For [1], printing the key out in a sequence of QR codes (or variant) would probably be a good compromise between plaintext paper and disc. QR codes have better built in error correction than teams of people typing in a long sequence of arbitrary characters...
Eh, the lack of connection to passenger space is a bad idea: 1. Pilots need to use the restroom. I have seen a flight attendant take the pilot's place briefly in order to facilitate this (it would suck if the copoilot has a heart attack while the pilot is in the can and no one can open the door). A bathroom up front would be needed. 2. On longer flights pilots need to eat. Having redundant cooking facilities for two guys up front would waste valuable weight. If you require pilots to eat lousy food you are going to have lousy pilots on longer flights. 3. On even longer flights, pilots need to sleep. At this point we have a crew of 4 with two beds all in the "cockpit" section. 4. Captain Sully facilitated the evacuation of his plane in the Hudson when every second mattered. Having only flight attendants (sometimes there's only one) evacuate a plane while the crew gets a quick escape goes against the idea of "the captain goes down with the craft unless the last man is out."
The lack of communication is also a bad idea: a flight attendant may need to tell the pilot to shut off a breaker to prevent a fire - if all they can do is tell the pilot to "land now" a simple wiring problem could result in a fireball because it takes longer to land. And if the breakers can be controlled from the passenger space, well, why are we locking the cockpit up?
But without the leak, how would anyone even think action would need to take place? Acting on the information without revealing it would have guaranteed a stamp of "terrorist crackpot" and maybe a 3rd page article in a few papers. Would you rather small groups of people randomly taking action on suspicions and assumptions all of the time? Meaningful action requires being well informed.
Yes leaking by itself accomplishes nothing, but how much on this front be accomplished without the leak?
I am curious as to why there are far fewer cries of "evil" about this reduction of functionality post-sale than there were about the Sony OtherOS removal... even though this cable restriction is more fundamental to the device and affects more use cases. It's almost as if there is some fanboy bias holding a portion of commenters back...
Your definition is at odds with the accepted perception of toy. For example, say I have a real decorative samurai sword. Obviously it is only there for personal amusement, or possibly to help repel a home invasion. Now, if someone comes over and asks me, "is that a toy?" under your definition I should say yes. However, it is obviously irresponsible to answer in that manner because the likelyhood of this curious person cutting his fingers off trying to pick it up has just increased significantly.
Calling dangerous objects toys is almost as irresponsible as treating them like toys.
Japan's HSR has done just fine despite having more earthquakes than California. Last I checked the number of fatalities on the HSR network for it's entire existence has been single digit.
Except as others have stated in this thread, this employee regularly took pictures during meetings and distributed them on the company intranet (after all, he was the Creative Director).
And even if he didn't, are you telling me you've never opted to take a photo when an important slide comes up in a meeting? That means you either were furiously scribbling down notes (when a picture would do) or your meetings never discussed anything noteworthy...
The "old" (I assume you mean current) NY subway map is amazing: compare. The Boston map is good but kindof crappy in some ways - for example, I kept going to Aquarium on the blue line for Quincy market because I had no idea the green line Haymarket station was close. And it sucks for strictly transit purposes too: from that map it is impossible to know that the E at the unnamed stop just before Heath st and D at "Brookline Village" are actually a 5 minute walk apart. Similarly, the D at Reservoir, C at Cleveland Circle, and the unnamed B stop in the vicinity are all a block away from each other. Someone with an unlimited pass would be able to make those connections and save a lot of time if they started out on one letter and wanted to end up at a stop on another letter, but the map makes you think you have to go all the way downtown.
The current NY subway map makes the unorthodox transfers obvious - with an unlimited card you can transfer from the G to the J at the "Broadway" station, for example.
The funny thing is the map they had before it was even more useful: it had bubbles at major bus transfer points that showed all of the transfers (and the neighborhoods the bus routes served). They still use that version in the stations but not on the trains or for taking home. The extra information was removed because some consulting firm said it was too "confusing" - yeah maybe for tourists, but for us natives it was amazing.
Do you know anything about the incident you speak of? Here is what happened: -Crew parks train for the night, goes to hotel for mandatory rest (because they have been on duty long enough that they are outlawed, meaning the most they are allowed to do is bring the train to a hotel). This rest point happens to be on a slight incline. -To maintain brake pressure one engine is left running. Idling more than one engine overnight tends to bring out whining about noise and pollution. -That one engine catches fire. Firemen shut down the engine and put out the fire. They alert the railroad. The nearest crew is the one who dropped off the train, and they are not allowed to touch the train for several more hours. Brake pressure is lost to the point where the train begins rolling into town. -There *is* a rule that a certain number of handbrakes are set to prevent this exact situation - the investigation seems to be going in the direction of this rule not having been followed.
How exactly would additional regulation have helped here? One regulation kept the railroad from calling in the crew who dropped off the train, "quality of life" concerns prevented a redundant engine from being left running, and the rule specifically designed to prevent this had been ignored. As it is, the railroad is moving the relief point to more level ground but what more could be done? "Shit happens". While it unfortunately happened to an entire town, had all that oil been transported by truck instead [make rail transport too expensive and this is what happens], how many additional traffic accidents over the past year would have occurred under the radar? Or is it ok if 50 deaths happen on highways over a year instead of all at once in one location?
If you lived in the city during the 2005 Transit Strike you would know the amount of subsidy is irrelevant - without transit for three days the "local" (local being a population larger than the countries of Switzerland or Denmark) economy was massively disrupted.
When you can't lend a guest your ID card to run down to x and grab y, or run back to your room to grab z, all it does is encourage door propping. My college allowed access to neighboring residence halls during daytime hours precisely because of this (if access is granted legitimately less people will bother propping doors). Trying things like door alarms when they're held open too long simply results in more creative and difficult to fix door props (like crazy-gluing cardboard over the door latch, or welding a penny over it).
I once worked with someone in an ID card center who would almost never deny anyone card access to additional buildings. The reason? They're going to find a way into the building anyway, and if it was via a card it will at least be logged (and even if it was a borrowed card, it at least points to a person as a starting point if an investigation is needed).
At home, games: (Debian) Linux does everything I want except play games. Windows does everything I want [in a desktop] including play games. Linux has some advantages (middle click to paste what was selected, pasting text or image data on the desktop creates a file of appropriate type, easy always on top for arbitrary windows, less scary full disk encryption) but a lot of them have been disappearing (ie: Windows 7 includes desktop slideshow, a feature that kept me going back to KDE). I do have a Linux file server using Samba 4 which gives me all the non-desktop goodies that I am missing from Windows (SSH access, rtorrent, irc, DNS server, real scripting, etc).
At work, Outlook: Yes I can get the email all kinds of ways but that is only 10% of Outlook in an Exchange environment. Creating complex filters and rules, the colored flags, scheduling, calendar, and tasks are all necessary parts of the Outlook experience (even more so when there are shared mailboxes involved) and Evolution isn't quite there yet. I do have a Linux box as well but until that's ironed out, I am stuck with Windows as well.
Interstates that run within NYC (particularly river crossings).
Also, any highway that has a variable speed limit due to weather conditions.
Finally,during road construction work if there is no clearance between the construction area and the open lane.
Also (admittedly this is more pedantry) the US Numbered Highways are sometimes called "Federal Highways" even though they do not receive Federal funding - these typically follow the speed limits of local roads.
Quick guide to farenheit: 212: water boiling 150: this ends the cooking section of farenheit (lowest number on the oven)... 110+: too fucking hot, this begins the section of Fahrenheit relevant to most people's daily environment 98.6: you (if the temperature of 'you' is > 100 consider seeing a doctor) 32: water freezes 0: too fucking cold
Having the typical range of human-livable temperature span 100 positive degrees makes it easy to 'visualize'. Also compared to Celsius, Fahrenheit is more precise. I can tell whether the house is 69, 70, 71 or 72 degrees. I can tell when the office has gone from its normal 73 degrees to 74 after someone puts an ice pack on a thermostat. I don't usually see Celsius measured in decimals but I'd imagine a lot of those temperatures would blur into the same number.
For most of the other stuff (ie: paper sizes, containers, weight) I agree metric is better, but I wouldn't want to give up the precision of Fahrenheit and its natural relation to human-liveable environments for the sake of conformity.
It doesn't need to work continously. Even on the trains that have it now, it only works reliably while in towns. If you're taking a 3 day cross country trip, having 10 minutes of internet every 2 hours is still an improvement.
Re:funny comparing to "high speed rail" elsewhere
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Automobile accidents are the leading cause of transportation death though.
Today we had a train wreck between two rush hour commuter trains in Connecticuit. Worst Metro-North has seen since 1988. No deaths.
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In the northeast, unless you're on the Acela Express or in a sleeper car, you're not riding anything younger than 30 years. The Amfleets which are the Northeast's bread and butter were built in 1975. At least the Midwest gets new Superliners every few years.
Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say
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1) The Keystone Corridor is also successful (from a customer service point of view), sees over a dozen trains each way daily, with portions of the line at over 100MPH speed. 2) That section of the Empire Corridor is slow but only because it is a former freight line through a very urban area. There are some sections where vibrations of trains could cause rockslides (though those have recently been stabilized enough to allow 45MPH speeds). It is a necessary evil because the only other option would be for Amtrak to have to run these trains out of Grand Central, which would be inefficient both operationally and for passengers who need to transfer (the rest of the trains must use Penn Station). It also sees over a dozen trains a day. 4) The Post Road Branch isn't that significant. It is 12 miles from Albany, NY to near the Massachusetts state line - it carries the Lake Shore Limited (one train a day). While the speed limit is 79 MPH (or feels that way) it is on jointed rail and therefore the most uncomfortable 12 miles in New York State. That said, the rest of the former Boston & Albany main line is not owned by Amtrak and large portions have speed limits of 45, but the rail is smooth - excellent for freight, annoying for passengers.
Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say
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It didn't help that from 1942-1962, Railroad tickets were taxed something like 10%, and that tax money went to the general fund (which then got doled out to the interstate highway system and the airports that directly competed with them). Source (admittedly biased but the best I could find with a quick google).
Places that are not NYC also have public transportation. Almost every state has at least one city with public transit. Middle class Americans seem blind to it because it tends to be viewed as only for "poor people" or the elderly, but it is there. The colleges around here (not NYC) educate these individuals on this with freshman car bans (parking shortage), so it's either learn to use the bus or never leave campus. It may not be convenient at all times but than can be worked around.
Also, your statement "rat and roach free" tells me you aren't properly understanding the solution - when you need to be frugal, sometimes you may have to live in a place that is less than pretty. Around here we'll often have three unrelated students sharing a 3 bedroom apartment. If there is a mice problem, they get a cat. Roach problem? RAID. You make do with what you have.
As for your heart rending example, that is an unfortunate situation but doesn't really describe the average college-bound individual.
Still possible to work your way through school in NYS... source.
We may have some of the highest taxes in the country but things like this is what it goes towards. There's also the Tuition Assistance Program (additional financial aid) and things like the Education Opportunity Program for students of low income households.
It can be made even cheaper by living at home (subtract room and board cost). Hopefully home is near a city (not necessarily *the* city, there's SUNYs everywhere). If not, that's simply the tradeoff of living in the middle of nowhere.
If you're not living at home, the "keeping gas in the tank" argument disappears - who says you need a car? That's several thousand a year going to what, exactly? You're not living at home so no excuse - you can select your state school and residence based on public transit requirements. Minimum wage jobs tend to also line public transit corridors. Many state schools offer public transit discounts for the regions they are in (or even flat out free transit).
Basically, if you are a resident of NY and cannot afford to go to college, it's most likely your own fault - do some research and be willing to adjust your lifestyle habits. If your home state is a lot less helpful, well, that's your lower tax rate in action.
Slashdot Mirror
For [1], printing the key out in a sequence of QR codes (or variant) would probably be a good compromise between plaintext paper and disc. QR codes have better built in error correction than teams of people typing in a long sequence of arbitrary characters...
Eh, the lack of connection to passenger space is a bad idea:
1. Pilots need to use the restroom. I have seen a flight attendant take the pilot's place briefly in order to facilitate this (it would suck if the copoilot has a heart attack while the pilot is in the can and no one can open the door). A bathroom up front would be needed.
2. On longer flights pilots need to eat. Having redundant cooking facilities for two guys up front would waste valuable weight. If you require pilots to eat lousy food you are going to have lousy pilots on longer flights.
3. On even longer flights, pilots need to sleep. At this point we have a crew of 4 with two beds all in the "cockpit" section.
4. Captain Sully facilitated the evacuation of his plane in the Hudson when every second mattered. Having only flight attendants (sometimes there's only one) evacuate a plane while the crew gets a quick escape goes against the idea of "the captain goes down with the craft unless the last man is out."
The lack of communication is also a bad idea: a flight attendant may need to tell the pilot to shut off a breaker to prevent a fire - if all they can do is tell the pilot to "land now" a simple wiring problem could result in a fireball because it takes longer to land. And if the breakers can be controlled from the passenger space, well, why are we locking the cockpit up?
But without the leak, how would anyone even think action would need to take place? Acting on the information without revealing it would have guaranteed a stamp of "terrorist crackpot" and maybe a 3rd page article in a few papers. Would you rather small groups of people randomly taking action on suspicions and assumptions all of the time? Meaningful action requires being well informed.
Yes leaking by itself accomplishes nothing, but how much on this front be accomplished without the leak?
I am curious as to why there are far fewer cries of "evil" about this reduction of functionality post-sale than there were about the Sony OtherOS removal... even though this cable restriction is more fundamental to the device and affects more use cases. It's almost as if there is some fanboy bias holding a portion of commenters back...
Your definition is at odds with the accepted perception of toy. For example, say I have a real decorative samurai sword. Obviously it is only there for personal amusement, or possibly to help repel a home invasion. Now, if someone comes over and asks me, "is that a toy?" under your definition I should say yes. However, it is obviously irresponsible to answer in that manner because the likelyhood of this curious person cutting his fingers off trying to pick it up has just increased significantly.
Calling dangerous objects toys is almost as irresponsible as treating them like toys.
Japan's HSR has done just fine despite having more earthquakes than California. Last I checked the number of fatalities on the HSR network for it's entire existence has been single digit.
Except as others have stated in this thread, this employee regularly took pictures during meetings and distributed them on the company intranet (after all, he was the Creative Director).
And even if he didn't, are you telling me you've never opted to take a photo when an important slide comes up in a meeting? That means you either were furiously scribbling down notes (when a picture would do) or your meetings never discussed anything noteworthy...
The "old" (I assume you mean current) NY subway map is amazing: compare. The Boston map is good but kindof crappy in some ways - for example, I kept going to Aquarium on the blue line for Quincy market because I had no idea the green line Haymarket station was close. And it sucks for strictly transit purposes too: from that map it is impossible to know that the E at the unnamed stop just before Heath st and D at "Brookline Village" are actually a 5 minute walk apart. Similarly, the D at Reservoir, C at Cleveland Circle, and the unnamed B stop in the vicinity are all a block away from each other. Someone with an unlimited pass would be able to make those connections and save a lot of time if they started out on one letter and wanted to end up at a stop on another letter, but the map makes you think you have to go all the way downtown.
The current NY subway map makes the unorthodox transfers obvious - with an unlimited card you can transfer from the G to the J at the "Broadway" station, for example.
The funny thing is the map they had before it was even more useful: it had bubbles at major bus transfer points that showed all of the transfers (and the neighborhoods the bus routes served). They still use that version in the stations but not on the trains or for taking home. The extra information was removed because some consulting firm said it was too "confusing" - yeah maybe for tourists, but for us natives it was amazing.
Manhattan's street grid helped NYC grow in a much more orderly fashion than would otherwise have occurred...
Do you know anything about the incident you speak of? Here is what happened:
-Crew parks train for the night, goes to hotel for mandatory rest (because they have been on duty long enough that they are outlawed, meaning the most they are allowed to do is bring the train to a hotel). This rest point happens to be on a slight incline.
-To maintain brake pressure one engine is left running. Idling more than one engine overnight tends to bring out whining about noise and pollution.
-That one engine catches fire. Firemen shut down the engine and put out the fire. They alert the railroad. The nearest crew is the one who dropped off the train, and they are not allowed to touch the train for several more hours. Brake pressure is lost to the point where the train begins rolling into town.
-There *is* a rule that a certain number of handbrakes are set to prevent this exact situation - the investigation seems to be going in the direction of this rule not having been followed.
How exactly would additional regulation have helped here? One regulation kept the railroad from calling in the crew who dropped off the train, "quality of life" concerns prevented a redundant engine from being left running, and the rule specifically designed to prevent this had been ignored. As it is, the railroad is moving the relief point to more level ground but what more could be done? "Shit happens". While it unfortunately happened to an entire town, had all that oil been transported by truck instead [make rail transport too expensive and this is what happens], how many additional traffic accidents over the past year would have occurred under the radar? Or is it ok if 50 deaths happen on highways over a year instead of all at once in one location?
If you lived in the city during the 2005 Transit Strike you would know the amount of subsidy is irrelevant - without transit for three days the "local" (local being a population larger than the countries of Switzerland or Denmark) economy was massively disrupted.
When you can't lend a guest your ID card to run down to x and grab y, or run back to your room to grab z, all it does is encourage door propping. My college allowed access to neighboring residence halls during daytime hours precisely because of this (if access is granted legitimately less people will bother propping doors). Trying things like door alarms when they're held open too long simply results in more creative and difficult to fix door props (like crazy-gluing cardboard over the door latch, or welding a penny over it).
I once worked with someone in an ID card center who would almost never deny anyone card access to additional buildings. The reason? They're going to find a way into the building anyway, and if it was via a card it will at least be logged (and even if it was a borrowed card, it at least points to a person as a starting point if an investigation is needed).
I don't suppose you've ever gone to a movie while on call for something?
Or are you saying that IT staff / firemen / doctors should never go to movies?
Moron.
Posting to undo accidental 'overrated' moderation.
+1 funny!
It really is just those two things.
At home, games: (Debian) Linux does everything I want except play games. Windows does everything I want [in a desktop] including play games. Linux has some advantages (middle click to paste what was selected, pasting text or image data on the desktop creates a file of appropriate type, easy always on top for arbitrary windows, less scary full disk encryption) but a lot of them have been disappearing (ie: Windows 7 includes desktop slideshow, a feature that kept me going back to KDE). I do have a Linux file server using Samba 4 which gives me all the non-desktop goodies that I am missing from Windows (SSH access, rtorrent, irc, DNS server, real scripting, etc).
At work, Outlook: Yes I can get the email all kinds of ways but that is only 10% of Outlook in an Exchange environment. Creating complex filters and rules, the colored flags, scheduling, calendar, and tasks are all necessary parts of the Outlook experience (even more so when there are shared mailboxes involved) and Evolution isn't quite there yet. I do have a Linux box as well but until that's ironed out, I am stuck with Windows as well.
Interstates that run within NYC (particularly river crossings).
Also, any highway that has a variable speed limit due to weather conditions.
Finally,during road construction work if there is no clearance between the construction area and the open lane.
Also (admittedly this is more pedantry) the US Numbered Highways are sometimes called "Federal Highways" even though they do not receive Federal funding - these typically follow the speed limits of local roads.
Quick guide to farenheit: ...
212: water boiling
150: this ends the cooking section of farenheit (lowest number on the oven)
110+: too fucking hot, this begins the section of Fahrenheit relevant to most people's daily environment
98.6: you (if the temperature of 'you' is > 100 consider seeing a doctor)
32: water freezes
0: too fucking cold
Having the typical range of human-livable temperature span 100 positive degrees makes it easy to 'visualize'. Also compared to Celsius, Fahrenheit is more precise. I can tell whether the house is 69, 70, 71 or 72 degrees. I can tell when the office has gone from its normal 73 degrees to 74 after someone puts an ice pack on a thermostat. I don't usually see Celsius measured in decimals but I'd imagine a lot of those temperatures would blur into the same number.
For most of the other stuff (ie: paper sizes, containers, weight) I agree metric is better, but I wouldn't want to give up the precision of Fahrenheit and its natural relation to human-liveable environments for the sake of conformity.
It doesn't need to work continously. Even on the trains that have it now, it only works reliably while in towns. If you're taking a 3 day cross country trip, having 10 minutes of internet every 2 hours is still an improvement.
Automobile accidents are the leading cause of transportation death though.
Today we had a train wreck between two rush hour commuter trains in Connecticuit. Worst Metro-North has seen since 1988. No deaths.
In the northeast, unless you're on the Acela Express or in a sleeper car, you're not riding anything younger than 30 years. The Amfleets which are the Northeast's bread and butter were built in 1975. At least the Midwest gets new Superliners every few years.
1) The Keystone Corridor is also successful (from a customer service point of view), sees over a dozen trains each way daily, with portions of the line at over 100MPH speed.
2) That section of the Empire Corridor is slow but only because it is a former freight line through a very urban area. There are some sections where vibrations of trains could cause rockslides (though those have recently been stabilized enough to allow 45MPH speeds). It is a necessary evil because the only other option would be for Amtrak to have to run these trains out of Grand Central, which would be inefficient both operationally and for passengers who need to transfer (the rest of the trains must use Penn Station). It also sees over a dozen trains a day.
4) The Post Road Branch isn't that significant. It is 12 miles from Albany, NY to near the Massachusetts state line - it carries the Lake Shore Limited (one train a day). While the speed limit is 79 MPH (or feels that way) it is on jointed rail and therefore the most uncomfortable 12 miles in New York State. That said, the rest of the former Boston & Albany main line is not owned by Amtrak and large portions have speed limits of 45, but the rail is smooth - excellent for freight, annoying for passengers.
It didn't help that from 1942-1962, Railroad tickets were taxed something like 10%, and that tax money went to the general fund (which then got doled out to the interstate highway system and the airports that directly competed with them). Source (admittedly biased but the best I could find with a quick google).
Places that are not NYC also have public transportation. Almost every state has at least one city with public transit. Middle class Americans seem blind to it because it tends to be viewed as only for "poor people" or the elderly, but it is there. The colleges around here (not NYC) educate these individuals on this with freshman car bans (parking shortage), so it's either learn to use the bus or never leave campus. It may not be convenient at all times but than can be worked around.
Also, your statement "rat and roach free" tells me you aren't properly understanding the solution - when you need to be frugal, sometimes you may have to live in a place that is less than pretty. Around here we'll often have three unrelated students sharing a 3 bedroom apartment. If there is a mice problem, they get a cat. Roach problem? RAID. You make do with what you have.
As for your heart rending example, that is an unfortunate situation but doesn't really describe the average college-bound individual.
Still possible to work your way through school in NYS... source.
We may have some of the highest taxes in the country but things like this is what it goes towards. There's also the Tuition Assistance Program (additional financial aid) and things like the Education Opportunity Program for students of low income households.
It can be made even cheaper by living at home (subtract room and board cost). Hopefully home is near a city (not necessarily *the* city, there's SUNYs everywhere). If not, that's simply the tradeoff of living in the middle of nowhere.
If you're not living at home, the "keeping gas in the tank" argument disappears - who says you need a car? That's several thousand a year going to what, exactly? You're not living at home so no excuse - you can select your state school and residence based on public transit requirements. Minimum wage jobs tend to also line public transit corridors. Many state schools offer public transit discounts for the regions they are in (or even flat out free transit).
Basically, if you are a resident of NY and cannot afford to go to college, it's most likely your own fault - do some research and be willing to adjust your lifestyle habits. If your home state is a lot less helpful, well, that's your lower tax rate in action.