Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police

The Picard Maneuver@startrek.website to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 2506 points –
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I get the sentiment, but you want them to waste public resources doing it on all these different clunky uis and software? Sometimes these take minutes to load new information to parse.

Maybe waste your time pinpointing it instead of expecting public resources to do what you could do for them?

I mean... their job supposedly is to protect and serve the citiens so yeah... I'd expect them to use their tools to do their job.

It’s your software/hardware and you know how to operate it. Would take you a fraction of the time as well.

Maybe public cameras sure, but private that’s not their tool by any stretch of the imagination.

And most public cameras don’t record for privacy reasons.

It’s your software/hardware

Where do you read that in the original post?

In what world do random citizens own and operate the security cameras of, well, anything? As opposed to the people that work there, or I dont know the police? Whose job is allegedly to solve crimes?

What? It was a campus security camera, not their hardware

Oh shit, a few minutes to do their job. The fucking horror, wouldn’t want to cut into their being an utter fucking bastard time, where they’re probably harassing a minority or beating their wife.

It’s public money, why waste it when you could provide it for them.

But argue fallacious points.

Okay so genius, are the cops going to provide the footage for the person to watch themselves to narrow down the time?

How the fuck do you expect this person to work it out if the ones with access to the evidence to do so refuse to do so?

And further fucking more, how is doing their job, wasting public money? There’s a lot of money wasted on police, investigating a robbery for a real person is not one of them.

So when there is a pothole in front of your driveway, you're going out and filling it in yourself, right? Because why waste the city's valuable time when you could do it yourself?

If it’s in your driveway it’s your problem, yes.

They said in front. So right after you go out

Even if it was in your driveway, unless you’re a cement construction worker you’d probably have no way to fix it and contact somebody

Who is "you" in this sentence? I mean, I could probably write security camera software, but I don't, and have no plans to. I imagine most of the people here are the same.

on all these different clunky uis and software

As someone who has used security cam software before. I swear they are designed to be as unhelpful, slow, and convoluted as possible.

That’s an interesting way to say that they shouldn’t get paid if they’re not doing their jobs. 

Yeah, every time I have ever had to hand over footage to the police for thefts at our family store, I clip and organizr that shit. I also include a paper identifying each file, the timestamps and what happened during them, any details I identified that they can corroborate (physical description, identifiable clothing/tattoos, make and model of vehicle, license plate number, etc.). I often end up putting in 1-2 hours of work on it watching, editing and transferring footage.

If you want traction and results from the police, you need to make it as easy as possible for them by doing the heavy lifting yourself. The cynical view is that thats because they just don't care, but also, in fairness, your case is one of dozens of cases on their desk and the cases never stop coming. This is your priority, so put in the effort instead of expecting others do so. That being said, that is much easier when you have direct access to the cctv footage. I'm guessing this student didnt.