The tracks for the Northeast Corridor and Acela trains are predominantly owned by either Amtrak or the regional transit agencies such as MBTA or SEPTA. Almost none of this critical section of track is privately owned.
This is the busiest passenger rail on the whole planet.
This shuts down amtrak and also regional commuter rail.
Lots and lots of people are going to be late for work tomorrow.
These are not just any people, they are the ones who pay big money to ride the commuter train (usually over $300/month) so many companies will probably be running very short-handed in the management department tomorrow.
You know what? This derailment happened on the busiest passenger railroad line on the whole planet. Many many people will be affected all over the world when these commuters do not arrive at work on time tomorrow. The world still revolves around NYC. This is big news for the business world.
Nobody ever said that we should upgrade every single mile of railroad in this country and nobody ever said that we should offer high speed rail service to rural Wyoming, but that won't stop people from telling us why it's hopeless to upgrade our rail system.
because here on slashdot we might actually have an interesting discussion about why trains fall off the tracks, the merits of infrastructure investment, why people prefer different forms of transpotation, etc.
believe it or not some people come here for the comments
Perhaps you are thinking of Metro North which is most decidedly not the same as Amtrak?
Perhaps you are thinking of the crash involving undiagnosed sleep apnea (Metro North did not screen its employees for sleep apnea as NHTSA recommends for all operators). They changed his shift unexpectedly, his sleep apnea prevented him from sleeping well and he nodded off. It was 100% preventable if Metro North had followed the guidelines.
Perhaps you are thinking of the derailment and death on Metro North when a train plowed into a work crew. Again no fault to the train or the crew, but a management failure to enforce basic rules of safety.
Oh and you really think that amtrak sets its prices like that? woof!
Im sure its a mixture between driver error and system issues
The majority of derailments are due to track problems or striking vehicles at grade crossings, and nothing to do with the driver or the train. How is it that you are so sure?
A completely private-enterprise solution that just needs some lawyers involved to implement.
Maybe you should look at the electronics section of your local drugstore and tell us how many of the USB charging devices have "UL" stamps on them. "None" will be my guess. All of the people who bought these devices, are they all in continuous violation of the fire codes? What is anyone going to do about it?
And guess what, in China you can print "UL" or "FCC" on anything you want to, they sure don't care, and who actually looks through the thousands of container loads that arrive in the US every day to see if the items have fake UL stamps? Nobody, that's who. Your idea is useless, because just like UL, everyone will just ignore it.
But to me the use wasn't worth the privacy invasion.
You know the power company already has a really tremendous ability to monitor your power usage on a continuous basis. They can tell if you stay up late, they can tell if you sneak home during the day to cheat on your wife. They can tell how much you run your electric dryer so they can tell how many people are living in your house. They can probably tell you what model of refrigerator you own, just from looking at the power curves. No doubt your wife's lawyer or your insurance company (or someone else's insurance company) could find some sort of expert witness who will swear to the accuracy of the data. You've already let them peer into your daily life just by signing up for service.
Now imagine the havoc of the inevitable solar flare on all this connectedness that can not run with out being connected.
Yeah whatever, scare-monger, that solar flare will knock out the power station whether or not you have sensors on your refrigerator. So you mean we have to be prepared for when the power goes off? Yeah this is the USA, you can count on the power to go out at least a couple of times a year. Are you prepared for that?
Infrastructure like railroads, bridges, etc. can be fitted with a massive number of telemetry sensors at low cost. Many bridge inspections could be done remotely if the bridge is covered with thousands and thousands of strain gauges. The USGS and the weather service can offer more and better information to the public with more advanced sensor networks. Maybe with enough sensors and the right software, we could predict earthquakes. Who knows? The technology is not there.
The security wonks tell us over and over to re-use existing security structure, but there is no existing model for this type of thing, so people are forced to roll their own, with the usual consequences.
company pays 3x damages.. it would solve the problem
That's not how it works. 3x damages bankrupts the shell corporation holding the distribution rights, nobody actually gets any money, the anonymous stakeholders walk away with no loss.
it's not the implementations that are too large, it's the specification that's too large.
How many ways are there to dereference a pointer? you can use either *foo or foo[0] but why? Nothing is gained from having two ways to do it, it just makes the language more obscure.
The c preprocessor by its nature is a hulking uncontrolled nightmare that can and will deposit horrible bugs everywhere in your program, you can choose any one of a literally infinite array of options to solve your problem.
And then there is the typedef operator, which can also be abused in fascinating ways to achieve truly unfindable bugs, without really contributing much of anything to the language. Or maybe you can just use the preprocessor instead. For extra points, use both the preprocessor and typedefs to drive your fellow coders absolutely insane.
Slashdot Mirror
Zero died in this incident,
If you can't get that part right it doesn't speak much for any of the other things you say.
there's no doubt that people in LA need more training
In 1969, man landed on the moon. Most of the planet learned about it 1.3 seconds later.
The tracks for the Northeast Corridor and Acela trains are predominantly owned by either Amtrak or the regional transit agencies such as MBTA or SEPTA. Almost none of this critical section of track is privately owned.
if I'm lucky I'll get a happy ending during the security pat-down.
You must be a grand disappointment to your spouse if that's all it takes
the fact that you care enough to comment indicates you're lying
if the story was really as you say you would not have clicked
but you clicked and even made a comment, so clearly it worked for you
congratulations for participating
so in other words your entire comment is nothing more than lies and ignorance
This is the busiest passenger rail on the whole planet.
This shuts down amtrak and also regional commuter rail.
Lots and lots of people are going to be late for work tomorrow.
These are not just any people, they are the ones who pay big money to ride the commuter train (usually over $300/month) so many companies will probably be running very short-handed in the management department tomorrow.
You know what? This derailment happened on the busiest passenger railroad line on the whole planet. Many many people will be affected all over the world when these commuters do not arrive at work on time tomorrow. The world still revolves around NYC. This is big news for the business world.
Nobody ever said that we should upgrade every single mile of railroad in this country and nobody ever said that we should offer high speed rail service to rural Wyoming, but that won't stop people from telling us why it's hopeless to upgrade our rail system.
because here on slashdot we might actually have an interesting discussion about why trains fall off the tracks, the merits of infrastructure investment, why people prefer different forms of transpotation, etc.
believe it or not some people come here for the comments
Why is this on Slashdot...!?
Because some people who read slashdot also take the train
Because technology failures are interesting to technology people
Because intrastructure issues are important to the economy that employs slashdot readers
all under amtrak control
Perhaps you are thinking of Metro North which is most decidedly not the same as Amtrak?
Perhaps you are thinking of the crash involving undiagnosed sleep apnea (Metro North did not screen its employees for sleep apnea as NHTSA recommends for all operators). They changed his shift unexpectedly, his sleep apnea prevented him from sleeping well and he nodded off. It was 100% preventable if Metro North had followed the guidelines.
Perhaps you are thinking of the derailment and death on Metro North when a train plowed into a work crew. Again no fault to the train or the crew, but a management failure to enforce basic rules of safety.
Oh and you really think that amtrak sets its prices like that? woof!
Im sure its a mixture between driver error and system issues
The majority of derailments are due to track problems or striking vehicles at grade crossings, and nothing to do with the driver or the train. How is it that you are so sure?
it would be a miracle rivaling the birth of christ if openssl were actually fixed
A completely private-enterprise solution that just needs some lawyers involved to implement.
Maybe you should look at the electronics section of your local drugstore and tell us how many of the USB charging devices have "UL" stamps on them. "None" will be my guess. All of the people who bought these devices, are they all in continuous violation of the fire codes? What is anyone going to do about it?
And guess what, in China you can print "UL" or "FCC" on anything you want to, they sure don't care, and who actually looks through the thousands of container loads that arrive in the US every day to see if the items have fake UL stamps? Nobody, that's who. Your idea is useless, because just like UL, everyone will just ignore it.
But to me the use wasn't worth the privacy invasion.
You know the power company already has a really tremendous ability to monitor your power usage on a continuous basis. They can tell if you stay up late, they can tell if you sneak home during the day to cheat on your wife. They can tell how much you run your electric dryer so they can tell how many people are living in your house. They can probably tell you what model of refrigerator you own, just from looking at the power curves. No doubt your wife's lawyer or your insurance company (or someone else's insurance company) could find some sort of expert witness who will swear to the accuracy of the data. You've already let them peer into your daily life just by signing up for service.
no amount of electronics will prevent thieves from putting your car onto a flatbed truck
faraday cages still work pretty well to block radio signals
if they really really want to break into your car, there is no way to stop them
Now imagine the havoc of the inevitable solar flare on all this connectedness that can not run with out being connected.
Yeah whatever, scare-monger, that solar flare will knock out the power station whether or not you have sensors on your refrigerator. So you mean we have to be prepared for when the power goes off? Yeah this is the USA, you can count on the power to go out at least a couple of times a year. Are you prepared for that?
it's also a death trap, using it as your daily vehicle is an enormous risk compared to a modern vehicle
did you count the potential cost of your death in your financial analysis?
Infrastructure like railroads, bridges, etc. can be fitted with a massive number of telemetry sensors at low cost. Many bridge inspections could be done remotely if the bridge is covered with thousands and thousands of strain gauges. The USGS and the weather service can offer more and better information to the public with more advanced sensor networks. Maybe with enough sensors and the right software, we could predict earthquakes. Who knows? The technology is not there.
The security wonks tell us over and over to re-use existing security structure, but there is no existing model for this type of thing, so people are forced to roll their own, with the usual consequences.
company pays 3x damages .. it would solve the problem
That's not how it works. 3x damages bankrupts the shell corporation holding the distribution rights, nobody actually gets any money, the anonymous stakeholders walk away with no loss.
today chips with 8048 cores are fractions of a penny in large quantity, so yes they have changed pretty dramatically
The lack of tail call optimization is a deal breaker for any sort of advanced programming.
Many fast algorithms have been written to assume tail optimization, these are all out of consideration..
it's not the implementations that are too large, it's the specification that's too large.
How many ways are there to dereference a pointer? you can use either *foo or foo[0] but why? Nothing is gained from having two ways to do it, it just makes the language more obscure.
The c preprocessor by its nature is a hulking uncontrolled nightmare that can and will deposit horrible bugs everywhere in your program, you can choose any one of a literally infinite array of options to solve your problem.
And then there is the typedef operator, which can also be abused in fascinating ways to achieve truly unfindable bugs, without really contributing much of anything to the language. Or maybe you can just use the preprocessor instead. For extra points, use both the preprocessor and typedefs to drive your fellow coders absolutely insane.