Great post. Babysteps.
Craig
--- Josh Sirota <josh@sirota.org> wrote:
> I know I'm days behind in the dicussion, but today
> is the first day I've
> been able to catch up on my digests from back before
> Halloween.
>
> As a member who has written autocrossing scoring
> (not timing!) software 3
> times for various regions over the years, and as the
> guy who actually
> purchased SFR's current JACircuits timing system,
> and lastly as someone who
> has been down this road before, let me weigh in. I
> haven't been that active
> for the last couple of years, but I do have a lot of
> experience with these
> issues.
>
> 1) This conversation all started with asking about
> pre-registration. I
> THINK the reason for the question was about reducing
> the amount of time
> spent in the registration line at the day of the
> event. Like others have
> said, I don't think that this is a good enough
> reason to do on-line
> registration. There are a lot of hassles associated
> with it for a
> relatively small benefit, but it's an interesting
> academic discussion.
>
> 2) However, pre-registration is absolutely REQUIRED
> for any on-site SCORING
> software to work. There is no way to get on-site
> scoring done without all
> of the entrants IN THE COMPUTER SYSTEM before their
> run group starts. This
> is nearly impossible to accomplish with on-site
> registration.
>
> 3) The Nationals software, called TS96 (because this
> version was written for
> national events in '96, and hasn't had many updates
> since) is basically
> impossible to use unless all registration is done
> before the event starts,
> AND if the cars run in close to numeric order within
> their classes (as is
> done at National events). In reality to use any
> on-site scorign software
> will require changes to the way that the flow of the
> event goes (no more
> running in the wrong run group, we'll likely want to
> institute a run order
> (such as, by car number), which will force the way
> we grid, etc. Let's not
> bite off more than we can chew.
>
> 4) Years ago I proposed a way to fully automate our
> events, with
> computerized entry, timing and scoring, etc. Boris
> Elpiner helped refine
> the whole plan maybe 3 or 4 years ago. It involved
> a number of networked
> computers, bar codes, bar code readers at the start
> line, etc. Very cool.
> Very complex. A very bad idea that we were not in
> any position to implement
> (and we still aren't).
>
> 5) So I suggest backing off of any computerized
> scoring plan. It costs more
> than its worth (and I don't mean $$$ cost). If for
> some reason we could
> justify the costs of doing pre-registration, that
> would be good, because
> it's the first baby step towards doing a fully
> computerized events.
>
> 6) If any of you laid-off high tech programmers (I
> still have a job myself,
> I'm happy to say) want to talk about things that I
> think would be
> interesting prototypes, drop me a line. But don't
> expect the SCCA, with our
> 200+ entry events, to sign up to use anything
> anytime soon. The procedural
> changes alone are too much to ask. Ask me about the
> time I tried to suggest
> that we should do tech before registration, like
> they do in LA. That lasted
> one event 6 or 7 years ago.
>
> Josh
Find a job, post your resume.
http://careers.yahoo.com
|