Apple started offering Apple+ (or some such name) without DRM for a 30 cent premium.
A couple of years ago, Apple split the sales model of songs, with normal DRMd songs at $0.99 and non-DRMd songs (encoded at a higher bitrate) for $1.29.
Around a year ago, Apple dispensed with this model and started offering all tracks DRM-free and encoded at the higher bitrate, but in exchange they had to acquiesce to label demands for variable pricing. So some non-DRMd songs are offered at $0.69, some are offered at $0.99 and the rest (usually newer releases) are offered at $1.29. But none are sold with DRM.
The most expensive hotels, are the ones most likely to have for-pay wifi.
I've noticed that as well during my travels.
That $60/night Best Western outside of D.C. that I stayed in? Free wifi. The $350/night InterContinental Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco that I stayed in? Wifi cost $20/day.
Repeating a comment I made on Hacker News - they wanted to help the guy by broadcasting his greatest screwup all over the internet and then saying "here's the guy who did it"? I hope no one ever decides to be that generous with me.
Your examples refer to property that is not owned by the company - just because its on their property doesn't give them rights over it. The article and this discussion pertains to company owned property.
The implication here is that the employee's information and data aren't 'property' and therefore is fair game to be accessed by the owner of whatever resource it travels over. Again, how far do we take this? Does Comcast have the implicit right to read the emails in my Gmail account because the data goes over their pipes? Does the government have the right to read emails that may pass through a Fed-owned router in some AT&T closet out there?
The data exists on the company's computers, likely passed through their network and servers, and because of these things they are legally accesible by the company
How far do we take this logic? Does the company have a right to search an employee's pocketbook because it's sitting in a company-owned office? Can the company take samples of an employee's lunch for drug testing (or health insurance purposes_ because it's sitting in a company-owned refrigerator, powered by company-paid-for electricity? Can a company search an employee's car because it's sitting on a company-owned parking lot?
True, which is why I would love to hear about alternatives.
I have near instant access to my funds and I use a check card. It is called a bank and mine has functioned like that for ages.
The bank that holds my business account takes 24 hours to clear an in-state check and 48-72 hours to clear an out of state check. They also don't offer website cc processing. If you know of a Massachusetts bank that offers that service, I'd love to hear it.
I have, and will continue to, refuse to conduct business with online entities that do not support a non-Paypal option. I have never used Paypal, and I don't anticipate that this will change.
I know people hate PayPal (and for good reason), but there is one reason why I continue to use PayPal for my web sales: the PayPal debit card, which means that I have near instant access my my received funds. It works great for me since I sell physical products, so if my cash flow is low, I can take the money from an order and immediately use it to purchase more inventory. I have Google checkout and Amazon Payments accounts that I can use for backup, but both of those hold on to your money for a set period; once the money is cleared, the only way you can get it is through a bank transfer which takes another couple of days. In good times, that's fine, but in this economic climate it's nice to be able to get my hands on my money.
If someone knows of a good, reliable cc processors that gives relatively fast access to cash (say, 48 hours or less), I'll switch in an instant.
They seriously signed a contract that stated "do work and we'll pay you"? I know a pretty good way of getting the budget under control. Don't do that!
I've been in contacting situations with the Fed Gov where the contractor (us) was set, and the scope and price were agreed upon, but the contract itself was held up for various reasons (sometimes political, sometimes mundane, sometimes related to a family emergency that the contracting officer is dealing with). If it was a situation where a delay would increase costs, we would be told to start work ("Notice to Proceed") with the indication that we would be paid our negotiated rates & expenses, and the contract stuff would be worked out.
It's the conflicting between trying to do things by the book ("don't let them work without an itemized contract!") and responding to concerns about efficiency ("you could have saved $1 million of taxpayer money if you let them start work early? Why didn't you let them start work?").
The real reason why Apple would never allow Flash to work on one of it's mobile devices is simple. The App Store. Most of the available apps could easily be mimicked using Flash, and made easily available. This would not be a good thing for Apple's bottom line.
As noted above, this rationale is easily disproved by Apple's encouragement of offline HTML5 web apps.
Grudge? Microsoft essentially saved Apple by loaning it much needed $$$.
Not exactly a loan. Microsoft bought a bunch of Apple stock. Common wisdom at the time was that Microsoft needed to prop up some kind of paper tiger competitor to avoid further anti-trust restrictions.
It was more than that, it was part of a settlement to resolve the Apple/Microsoft QuickTime lawsuit.
The issue is trying to get fast, cost effective, trains.
Yes, but we have a fast, cost-effective train. It's called the Acela. Like I wrote earlier, it's plenty fast and falls within the cost-range of other HSR trainsets. More cost-effective would certainly be better, sure, but the vehicle is not the limiting factor right now. A lighter Amtrak train idling on a siding waiting for a freight train to pass ain't gonna use appreciably less energy than a heavy Amtrak train idling on a siding waiting for a freight train to pass.
In truth, the whole has to be dealt with, not just a few headline issues.
Very true.
Light trains = more fuel efficiency = improving cost effectiveness over other forms of transport, and the ability to deploy them faster because of a lesser need to engage in wholesale signaling and routing upgrades (light trains have easier emergency braking than heavy trains.)
Yes, but lighter trains, which might save you a couple of million dollars isn't that big a deal with the infrastructure, ROW, maintenance facility, and environmental mitigation costs are tens of billions of dollars. Again, less energy use is better, but trains are already more efficient than trains (and buses under certain conditions). It's the rest of the rail infrastructure that needs work and spending time worrying about the one thing that's not really a problem is just a waste of everyone's time.
There's no logic to property taxes for this kind of thing, what costs are railroads (outside of crossings, which we should be eliminating) imposing on the cities and counties they pass through? Why should a railroad subsidize local schools? Why discourage a railroad from having and using track?
FWIW, I was repeatedly making sure that my words did not cover the north eastern corridor.
Which is why I used weasel words to get around the fact that you never mention the NEC directly ("there's a huge perception" rather than "you wrote..."). Weasel words FTW!
I can't comment on the Acela's weight issues (though I suspect it's still unnecessarily heavy. One thing I find very odd about my experiences of living in both the UK and US is that the US uses much larger engines and rolling stock, yet the amount of space inside the trains is identical. Just switching to the UK loading gauge should cut 20% off the weight of every train without in anyway reducing the quality of the experience. And this, my friend, is probably the only time you'll hear anyone "praising" the UK loading gauge;-). I believe the Eurostar trains use the UK LG, FWIW.)
Sure they're heavy, but my point was that no one has shown that the weight is the cause of sucky Amtrak service. Having lighter trains isn't going to solve the problem of Amtrak trains being stuck behind freight trains. Furthermore, as heavy as Amtrak trains are, they are far, far, lighter than the 15,000-ft long freight trains they share the track with so it's not like they're adding all that much to the track wear.
Right now, I think two major things have to happen to the line south of DC (and West of NY). First, and I'm sure it'd attract widespread support and government funding if asked for properly), the grade needs to be raised or lowered. That'd make a massive difference, just being able to eliminate virtually every railroad crossing. It'd attract government funding and be popular because nobody in their right mind likes crossings.
This is one of those things that everyone supports (including me) but there are some serious impediments. 1) it's very expensive ($1-2 million per grade crossing), 2) you have to re-route the train and road traffic in the meanwhile during the 1-2 year construction period which causes environmental and scheduling impacts at other locations, and 3) it causes problems for homes and businesses near the crossings that were accessible when everything is at grade but may have driveways and lots cut off by retaining walls (I've seen businesses complain because once the overpass is in place, their signage is no longer visible so street traffic can't see them and their business goes way down).
In the end IMO it's a worthwhile thing to do, but there are real concerns that have to be addressed before we move forward. As for attracting government funding, I guarantee you that every municipality and RR operator in the USA has asked for funding for every grade crossing in the country (all 159,000 of them) and the answer is usually "no."
The other is electrification, which I understand your concerns about, but it's something that the both Amtrak and the railroads ought to be looking at anyway. Yes, nobody likes subsidized railroads, but in reality this is one of the ways to eliminate them, as electrification doesn't just give you highspeed rail (which in turn makes the passenger services profitable) but it also gives you significantly lower fuel costs.
Agreed.
Should the government chip in for electrification? I don't think they need to so much as recognize one other core issue: railroads take traffic off of normal roads, reducing costs, yet railroads have to pay property taxes, and normal roads don't. Property taxes for railroad and railway infrastructure needs to go, it needs to be eliminated. It's silly, the logic seems to be "Well, it's private so...", but in the end it's not recognizing the role railroads play. Eliminating property taxes would go a long way towards making the costs associated with railroads lower, which would help free up funds for upgrades, and ultimately help put passenger services on a profitable footing again.
Note, though, that one of the biggest advantages of lightweight cars is that they can have far greater acceleration for a given amount of power, and that high acceleration is even more valuable when you have a crazily variable track like the NEC, as it reduces the penalty for being forced to periodically reduce speed.
As it is acceleration is limited by things like passenger comfort and wheel slip so I can't imagine this is going to be a real worthwhile benefit.
The question I have is whether the FRA as an organization is simply too hide-bound to ever provide anything more reasonable.
At this point there's no real reason why the regs should be revised. Once we can demonstrate that the regs are what's holding back HSR we can talk, but you can go to an APTA, AREMA, AAR or TRB meeting and see that on the list of the things engineers and planners are complaning about, FRA body-strength regs are way down there.
I hereby grant you an epic fail on your ignorance of Amtrak's NEC and Acela weight issues. First off, Amtrak (aka National Passenger Railroad Corp.) OWNS the Northeast Corridor -- virtually all of the infrastructure from Boston to DC and Philly to Harrisburg. This means Amtrak not only has to maintain its rolling stock, but the fixed infrastructure (track, catenary, signal/comms, and structures) as well.
This is all true
Amtrak dispatches trains across this territory, not CSX.
This is not. Trains originating out of VA are dispatched by NS and CSX has control in CT.
All of the freight traffic is run at night when things die down.
This is patently wrong, as anyone who has every spent time sitting near the tracks during the daytime *anywhere* along the NEC can observe for themselves.
Nonetheless, FRA regulations make it impossible to shut down tracks for long periods of time because FRA regs require Amtrak to grant passage of freights through its territory. If you've ever been out at night with the work crews, you'd find that in an 8 hour shift, they basically get 2, maybe 3 hours of actual work done. Most of the time is spent waiting for a long enough idle window to work without being obliterated by an oncoming train. An Acela 2 feet away from you at a good clip of 90 or 100 MPH (which is slow by passenger standards) is pretty intimidating.
Been there, done that. In fact if your Google-fu is any good, you can find pictures on the net of me doing exactly that. You show me your Amtrak ROW ID and I'll show you mine.
All travel outside the NEC requires movement over another host's rail infrastructure. Rail maintenance standards for freight are much lower than for passenger, so between hostile enemy dispatching and shitty track, Amtrak's passenger service is forced to creep along. Freights have no interest in passenger traffic. They hate it.
This agrees with what I wrote
Freight trains are also much heavier than a passenger train and end up beating the shit out of the track to the point where slow orders become necessary. Ambient temperature also causes slow orders depending on how far above or below the steel track's neutral temperature it is.
This is true
I used to work in Amtrak engineering ops, FYI.
Acela speeds are handicapped by a rail infrastructure that's over a century old in some places. You can see dates like 1912 stamped on some of the track. Some of the signaling equipment is from the early 20th century -- electromechanical with relays and everything. It tends to be flakey. A train's MAS (Max Authorized Speed) is determined by the track class. The track class is a set of tolerances that qualify said track for a particular speed. The higher the class, the faster the train is allowed to go. The Acelas travel the fastest through a relatively short segment that crosses Rhode Island starting north of CT. North of NYC is where the constant-tension cat wire is -- it's weighted on both ends like a ski lift to keep the tension from changing. South of NYC is all fixed cat. It's tied down at both ends and subject to a host of factors which lead the FRA to conclude that the Acela is not allowed to run faster than the normal Metroliners. The Acela's weight isn't the problem. It's the inability of the infrastructure to accommodate a modern trainset. Another example -- the Acela actively tilts inside curves to counteract centrifugal force. Around northern NJ and NYC, the tracks are too close together for an Acela to lean as far as it needs to to run at higher speeds.
This is all true and all jibes with what I wrote.
Amtrak bought the trainsets from Bombardier and then the FRA started imposing its absurdly stringent safety standards.
This is Alstom-Bombardier's excuse but everyone I've talked to at
That is for the track only (rails + ties + ballast + fasteners). Does not include land acquisition or anything else I spelled out in my post. Also double that cost for a double-tracked system.
Rail travel could be cheaper and could actually compete with the airlines. If Amtrak and CSX et al improved the track, including engaging in a program of electrification (which they should do anyway), and started using lighter, lower cost, rolling stock,
I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but I have to comment on this segment. First, regarding "lighter, lower cost rolling stock" there's a huge perception that the Acela service on the NEC corridor sucks because they train is too heavy, and in turn the train is too heavy because of FRA safety regs. Yes, the Acela is heavy, and yes the Acela is heavy because of safety regs (although the FRA regs were revised in the late 1990's to make accommodations for the Acela) but that's not the cause of any performance problems. I worked on the testing of the Acela trainsets in Pueblo and in NJ in 2000 and the trainset can sustain speeds of well over 150 mph for hours at a time. The power cars are plenty powerful - one of the Amtrak engineers on the project told me that if a trainset was powered by one PC instead of the normal two, the end-to-end (Bos-DC) run time would only be increased by 5 minutes). If you look at the cost of an Acela trainset, it falls within the range of other HSR trainsets like the ICE, TGV and Eurostar (albiet at the higher end). The Acela service sucks because it shares tracks with freight trains (in fact most of the NEC is dispatched by CSX and Norfolk Southern who tend to prioritize their trains over Amtrak trains), because the catenary south of NYC dates from the 10th century and can't handle high speeds, because there are a number of grade-crossings along the line north of NYC that the trains have to slow down for, and because the track has a lot of curves that the train has to slow down for.
In any event, the rolling stock is by far a minor cost compared with the total capital cost of an HSR system. Train track costs on the order of $1 million/mile for a single track. That costs does not include land acquisition, electrification, environmental review, the inevitable NIMBY litigation, mitigation costs, etc. And I agree that more electrification is something we need, but it's not just a matter of stringing wire. Bridges have to be raised to allow for the additional clearance for the catenary, if you're electrifying an existing line you have to do the work at night to minimize traffic disruption which means nighttime nose & lighting concerns, you have safety concerns (especially at crossings), you have to acquire more ROW for electrical substations, and so one. Combine all these costs with the perception that "transit needs to pay for itself" and you have a country unwilling to invest the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary for a world class rail system.
That's chronic exposure hearing damage territory: a real problem for professional demonstrators. In the USA their employers would be required by OSHA to provide them with hearing protection.
The "chronic" part comes from OSHA and NIOSH guidelines that seek to limit hearing damage to "acceptable" levels, not eliminate hearing damage. You're correct insofar as OSHA/NIOSH would only have a problem with those levels for repeated exposure, but even limited exposure is going to cause threshold shifts. As far as OSHA/NIOSH are concerned, those problems are acceptable, but if you're someone who values your hearing, you may not.
There are limits in most places, there just isn't much interest in enforcing them (in the sense that the cops don't care all that much, I imagine they would eventually respond to consistent complaints).
This. In fact, I wrote up a case study (PDF) on this issue for a technical conference. Noise just ain't as sexy as busting drug dealers.
Uh, according to TFA, the device produces warning tones at the loudest level of 151db, at one meter distance.. Since they're designed for crowd control at a considerable distance, it's VERY unlikely that you're going to get anywhere near those levels at 50 meters away.
Using a source reference level of 151 dB at 1 meter, the spl at 50 meters will be 117 dB. That's hearing damage territory.
??
No it doesn't it just confirms the fact that when it comes to mastering, you can't treat a recording bound for CD the same as a recording bound for vinyl.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, I would highly doubt that a news periodical like Time would just pull a story out of their arses without any actual basis to them.
You must be new here.
Apple started offering Apple+ (or some such name) without DRM for a 30 cent premium.
A couple of years ago, Apple split the sales model of songs, with normal DRMd songs at $0.99 and non-DRMd songs (encoded at a higher bitrate) for $1.29.
Around a year ago, Apple dispensed with this model and started offering all tracks DRM-free and encoded at the higher bitrate, but in exchange they had to acquiesce to label demands for variable pricing. So some non-DRMd songs are offered at $0.69, some are offered at $0.99 and the rest (usually newer releases) are offered at $1.29. But none are sold with DRM.
Apart from the 'cool' factor, why do people use Apple's locked down crap?
Apple hasn't sold DRMd music for a couple of years now.
Video through iTunes is still DRMd, but so is Amazon video.
The most expensive hotels, are the ones most likely to have for-pay wifi.
I've noticed that as well during my travels.
That $60/night Best Western outside of D.C. that I stayed in? Free wifi. The $350/night InterContinental Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco that I stayed in? Wifi cost $20/day.
Repeating a comment I made on Hacker News - they wanted to help the guy by broadcasting his greatest screwup all over the internet and then saying "here's the guy who did it"? I hope no one ever decides to be that generous with me.
Not very well (I say that as an E71 user).
Your examples refer to property that is not owned by the company - just because its on their property doesn't give them rights over it. The article and this discussion pertains to company owned property.
The implication here is that the employee's information and data aren't 'property' and therefore is fair game to be accessed by the owner of whatever resource it travels over. Again, how far do we take this? Does Comcast have the implicit right to read the emails in my Gmail account because the data goes over their pipes? Does the government have the right to read emails that may pass through a Fed-owned router in some AT&T closet out there?
The data exists on the company's computers, likely passed through their network and servers, and because of these things they are legally accesible by the company
How far do we take this logic? Does the company have a right to search an employee's pocketbook because it's sitting in a company-owned office? Can the company take samples of an employee's lunch for drug testing (or health insurance purposes_ because it's sitting in a company-owned refrigerator, powered by company-paid-for electricity? Can a company search an employee's car because it's sitting on a company-owned parking lot?
Apple has been a 1-click licensee for quite a while now.
**I can take the money from an order and immediately use it to purchase more inventory.**
No, you can't. That's kiting, and it's a major felony in the construction business. You must FIRST fill the order before you can use that money.
You're assuming (wrongly) that I'm not filling the order first.
Until they hold your money hostage.
True, which is why I would love to hear about alternatives.
I have near instant access to my funds and I use a check card. It is called a bank and mine has functioned like that for ages.
The bank that holds my business account takes 24 hours to clear an in-state check and 48-72 hours to clear an out of state check. They also don't offer website cc processing. If you know of a Massachusetts bank that offers that service, I'd love to hear it.
I have, and will continue to, refuse to conduct business with online entities that do not support a non-Paypal option. I have never used Paypal, and I don't anticipate that this will change.
I know people hate PayPal (and for good reason), but there is one reason why I continue to use PayPal for my web sales: the PayPal debit card, which means that I have near instant access my my received funds. It works great for me since I sell physical products, so if my cash flow is low, I can take the money from an order and immediately use it to purchase more inventory. I have Google checkout and Amazon Payments accounts that I can use for backup, but both of those hold on to your money for a set period; once the money is cleared, the only way you can get it is through a bank transfer which takes another couple of days. In good times, that's fine, but in this economic climate it's nice to be able to get my hands on my money.
If someone knows of a good, reliable cc processors that gives relatively fast access to cash (say, 48 hours or less), I'll switch in an instant.
They seriously signed a contract that stated "do work and we'll pay you"? I know a pretty good way of getting the budget under control. Don't do that!
I've been in contacting situations with the Fed Gov where the contractor (us) was set, and the scope and price were agreed upon, but the contract itself was held up for various reasons (sometimes political, sometimes mundane, sometimes related to a family emergency that the contracting officer is dealing with). If it was a situation where a delay would increase costs, we would be told to start work ("Notice to Proceed") with the indication that we would be paid our negotiated rates & expenses, and the contract stuff would be worked out.
It's the conflicting between trying to do things by the book ("don't let them work without an itemized contract!") and responding to concerns about efficiency ("you could have saved $1 million of taxpayer money if you let them start work early? Why didn't you let them start work?").
The real reason why Apple would never allow Flash to work on one of it's mobile devices is simple. The App Store. Most of the available apps could easily be mimicked using Flash, and made easily available. This would not be a good thing for Apple's bottom line.
As noted above, this rationale is easily disproved by Apple's encouragement of offline HTML5 web apps.
Grudge? Microsoft essentially saved Apple by loaning it much needed $$$.
Not exactly a loan. Microsoft bought a bunch of Apple stock. Common wisdom at the time was that Microsoft needed to prop up some kind of paper tiger competitor to avoid further anti-trust restrictions.
It was more than that, it was part of a settlement to resolve the Apple/Microsoft QuickTime lawsuit.
The issue is trying to get fast, cost effective, trains.
Yes, but we have a fast, cost-effective train. It's called the Acela. Like I wrote earlier, it's plenty fast and falls within the cost-range of other HSR trainsets. More cost-effective would certainly be better, sure, but the vehicle is not the limiting factor right now. A lighter Amtrak train idling on a siding waiting for a freight train to pass ain't gonna use appreciably less energy than a heavy Amtrak train idling on a siding waiting for a freight train to pass.
In truth, the whole has to be dealt with, not just a few headline issues.
Very true.
Light trains = more fuel efficiency = improving cost effectiveness over other forms of transport, and the ability to deploy them faster because of a lesser need to engage in wholesale signaling and routing upgrades (light trains have easier emergency braking than heavy trains.)
Yes, but lighter trains, which might save you a couple of million dollars isn't that big a deal with the infrastructure, ROW, maintenance facility, and environmental mitigation costs are tens of billions of dollars. Again, less energy use is better, but trains are already more efficient than trains (and buses under certain conditions). It's the rest of the rail infrastructure that needs work and spending time worrying about the one thing that's not really a problem is just a waste of everyone's time.
There's no logic to property taxes for this kind of thing, what costs are railroads (outside of crossings, which we should be eliminating) imposing on the cities and counties they pass through? Why should a railroad subsidize local schools? Why discourage a railroad from having and using track?
Agreed.
FWIW, I was repeatedly making sure that my words did not cover the north eastern corridor.
Which is why I used weasel words to get around the fact that you never mention the NEC directly ("there's a huge perception" rather than "you wrote..."). Weasel words FTW!
I can't comment on the Acela's weight issues (though I suspect it's still unnecessarily heavy. One thing I find very odd about my experiences of living in both the UK and US is that the US uses much larger engines and rolling stock, yet the amount of space inside the trains is identical. Just switching to the UK loading gauge should cut 20% off the weight of every train without in anyway reducing the quality of the experience. And this, my friend, is probably the only time you'll hear anyone "praising" the UK loading gauge ;-). I believe the Eurostar trains use the UK LG, FWIW.)
Sure they're heavy, but my point was that no one has shown that the weight is the cause of sucky Amtrak service. Having lighter trains isn't going to solve the problem of Amtrak trains being stuck behind freight trains. Furthermore, as heavy as Amtrak trains are, they are far, far, lighter than the 15,000-ft long freight trains they share the track with so it's not like they're adding all that much to the track wear.
Right now, I think two major things have to happen to the line south of DC (and West of NY). First, and I'm sure it'd attract widespread support and government funding if asked for properly), the grade needs to be raised or lowered. That'd make a massive difference, just being able to eliminate virtually every railroad crossing. It'd attract government funding and be popular because nobody in their right mind likes crossings.
This is one of those things that everyone supports (including me) but there are some serious impediments. 1) it's very expensive ($1-2 million per grade crossing), 2) you have to re-route the train and road traffic in the meanwhile during the 1-2 year construction period which causes environmental and scheduling impacts at other locations, and 3) it causes problems for homes and businesses near the crossings that were accessible when everything is at grade but may have driveways and lots cut off by retaining walls (I've seen businesses complain because once the overpass is in place, their signage is no longer visible so street traffic can't see them and their business goes way down).
In the end IMO it's a worthwhile thing to do, but there are real concerns that have to be addressed before we move forward. As for attracting government funding, I guarantee you that every municipality and RR operator in the USA has asked for funding for every grade crossing in the country (all 159,000 of them) and the answer is usually "no."
The other is electrification, which I understand your concerns about, but it's something that the both Amtrak and the railroads ought to be looking at anyway. Yes, nobody likes subsidized railroads, but in reality this is one of the ways to eliminate them, as electrification doesn't just give you highspeed rail (which in turn makes the passenger services profitable) but it also gives you significantly lower fuel costs.
Agreed.
Should the government chip in for electrification? I don't think they need to so much as recognize one other core issue: railroads take traffic off of normal roads, reducing costs, yet railroads have to pay property taxes, and normal roads don't. Property taxes for railroad and railway infrastructure needs to go, it needs to be eliminated. It's silly, the logic seems to be "Well, it's private so...", but in the end it's not recognizing the role railroads play. Eliminating property taxes would go a long way towards making the costs associated with railroads lower, which would help free up funds for upgrades, and ultimately help put passenger services on a profitable footing again.
Note, though, that one of the biggest advantages of lightweight cars is that they can have far greater acceleration for a given amount of power, and that high acceleration is even more valuable when you have a crazily variable track like the NEC, as it reduces the penalty for being forced to periodically reduce speed.
As it is acceleration is limited by things like passenger comfort and wheel slip so I can't imagine this is going to be a real worthwhile benefit.
The question I have is whether the FRA as an organization is simply too hide-bound to ever provide anything more reasonable.
At this point there's no real reason why the regs should be revised. Once we can demonstrate that the regs are what's holding back HSR we can talk, but you can go to an APTA, AREMA, AAR or TRB meeting and see that on the list of the things engineers and planners are complaning about, FRA body-strength regs are way down there.
I hereby grant you an epic fail on your ignorance of Amtrak's NEC and Acela weight issues. First off, Amtrak (aka National Passenger Railroad Corp.) OWNS the Northeast Corridor -- virtually all of the infrastructure from Boston to DC and Philly to Harrisburg. This means Amtrak not only has to maintain its rolling stock, but the fixed infrastructure (track, catenary, signal/comms, and structures) as well.
This is all true
Amtrak dispatches trains across this territory, not CSX.
This is not. Trains originating out of VA are dispatched by NS and CSX has control in CT.
All of the freight traffic is run at night when things die down.
This is patently wrong, as anyone who has every spent time sitting near the tracks during the daytime *anywhere* along the NEC can observe for themselves.
Nonetheless, FRA regulations make it impossible to shut down tracks for long periods of time because FRA regs require Amtrak to grant passage of freights through its territory. If you've ever been out at night with the work crews, you'd find that in an 8 hour shift, they basically get 2, maybe 3 hours of actual work done. Most of the time is spent waiting for a long enough idle window to work without being obliterated by an oncoming train. An Acela 2 feet away from you at a good clip of 90 or 100 MPH (which is slow by passenger standards) is pretty intimidating.
Been there, done that. In fact if your Google-fu is any good, you can find pictures on the net of me doing exactly that. You show me your Amtrak ROW ID and I'll show you mine.
All travel outside the NEC requires movement over another host's rail infrastructure. Rail maintenance standards for freight are much lower than for passenger, so between hostile enemy dispatching and shitty track, Amtrak's passenger service is forced to creep along. Freights have no interest in passenger traffic. They hate it.
This agrees with what I wrote
Freight trains are also much heavier than a passenger train and end up beating the shit out of the track to the point where slow orders become necessary. Ambient temperature also causes slow orders depending on how far above or below the steel track's neutral temperature it is.
This is true
I used to work in Amtrak engineering ops, FYI.
Acela speeds are handicapped by a rail infrastructure that's over a century old in some places. You can see dates like 1912 stamped on some of the track. Some of the signaling equipment is from the early 20th century -- electromechanical with relays and everything. It tends to be flakey. A train's MAS (Max Authorized Speed) is determined by the track class. The track class is a set of tolerances that qualify said track for a particular speed. The higher the class, the faster the train is allowed to go. The Acelas travel the fastest through a relatively short segment that crosses Rhode Island starting north of CT. North of NYC is where the constant-tension cat wire is -- it's weighted on both ends like a ski lift to keep the tension from changing. South of NYC is all fixed cat. It's tied down at both ends and subject to a host of factors which lead the FRA to conclude that the Acela is not allowed to run faster than the normal Metroliners. The Acela's weight isn't the problem. It's the inability of the infrastructure to accommodate a modern trainset. Another example -- the Acela actively tilts inside curves to counteract centrifugal force. Around northern NJ and NYC, the tracks are too close together for an Acela to lean as far as it needs to to run at higher speeds.
This is all true and all jibes with what I wrote.
Amtrak bought the trainsets from Bombardier and then the FRA started imposing its absurdly stringent safety standards.
This is Alstom-Bombardier's excuse but everyone I've talked to at
That is for the track only (rails + ties + ballast + fasteners). Does not include land acquisition or anything else I spelled out in my post. Also double that cost for a double-tracked system.
Rail travel could be cheaper and could actually compete with the airlines. If Amtrak and CSX et al improved the track, including engaging in a program of electrification (which they should do anyway), and started using lighter, lower cost, rolling stock,
I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but I have to comment on this segment. First, regarding "lighter, lower cost rolling stock" there's a huge perception that the Acela service on the NEC corridor sucks because they train is too heavy, and in turn the train is too heavy because of FRA safety regs. Yes, the Acela is heavy, and yes the Acela is heavy because of safety regs (although the FRA regs were revised in the late 1990's to make accommodations for the Acela) but that's not the cause of any performance problems. I worked on the testing of the Acela trainsets in Pueblo and in NJ in 2000 and the trainset can sustain speeds of well over 150 mph for hours at a time. The power cars are plenty powerful - one of the Amtrak engineers on the project told me that if a trainset was powered by one PC instead of the normal two, the end-to-end (Bos-DC) run time would only be increased by 5 minutes). If you look at the cost of an Acela trainset, it falls within the range of other HSR trainsets like the ICE, TGV and Eurostar (albiet at the higher end). The Acela service sucks because it shares tracks with freight trains (in fact most of the NEC is dispatched by CSX and Norfolk Southern who tend to prioritize their trains over Amtrak trains), because the catenary south of NYC dates from the 10th century and can't handle high speeds, because there are a number of grade-crossings along the line north of NYC that the trains have to slow down for, and because the track has a lot of curves that the train has to slow down for.
In any event, the rolling stock is by far a minor cost compared with the total capital cost of an HSR system. Train track costs on the order of $1 million/mile for a single track. That costs does not include land acquisition, electrification, environmental review, the inevitable NIMBY litigation, mitigation costs, etc. And I agree that more electrification is something we need, but it's not just a matter of stringing wire. Bridges have to be raised to allow for the additional clearance for the catenary, if you're electrifying an existing line you have to do the work at night to minimize traffic disruption which means nighttime nose & lighting concerns, you have safety concerns (especially at crossings), you have to acquire more ROW for electrical substations, and so one. Combine all these costs with the perception that "transit needs to pay for itself" and you have a country unwilling to invest the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary for a world class rail system.
That's chronic exposure hearing damage territory: a real problem for professional demonstrators. In the USA their employers would be required by OSHA to provide them with hearing protection.
The "chronic" part comes from OSHA and NIOSH guidelines that seek to limit hearing damage to "acceptable" levels, not eliminate hearing damage. You're correct insofar as OSHA/NIOSH would only have a problem with those levels for repeated exposure, but even limited exposure is going to cause threshold shifts. As far as OSHA/NIOSH are concerned, those problems are acceptable, but if you're someone who values your hearing, you may not.
There are limits in most places, there just isn't much interest in enforcing them (in the sense that the cops don't care all that much, I imagine they would eventually respond to consistent complaints).
This. In fact, I wrote up a case study (PDF) on this issue for a technical conference. Noise just ain't as sexy as busting drug dealers.
Uh, according to TFA, the device produces warning tones at the loudest level of 151db, at one meter distance.. Since they're designed for crowd control at a considerable distance, it's VERY unlikely that you're going to get anywhere near those levels at 50 meters away.
Using a source reference level of 151 dB at 1 meter, the spl at 50 meters will be 117 dB. That's hearing damage territory.
?? No it doesn't it just confirms the fact that when it comes to mastering, you can't treat a recording bound for CD the same as a recording bound for vinyl.