Yup, solid axles on the wheels, so on any turn one or both of them are scraping on the track. Also the trains go relatively fast compared to most subways which amplifies the noise, especially in tunnels.
Also note that in Europe or Japan, using automobiles is relatively expensive because of higher fuel prices. This increases demand for mass transit as well as demand for more efficient and smaller vehicles. Cheap gas in the US means that the demand tends to be for bigger and more inefficient autos. When there have been gas price spikes in the US for more than a few months the sales of larger cars tend to decline.
SF mass transit is essentially the bus system. BART has only 7 stops in SF. If you mean the wider Bay Area then mass transit is just as sparse except for buses and it rarely goes to where people work. Compare to Manhattan where you are almost always within walking distance to a subway station.
We also have NIMBYs. For example, BART wasn't allowed to go through the expensive Menlo Park so so there was no service to the south bay. Turns out the south bay became a hot item later where tons of people and the high paying jobs were, while S.F. slowly became more of a bedroom community. You plan for today but the result may not be as useful tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be no budget or capability to change. Also Menlo Park has not allowed expressways through the city, so there was often a fanout of autos coming off of the bridge.
Now BART is going to the south bay but it's still complicated, it goes around the east bay so as to bypass Menlo Park. It will help a lot of people for sure but not as many as it could if it became a ring.
Then there's the issue that it's not enough. To get to BART in the first place is tricky. There's park-and-ride which just means drive for awhile and then park in a high crime area before taking mass transit. Or you take a bus or light rail for an hour first. Plus the cost; still less than the cost of a car, but if you already have a car because you need it to go get groceries and take the kids to school then it's an added burden; especially with Cal-Train which is not cheap.
On the bright side however, I see more and more higher density (and luxury) apartments being built very close to mass transit stops, BART, Light Rail, etc. These are no longer associated with poor communities. On the downside, many of those who can afford the luxury apartments seem to prefer Uber or other inefficient modes of transportation that defeat the purpose of mass transit.
Overall, from what I've seen in many areas in the US, mass transit has these problems: sparse, does not go where you want to go, is slow and requires multiple changes, limited hours. Areas with high tax revenue are low density and don't want mass transit; areas with high density tend to have relatively low tax revenue and can't afford the mass transit or don't have the political clout.
I'm uncertain here. It would normally seem to be the right thing to do, however in the present state of affairs it won't do anything. The senate will never vote to impeach, that's a pipe dream. Congress won't cooperate with any invocation of the 25th amendment, it will just be a bit of theater. So stepping up and resigning will not accomplish anything except to go and get a better job (not in politics, the political career will be over). And after resigning, Trump will just appoint someone else who's more compliant.
So I can imagine that 'anonymous' does believe that more good can be done within the administration than from outside. However by writing this letter all it's likely to do is make Trump even more paranoid and more insistent that everyone swear personal loyalty (especially when he's already upset at so many former BFFs).
We've already had plenty of senior officials resign and publicly claim how bad the president is, and this has not accomplished anything. Everyone who isn't a fan of Trump already knows he's a moron and incompetent, and everyone who is a fan refuses to believe it.
Overall it might have been better if 'anonymous' just kept quiet.
This also means that invoking the 25th amendment will backfire. After invoking that amendment, congress takes over. And that this point in time with elections upcoming, they will all loudly shout "I still love Trump so please vote for me!!" after which the VP and majority of the cabinet will quickly find themselves out of a job.
Also, the 25th amendment allows for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit for office, after which congress decides what to do. Which in a roundabout way implies that these cabinet appointees do have the power to undermine the president, at least as a group.
I had fully expected the Republican party to start fracturing after Trump won the primaries and then the presidency. I was surprised when the majority of his Republican critics turned around and started toadying up to him. I wonder if after the midterms and their jobs are safe for awhile longer if they dare to criticize again, but as unpredictable as things have been I'm probably wrong.
And you can't fix the first-past-the-post system without changing the constitution, and that's highly unlikely. What you want is a change in the electorate to start favoring more moderates and centrists even in the primaries. California has a system now where the top two winners of primaries advance to the general election, even if from the same party. Hasn't been around long though so it's unclear if this will make a clear difference in the long run. Given that both major parties bitterly opposed it, it's probably a good idea.
And I have come to the conclusion after several decades, that loyalty to a political party is the biggest vice in America.
Um, I think you are referring to the electoral college, because the people of America by a majority voted for a different candidate. But the electoral college doesn't always reflect the will of the people and it was not designed to do so. Being a republic or not is unrelated to this issue.
To be fair though, the candidates presumably campaigned with the assumption of winning the electoral college vote and not to win the majority vote. So Hillary lost fair and square according to the agreed upon rules, even if it did not agree with will of the people of America.
Presidential appointees are not deep state, as far as I understand the conspiracy meaning of that new term. Deep state refers to the permanent bureaucracy and not the appointees who come and go.
As Trump does't understand, oaths of office are for loyalty to the country and not to any particular person.
Why would this have anything to do with the Democrats? This anonymous person may be Republican as he/she has said that some of Trump's policies were good. But only an idiot would back Trump 100% in all his crazy ideas, and it would be absurd to say that someone who doesn't back Trump's crazy ideas must be a Democrat.
Trump could not have penned this because it's far too articulate.
I had the DirecTV+TiVo. There was only the POTS connector. The wireless adapter wouldn't have helped at the time 15 years ago when I didn't have internet connectivity in the living room.
I've never been in a sort of conference call as described in the summary. Every conference call I've been on is for the company and you know everyone on the call already. And the only reason these calls exist is because not everyone is present in the same city or building.
Or compare dialup for $5-10 a month, versus the cheapest possible not-quite-broadband alternative which is $50 a month. For seniors on a fixed income, the dialup is just fine.
Hey, I'm in San Jose, CA, in Silicon Valley. It's not the boondocks. But broadband internet access here sucks. It's either highly overpriced and poorly serviced Comcast or AT&T u-verse that goes over phone lines. The Comcast cable connection is still two cables coming in, the A & B for analog, which requires an extra box to convert into a digital signal. The wiring to get that to work is complicated if you want all the cables in the walls and not under the carpet, so I don't use that option.
I know people in the boondocks who have better connections than I do.
The economics for the customer to support dialup does work - the connection is there and still works fine if the user still has landline service. And it's more than 100 users. These are millions of people who don't have good broadband access in the US, we're a relatively backwards country as far as the internet goes. As for TiVo, I can guarantee you that TiVo wants their many thousands of users of old boxes to buy brand new boxes instead, many of whom will just go with straight up streaming rather than another full featured set top box.
I used power line adapters but later they had problems, possibly interference from the newer VDSL such that dialups rarely succeeded. So I resorted to dragging a phone line across the carpet every few weeks to allow it to do its dialup.
And you can't just switch to wireless if your TiVo box only has dialup as an option. Not everybody goes out and buys an expensive replacement when they already have a perfectly good piece of equipment that does the job well.
TiVo was integrated into DirecTV satellite before AT&T bought it out and screwed it up. It did need dialup for reporting back purchases but you didn't need it connected all the time.
One problem is that there may be new TiVo boxes with better connectivity options, but it still requires purchasing a new box. Why pay more money when what you have works just fine?
I had a DirecTV/TiVo with dialup, but there was no ethernet or wifi option. It would have required buying a new box altogether (and after a certain point also new satellite dish, new adapters, and so forth). The only thing dialup was used for was reporting back purchases, since the satellite was used to download program info. I think after a while the dialup stopped working reliably, so when I finally send the smartcard back when I cancelled the service I got a bill for 3 or 4 movies that had never been reported. It was sort of a pain to keep this working because the TiVo wasn't near a phone jack. Still, better than cable...
This is one reason I kept my landline service active because there wasn't a good alternative.
I had my own large office with a door and a large window once, but this was also my worst tech job and one where I was paid the least. They just had an excess of offices with windows and they didn't have cubicles except for visiting sales people. My next job was my first time in a cubicle, and I was much happier there.
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Yup, solid axles on the wheels, so on any turn one or both of them are scraping on the track. Also the trains go relatively fast compared to most subways which amplifies the noise, especially in tunnels.
Because voters don't vote with their brains but with their emotions.
Also note that in Europe or Japan, using automobiles is relatively expensive because of higher fuel prices. This increases demand for mass transit as well as demand for more efficient and smaller vehicles. Cheap gas in the US means that the demand tends to be for bigger and more inefficient autos. When there have been gas price spikes in the US for more than a few months the sales of larger cars tend to decline.
But individual transit essentially does the opposite of what mass transit it supposed to do. They increase pollution and increase traffic congestion.
It's much easier and profitable to plop down a new Costco than to extend a rail line.
SF mass transit is essentially the bus system. BART has only 7 stops in SF. If you mean the wider Bay Area then mass transit is just as sparse except for buses and it rarely goes to where people work. Compare to Manhattan where you are almost always within walking distance to a subway station.
We also have NIMBYs. For example, BART wasn't allowed to go through the expensive Menlo Park so so there was no service to the south bay. Turns out the south bay became a hot item later where tons of people and the high paying jobs were, while S.F. slowly became more of a bedroom community. You plan for today but the result may not be as useful tomorrow. And tomorrow there will be no budget or capability to change. Also Menlo Park has not allowed expressways through the city, so there was often a fanout of autos coming off of the bridge.
Now BART is going to the south bay but it's still complicated, it goes around the east bay so as to bypass Menlo Park. It will help a lot of people for sure but not as many as it could if it became a ring.
Then there's the issue that it's not enough. To get to BART in the first place is tricky. There's park-and-ride which just means drive for awhile and then park in a high crime area before taking mass transit. Or you take a bus or light rail for an hour first. Plus the cost; still less than the cost of a car, but if you already have a car because you need it to go get groceries and take the kids to school then it's an added burden; especially with Cal-Train which is not cheap.
On the bright side however, I see more and more higher density (and luxury) apartments being built very close to mass transit stops, BART, Light Rail, etc. These are no longer associated with poor communities. On the downside, many of those who can afford the luxury apartments seem to prefer Uber or other inefficient modes of transportation that defeat the purpose of mass transit.
Overall, from what I've seen in many areas in the US, mass transit has these problems: sparse, does not go where you want to go, is slow and requires multiple changes, limited hours. Areas with high tax revenue are low density and don't want mass transit; areas with high density tend to have relatively low tax revenue and can't afford the mass transit or don't have the political clout.
Sorry, posted on a tablet, did not realize it would insert characters incompatible with the enlightened Slashdot system.
Eligible voters who failed to cast a ballot effectively voted for âoeI donâ(TM)t care, leave me out of this!â
I'm uncertain here. It would normally seem to be the right thing to do, however in the present state of affairs it won't do anything. The senate will never vote to impeach, that's a pipe dream. Congress won't cooperate with any invocation of the 25th amendment, it will just be a bit of theater. So stepping up and resigning will not accomplish anything except to go and get a better job (not in politics, the political career will be over). And after resigning, Trump will just appoint someone else who's more compliant.
So I can imagine that 'anonymous' does believe that more good can be done within the administration than from outside. However by writing this letter all it's likely to do is make Trump even more paranoid and more insistent that everyone swear personal loyalty (especially when he's already upset at so many former BFFs).
We've already had plenty of senior officials resign and publicly claim how bad the president is, and this has not accomplished anything. Everyone who isn't a fan of Trump already knows he's a moron and incompetent, and everyone who is a fan refuses to believe it.
Overall it might have been better if 'anonymous' just kept quiet.
This also means that invoking the 25th amendment will backfire. After invoking that amendment, congress takes over. And that this point in time with elections upcoming, they will all loudly shout "I still love Trump so please vote for me!!" after which the VP and majority of the cabinet will quickly find themselves out of a job.
Also, the 25th amendment allows for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unfit for office, after which congress decides what to do. Which in a roundabout way implies that these cabinet appointees do have the power to undermine the president, at least as a group.
I had fully expected the Republican party to start fracturing after Trump won the primaries and then the presidency. I was surprised when the majority of his Republican critics turned around and started toadying up to him. I wonder if after the midterms and their jobs are safe for awhile longer if they dare to criticize again, but as unpredictable as things have been I'm probably wrong.
And you can't fix the first-past-the-post system without changing the constitution, and that's highly unlikely. What you want is a change in the electorate to start favoring more moderates and centrists even in the primaries. California has a system now where the top two winners of primaries advance to the general election, even if from the same party. Hasn't been around long though so it's unclear if this will make a clear difference in the long run. Given that both major parties bitterly opposed it, it's probably a good idea.
And I have come to the conclusion after several decades, that loyalty to a political party is the biggest vice in America.
Um, I think you are referring to the electoral college, because the people of America by a majority voted for a different candidate. But the electoral college doesn't always reflect the will of the people and it was not designed to do so. Being a republic or not is unrelated to this issue.
To be fair though, the candidates presumably campaigned with the assumption of winning the electoral college vote and not to win the majority vote. So Hillary lost fair and square according to the agreed upon rules, even if it did not agree with will of the people of America.
Presidential appointees are not deep state, as far as I understand the conspiracy meaning of that new term. Deep state refers to the permanent bureaucracy and not the appointees who come and go.
As Trump does't understand, oaths of office are for loyalty to the country and not to any particular person.
Why would this have anything to do with the Democrats? This anonymous person may be Republican as he/she has said that some of Trump's policies were good. But only an idiot would back Trump 100% in all his crazy ideas, and it would be absurd to say that someone who doesn't back Trump's crazy ideas must be a Democrat.
Trump could not have penned this because it's far too articulate.
I had the DirecTV+TiVo. There was only the POTS connector. The wireless adapter wouldn't have helped at the time 15 years ago when I didn't have internet connectivity in the living room.
And I spend time on the other end saying "Bob? Bob? Can you un-mute and answer the question, Bob?"
I've never been in a sort of conference call as described in the summary. Every conference call I've been on is for the company and you know everyone on the call already. And the only reason these calls exist is because not everyone is present in the same city or building.
Or compare dialup for $5-10 a month, versus the cheapest possible not-quite-broadband alternative which is $50 a month. For seniors on a fixed income, the dialup is just fine.
Hey, I'm in San Jose, CA, in Silicon Valley. It's not the boondocks. But broadband internet access here sucks. It's either highly overpriced and poorly serviced Comcast or AT&T u-verse that goes over phone lines. The Comcast cable connection is still two cables coming in, the A & B for analog, which requires an extra box to convert into a digital signal. The wiring to get that to work is complicated if you want all the cables in the walls and not under the carpet, so I don't use that option.
I know people in the boondocks who have better connections than I do.
The economics for the customer to support dialup does work - the connection is there and still works fine if the user still has landline service. And it's more than 100 users. These are millions of people who don't have good broadband access in the US, we're a relatively backwards country as far as the internet goes. As for TiVo, I can guarantee you that TiVo wants their many thousands of users of old boxes to buy brand new boxes instead, many of whom will just go with straight up streaming rather than another full featured set top box.
I used power line adapters but later they had problems, possibly interference from the newer VDSL such that dialups rarely succeeded. So I resorted to dragging a phone line across the carpet every few weeks to allow it to do its dialup.
And you can't just switch to wireless if your TiVo box only has dialup as an option. Not everybody goes out and buys an expensive replacement when they already have a perfectly good piece of equipment that does the job well.
TiVo was integrated into DirecTV satellite before AT&T bought it out and screwed it up. It did need dialup for reporting back purchases but you didn't need it connected all the time.
One problem is that there may be new TiVo boxes with better connectivity options, but it still requires purchasing a new box. Why pay more money when what you have works just fine?
I had a DirecTV/TiVo with dialup, but there was no ethernet or wifi option. It would have required buying a new box altogether (and after a certain point also new satellite dish, new adapters, and so forth). The only thing dialup was used for was reporting back purchases, since the satellite was used to download program info. I think after a while the dialup stopped working reliably, so when I finally send the smartcard back when I cancelled the service I got a bill for 3 or 4 movies that had never been reported. It was sort of a pain to keep this working because the TiVo wasn't near a phone jack. Still, better than cable...
This is one reason I kept my landline service active because there wasn't a good alternative.
I had my own large office with a door and a large window once, but this was also my worst tech job and one where I was paid the least. They just had an excess of offices with windows and they didn't have cubicles except for visiting sales people. My next job was my first time in a cubicle, and I was much happier there.