Rio Tinto has been working on this on their railroad serving their mines in Australia. They've already run some very long and heavy trains automatically.
The thyristors are actually used on just the type C cars which were built in the 1980's. The A and B cars that were built for the 1972 opening of the system are blowing fuses when the voltage spike hits. Right now they are restricting the part of the system with the problem to just the A and B cars since the fuses are easier to get a hold of and are a lot cheaper.
The problem is that they're getting 2000 volt spikes happening, double the nominal voltage of 1000 VDC.
BART also has a non-standard voltage. Instead of the standard 600 VDC they went with 1000 VDC. When they were doing testing on their Concord test track when they were designing the system they used a rectifier that output quite a few different voltages, including 600 VDC and some others that are also used in quite a few places, like 1500 VDC. That rectifier now powers the trolley cars at the Western Railroad Museum.
There are also other things about BART that are non-standard and not used anywhere else in the transit industry.
Back when I was in high school the district was thinking about buying a DEC Edusystem, which used a PDP-8/L. DEC brought one in and set it up in the library and gave one week classes in BASIC. The district decided they couldn't afford it so instead they a Compucorp programmable calculator for each school. Maybe that might be something to look into.
I'm mainly near sighted, but had been using bifocals. That was very annoying when trying to see a monitor while standing higher than the monitor. Had to get new glasses a year ago so I went with progressives. The place I got them said I could return them within one month if I didn't like them. At first they were very annoying, but after a little over a week I got used to them and now they're great. They work fine for me with multiple monitors. But everyone is different and some people never can get used to them.
Parts of ENIAC are in the Smithsonian and the Computer History Museum. I think there are some other places, too. So, he could get the whole thing. I doubt you can get the parts to make it work. However, some university did make an "ENIAC on a chip".
Florida's a good spot for them. There are no mountains for them to crash in to. Nice flat spaces to make very long runways. In fact, there might be a runway of unusual size that the government isn't using very much that they can use. Also, a handy supply of alligators to turn into a reptilian zombie worker army.
Concord Naval Weapons Station used to have a very large rail network, including in the nuke weapons area. The BNSF and Union Pacific both have main lines that go past the base. A group ran a steam locomotive excursion on the line that went by the base. We stopped there to take photos and unloaded several hundred people. A few minutes later trucks loaded with Marines armed with M-16s were there asking us what we were doing there.
Actually, freight trains are pretty unpredictable. Even Amtrak train move pretty unpredictably. I've seen some Amtrak trains that were more than 12 hours behind schedule.
BART tickets are also time limited. If you enter a station fare gate you have 3 hours to exit. If you do not exit the system in that time the fare gate will not open and will give a "see station agent" message. You then have to go the station agent and explain what you've been doing inside for so long.
Why would you not shoot the knife out of his hand?? Of course, in real life that doesn't work because the target is moving erratically and you can't aim that well. That's why you aim for the center of mass.
> Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators â" in the snow, both ways, uphill!
Luxury! In my day we could only dream of graphing calculators. We had to make do with 8 digit, 4 function calculators. Only the rich, hoity toity kids had a square root button. Don't even get me started about what we had to do for transcendental functions!
Well, it was Grace Hopper and she's the mother of COBOL, not FORTRAN. She used to give out "nanoseconds" at her lectures. They were 11.9 inch lengths of wire, which represents how far electricity can go in a nanosecond. A friend of mine still has one of these "nanoseconds" he got from her.
A quick google search came up with several US companies that are pretty much doing the same thing, but they get your credit card or pay pal info before allowing you to download open office from them. One wants $49.95 a year!
"Throw rocks at them." Of course, we need to set up the railgun catapult and create a sentient computer system (a HOLMES IV would do nicely) and then we can get rid of the Lunar Authority.
>So this is Google Maps being a tool of China, showing us what the folks who run that country (aka, >the people who put the "big" in "big brother") and set their nuclear policy want us to see. The >might as well have made a see-from-space banner that says, "You can probably take us, sure, but >it'll cost you Los Angeles".
As long as we can be sure that they take out Paris Hilton, I say it's worth it!
Oh, and let's get Nicole Richie, Lindsey Lohan, and Britney Spears, too.
Slashdot Mirror
So, how much is that in Libraries of Congress?
Rio Tinto has been working on this on their railroad serving their mines in Australia. They've already run some very long and heavy trains automatically.
They still use miles for driving distances in the UK. Odometers in cars give the distance measured in miles, not kilometers or furlongs/fortnight.
That'll make it so that their systems won't keep trying to "upgrade" to Windows 10! Smart move Singapore!
The thyristors are actually used on just the type C cars which were built in the 1980's. The A and B cars that were built for the 1972 opening of the system are blowing fuses when the voltage spike hits. Right now they are restricting the part of the system with the problem to just the A and B cars since the fuses are easier to get a hold of and are a lot cheaper.
The problem is that they're getting 2000 volt spikes happening, double the nominal voltage of 1000 VDC.
BART also has a non-standard voltage. Instead of the standard 600 VDC they went with 1000 VDC. When they were doing testing on their Concord test track when they were designing the system they used a rectifier that output quite a few different voltages, including 600 VDC and some others that are also used in quite a few places, like 1500 VDC. That rectifier now powers the trolley cars at the Western Railroad Museum.
There are also other things about BART that are non-standard and not used anywhere else in the transit industry.
All of which had nothing to do with an earthquake in the country of Nepal. Nepal is not India. Go look at a map!
Back when I was in high school the district was thinking about buying a DEC Edusystem, which used a PDP-8/L. DEC brought one in and set it up in the library and gave one week classes in BASIC. The district decided they couldn't afford it so instead they a Compucorp programmable calculator for each school. Maybe that might be something to look into.
I'm mainly near sighted, but had been using bifocals. That was very annoying when trying to see a monitor while standing higher than the monitor. Had to get new glasses a year ago so I went with progressives. The place I got them said I could return them within one month if I didn't like them. At first they were very annoying, but after a little over a week I got used to them and now they're great. They work fine for me with multiple monitors. But everyone is different and some people never can get used to them.
There was a war on. Then we had to build bigger bombs to beat the Rooshins in the nucular race.
Parts of ENIAC are in the Smithsonian and the Computer History Museum. I think there are some other places, too. So, he could get the whole thing. I doubt you can get the parts to make it work. However, some university did make an "ENIAC on a chip".
I think it will be smart pants. We can call them smarty pants.
I for one welcome our new hybridized mammoth overlords!
Come on, you know you wanted to post this first.
Florida's a good spot for them. There are no mountains for them to crash in to. Nice flat spaces to make very long runways. In fact, there might be a runway of unusual size that the government isn't using very much that they can use. Also, a handy supply of alligators to turn into a reptilian zombie worker army.
Concord Naval Weapons Station used to have a very large rail network, including in the nuke weapons area. The BNSF and Union Pacific both have main lines that go past the base. A group ran a steam locomotive excursion on the line that went by the base. We stopped there to take photos and unloaded several hundred people. A few minutes later trucks loaded with Marines armed with M-16s were there asking us what we were doing there.
Actually, freight trains are pretty unpredictable. Even Amtrak train move pretty unpredictably. I've seen some Amtrak trains that were more than 12 hours behind schedule.
AFAIK, the cell phone companies put the equipment in the BART tunnels and also paid BART for the privilege.
BART tickets are also time limited. If you enter a station fare gate you have 3 hours to exit. If you do not exit the system in that time the fare gate will not open and will give a "see station agent" message. You then have to go the station agent and explain what you've been doing inside for so long.
Why would you not shoot the knife out of his hand?? Of course, in real life that doesn't work because the target is moving erratically and you can't aim that well. That's why you aim for the center of mass.
Sprint does not "own" Nascar. They pay Nascar big bucks to sponsor one of the Nascar race series, however.
> Why in my day, we had to buy our own graphing calculators â" in the snow, both ways, uphill!
Luxury! In my day we could only dream of graphing calculators. We had to make do with 8 digit, 4 function calculators. Only the rich, hoity toity kids had a square root button. Don't even get me started about what we had to do for transcendental functions!
Well, it was Grace Hopper and she's the mother of COBOL, not FORTRAN. She used to give out "nanoseconds" at her lectures. They were 11.9 inch lengths of wire, which represents how far electricity can go in a nanosecond. A friend of mine still has one of these "nanoseconds" he got from her.
A quick google search came up with several US companies that are pretty much doing the same thing, but they get your credit card or pay pal info before allowing you to download open office from them. One wants $49.95 a year!
"Throw rocks at them." Of course, we need to set up the railgun catapult and create a sentient computer system (a HOLMES IV would do nicely) and then we can get rid of the Lunar Authority.
>So this is Google Maps being a tool of China, showing us what the folks who run that country (aka, >the people who put the "big" in "big brother") and set their nuclear policy want us to see. The >might as well have made a see-from-space banner that says, "You can probably take us, sure, but >it'll cost you Los Angeles".
As long as we can be sure that they take out Paris Hilton, I say it's worth it!
Oh, and let's get Nicole Richie, Lindsey Lohan, and Britney Spears, too.