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Houston's real time traffic map

Houston, Tx also has a really good traffic website run from a joint operation between the Metro and a university. It helps people find out that the 610 Loop, I10, and US 290 are just a huge parking lot during rush hour. The site is at Houston Metro

Houston has one as well. This one works by passively reading the identifications off those handy little tollway ez-tags, and sees how fast the traffic is moving on average. I always thought it was kind of funny how it would often read 70 mph in places even though the speed limit was 55. The map looks pretty crappy like now. This is typical rush hour. I used to take 45 minutes to get to school, (8 mi. trip) worst case was an hour and a half. Stupid Houston, yay college.

Such things have existed for years in the US.

Here's Houston: http://traffic.tamu.edu/incmap/

Here's Dallas: http://dfwtraffic.dot.state.tx.us/dfwweb/

These don't use 'car counters' (sounds expensive), they simply use the RFID tags that the tollway system uses to automatically charge you when you cruise through at 70 mph. They just set the sensors up on the side of the road (cheap), and send the info in. That's why they can afford to have coverage over the entire city, not just downtown like that slow Denver map.

What would be great is a standardized system to push these maps to LCD screens in your car.

Check this paper out for details: End of Moore's law: thermal (noise) death of integration in micro and nano electronics

This might also bring totaly new prospects to the approach applied in Transmeta's Crusoe.

>For one, there is no evidence of any other planetary body
>which would have gotten a significant infusion of water
>this way and it seems unlikely that Mars would have been the
>only target.

You must not have read the article, or at least you didn't read it carefully. The water wasn't all delivered by the bodies that collided with Mars - much of it would have already been in place, trapped as ice beneath the surface and at the poles (as we believe it is today). Furthermore, we have lots of evidence that water ice can be delivered to planets via comets - we actually watched comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smash into Jupiter in 1994. That comet consisted of around 21 fragments, some with diameters of well over a mile, and had a visible impact even on that giant planet's atmosphere. You can visit this site to get an overview of the massive (and unexpected) results of their fiery plunge into Jupiter. Had it smacked Mars instead, it would have injected a vast amount of water vapor (and other gasses) into the thin Martian atmosphere, radically altering its composition.

Even today, if a large comet or even a sufficiently sized iceless asteroid slammed into the surface, it would produce a massive explosion, throw mountains worth of material into the atmosphere and generate a tremendous shockwave. The heat that would result from such events - including the rain of ejected rock falling back to the surface of Mars - could melt that subsurface permafrost on a global scale. Throw in any ice delivered by the impactor itself (for example, from a 20 mile wide comet) and you'd have one hell of a flood.

As CO2 and water vapor poured into the atmosphere, they'd rapidly insulate the planet, allowing still more ice to melt and resulting in colossal floods on a global scale. Another article I've seen on this theory points out the atmosphere could become hotter than a self-cleaning oven (more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit). This flooding could go on for years, until Mars cooled and its water vapor / CO2 atmosphere largely precipitated out, seeped through all the regolith at the surface, and refroze as a layer of permafrost.

If you want to see something of interest that does this check out Houston Live Traffic They use toll-booth transponders with sensors every 1-5 miles. This then gives them a live map of average traffic flow. They also have web cams at various spots.
Overall this is an excellent demonstration of this kind of technology.

why the double standard for Korea and Iran?

ProdiGene is based in College Station.
If you are not familiar with the term "Aggie" this is a student or alumnus of Texas A&M University. For reference.

Report Has a report from the department of Engineering Technology at Texas Tech about ways to stop fire ant damage. The first few pages discuss the problem: Basically it says that the alternating magnetic fields generated by and within the electronic equipment attract the ants from short distances. When the ant dies the electricity causes strange reactions, including the release of pheromones which attract other ants. And it seems that in some places this is a serious problem as was said with some figures quoted. However this report is about fire ants and I am too lazy to research more to see if it generalizes to all aunt species so good luck :)

Actually, they *do* use toll tag transponders to track your speed. In Houston, the end result is this cool online map of traffic speeds on all monitored highways in the Houston/Galveston area.

But that data comes from an averaging of individual speeds. Somewhere, there's a computer owned by a government agency which has recorded the fact that Amtech/TransCore tag number 361836456148814 passed station X at 07:32:49.5 and passed station Y (1 mile away) at 07:33:14.2 for an average speed greater than the posted speed limit.

I also remember reading somewhere (possibly on San Antonio's similar site) that any Amtech system can be used to help with their traffic tracking. So their database has you tracked whether you've got a local tag, or one from San Antonio or Dallas, or even your Oklahoma Turnpike Pikepass.

Interesting fact: wrapping your TollTag (etc) in aluminum foil prevents it from being detected by the sensors. That tinfoil beanie doesn't look so silly now, does it?

You haven't been paying much attention on this planet, have you?
HOW TO MOUNT A BUTTERFLY

Ok, having looked into this 1991 act it does look very relevant. In this address Bush takes credit for it, but perhaps that is just politics.

This page is pretty interesting, although it contains several obvious misunderstandings (understandable in a USDA statement about computer networks in 1991). It credits Gore as well as Bush. It is kind of quaint in that it has the whole "Japan and Europe are getting ahead" attitude that was the popular wisdom in the US during the last 80's and early 90's.

For an earlier look, see RFC 1167, authored by Vint Cerf. It's extremely impressive. It's not clear that he anticipated that ordinary people would actually use and do business on the Internet, but then, extrapolating from 1990 would not have suggested it.

The only super hero I care for is Tux. I cannot comment on the classic super heroes, as the site could not bear the load. Since there are several tux sites, they will probably survive the load better. Check here, here, here, here, here, here or here.

Of course, the risk of these deposits is in the uncontrolled release of methane. It would be good if we can mine them and turn them into the less dangerous carbon dioxide.

After all, if we don't mine them some of them will evaporate anyway. Volcanic action, a rock from space, a sunken ship or fisherman's net scraping across...or simply a low-pressure hurricane crossing a deposit which has expanded to its upper limit.

For that matter, those deposits which don't evaporate...what can they do? Get trapped under layers of sediment? Evaporate when the ocean floor folds into a mountain top? Get sucked back into the planet at the end of the tectonic plate, and be emitted from a volcano or leakage to the surface? It all reaches the surface sometime.

I downloaded the other 6.7 avi version, so that's available too. Likely, you'll probably want to download that one--though I'm leaving the others up.

I downloaded the other 6.7 avi version, so that's available too. Likely, you'll probably want to download that one--though I'm leaving the others up.

.. I can't think of a better use of college bandwidth :)

All of them here

I have 3 versions that I've mirrored:
A 34.8 MB mpeg

16.2 MB wmv

and a 2.4 MB wmv

Enjoy ;)

.. I can't think of a better use of college bandwidth :)

All of them here

I have 3 versions that I've mirrored:
A 34.8 MB mpeg

16.2 MB wmv

and a 2.4 MB wmv

Enjoy ;)

.. I can't think of a better use of college bandwidth :)

All of them here

I have 3 versions that I've mirrored:
A 34.8 MB mpeg

16.2 MB wmv

and a 2.4 MB wmv

Enjoy ;)

.. I can't think of a better use of college bandwidth :)

All of them here

I have 3 versions that I've mirrored:
A 34.8 MB mpeg

16.2 MB wmv

and a 2.4 MB wmv

Enjoy ;)

yeah linux suxx0rs windows rulez

scr1p+m@5+3r c0kk

Your Solution

Those transponders are everywhere here in Houston. Some also have cameras.

More than that though, it is all freely accessible to the public at http://traffic.tamu.edu.

It seems that it is impossible to stem the flow of this technology. Cameras will be placed on street corners and methods for police to find crime will improve. The real concern, IMNSHO, is who is looking through the cameras, gov't or everyone?

I live in Houston and they have been tracking traffic like this for YEARS now. They even have a website where you can go and view the current traffic condtions. It's actually a REALLY REALLY helpful system since I normally have to drive about an hour to get to work, and this system often keeps me from being stuck in traffic. Also, they have webcams where you can view the current traffic live.

I live in Houston and they have been tracking traffic like this for YEARS now. They even have a website where you can go and view the current traffic condtions. It's actually a REALLY REALLY helpful system since I normally have to drive about an hour to get to work, and this system often keeps me from being stuck in traffic. Also, they have webcams where you can view the current traffic live.

Houston has its own traffic tracking system that operates in a similar fashion. When I first realized that they were using the toll-tags to calculate this, I became concerned about the privacy issues (especially given that this use is technically a violation of the license agreement). So I called a friend of mine at the Texas Transportation Institute and asked about it.

And lo and behold, they actually turn out to take the privacy aspect very seriously. When an EZ-Tag (TM) passes under a sensor, it gets assigned an id. When it passes under the next sensor, it calculates the speed, adds it to the database with this generated id (not the toll tag number). And then it assigns it a new ID for the trip to the next sensor. Thus, TTI is incapable of knowing, even under threat of subpoena, the identity of any car passing down the highway or the route of any single vehicle beyond any single highway segment. The entire system is designed to prevent it.

Houston has its own traffic tracking system that operates in a similar fashion. When I first realized that they were using the toll-tags to calculate this, I became concerned about the privacy issues (especially given that this use is technically a violation of the license agreement). So I called a friend of mine at the Texas Transportation Institute and asked about it.

And lo and behold, they actually turn out to take the privacy aspect very seriously. When an EZ-Tag (TM) passes under a sensor, it gets assigned an id. When it passes under the next sensor, it calculates the speed, adds it to the database with this generated id (not the toll tag number). And then it assigns it a new ID for the trip to the next sensor. Thus, TTI is incapable of knowing, even under threat of subpoena, the identity of any car passing down the highway or the route of any single vehicle beyond any single highway segment. The entire system is designed to prevent it.

that Houston Traffic Map is pretty cool. I thought the animated historical traffic speed data was especially cool.

Hey everyone,

We have had this going on for a long time. They dont come right out and say they are using the toll tags for that purpose, but you know it's being done when you look at a site like this: Houston Traffic Map. It is pretty cool though. You can look at the map and see what roads are moving and which ones are not and during rush hours most of em arent.

M Prindle

I would tend to agree with the Dr. Richard's interest in looking beyond the neuron, but I believe his metaphor of looking at the transistor is wholly off base.

A CPU, even to an alien is composed of a lot of wired physics experiments built into a glorified chunk of sand. Not only would they have difficulty analyzing a transistor, they would likely miss the important parts, the logical gate structures. Without understanding these "higher level" abstractions (literally groups of physics experiments) the hardware and, more importantly the software that runs on them, is of little value.

In the case of brain tissue, the many neurons in even a simple creature bunch together to form clumps or 'nodes' almost equivalent to a CPU's register or other sub-elements. These nodes combine to create larger physical components, again like an ALU or FPU. The structure of the brain, in other words, is directly analogous to embedded, firmware-loaded computers (e.g. a BIOS is the first to come to mind.)

Fortunately for those children of Turing who are addicted to a formal systems approach, the black box of a brain, like any other system, is prone to reverse-engineering. I like to call systems like A.L.C.E. True A.I. (Since nature seems to have avoided using the formal-production rule methods of A.L.I.C.E. they are definitely artificial.) What interests many Computer/Electrical Engineers and current researchers are kinds of Simulated Intelligence (S.I.) that propose to emulate natural intelligence (whatever that is.) It usually involves like fuzzy logic and neural networks (neither of which is for the mathematically disinclined.)

To quote Larry Wall,

"Either approach may give birth to various sorts of monstrosities."

(disclaimer: my A.I. formal training has been exclusively GOFAI - Good. Ol' Fasion. A.I. while my prost-graduate research has to this point been exclusively )

That appears to be a mud dauber, or mud wasp.

The Texas A&M CS dept. homepage now includes, among other rotating photos, pictures of Bjarne and a pointer to the news that he has accepted the endowed faculty position.

The Texas A&M CS dept. homepage now includes, among other rotating photos, pictures of Bjarne and a pointer to the news that he has accepted the endowed faculty position.

The Texas A&M CS dept. homepage now includes, among other rotating photos, pictures of Bjarne and a pointer to the news that he has accepted the endowed faculty position.

Just look at http://www.cs.tamu.edu/news/items?id=56&PHPSESSID= a5090196b655fa156fd7d43f5010549d

Read the official announcement from the Texas A&M Univeristy Department of Computer Science for yourself.

Houston has a similar system based on toll tags, Transtar

He is evil.

For the bonehead award, Programming I was basically just Pascal on personal computers. Well, I had gotten into "trouble" for not commenting my source code. So, for my final program, I wrote it in Pascal, compiled, disassembled, rewrote the assembler code to Pascal inline assembly statements, and lined up the original Pascal as the assembly inline comments. My prof wasn't amused.

But, on the other end, I took another programming course which was supposed to be COBOL, c, and FORTRAN. The first day, the prof said that we will not need our FORTRAN book and would not write any FORTRAN programs or be tested on FORTRAN. However, we were instructed to learn FORTRAN on our own. Well, almost no one kept their FORTRAN book or even bothered learning FORTRAN. I was lucky enough to have already learned most FORTRAN working on physics stuff. Our final program was to write a source converter in c to convert FORTRAN programs to c. Not only did we have to know FORTRAN, but we had to KNOW FORTRAN!

On a side note, how come Aggies can't build a bonfire without killing themselves in the process.

That's not called for. That is a very serious and real issue on A&M's campus.

You might, however, find it interesting to note that bonfire was around for 88 years before it fell in '99. I'd say thats a pretty good track record.

I would have liked it when I was at A&M if we ran Linux.

When I saw this picture on this page I was thinking those are odd boxes to keep cats in.

When I saw this picture on this page I was thinking those are odd boxes to keep cats in.

Reveille is a collie, the mascot of Texas A&M University.

I'm sure someone else referenced this, but I'm lazy and didn't read all the posts. see drawbridge: http://drawbridge.tamu.edu/ It's a bridging/firewall FreeBSD distro.

Much to my dismay Texas A&M implemented a system a few years back which does just that. You may want to contact their computer group to see if they can help you out. I know their system was cross platform because when I would use their XPRINT system my meter would be incremented. When I used Macs the same deal...

I'm sure there are others out there, but I'm also pretty sure their system is an in-house solution. Maybe since you are a university and one in Texas at that they will help ya out :)

Good luck.

JOhn

Much to my dismay Texas A&M implemented a system a few years back which does just that. You may want to contact their computer group to see if they can help you out. I know their system was cross platform because when I would use their XPRINT system my meter would be incremented. When I used Macs the same deal...

I'm sure there are others out there, but I'm also pretty sure their system is an in-house solution. Maybe since you are a university and one in Texas at that they will help ya out :)

Good luck.

JOhn

I think several (highly modded) contributors to this discussion are confusing
the concepts of information bandwidth and frequency bandwidth. Ultra-wideband
refers to the bandwidth in the frequency domain, which is only indirectly
connected to the concept of information bandwidth, in that a wide band in
the frequency domain translates to narrow pulse in the time domain. Coding
techniques also strongly affect the ultimate information bandwidth of the
system. UWB is nothing like IEEE 802.11b,
which operates in the narrow 2.4 GHz - 2.483 GHz band.

I have been working on a project for US Army STRICOM,
in which we are using 8 UWB devices manufactured by
Time Domain Inc. to perform position location. These devices
operate at 1.9 GHz center frequency with a 2 GHz bandwidth,
which translates to a 500 ps pulsewidth.
We have a short conference paper on UWB simulation, accepted for presentation
to the 2002 IEEE Antenna and PropagationSociety Symposium,
which you can access
here. Speaking in general and rather simplistic terms, the information
bandwidth of such a system would depend of the time frame over which you
will allocate these 500 ps slots to listen for the transmission of 1 bit
of information. For example, if we choose a 5 ns time frame, then we
could theoretically obtain 200 Mb/s information bandwidth, while (ideally)
allowing for 10 channels of operation. Of course, the previous analysis
neglects the need for redundancy, and you may want to choose a time slot
over which to listen for a pulse different than the pulsewidth itself, but
I think the discussion gives one a good idea about how to relate information
bandwidth to frequency domain bandwidth in a simple communication system.

We have the ability right now to craft custom virii and bacteria which can replicate and destroy other creatures.

No.

Call me a flat - earther, (or better yet, call me a Catholic) but I don't see the benefit in creating custom-virii to counteract other parasites.

For instance, look at the at the Africanized bee. (Aphis mellifera scutellata)


I know that "killer bees" is a misnomer, but the aggression of the Africanized bee is something that scientists failed to account for in their creation, much to the detriment of Sounth and Central America and some areas of Texas. Creating custom lifeforms is not what we should be doing.

Transporting animals to do one thing or another, OTOH, is somewhere between here and there. The Spanish brought horses; I brought my dog from Arlington to Austin, and he fathered in Austin.

I'm not an expert in morality (I'm still trying to figure right V wrong out myself) but I can't see the creation of custom lifeforms as a Good Thing under any circumstances.