By reading the second paragraph of the article you linked to:
Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and the Federal Engineering Corporation—bought over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego and converted them into bus operation.Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and the Federal Engineering Corporation—bought over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego and converted them into bus operation.
How much responsibility is Google supposed to take for public infrastructure issues? It seems weird for me to be defending Big (we say we're not) Evil Corporation, but there are limits. They've got a business to run keeping track of which ass cheek you like to scratch and hyping pie-in-the-sky projects. Infrastructure ain't their shtick.
Worse still because this from an industry that has been purporting for years to end commutes and the need to concentrate employees with their "innovations" in communications etc.
Yet the greatest irony is that they fail to see the irony. I live in the NY area and work on a fairly small project that's spread across 6 facilities in 3 countries and 2 continents, and it's no big deal. Maybe once every couple of months we get together somewhere. This despite the fact that our project involves custom hardware, so logistics is more difficult than with a pure software project. Would having everybody in one location make it easier? A little, but we have people with serious expertise in different areas, so it's not worth losing them for the sake of moving everything to a single location. There is nothing new about this - in WWII there were projects involving hundreds of subcontractors all over the country, and the only tools they had were mail and trains. Worked fine.
Silly Valley, for all their cosmopolitan heirs, is one of the most provincial places in the world. They think that the only places on the planet where their business can be done is the Bay Area and India. They could save a lot of money by expanding into other areas of the country, and pick up some great talent. Want great programmers? Try Pittsburgh.
What's funny about this is that company buses are hardly new, and were never considered some sort of fancy way to get to work. Especially back in an era when many middle class people didn't have cars, big companies like shipyards and aircraft plants often had company buses. It was especially good for people working night shifts when public transportation shut down, and in many cases places that needed lots of land wound up in areas where there was no public transportation anyway.
This is how we won WWII folks. Rosie the Riveter took the company bus to work. In at least one wartime Bugs Bunny cartoon you'll see him riding a bus clearly marked "Lockheed".
San Francisco is becoming a city without a middle class.
Most people who work for Google, Apple, etc. are middle class. Sure a few of them got in early and made a bundle on stock options, but most are just well paid but still very much middle class.
That whole thing is seriously overblown. Yes it happened, but its effect was small. In many cases GM wanted to get rid of trolleys so they could replace them with the buses they made, but they're both mass transit. Trolleys weren't exactly the ideal mass transit system either - they cost a lot to run, and ran on rigid paths which caused a lot of accidents and congestion. Don't get too nostalgic about them.
The greatest form of mass transit ever created is the subway, but unfortunately they're very expensive to build and can only be justified in the highest density areas. In Manhattan it's genuinely a pleasure not to have a car, but there aren't many places like it.
Face it, the biggest reason we have so many cars is not because of some evil conspiracy, but because people like them.
Politically I lean pretty heavily to the left, but even I shake my head when it comes to San Francisco. Moscow on the Bay. But it's not so much that they're so left wing, as that they're bizarre and self-contradictory. We want a vibrant hi-tech city, but we don;t want it too expensive to live in. Yeah, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too, but it doesn't work.
That's what I love about Silly Valley. On the one hand they complain about not being able to get enough people, in part because housing is too expensive, and on the other hand they won't allow construction of new, preferably higher density, housing. Either you want to be a major tech hub, or you want to be a low density suburb. Sorry folks, you can't have it both ways.
If these people wanted to isolate themselves from their communities in San Francisco, then they probably wouldn't live in San Francisco at all. Why not just move closer to where they work, where the housing prices may be exorbitant, but still cheaper than San Francisco. The main thing these people are guilty of is wanting to get to work in a convenient and comfortable way. No matter how nice these buses are, they're still buses. It's not like they're taking limos or private helicopters.
The fact that the need motorized transport to get around is indicative of an inherently inefficient and environmentally-unfriendly lifestyle.
Buses are a lot more environmentally friendly than cars. If you want everybody to walk to work, you have to go back over 100 years. When mass transit came along, lots of people started living further from work.
a long established wrecker of cities
So you're saying that San Francisco is falling apart because everybody wants to live there. I thought the problem was everybody moving out to the burbs.
crux of the problem... nobody wants to live out in the 'burbs anymore, etc.
Oh, the irony. All my life people complained that everybody moves out to the burbs, destroying urban life, and now the problem is that everybody wants to live in the city? Please make up your mind.
They'll be less insulated if they drive their cars?
I don't know San Francisco well, but I can tell you that in New York you can walk a few blocks from a neighborhood that you can't afford to a neighborhood you don't want to be in. And New York, especially Manhattan, is less dependent on cars than any other city in the country. Even rich people walk a lot, because it's easy and often convenient. Yet it all does nothing to alleviate the poverty.
If they were public buses instead of company buses, would they clog the streets any less? Whoever owns and rides them, they are mass transit. Only in San Francisco would people complain about folks using mass transit. I'm no big fan of Silly Valley and its satellite communities like San Francisco, but this has to be one of the silliest, and most hypocritical, complaints I've ever heard.
Telescopes are pretty bad at analyzing soil samples and a whole bunch of other things. The purpose of exploring Mars is scientific discovery, which robots can do cheaper.
First, except to keep the robot from falling off a cliff, there is no need for anything or anyone to make instant decisions, and those sorts of instant decisions are already largely made by the robots (a person in orbit probably wouldn't help much).
Second, for a fraction of the price of figuring out how to send wetware to Mars (I suppose a mission requirement will be that it arrive alive) we could vastly improve our robotics. That would also be useful for exploring the outer solar system.
I don't like being such a wet blanket about manned space exploration. I'm old enough to remember the Gemini and Apollo programs, and watching Armstrong take the first steps on the moon (on live TV no less). Even as a kid I realized what an historic moment it was, and I was lucky to be alive at a time when I could see it. Nevertheless amongst the things we learned is that it's very expensive to send humans into space, and you can do much more science for a fraction of the price without them.
Having to go inside to turn on your outdoor lights, eh? Next thing you know, telephony will revert to two tin cans and a string.
Maybe I just suffer from a 20th century mentality, but I've never felt deprived having to actually open the door and go inside to turn on the outdoor lights. If I did, I would install a switch on the outside! (yes, waterproof obviously).
This whole wireless control thing has degenerated into silly gimmicks. Admittedly this doesn't seem like some great security threat to me. There's a bit of a difference between being able to turn off some of the lights of some of the people and being able to shut down power stations, but this is still a gimmick.
Slashdot Mirror
Where did you make that up?
By reading the second paragraph of the article you linked to:
Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and the Federal Engineering Corporation—bought over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego and converted them into bus operation.Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and the Federal Engineering Corporation—bought over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego and converted them into bus operation.
How much responsibility is Google supposed to take for public infrastructure issues? It seems weird for me to be defending Big (we say we're not) Evil Corporation, but there are limits. They've got a business to run keeping track of which ass cheek you like to scratch and hyping pie-in-the-sky projects. Infrastructure ain't their shtick.
Sounds like a great idea, but until MTC gets its act together, what should these companies and their employees do?
Worse still because this from an industry that has been purporting for years to end commutes and the need to concentrate employees with their "innovations" in communications etc.
Yet the greatest irony is that they fail to see the irony. I live in the NY area and work on a fairly small project that's spread across 6 facilities in 3 countries and 2 continents, and it's no big deal. Maybe once every couple of months we get together somewhere. This despite the fact that our project involves custom hardware, so logistics is more difficult than with a pure software project. Would having everybody in one location make it easier? A little, but we have people with serious expertise in different areas, so it's not worth losing them for the sake of moving everything to a single location. There is nothing new about this - in WWII there were projects involving hundreds of subcontractors all over the country, and the only tools they had were mail and trains. Worked fine.
Silly Valley, for all their cosmopolitan heirs, is one of the most provincial places in the world. They think that the only places on the planet where their business can be done is the Bay Area and India. They could save a lot of money by expanding into other areas of the country, and pick up some great talent. Want great programmers? Try Pittsburgh.
What's funny about this is that company buses are hardly new, and were never considered some sort of fancy way to get to work. Especially back in an era when many middle class people didn't have cars, big companies like shipyards and aircraft plants often had company buses. It was especially good for people working night shifts when public transportation shut down, and in many cases places that needed lots of land wound up in areas where there was no public transportation anyway.
This is how we won WWII folks. Rosie the Riveter took the company bus to work. In at least one wartime Bugs Bunny cartoon you'll see him riding a bus clearly marked "Lockheed".
San Francisco is becoming a city without a middle class.
Most people who work for Google, Apple, etc. are middle class. Sure a few of them got in early and made a bundle on stock options, but most are just well paid but still very much middle class.
That whole thing is seriously overblown. Yes it happened, but its effect was small. In many cases GM wanted to get rid of trolleys so they could replace them with the buses they made, but they're both mass transit. Trolleys weren't exactly the ideal mass transit system either - they cost a lot to run, and ran on rigid paths which caused a lot of accidents and congestion. Don't get too nostalgic about them.
The greatest form of mass transit ever created is the subway, but unfortunately they're very expensive to build and can only be justified in the highest density areas. In Manhattan it's genuinely a pleasure not to have a car, but there aren't many places like it.
Face it, the biggest reason we have so many cars is not because of some evil conspiracy, but because people like them.
Politically I lean pretty heavily to the left, but even I shake my head when it comes to San Francisco. Moscow on the Bay. But it's not so much that they're so left wing, as that they're bizarre and self-contradictory. We want a vibrant hi-tech city, but we don;t want it too expensive to live in. Yeah, I'd like to have my cake and eat it too, but it doesn't work.
That's what I love about Silly Valley. On the one hand they complain about not being able to get enough people, in part because housing is too expensive, and on the other hand they won't allow construction of new, preferably higher density, housing. Either you want to be a major tech hub, or you want to be a low density suburb. Sorry folks, you can't have it both ways.
If these people wanted to isolate themselves from their communities in San Francisco, then they probably wouldn't live in San Francisco at all. Why not just move closer to where they work, where the housing prices may be exorbitant, but still cheaper than San Francisco. The main thing these people are guilty of is wanting to get to work in a convenient and comfortable way. No matter how nice these buses are, they're still buses. It's not like they're taking limos or private helicopters.
This is a logical extension of the sort of the carefully cultivated isolation you encounter on a university campus.
Not NYU - their "campus" is called Greenwich Village.
Don't think in terms of small and half-baked solutions.
nuclear weapons = community renewal
The fact that the need motorized transport to get around is indicative of an inherently inefficient and environmentally-unfriendly lifestyle.
Buses are a lot more environmentally friendly than cars. If you want everybody to walk to work, you have to go back over 100 years. When mass transit came along, lots of people started living further from work.
a long established wrecker of cities
So you're saying that San Francisco is falling apart because everybody wants to live there. I thought the problem was everybody moving out to the burbs.
crux of the problem ... nobody wants to live out in the 'burbs anymore, etc.
Oh, the irony. All my life people complained that everybody moves out to the burbs, destroying urban life, and now the problem is that everybody wants to live in the city? Please make up your mind.
They'll be less insulated if they drive their cars?
I don't know San Francisco well, but I can tell you that in New York you can walk a few blocks from a neighborhood that you can't afford to a neighborhood you don't want to be in. And New York, especially Manhattan, is less dependent on cars than any other city in the country. Even rich people walk a lot, because it's easy and often convenient. Yet it all does nothing to alleviate the poverty.
If they were public buses instead of company buses, would they clog the streets any less? Whoever owns and rides them, they are mass transit. Only in San Francisco would people complain about folks using mass transit. I'm no big fan of Silly Valley and its satellite communities like San Francisco, but this has to be one of the silliest, and most hypocritical, complaints I've ever heard.
So? Send a whole fleet of rovers and have them work in parallel. Design new and improved rovers. It'll still be a lot cheaper than sending people.
Telescopes are pretty bad at analyzing soil samples and a whole bunch of other things. The purpose of exploring Mars is scientific discovery, which robots can do cheaper.
First, except to keep the robot from falling off a cliff, there is no need for anything or anyone to make instant decisions, and those sorts of instant decisions are already largely made by the robots (a person in orbit probably wouldn't help much).
Second, for a fraction of the price of figuring out how to send wetware to Mars (I suppose a mission requirement will be that it arrive alive) we could vastly improve our robotics. That would also be useful for exploring the outer solar system.
I don't like being such a wet blanket about manned space exploration. I'm old enough to remember the Gemini and Apollo programs, and watching Armstrong take the first steps on the moon (on live TV no less). Even as a kid I realized what an historic moment it was, and I was lucky to be alive at a time when I could see it. Nevertheless amongst the things we learned is that it's very expensive to send humans into space, and you can do much more science for a fraction of the price without them.
Some success meals were Russian borscht ...
Even Russian robots don't eat borscht. They do better on electricity from solar cells. The engines may require a different diet.
Hold it, you were thinking of sending ugly bags of mostly water? Why? What is this, the Rube Goldberg Mars Exploration contest?
Never send a man to do a robot's job.
It's simpler than that:
banishForProfitMedicalInsurance();
It is a computer issue ...
And if not implementing it would cost them money, wanna bet they'd have it ready on time? Funny how that works.
Taxes are theft!
Collected by men with guns!
Which are then used to pay for two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner!
Paver Stones on the Road to Single-Payer ... Which is what Obama has wanted since day one.
How I wish that were true.
Having to go inside to turn on your outdoor lights, eh? Next thing you know, telephony will revert to two tin cans and a string.
Maybe I just suffer from a 20th century mentality, but I've never felt deprived having to actually open the door and go inside to turn on the outdoor lights. If I did, I would install a switch on the outside! (yes, waterproof obviously).
This whole wireless control thing has degenerated into silly gimmicks. Admittedly this doesn't seem like some great security threat to me. There's a bit of a difference between being able to turn off some of the lights of some of the people and being able to shut down power stations, but this is still a gimmick.