My guess is that 3.5" is too big of a gap to perform any sort of trickery to allow cars to safely run on both gauges, but is too small of a gap to engineer any sort of other solution.
Remember that safety standards are likely much more stringent (and speeds higher) these days... (of course, given the proper trackage, old trains could run pretty fast...)
How weird would it be to see a bunch of Russian trucks driving around the United States? The producers of "Red Dawn" would be turning over in their graves!
I live near a large seaport, and see trucks with Russian/foreign shipping containers on them all the time.
Ship electricity through the rails? Unless I'm missing something, that sounds absurdly dangerous.
Also, since this is a freight line, I don't think that speed is all that huge of an issue, (especially when you consider the route they're taking). As long as the tunnel isn't serving as a bottleneck, I think a conventional rail would be adequate.
I'm not sure if it's technically feasible, but wikipedia suggests that a dual-gauge configuration is being considered that would allow trains of both types to operate on the line. of course, you'd still have the problem of finding something to do at the end of the line, but I imagine that something could be worked out....
(And the post-civil war switch to standard gauge wouldn't be feasible for this sort of scenario. That switch was so minor that existing equipment could be used without any major problems or requiring ties to be dug up. Also, I imagine engineering standards are a tad stricter these days...)
If the tunnel will indeed serve as a rail link, how does Russia plan on dealing with the fact that their trains use a different gauge than trains in the US do? From what I understand, the break-of-gauge is a huge pain for Russian trains to enter China, and requires cargo to either be unloaded, or for the bogies to be changed...
On the other hand, if the annual energy savings from this project is anything even remotely close to what's projected, I'm amazed that it hasn't been built already. The cost savings figures quoted by the Russians have the project breaking even in less than a year!
(Not to mention the trade benefits from building such a tunnel and the symbol of unity the tunnel would serve as... Russia's going through some pretty hard times as it is.)
Quantum spin is one of those things you just have to accept in Physics without asking too many questions. (because if you don't understand Quantum Spin yet, you probably won't understand the answers to those questions --- Physics is fun like that)
Particles have angular momentum, even though they're not necessarily rotating in the classical sense of the word (as a wheel does). Confusing? Yes. Useful? HELL YES. For one, MRI imaging relies entirely on quantum spin to work.
The box-cutter approach could never work again, and for only one of the reasons you mentioned.
The public is now well-aware that any airline hijackings are not going to result in hostage-type situations, but 9/11-type scenarios instead.
A box-cutter is not a formidable weapon when dealing with a large mob of people. The hijackers would be immediately overwhelmed by the passengers and subdued before they even get anywhere near the cockpit which they wouldn't be able to access due to the reinforced doors.
Personally, I feel that the cockpit should be completely separate from the passenger compartment -- the pilots enter through a separate door on the exterior of the plane. The fact that the doors weren't reinforced and kept locked in the first place represents a HUGE failure on the part of the FAA.
Terrorism is still scary. Box-cutters are not. This has NOTHING to do with the effectiveness of pre-flight screenings and EVERYTHING to do with passengers being more vigilant of their surroundings.
If you look hard enough, decent story-based games DO still exist.
I'm pretty sure the Monkey Island franchise is still going on, and pretty much every game in that series has been fun and enjoyable.
Likewise, there are a handful of adventure games still floating around. The best one I can remember in recent memory was The Longest Journey. I haven't played the sequal, Dreamfall, but I believe that it was consiered to be pretty good (although it was completely panned in reviews due to the unfamiliar genre).
RPGs with good stories exist as well. Although it's a few years old now, Planescape: Torment is arguably amongst the best RPGs I've ever played. Although the gameplay wasn't the best, the story kept you hooked. Basically the opposite of Neverwinter Nights, which basically achieved CRPG Nirvana at the expense of a good story.
Putin is possibly the greatest threat to democracy since Stalin.
At least under the USSR, you knew what to expect, crime was mostly under control, and the economy wasn't in the crapper. I agree with you fully that Russia faces a very different set of circumstances than the US does, but I don't think that a fascist regime is the answer in Russia (nor do I think that it's a viable long-term solution anywhere, even if you ignore the gross human-rights violations). Remember, it was corruption, and not communism led to the downfall of the USSR.
Yes, but Apple has a legitimate reason for this policy -- they make a good portion of their money off of selling hardware (among a host of other secondary reasons).
This reason does not exist for Microsoft. They aren't selling hardware, so it's a bit perplexing as to why they're instituting a surcharge unless there's some shady business going on that we don't know about. Even at that, it would make more sense to charge LESS for a license to run the software under virtualization.
Nah. Xenix would be a more apt comparison to Copland/Rhapsody. (Although you could also equate Xenix back to A/UX -- another one of Apple's aborted OS ideas).
The problem with Vista is that it was so hideously behind schedule that the all features that made it worth upgrading were torn out to get the thing actually shipped. MS needed to make the deadline, because XP's teetering dangerously close to its end-of-life. (Official EOL is next January, with mainstream support continuing until 2009), and Win2k had already reached its EOL. Unfortunately, in the end, MS managed to produce a product less desirable than Win2k (which was a legitimately good operating system that MS really should have continued to support).
Apple's business model does not depend heavily upon shipping OS updates with any specific frequency, although they do do it considerably more often than Microsoft does. Thus, they can deliver updates "as needed". Instead of ripping out features to meet an arbitrary deadline, Apple can actually complete the features or retool the OS so they don't release something that's incomplete (Vista) or completely unusable (Windows Me!). And I don't think I need to remind any IT Pros of the horrors of Me!
What you're saying makes sense, and indeed, during the Cold War, this was a large concern. Intelligence had shown that soviet ICBMs were aimed at critical US infrastructure points, and that a nuclear attack would likely aim for these infrastructure points instead of (or possibly in addition to) major population centers.
Most of the infrastructure built at the time was designed to resist such an attack as best as possible. AT&T had a massive network of hilltop microwave transmitters which was abandoned in favor of burying lots of fiber all over the place. I'm not sure how vulnerable our infrastructure is today, but the fact remains that 20 years ago, these things were indeed taken into consideration.
You see, even the most evil "terrorists" and "commies" have some sort of shred of respect for the value of human life. If their means can be achieved by damaging equipment instead of murder, they'll probably take that route. Unfortunately, terrorism (at least in the classical definition of the term) is designed to capture as much attention as possible. Comparing the government's response to 9/11 and Katrina, I think my point here is pretty clear...
Can anyone reference a national system that was successfully replaced? I heard rumor that a very small country changed which side of the road they drove on in the past ten years.
Yes, I can. It might not be recent or entirely relevant, but the entire US rail network south of the Mason-Dixon line was converted from broad 5ft gaguge to the "standard" 4'9" gauge that was used in the North on May 31 1886. The work was completed in less than 36 hours.
No matter how you spin it, that's pretty darn impressive.
Wow..... you just made me realize that RPN is essentially the Latin grammatical syntax applied to math.....
(For the uninitiated, Latin sentences typically go: Subject -> Direct Object -> Verb (with an indirect object optionally thrown in before or after the DO))
Alternatively, rearrange the phrase as you'd hear Yoda say it.
You really believe that Ford will actually disappear? If things get bad enough for them, somebody will buy them, or the Feds will bail them out. Simply put, domestically owned domestic automobile production is a defense asset, and I don't believe the government will allow either Ford or GM to collapse.
Although I agree with you in principle, I'm pretty sure that the past 6 years have proved otherwise.
The feds are letting our economy go to shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Likewise, a "bailout" is a big no-no according to every economics textbook on the planet. Firms need to be able to fail in order to maintain competition and innovation.
That said, if we put tariffs on foreign cars that didn't meet a certain fuel efficiency cutoff, I think we'd still see improvements across the board, and the American automakers would probably be safe (but still be forced to produce a better product). Although I'm usually a small-government kind of guy, inflation and our trade deficit are completely out of control, and something needs to be done.
What it all boils down to is that the current administration is acting like it's 1950, and making the mistakes of the 70s all over again. This can be seen by virtually every aspect of our federal policy right now. In 2008, I'm going to vote for whomever is the first candidate to admit we've screwed up pretty badly in the past 10 years, and need to work furiously to regain our edge. Hope is not yet lost.
Please RTFA. It looks like this "course" is intended to teach students to make sure that they get credit for their research and work.
Although I do agree that any obstruction of the free flow of information is detrimental to science and academia, I don't think that's the point of this initiative.
If your research is quoted/copied by another scientist (especially, one who is more reputable than you are) without proper citation, it can completely destroy your credibility, and severely hurt when applying for grants or being considered for tenure.
I really don't see anything wrong with this. Like TFA said, there have been several high-profile copyright infringement cases lately, and you'd be a fool not to protect yourself.
This famously happened with some of the original AIDS research in the 80s (that first identified HIV as a retrovirus), where the group of CDC epidemiologists who spearheaded the research received little to no credit for their work once conclusive evidence was found.
I beg to differ. Although it is Gaim-Based, and only runs on one platform, Adium is the undisputed champion of textual messaging.
It's really really rare to come across a program that is extremely easy to use, but is completely extensible and customizable (with minimal effort). Winamp is the only other widely-popular program I can think of that fits that description (and perhaps Firefox to a somewhat lesser extent...)
If you've got a mac to play around with, I highly reccommend checking it out.
You're right that you're going to run into hardware problems unless you choose very carefully.
As is the case with most things related to analogue/digital conversion (and also to video editing), the sky's pretty much the limit when it comes to the amount of money you can sink into your equipment.
For starters, a broadcast-quality VCR will set you back quite a bit. Great capture hardware's going to do you no good if the quality of the source is poor. We'll leave this part as an exercise for the reader.
Now that you've got a decent VCR, you can go splurge on an expensive Analogue-Digital converter. Any decent-quality device won't offer all of the unnecessary "bells and whistles" (such as hardware-based MPEG/WMV encoding) that the parent poster describes. Instead, most pro-grade boxes will take an analogue signal (RCA, S-Vid, or even BNC if you want to go all out), and output a standard FireWire DV signal that any decent video editing software should be able to handle. Canopus' hardware is very well-regarded for these purposes. Their products range from somewhat inexpensive (~$150) for consumer-grade products to appallingly expensive for the pro-grade stuff.
However, the fact that you were considering using a TV-tuner card to do the capture seems to indicate that you haven't done anything like this at all. If your content is bad enough that you really NEED to be "in control of every step of the process", you're better off outsourcing this to a professional. Otherwise, a decent VCR and A/D converter should clean up the signal pretty well for you. You can always take care of things like de-interlacing in software later on.
I might also recommend stepping down from your podium, and considering editing your video with non-free software. I can't help but think that the gap that exists between Cineleera and Final Cut Pro is even bigger than the gap between Photoshop and The Gimp (which is pretty huge). Most professional studios use either Avid or Final Cut (and I'm really not trying to be an apple fanboy here -- Apple and Avid basically jointly own the entire industry). Compared to the rest of the costs of video production, Final Cut is a steal.
Alternatively, there are VHS/DVD-R decks out there that will automatically make dubs for you. Sony makes one, and it costs around $200 the last time I checked. Quality's not going to be the absolute best, but will still be pretty darn good. And it's easy as long as your source doesn't have macrovision.
I use my Mini for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Final Cut Pro.
It's not perfect, but it's still damn fast for everything I've ever needed it for. My only complaint is that the built-in hard drive is kind of slow. When I'm working on disk-intensive projects, I work off of a 7200 RPM Firewire disk.
Oh, and Parallels runs great on it. It's powerful AND practical.
Before you go calling something "crippled", please give it a chance and use it yourself. There's not all that much software out there that can really bog down a Core Duo.
Also, Final Cut might not be the best comparison to make. As long as you're connected to some sort of render farm, or don't do any intensive rendering (or HD) on the machine you're editing with, Final Cut will still run quite happily on a 400mhz G4.
If there were Americans to fill these spots, I wouldn't doubt that they'd be filled by Americans. It's a far cry from "throwing open the borders" (which I would imagine would apply more to unskilled jobs than skilled jobs anyway)
The H-1B process is so costly, time-consuming, and unreliable that an employer would be insane not to.
Instead, in effect, you end up with a talent-shortage. Americans are still out of a job, and companies are unable to maintain an edge in order to stay competitive in the international market. It's not like H-1B workers tend to live in poverty or get paid less than Americans either. Given that we're LOSING skilled workers to emigration, wouldn't it make sense to let more back in to fill the void?
If we can't fill our jobs with our own people, then there is something seriously wrong with our education system that needs to be addressed immediately. Basic economics indicates that opening the job market up to competition would be the fastest and most effective way to make this happen.
Really? I'd think that would reduce capacity, and make maintenance unbearably difficult. It would likely prevent any future 'pigs' from traveling through the pipe, and require a portion of the line to be shut down and evacuated before any maintenance could be performed.
They could be using storm sewers, in which case, it wouldn't be particularly unpleasant to maintain. (Quite the opposite in fact, as the pipes would be huge and easily accessible)
On the other hand, neither solution sounds particularly reliable.
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It's about 5 feet.
My guess is that 3.5" is too big of a gap to perform any sort of trickery to allow cars to safely run on both gauges, but is too small of a gap to engineer any sort of other solution.
Remember that safety standards are likely much more stringent (and speeds higher) these days... (of course, given the proper trackage, old trains could run pretty fast...)
I live near a large seaport, and see trucks with Russian/foreign shipping containers on them all the time.
Ship electricity through the rails? Unless I'm missing something, that sounds absurdly dangerous.
Also, since this is a freight line, I don't think that speed is all that huge of an issue, (especially when you consider the route they're taking). As long as the tunnel isn't serving as a bottleneck, I think a conventional rail would be adequate.
I'm not sure if it's technically feasible, but wikipedia suggests that a dual-gauge configuration is being considered that would allow trains of both types to operate on the line. of course, you'd still have the problem of finding something to do at the end of the line, but I imagine that something could be worked out....
(And the post-civil war switch to standard gauge wouldn't be feasible for this sort of scenario. That switch was so minor that existing equipment could be used without any major problems or requiring ties to be dug up. Also, I imagine engineering standards are a tad stricter these days...)
If the tunnel will indeed serve as a rail link, how does Russia plan on dealing with the fact that their trains use a different gauge than trains in the US do? From what I understand, the break-of-gauge is a huge pain for Russian trains to enter China, and requires cargo to either be unloaded, or for the bogies to be changed...
On the other hand, if the annual energy savings from this project is anything even remotely close to what's projected, I'm amazed that it hasn't been built already. The cost savings figures quoted by the Russians have the project breaking even in less than a year!
(Not to mention the trade benefits from building such a tunnel and the symbol of unity the tunnel would serve as... Russia's going through some pretty hard times as it is.)
I was thinking Iraq, but hey.... whatever floats your boat.
Quantum spin is one of those things you just have to accept in Physics without asking too many questions. (because if you don't understand Quantum Spin yet, you probably won't understand the answers to those questions --- Physics is fun like that)
Particles have angular momentum, even though they're not necessarily rotating in the classical sense of the word (as a wheel does). Confusing? Yes. Useful? HELL YES. For one, MRI imaging relies entirely on quantum spin to work.
The box-cutter approach could never work again, and for only one of the reasons you mentioned.
The public is now well-aware that any airline hijackings are not going to result in hostage-type situations, but 9/11-type scenarios instead.
A box-cutter is not a formidable weapon when dealing with a large mob of people. The hijackers would be immediately overwhelmed by the passengers and subdued before they even get anywhere near the cockpit which they wouldn't be able to access due to the reinforced doors.
Personally, I feel that the cockpit should be completely separate from the passenger compartment -- the pilots enter through a separate door on the exterior of the plane. The fact that the doors weren't reinforced and kept locked in the first place represents a HUGE failure on the part of the FAA.
Terrorism is still scary. Box-cutters are not. This has NOTHING to do with the effectiveness of pre-flight screenings and EVERYTHING to do with passengers being more vigilant of their surroundings.
If you look hard enough, decent story-based games DO still exist.
I'm pretty sure the Monkey Island franchise is still going on, and pretty much every game in that series has been fun and enjoyable.
Likewise, there are a handful of adventure games still floating around. The best one I can remember in recent memory was The Longest Journey. I haven't played the sequal, Dreamfall, but I believe that it was consiered to be pretty good (although it was completely panned in reviews due to the unfamiliar genre).
RPGs with good stories exist as well. Although it's a few years old now, Planescape: Torment is arguably amongst the best RPGs I've ever played. Although the gameplay wasn't the best, the story kept you hooked. Basically the opposite of Neverwinter Nights, which basically achieved CRPG Nirvana at the expense of a good story.
Putin is possibly the greatest threat to democracy since Stalin.
At least under the USSR, you knew what to expect, crime was mostly under control, and the economy wasn't in the crapper. I agree with you fully that Russia faces a very different set of circumstances than the US does, but I don't think that a fascist regime is the answer in Russia (nor do I think that it's a viable long-term solution anywhere, even if you ignore the gross human-rights violations). Remember, it was corruption, and not communism led to the downfall of the USSR.
Yes, but Apple has a legitimate reason for this policy -- they make a good portion of their money off of selling hardware (among a host of other secondary reasons).
This reason does not exist for Microsoft. They aren't selling hardware, so it's a bit perplexing as to why they're instituting a surcharge unless there's some shady business going on that we don't know about. Even at that, it would make more sense to charge LESS for a license to run the software under virtualization.
Nah. Xenix would be a more apt comparison to Copland/Rhapsody. (Although you could also equate Xenix back to A/UX -- another one of Apple's aborted OS ideas).
The problem with Vista is that it was so hideously behind schedule that the all features that made it worth upgrading were torn out to get the thing actually shipped. MS needed to make the deadline, because XP's teetering dangerously close to its end-of-life. (Official EOL is next January, with mainstream support continuing until 2009), and Win2k had already reached its EOL. Unfortunately, in the end, MS managed to produce a product less desirable than Win2k (which was a legitimately good operating system that MS really should have continued to support).
Apple's business model does not depend heavily upon shipping OS updates with any specific frequency, although they do do it considerably more often than Microsoft does. Thus, they can deliver updates "as needed". Instead of ripping out features to meet an arbitrary deadline, Apple can actually complete the features or retool the OS so they don't release something that's incomplete (Vista) or completely unusable (Windows Me!). And I don't think I need to remind any IT Pros of the horrors of Me!
What you're saying makes sense, and indeed, during the Cold War, this was a large concern. Intelligence had shown that soviet ICBMs were aimed at critical US infrastructure points, and that a nuclear attack would likely aim for these infrastructure points instead of (or possibly in addition to) major population centers.
Most of the infrastructure built at the time was designed to resist such an attack as best as possible. AT&T had a massive network of hilltop microwave transmitters which was abandoned in favor of burying lots of fiber all over the place. I'm not sure how vulnerable our infrastructure is today, but the fact remains that 20 years ago, these things were indeed taken into consideration.
You see, even the most evil "terrorists" and "commies" have some sort of shred of respect for the value of human life. If their means can be achieved by damaging equipment instead of murder, they'll probably take that route. Unfortunately, terrorism (at least in the classical definition of the term) is designed to capture as much attention as possible. Comparing the government's response to 9/11 and Katrina, I think my point here is pretty clear...
Yes, I can. It might not be recent or entirely relevant, but the entire US rail network south of the Mason-Dixon line was converted from broad 5ft gaguge to the "standard" 4'9" gauge that was used in the North on May 31 1886. The work was completed in less than 36 hours.
No matter how you spin it, that's pretty darn impressive.
Ohm -> Resistance; Superhackers -> Superconductors -> No resistance -> Zero Ohms.
(Also, something I've always found amusing is that the unit for ()^-1 is the "mho")
Wow..... you just made me realize that RPN is essentially the Latin grammatical syntax applied to math.....
(For the uninitiated, Latin sentences typically go: Subject -> Direct Object -> Verb (with an indirect object optionally thrown in before or after the DO))
Alternatively, rearrange the phrase as you'd hear Yoda say it.
Although I agree with you in principle, I'm pretty sure that the past 6 years have proved otherwise.
The feds are letting our economy go to shit, and there's nothing we can do about it. Likewise, a "bailout" is a big no-no according to every economics textbook on the planet. Firms need to be able to fail in order to maintain competition and innovation.
That said, if we put tariffs on foreign cars that didn't meet a certain fuel efficiency cutoff, I think we'd still see improvements across the board, and the American automakers would probably be safe (but still be forced to produce a better product). Although I'm usually a small-government kind of guy, inflation and our trade deficit are completely out of control, and something needs to be done.
What it all boils down to is that the current administration is acting like it's 1950, and making the mistakes of the 70s all over again. This can be seen by virtually every aspect of our federal policy right now. In 2008, I'm going to vote for whomever is the first candidate to admit we've screwed up pretty badly in the past 10 years, and need to work furiously to regain our edge. Hope is not yet lost.
Please RTFA. It looks like this "course" is intended to teach students to make sure that they get credit for their research and work.
Although I do agree that any obstruction of the free flow of information is detrimental to science and academia, I don't think that's the point of this initiative.
If your research is quoted/copied by another scientist (especially, one who is more reputable than you are) without proper citation, it can completely destroy your credibility, and severely hurt when applying for grants or being considered for tenure.
I really don't see anything wrong with this. Like TFA said, there have been several high-profile copyright infringement cases lately, and you'd be a fool not to protect yourself.
This famously happened with some of the original AIDS research in the 80s (that first identified HIV as a retrovirus), where the group of CDC epidemiologists who spearheaded the research received little to no credit for their work once conclusive evidence was found.
I beg to differ. Although it is Gaim-Based, and only runs on one platform, Adium is the undisputed champion of textual messaging.
It's really really rare to come across a program that is extremely easy to use, but is completely extensible and customizable (with minimal effort). Winamp is the only other widely-popular program I can think of that fits that description (and perhaps Firefox to a somewhat lesser extent...)
If you've got a mac to play around with, I highly reccommend checking it out.
Watch out, or you might end up hiring an armed guard by accident ;-)
You're right that you're going to run into hardware problems unless you choose very carefully.
As is the case with most things related to analogue/digital conversion (and also to video editing), the sky's pretty much the limit when it comes to the amount of money you can sink into your equipment.
For starters, a broadcast-quality VCR will set you back quite a bit. Great capture hardware's going to do you no good if the quality of the source is poor. We'll leave this part as an exercise for the reader.
Now that you've got a decent VCR, you can go splurge on an expensive Analogue-Digital converter. Any decent-quality device won't offer all of the unnecessary "bells and whistles" (such as hardware-based MPEG/WMV encoding) that the parent poster describes. Instead, most pro-grade boxes will take an analogue signal (RCA, S-Vid, or even BNC if you want to go all out), and output a standard FireWire DV signal that any decent video editing software should be able to handle. Canopus' hardware is very well-regarded for these purposes. Their products range from somewhat inexpensive (~$150) for consumer-grade products to appallingly expensive for the pro-grade stuff.
However, the fact that you were considering using a TV-tuner card to do the capture seems to indicate that you haven't done anything like this at all. If your content is bad enough that you really NEED to be "in control of every step of the process", you're better off outsourcing this to a professional. Otherwise, a decent VCR and A/D converter should clean up the signal pretty well for you. You can always take care of things like de-interlacing in software later on.
I might also recommend stepping down from your podium, and considering editing your video with non-free software. I can't help but think that the gap that exists between Cineleera and Final Cut Pro is even bigger than the gap between Photoshop and The Gimp (which is pretty huge). Most professional studios use either Avid or Final Cut (and I'm really not trying to be an apple fanboy here -- Apple and Avid basically jointly own the entire industry). Compared to the rest of the costs of video production, Final Cut is a steal.
Alternatively, there are VHS/DVD-R decks out there that will automatically make dubs for you. Sony makes one, and it costs around $200 the last time I checked. Quality's not going to be the absolute best, but will still be pretty darn good. And it's easy as long as your source doesn't have macrovision.
I use my Mini for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Final Cut Pro.
It's not perfect, but it's still damn fast for everything I've ever needed it for. My only complaint is that the built-in hard drive is kind of slow. When I'm working on disk-intensive projects, I work off of a 7200 RPM Firewire disk.
Oh, and Parallels runs great on it. It's powerful AND practical.
Before you go calling something "crippled", please give it a chance and use it yourself. There's not all that much software out there that can really bog down a Core Duo.
Also, Final Cut might not be the best comparison to make. As long as you're connected to some sort of render farm, or don't do any intensive rendering (or HD) on the machine you're editing with, Final Cut will still run quite happily on a 400mhz G4.
If there were Americans to fill these spots, I wouldn't doubt that they'd be filled by Americans. It's a far cry from "throwing open the borders" (which I would imagine would apply more to unskilled jobs than skilled jobs anyway)
The H-1B process is so costly, time-consuming, and unreliable that an employer would be insane not to.
Instead, in effect, you end up with a talent-shortage. Americans are still out of a job, and companies are unable to maintain an edge in order to stay competitive in the international market. It's not like H-1B workers tend to live in poverty or get paid less than Americans either. Given that we're LOSING skilled workers to emigration, wouldn't it make sense to let more back in to fill the void?
If we can't fill our jobs with our own people, then there is something seriously wrong with our education system that needs to be addressed immediately. Basic economics indicates that opening the job market up to competition would be the fastest and most effective way to make this happen.
Really? I'd think that would reduce capacity, and make maintenance unbearably difficult. It would likely prevent any future 'pigs' from traveling through the pipe, and require a portion of the line to be shut down and evacuated before any maintenance could be performed.
Of course, I could be completely wrong.
They could be using storm sewers, in which case, it wouldn't be particularly unpleasant to maintain. (Quite the opposite in fact, as the pipes would be huge and easily accessible)
On the other hand, neither solution sounds particularly reliable.