But do other cities use the system used in Boston? That seems to me to be the root of the problem: a lack of standard ways to do standard things. Here in my cit

But do other cities use the system used in Boston? That seems to me to be the root of the problem: a lack of standard ways to do standard things. Here in my city I once got involved with a system that: * sent serial characters over a modem on a dedicated phone line. * the characters ended up in a hacked printing terminal. * that closed a relay that rang the gong in the fire station after the printing terminal had generated the associated document. So yay! We solved the problem. Unfortunately such "one off" systems tend to be maintenance nightmares (which is where I came in).