Don't Tie a Horse To a Tree and Other Open Data Lessons 109
itwbennett writes "Baltimore this week became the first city to hop on the open data bandwagon with the launch of the Baltimore Decoded website. The site makes the city's charter and codes more accessible to the public and will eventually include information on court decisions, legislative tracking and city technical standards (e.g., building regulations, zoning restrictions, fire codes). The site also offers a RESTful, JSON-based API for accessing the data. ITworld's Phil Johnson dug in and found these lesser-known Baltimore codes: You can't hold more than 1 yard sale every 6 months, you can't tie a horse to a tree, and you can't have fruit on a wharf. What you do with this information is up to you."
Re:Two problems (Score:5, Insightful)
XML may be an over engineered piece of crap, but while JSON isn't perfect, its pretty darn simple and "just works", with very few gotchas... REST is just "use http the way it was designed to be used and not one bit more".
Not too sure where the problem is.
Know the law (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally, A cit where you can figure out what it legal under the city's laws. Now only if you could access the county, state and federal regulations it might be possible to obey the millions of pages of laws that you are subject to. That would be nice, but under common law, you also need all the historical records! Some of those may or may not have existing documentation, and it may be privately held.
We have a legal system that accumulates laws. I'd prefer one that actively put in some re-factoring and simplification work instead of implicitly including all historical laws and decisions, overriding what is changed. How much law can we possible need? It has to be less that what we have.
Re:Know the law (Score:4, Insightful)
It is that way by design. It's difficult to control a law abiding populace, so pass enough laws to make everyone a criminal. Some one gets uppity or steps out of line, you've already got 'em.
yard sale (Score:4, Insightful)
If there were no limit on yard sales, then people could just set up a shop in a residential zone.
Re:No Horse/Tree Connectivity? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop trying to rein us in.
Thank you! That is the first time this month anyone on slashdot has correctly spelled the phrase "rein in".