplier releases own commercial app" without being a little dishonest:

I have been using this successfully for more than 6 months for both London Bus (now called London Travel Deluxe) and London Tube Deluxe Pro for iPad.

The blogger (and many commenters) jumped to conclusions way too quickly here.

> It’s an uncomfortable coincidence that the XML API was closed down a week after the removal of MDV’s release of the ‘My TfL’ app.

I reworded the title based on my reading of the article where the above quotation is from. TfL was a meaningless acronym in the title, especially without any context.

Anybody else get confused by the title because of the British English practice of using the plural verb forms for (certain) collective nouns?

I don't understand what you mean, can you explain?

US: Netcraft confirms Microsoft is dying.

UK: Netcraft confirm Microsoft are dying.

Thanks - I never noticed that. I think I must have been unconsciously converting the US style to the UK style in my head all this time.

It's in the context of football that I really struggle to contain myself, and I'm not a grammar nazi any other time.

"Manchester United is going to win", or "Scotland has no chance", Argh!! I've no real reason to hate this, but it just feels wrong!

"Manchester United" is a contraction of "Manchester United Football Club"

Right, but en_UK dictates that this is plural, and hence you say "Manchester United are going to win."

And "Manchester United Football Club is going to win the Premiership" sounds to me as incorrect as "Manchester United is going to win the Premiership"

No matter what justification you use, "<football team> is..." will sound wrong to english speakers in the UK, Aus, NZ and a couple of other places (bar the person higher up in this thread who says they never notice it :))

In America, the convention is that organizations are singular in number. For example, "Bank of America offers loans." In England, the convention seems to be to treat organizations as plural.

I think that, actually, our (English) convention is (theoretically) to pick whichever seems more logical.

We would never say "Bank of America offer loans", however the poster used "TfL Kill Two of My Apps" because the act of killing was done be staff (plural) at TfL, rather than by the organisation itself.

That seems to be a distinction without a difference. Offering loans is done by the staff at Bank of America to the same degree that "the act of killing was done by staff (plural) at TfL, rather than by the organisation itself."

But when you read "Bank of America offers loans" you automatically assume that it's a company policy change, right? It's unlikely that the reason they are now offering loans is because the low-level staff who you ask for loans just happen to feel like it.

That said, yeah, there's a lot of wiggle room, and I've never known anyone argue about misuse either way... but in general, one way just sounds natural to our ears, and one sounds off, and which way sounds natural/off varies depending on scenario.

edit: I did actually have a slight "am I talking bullshit?" moment, rang up my mother who teaches English as a foreign language among other things, she backed up my interpretation so I'm more confident now.

I didn't say that Bank of America made a policy change; I sad that they offered a loan. The persons doing the offering of said loan are low-levels, presumably acting within the bounds set by company policy; however, the degree to which they adhere to the policy is not relevant. In terms of who is physically doing what, this really is a distinction without a difference, except that to your ears it sounds wrong (which is fine; that's the difference between dialects).

My point is simply that in American English, there are strict rules about number. I thought that English English had similarly strict rules about number that just happened to differ from those that Americans use; apparently not. Interesting.

"In British English, collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is, respectively, on the body as a whole or on the individual members; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree."

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_di....

There's also some more information about the differences between the two in these articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_collective_nouns#Metony... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesis

Fascinating; thank you for the links.

As a native British English speaker the title feels wrong to me, despite common practices.

Manchester United Win Football Game = fine

TfL Kill Puppies = ok, I suppose

TfL Kill My Apps = No, they killed your app.

Yeah, I feel like it should've been past tense as well. "TfL Kill(s) My Apps" would be gramatically correct, but, like you said, it doesn't feel as right because it's not a continuous/repetitive action.

Why does it have to be killed when Man U doesn't have to be won?

Without putting my linguist hat on (in the middle of a hack day) my gut feeling is the 'newspaper'ness of the title. "Entity Verbs Noun" is fine if it's an impartial style report, but "Entity Verbs My Noun" is only good if it is a continuous verb.

"TFL Kill All Hopes Of Timely Service", for example, would be OK.

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