The SP had quite a few different divisions, including shipping, communications, et cetera.
Which finally brought us to the... Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications ...one of the biggest three telcos in the entire world.
And let's not forget about the goode ole Western Union...
How difficult is it to direct a pizza delivery guy to the cab of a freight train in the Chicago yards? You just call a pizzeria within earshot of the crossing you're stuck at, and to confirm it, you say, "go outside, and in thirty seconds, I'm gonna blow my whistle three short times" (nowhere in regulations you do have to blow it three short times)...
And if you DO have business there, railroad cops are amongst the nicest people around. They're so bored that they're happy to see new people! Social engineering galore!!!
The rail companies all had their own internal telegraph and telephone systems, since they already had the right-of-way going from town to town. Once they realised they could sell the excess, a whole new industry was born.
They still do. And they interconnect their networks toghether, as well to Bell local loops, so you don't have all those silly long-distance restrictions. Better yet, the telephone network is fully accessible trough the locomotive radios, so you can call anywhere in north america for free from locomotive cabs...
It great to order pizza when you're stuck outside Chicago on a freight train, waiting for traffic to clear... (I've done a few times. Once, in 11 hours, we only moved 5 miles)...
1) You're running on the spare carrying capacity of a dedicated control system?
Railroad signalling is not very bandwidth-hungry. Signal and switches operation instructions and acknowledgement of both reception and execution are extremely reduntandly transmitted (you just can't allow 0.0001% of error there, unless you don't mind picking up a 1000 ton pile of scrap metal seasoned with mangled human remains), at a very low rate (in the range of dozens of baud). The rest of the bandwidth is used to transmit movement orders and requisitions and to track the movement of rolling stock, all things that classify as mundane data-processing tasks that are certainly as bandwith-hungry as an ICQ session.
* * *
By the 1920's, US railroads were heavily "computerized", since the ICC requirements for detailed freight and passenger statistics made them good clients of ye olde Hollerith tabulating machinery companie... Their extensive telegraph networks also gave them an early distributed teletypeprinter capability; so, in essence, railroads were at the edge of technological progress... Railroad signalling is also an interesting logic development, in that the large "interlocking plants" controlling railroad junctions were nothing less than computers programmed to disallow conflicting train movements. It's always interesting to study railroading history: they've been through exactly all the very same problems faced by airlines and UPS and networked companies over 120 years ago, and it is hilarious to see those who ignore history to stupidly repeat it...
Do you really need 100% reliable power? Computers work with a power supply that steps down the AC power down to a voltage manageable by batteries.
UPSes are wasteful in that they step-up voltage from a battery to 100 volts, then the computer's power supply steps it back down to low voltage. Why not design computers à la laptop, that is that have batteries between the transformer and the voltage regulators?
That would be much cheaper than a run-of-the-mill UPS, and would allow for operation with unreliable power sources.
Nowadays, everything you use works on low voltage, so it comes with a cumbersome transformer. That include halogens lamps. Why not wire houses with 12 volts, which could easily be supplemented by inline batteries? Big power-hungry appliances would simply get their separate high-voltage feeds, just like water heaters and ranges and clothes dryers and strip-heaters do nowadays.
And, especially for third-world countries, this would be much cheaper and could even be run by makeshift turbines on little streams.
and since Macintosh uses a less visible means of specifying file types,
Macintrash files have, in fact, two invisible 4-character extensions.
The filetype -- it contains the file type which says what kind of data is in the file.
The creator -- which identifies the application that created the file, and which should be used to work with the file.
Applications have a file type of 'APPL' and the creator field identifies the application; that is, it is what ends up in the "creator" field of files generated by this application.
Additionnal trivia: Beige toaster files are, in fact, divided in two. There is a data fork, and a ressource fork. The ressource fork contains information that can be easily edited by a resource editor program, allowing to change certain aspects of, say, an executable file, like the icons, fonts, sounds and strings it uses. The data fork contains, well... (drum roll) data... (In the case of an APPLication, it is the actual binary code. GUI details are in the ressource fork). Either (of both) of those data fork can be of zero length.
It is not a bad system, except that it is totally shielded from lusers and, although it can prevent them from doing mayhem on their filesystems, it is a royal pain in the ass to change if you don't have the proper utilities.
I suppose it could be desirable to have a filesystem that allows you to have as many forks on your files as you want (did I hear somewhere that Windoze NT has something like that? Or is it Novell?), but in my opinion, nothing beats the simplicity of a "flat file" filesystem such as we enjoy so much on Linux.
However, I still don't dislike the concept of embedding file type information and whatnot within the directory entry/fdn.
As I've said before, the ONLY way to have censorship is to allow the individual to select what they're censoring. That way, it becomes free choice, rather than outside force.
Then, it is no longer censorship. Censorship is something done by a third party to prevent information flow from A to B. But when B decides NOT so see some information, it is only choice, not censorship.
[...] IMHO, it's less a product of Government Thinking, and more a product of the dysfunctional, extremely co-dependent idiots Americans decide to vote for. You've no-one to blame but yourselves.
The problem is that the whole world is stuck with the shit those morons want.
[...] and instead recommended draconian laws to resolve the issue. From memory:
Criminalizing the creation of all viruses or self replicating programs -- even for research purposes.
Making "hacking" a federal crime with severe punishments
criminalizing THE HIRING of "white hat hackers" so that anyone who has EVER been convicted of "hacking" will be permanently barred from employment in the computer industry.
Of course they recommended against any corporation hiring "hacker" security firms and recommended that these organizations be criminalized.
In whole, the entire subcommittee hearing appeared entirely designed to further the cause of McAffee Associates and Microsoft, while recommending insane laws plainly unnecessary to further the cause of Internet security -- but they certainly do benefit the witnesses.
Nah, the whole hoopla looks like it's designed to let incompetent sysadmins and suits keep their cushy jobs...
To be sure, Slashdot's confrontation with M$ would have proceeded on the dead tree medium sooner or later, and the exchange of paper wouldn't have changed very much about the essential issues. But Roblimo could have bought himself a couple days to cool heads at Slashdot and talk to the lawyers, while the M$ lawyers would have been essentially idle, sitting expectantly in front of their Outlook clients and gradually losing their patience.
Hopefully, in the meanwhile, someone will send them a few love letters!!!!
Focusing on point (c) for a moment: Does this meanthat as soon as this licencing agreement was written, WinZip (and other zip extraction tools that can bypass the licencing acceptance code) suddenly became illegal?
Not at all, since the DMCIA says " [...] devices SPECIFICALLY to circumvent copy-protection"...
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And if you DO have business there, railroad cops are amongst the nicest people around. They're so bored that they're happy to see new people! Social engineering galore!!!
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It great to order pizza when you're stuck outside Chicago on a freight train, waiting for traffic to clear... (I've done a few times. Once, in 11 hours, we only moved 5 miles)...
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The rest of the bandwidth is used to transmit movement orders and requisitions and to track the movement of rolling stock, all things that classify as mundane data-processing tasks that are certainly as bandwith-hungry as an ICQ session.
* * *
By the 1920's, US railroads were heavily "computerized", since the ICC requirements for detailed freight and passenger statistics made them good clients of ye olde Hollerith tabulating machinery companie...
Their extensive telegraph networks also gave them an early distributed teletypeprinter capability; so, in essence, railroads were at the edge of technological progress...
Railroad signalling is also an interesting logic development, in that the large "interlocking plants" controlling railroad junctions were nothing less than computers programmed to disallow conflicting train movements.
It's always interesting to study railroading history: they've been through exactly all the very same problems faced by airlines and UPS and networked companies over 120 years ago, and it is hilarious to see those who ignore history to stupidly repeat it...
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UPSes are wasteful in that they step-up voltage from a battery to 100 volts, then the computer's power supply steps it back down to low voltage. Why not design computers à la laptop, that is that have batteries between the transformer and the voltage regulators?
That would be much cheaper than a run-of-the-mill UPS, and would allow for operation with unreliable power sources.
Nowadays, everything you use works on low voltage, so it comes with a cumbersome transformer. That include halogens lamps. Why not wire houses with 12 volts, which could easily be supplemented by inline batteries? Big power-hungry appliances would simply get their separate high-voltage feeds, just like water heaters and ranges and clothes dryers and strip-heaters do nowadays.
And, especially for third-world countries, this would be much cheaper and could even be run by makeshift turbines on little streams.
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That fellow is no better than Escobar's grandson.
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They'll learn :
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Macintrash files have, in fact, two invisible 4-character extensions.
The filetype -- it contains the file type which says what kind of data is in the file.
The creator -- which identifies the application that created the file, and which should be used to work with the file.
Applications have a file type of 'APPL' and the creator field identifies the application; that is, it is what ends up in the "creator" field of files generated by this application.
Additionnal trivia: Beige toaster files are, in fact, divided in two. There is a data fork , and a ressource fork . The ressource fork contains information that can be easily edited by a resource editor program, allowing to change certain aspects of, say, an executable file, like the icons, fonts, sounds and strings it uses. The data fork contains, well... (drum roll) data... (In the case of an APPLication, it is the actual binary code. GUI details are in the ressource fork). Either (of both) of those data fork can be of zero length.
It is not a bad system, except that it is totally shielded from lusers and, although it can prevent them from doing mayhem on their filesystems, it is a royal pain in the ass to change if you don't have the proper utilities.
I suppose it could be desirable to have a filesystem that allows you to have as many forks on your files as you want (did I hear somewhere that Windoze NT has something like that? Or is it Novell?), but in my opinion, nothing beats the simplicity of a "flat file" filesystem such as we enjoy so much on Linux.
However, I still don't dislike the concept of embedding file type information and whatnot within the directory entry/fdn.
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Let's celebrate!!!
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Then, it is no longer censorship. Censorship is something done by a third party to prevent information flow from A to B. But when B decides NOT so see some information, it is only choice, not censorship.
The problem is that the whole world is stuck with the shit those morons want.
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Nah, the whole hoopla looks like it's designed to let incompetent sysadmins and suits keep their cushy jobs...
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It's not surprising; after all, it is from France that the concept of human rights (as opposed to " property owner's rights ") comes from...
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Hopefully, in the meanwhile, someone will send them a few love letters!!!!
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Just move /. abroad...
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Not at all, since the DMCIA says " [...] devices SPECIFICALLY to circumvent copy-protection"...
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Traceroutes petered-out somewhere near Chicago.
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Puuuuhleeeze, kids, can you read " Unsafe at any speed ", by Ralph Nader? You'll seem much less ignorant.
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Hopefully, this time, somebody will be fired for buying from Microsoft...
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