I'm against Obama's plan to give tax rebates to people that do not pay federal income taxes. I'm sorry, but, if you get a rebate for something you didn't pay for, that isn't a rebate, it is welfare and income redistribution.
They don't pay income taxes, but they do pay payroll taxes - they are paying taxes and they are getting a rebate on those taxes. They are not getting free money.
Being racially biased simply means you choose one over the other. It has been proved, and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology, that everyone prefers others of their same race.
This is all well and good, but most of these factors seem like they would equally apply to highways
You're absolutely right, these issues also apply to highways, but you still have to consider them when you building a capital project, especially if they are going to be build in areas where neither exist. A knife wound might be preferable to a hollow-tipped bullet wound, but neither is particularly pleasant.
I wonder if they've ever considered raising the railroads off the ground, to prevent many problems with weeds, wild animals, etc.,
What generally happens (IME) is that culverts are placed at appropriate locations under the tracks to allow animals to cross high-traffic (or high-speed) rail lines safely.
and possible (not sure about this) lowering construction costs. Instead of laying millions of wooden ties in the ground with tracks on top, as they've done for 150 years,
Railroads have become quite efficient at placing wooden (and concrete (and sometimes even steel)) ties under the rails. It isn't like the 1800's where each tie was laid and spiked down by Chinese indentured servants, there are construction vehicles that can lay down ties, swap out ties, and lay down the ballast as needed.
why not have big T-shaped concrete-and-steel pieces which are sunk into the ground every 20-50 feet or so, with rails run along these?
That's a lot more infrastructure that has to be built and maintained compared with standard ballast and tie rail. If there's a problem with the rail, you send out a maintenance vehicle to mix the ballast or replace a tie, which you can do overnight during the off-hours. If you have a problem with the concrete structure, you shut it down and put people on buses for (hopefully only) a few days while you cut around damaged sections, pour new concrete and wait for it to set.
Obviously, the rails would be much thicker to handle the span, perhaps using concrete sections under the rails. These parts could be made in factories, and then installed on-site more cheaply than building everything on-site as is done now.
"Cheaply" remains to be seen - like I said, construction companies are pretty good at building rail quickly. Again, IME, most of the cost and time issues when it comes to construction is resolving land and ROW access issues, which will still be there no matter how you chose to build your rail.
Raising the railroad off the ground 5 feet or so would eliminate most wildlife crossing problems, and any weed problems too, and probably any problems with drainage or minor flooding too.
It's not just weeds, it's trees and brush, so you'll still have problems with elevated structures. Elevating a structure also makes the noise worse since you'll get less absorption from the ground since the source is elevated, and the vibrating structure will also re-radiate sound.
You are missing the point. It's not that anyone isn't sure that as far as energy use and carbon emissions goes the train will be better, the point of the environmental impact study is to determine if their are any especially environmentally sensitive areas that should be routed around.
Exactly. Trains in the long run may be more environmentally sensitive than other transit modes, but rail lines to have real environmental effects that need to be considered: noise & vibration, drainage, impervious surfaces (at the stations), wildlife disruption, fire danger from sparks off the rail or electrical components, defoliants used to kill weeds along the ROW, construction disruptions, exhaust soot (for diesel-powered locos), lubricant leakage from the vehicles, grade crossings, toxic soils that may be unearthed for ROW cuts and/or tunnels, and etc.
All of these things can be overcome, but it has to be done right, otherwise you'll wind up getting sued and have to rip up your project and rebuild it again to meet the appropriate standards.
flink lays out one reason why central system doesn't make a lot of sense on a multimodal transit system (don't forget they also have boats).
In the case of rail transit, a centralized fare system will also require a communications system with 100% uptime between the stations and the central system. I've had experience with the station-to-dispatch communications system and it's anything but reliable because the infrastructure is so old. The MBTA is in the process of upgrading the system but it's probably going to be years before 200+ stations are all upgraded.
In the meantime, if the comm goes down between the station and the centralized fare system, you either close the station until communications are restored (bad) or you let people ride for free until communications are restored (bad).
Stored values on the card is a decent compromise, but the security on the card should have been tighter.
Why should the value available on a smart card actually be something that can be changed by the person holding the card. Shouldn't the card just have an ID, and that ID is tied to an account, which is tied to a person. Maybe put the amount on the card, so the bus doesn't have to call home every time someone steps on a bus, but at least keep all transactions in a database so they can check for fraud after the fact.
For the record, I'm writing this response wearing two hats: one as a proud MIT alum and another as a proud occasional MBTA contractor.
I worked on this project a couple of years ago when the T started to upgrade the PA systems at the transit stations. One thing the project showed me was just who old and decrepit the MBTA communications infrastructure really is -some of the equipment in the utility rooms is older than I am (by several decades) and made by companies that went out of business in the 1970's!
The stations are, in theory, linked up with the MBTA dispatch building on High Street, but in reality the communications between the station and High Street are pretty unreliable. Part of the upgrade involved installing redundant fiber links between the stations and HQ but last I heard, a lot of the funding for the project got moved into other areas (see below) so I'm not sure if/how the fiber links were actually implemented. I can tell you that the advanced PA systems that were installed in my stations are just a pale shadow of what was envisioned at the project start.
What I'm getting at is that I can see why the T might want to have the currency values embedded on the cards rather than in a central database - if the links between the station and the central database go down, the T either has to shut down the station (bad) or let people ride for free until the connection comes back up (also bad). As mentioned in other posts, there is also the fact that buses aren't hard-linked to the network.
I'm sure the T's contractor could have used stronger encryption but I'm reasonably sure that the MBTA bought the absolute cheapest system they could for one reason - the MBTA is flat out broke. Pretty much every cent that the T receives in Fed/State subsidies and fare recovery goes into making sure that the buses, trains and boats run. Everything else takes a back seat to that. I'm pretty sure that the communications upgrade was gutted so the money could be shifted to maintenance.
No respectable engineering professor grades on a curve.
Every engineering professor I had (yes, I went to a respectable university) graded on a curve. Trust me, if they didn't, MIT's graduation rate would be around 10%.
And engineering is not just about knowing algorithms and properties, it's about making assumptions and choosing from different valid approaches. There's not always a "right" answer and my professors were smart enough to recognize that.
Ask any two engineers for a solution to a complex problem and you'll get five different solutions - hence the use of safety factors in practice.
engineers take many forms, not all of which are necessarily directly responsible for hundreds of lives (Acoustic engineering for example)
You'd be surprised what kind of dangers engineers from different disciplines have to face. Remember the ICE high-speed rail crash from a few years back? That crash happened because a resilient wheel came apart, which derailed the train. Resilient wheels are used as a noise control measure for train wheel/rail noise - thet are designed and spec'd by acoustical engineers.
Re:Why bother with physics when you can just cheat
on
The Physics of Football
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· Score: 2, Informative
The Patriots had broken a rule that had recently been explicitly laid out by the league. (See article).
Pats fan here. Yes, the Patriots broke the rules and were punished for it, but let's put this into perspective:
It's not against NFL rules to steal signs
It's not against NFL rules to steal signs using video cameras
It is against NFL rules for clubs to use video-recording equipment outside certain designated areas during games.
The Pats got in trouble for #3, not #1 & 2.
Of course #3 apparently contradicts league guidance on shooting from end zone positions ("but there are no restrictions on shooting from both upper end zone positions as long as the opportunity is provided to both teams") which apparently means there is some room for interpretation.
And c'mon... did they REALLY need to cheat against the Jets? The 4-12 Jets? You would think that wiser head couches would save their cheating for games against stronger teams.
The incident happened in the first half of the first game of the '07 season. In the prior year, the Jets were a playoff team that beat the Patriots in November '06 (which I remember because I was there). There was every reason to expect that the Jets would have been a strong contender this past season.
...if the economy is an issue, Mitt deserves some credit for his experience.
What did he do for the Massachusetts economy? (keep in mind I'm a Massachusetts residents).
And of course, Mitt is largely credited with saving Boston, and fixing the enormous big dig boondoogle.
By doing what exactly? Most of the Big Dig problems were solved by the Feds and new MTA appointees that were in place before Mitt became governor. How did Mitt "save" Boston (and what did it need saving from?)
Of course Massachusetts doesn't love him, since he's a republican and anti-union, but I don't think that he did the state harm.
Mitt's anti-union stance led directly to hundreds (I'm not exaggerating, I mean *hundreds*) of well-qualified and enthusiastic teachers fleeing the Springfield MA school system because his state-run control board (made up of Republicans) wanted to break the union and refused to give those teachers 3 years worth of raises they were entitled to before the state froze their wages. Our school system, in a city with a median income and test scores well below the rest of the state, is still trying to recover from that. Call me silly, but I would consider that to be "harm."
I think the state, and Boston in particular, greatly benefited from his leadership... relative to predecessors of course.
His predecessors at least paid some lip service to people who loved outside of Boston. His successor visited Western Massachusetts more times in his first 3 months in office than Mitt did in four years. Yeah, but clearly we're just bitter because Mitt is a Republican (ignoring the fact that our last four governors have been *gasp* Republicans).
Ha! Romney is legitimately successful in business. Lots of folks inhereit and cheat their way into success, but Romney has proven some skill in business and economics. I should note that I don't support the guy, but he's certainly the most accomplished business person of both major parties tickets.
Maybe, but his economic success in business certainly didn't translate to success in running Massachusetts - his tenure here consisted of making Massachusetts the butt of his jokes, and doing everything he could to break unions in preparing for his presidential run. The Boston area is doing okay, because, well it's the Bostonarea, but the rest of the state is trying to dig ourselves out of the hole he dug for us.
It's been a long time since I've been on a cross-country or international flight that didn't have power outlets in the coach seats. Ditto for Amtrak train rides.
They're making TV's with embedded HDs? I hadn't heard about this. Is this like a built-in DVR?
First I've heard of this as well. I've been looking for a way to DVR without having to deal with a living room PC or a subscription service like TIVO - something like the SanDisk V-Mate but with an integrated tuner - and such a beast doesn't seem to exist. A TV with an embedded HD looks like an interesting compromise, especially if the video is encoded in a relatively open format like MPEG2 or MPG4 (but I'm not counting on it).
an entertaining prank to be sure, and a surprise that no one's tried it before on this scale. There's no excuse for there not to be black electrical tape over every IR receiver on that set of displays.
[...]
I for one would like to see this happen several more times until the manufactures get their heads out of the sand. This is unfortunately what it takes to motivate them. They won't lift a finger until it starts to cost them.
This type of logic is exactly the reason why corporations will always try to force some form of DRM down our throats. Trusting people won't work when people can't be trusted.
Does anyone know if Apple would have to take out a license to play WMA or DRM protected WMA files with the iPod?
Yes, but it's not that simple. Remember, in addition to iPod, Apple also has another product line - Macs. If Apple's DAP's are going to play protected-WMA files and the iTMS is going to sell protected-WMA files, than Apple's own computer line will need to play protected-WMA files.
Only there's one problem: Microsoft doesn't license WMA DRM for any PC platform except Windows. So yes, even if Steve Jobs showed up in Redmond with a briefcase full of 50's and 100's, he won't get WMA-DRM files to play on the Mac.
So why should Apple be forced to support a DRM'd music format on it's players that isn't supported on it's computing platform?
Enough with the 24/96 wet dreams. Yes, 24/96 does offer real advantages for mixing houses in terms of being able to normalize levels generated by different sources and reducing the complexity of filters. But 16/44.4 is perfectly fine for home audio playback.
What does >16 bits get you? More dynamic range. BFD. 16 bits gets you (realistically) 90+ dB of dynamic range. Unless your listening room has a background noise level of 20 dB or less (trust me, it doesn't), you're not even enjoying the true benefit of the 16-bits you have now.
What does > 44.1kHz sampling give you? Wider frequency response. BFD. Let's assume that most people have good hearing beyond 20 kHz (very few do). Let's assume that most music/movie content has lots of information above 20 kHz (some do, most don't). Let's assume that your speakers can reproduce signals above 20 kHz (some can, most can't). There is still the issue of how you get that > 20kHz info on your recording on the first place. You see, most microphones don't record signals out that high, and of those that do, they only do so over a very narrow angle. When we have tech that can produce mics that are omni-directional above 20 kHz for reasonable costs then maybe you'll have an argument.
Let's deal with the loudness wars before we start worrying about 24/96.
...all of which they knew after retreiving the first one.
Let's look at the timelineagain - I-93N was closed for 60 minutes when they found the first one. They later found a second one at the corner of Stuart Street and Charles St, but no street closures are mentioned. Presumably they thought it wasn't an issue. Ten minutes later, a pipe bomb with a threatening note is found two blocks away at the New England Medical Center. Ten minutes after that, Mooninites are found under two bridges, which are closed. We now know that events were a bunch of unfortunate coincidences, but I can't see how the response was unreasonable because the authorities didn't immediately jump to that conclusion. BTW, it appears those bridges (along with Storrow Drive) were closed for about 30 minutes. That's about the same traffic disruption that would happen for a traffic accident.
Oh, did you miss the link someone else posted of a cop on a ladder taking one down? No 'special precautions', no "booms" (pun intended), no lifts or lane closures. Just a cop on a ladder.
So, when and where was that photo taken? Was is the first one under I-93? Or was is one of the later ones when the police knew what is was? Not to mention that even using "just" a ladder requires adequate clearance for safety.
I've worked plenty of jobs where I'm 'supposed' to follow certain safety rules. However, if I actually bothered to follow all of them, my productivity would slow to a crawl and I'd be fired. A trivial example from my early years in retail would be ladder safety
Lugging computer peripherals off a shelf is not in the same ballpark as working a few feet away from a roadway carrying 3,800 cars per hour or an electrified railroad ROW. I've done all three and had 0 near-death experiences working in retail compared with a half-dozen or so working on/near active transportation infrastructure. When you work around roadways and transit lines, you follow the rules or workers (and innocent bystanders) get maimed or killed.
That's one hour and 21 minutes. Not exactly quick...
Disregard my earlier response to you on this point, I thought you were referring to the timeline of the lane closure.
Regarding your point - that depends on the exact time of events. If the bomb squad showed up on site at 9:00am and 10:21am is the time where the guy on site declares "it's not a bomb!", then the timing does appear to be a little slow, but (IMO) not unreasonably so.
On the other hand, if 9:00am is the time it was called in, and 10:21am is the time where the BPD/Staties issues the press release stating "it's not a bomb!" that sound about right when you consider the time needed to mobilize to the site, close traffic, get suited up, carefully get up close to it, carefully move it, etc.
From personal experience, I can tell you that it takes 20-30 minutes just to close off a lane on a heavily trafficked road - and this is Boston's I-93 during rush hour that we're talking about.
That's one hour and 21 minutes. Not exactly quick...
From the BPD timeline: "At 9:00 a.m. The Boston Police Bomb squad is requested by the MBTA to Sullivan Square and examines the item. As a precaution I-93 is closed [...]"
From Wikipedia: "Northbound I-93 reopened to traffic at about 10:05 a.m."
Like I said, it was I-93N was closed for about 60 minutes. That is pretty quick for a highway closure.
But after police determined that it was not a real bomb, couldn't they just have waited until traffic slowed down for the next night? So there would have been exactly one road closure... for the first device. After that, they should have known what these kind of devices really were.
To determine whether the first device was a bomb, they needed to get up close to it, necessitating the I-93N closure. The Longfellow and BU bridges were closed after the NMC pipe bomb was found. Just because the first device wasn't a bomb, doesn't mean that the subquent devices weren't bombs. Then again, if Turner had put some identifying info on the lights, the authorities could have gotten some clarification.
So, this was 4 hours later than the aqua teen scare. Are Boston Police gifted with premonition, or how else could a 1pm incident cause their poor reaction to a 9am incident? Oh, and if we read on:
WTF? How is responding to an unknown object on public infrastructure using caution a poor reaction?
This is a fast reaction. Unlike the 81 minutes earlier in the morning...
Again, from the timeline: "At 12:54 p.m. the Boston Police Bomb squad receives a call for a suspicious device at the intersection of Stuart and Charles Street. "
"Six minutes later at 1:02 p.m. Boston Police received a call from New England Medical Center Security that they had uncovered a pipe bomb in their building in a desk drawer."
New England Medical Center is about two blocks away from the Stuart/Charles Street intersection - the bomb squad was already in the area.
Therefore, a stick with a hook on the end could be used to pull the devices down, after, perhaps closing the traffic lane under it for 30 seconds
That assumes that you know what it is, and you know how it's attached. Even if you proceed with the assumption that it's not a bomb, there are other issues that a worker needs to be aware of - for example, is it powered using AC power ( a shock hazzard)? How is it attached to the structure? Is there any identifying information on it that authorizes its placement? Are there any "surprises" like bottles of urine or bags of feces behind it? (you may think that last one was contrived, but I've seen it first hand, and it's something very real that public workers deal with on highways and transit properties).
These are issues that are best addressed by getting a close look. On the other hand, if Mr. Berdovsky had told the authorities on site what he knew instead of staying quiet and video taping it, maybe things could have gone more efficiently.
No need to "close the street" for the day.
I don't know where you're getting this '"close the street" for the day' stuff - consult the timeline and the Wikipedia summary. The northbound lanes of I-93 were closed for about an hour. If you've ever been involved in traffic closures (I have lots of times as part of my work), that's pretty damn quick.
Even if a 'cherry picker' truck was needed to 'safely' get the worker up the 10 feet or so, that also only requires the closing on a single lane, if that.
I hope you're not basing "closing a single lane" on the footprint of the man-lift - it's not just the footprint, you also need clearance for the radius of the boom (for a bucket truck or cherry picker) or you need adequate clearance for scissor lifts in case they fall over. Of course don't forget adequate clearances for any power or signal lines that might be in the area as part of the Orange line electrification system.
I know it's easy to sit behind your keyboard and second guess these things but I've actually had to work in situations like that. Even in the most benign of circumstances, there are lots of dangers.
Funny. No one had to close the streets to PLACE the devices...
Because he wasn't doing it safely. You want to hang off the side of a highway and get yourself or someone else killed hanging an electric sign for an advertiser, go ahead. But if the city or state agency sends an employee to do that without the proper
safety precautions and that worker (or an innocent bystander) gets killed, that agency will be
heldaccountable.
Because a bomb squad, who should have handled the dismantling of these devices, should have known in 5 minutes it wasn't a fucking bomb.
If you read the timeline of that day you'll see that the police did determine pretty quickly that is wasn't a bomb. The main issue during the day was that the streets had to be be closed so investigators could safely access the devices - even if the authorities didn't think it was a bomb, the street would still have to be closed to workers could safely remove them. There was also the issue that a real pipe bomb turned up at New England Medical Center during that ordeal.
As I wrote before, the biggest mistake those guys made was hanging the devices off of public property - even before 9/11, doing something like that is just guaranteed to get the bomb squad out there (and contrary to popular opinion, the device that was first called in to the police had only been there for less than 24 hours). Some of the other devices on storefronts though had been there longer.
IMHO the police reaction in this one instance was reasonable - up to the arrest & prosecution part. There were no mass evacuations, no arrests of Middle-eastern people for being Middle-Eastern. They closed the roads, investigated the devices, and reopened the roads. The arrests and press releases after that though were clearly CYA.
On the other hand, the arrest of Star Simpson was a fucking travesty, and my alma mater's response to the incident ("reckless"? WTF? Is wearing a blinking tie to the airport also reckless?) has ended my participation in their alumni fundraising activities.
I'm a Massachusetts residence who's been observing the whole gambling thing over the past six months. I don't know exactly why Deval wants to criminalize online gambling, but I can give you some background into the whole debate.
First of all, why does the state want to legalize gambling in the first place? You guessed it: money. The state is facing severe budget shortfalls in pretty much all areas, but especially the transportation infrastructure (and for you non-Mass Romney supporters out there: remember this when Romney brags about his economic accomplishments. He didn't to shit except turn Massachusetts into the butt of his jokes). Some of the state's biggest cities (Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, etc) have violent crime problems and these cities are looking for money to fund the police and outreach programs.
The state is trying very hard to develop new revenue streams by encouraging investment in biotech and green energy. But the problem with trying to bring those industries into Massachusetts is that land/rents in the eastern part of the state (with access to MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc) is very expensive. Costs in the western part of the state is significantly cheaper, but you don't have the highly-educated workforce like you do in the eastern part of the space. Also, these initiatives are long-term fixes, and we need money now.
So some Mass residents have been gazing longingly at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut (especially since lots of Mass residents spend money there) and have decided "we want some of that!" Hence the push to legalize gambling.
Of course the push toward casino gambling has created opposition with their concerns. Most of the concerns center around the potential for increased crime - some of the proposed locations (including Springfield) are dealing with crime problems and are worried that the casinos may create more crime, but since the state will be taking most of the money, the city/town will have to deal with the crime levels on their own. This isn't an unreasonable concern - western Massachusetts used to have homeless and public assistance centers all over the region, but they were consolidated by Romney into Springfield. Since western Mass doesn't have an extensive public transporation infrastructure, people on public assistance (and in too many cases, their deadbeat/criminal children/SO/spouses, etc) came to live in Springfield without a corresponding increase in the LEO/outreach budget which help cause our crime levels to spike.
Patrick (or his advisers/aides) spent some time meeting with people on both sides of the issues and researching the expected benefits and disadvantages to weigh the tradeoffs. Patrick finally recommended legalizing gambling at three casinos (eastern Mass, western Mass, and the Cape) after deciding that those three casinos could be prove beneficial, and create manageable problems.
That's where we are. So why the harsh penalties for online gambling? Maybe he is corrupt, but having seen how he kept his composure in response to a brutal campaign waged by his gubernatorial opponent last year makes me doubt that. My guess would be that it's a gift to casino opponents who are worried that unchecked gambling in the state might lead to increased problems in already high crime areas.
I can't say I'm all that happy that these penalties are in the bill, but given the various problems the state is
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Well, right now I'm thinking about taxation.
I'm against Obama's plan to give tax rebates to people that do not pay federal income taxes. I'm sorry, but, if you get a rebate for something you didn't pay for, that isn't a rebate, it is welfare and income redistribution.
They don't pay income taxes, but they do pay payroll taxes - they are paying taxes and they are getting a rebate on those taxes. They are not getting free money.
I don't like the OSX dock, and its lumping together of "start a new task" and "return to a previous task context"...
What's the difference? In both cases, you're trying to accomplish a task, right?
Being racially biased simply means you choose one over the other. It has been proved, and is logically obvious based upon the facts of evolutionary biology, that everyone prefers others of their same race.
Not necessarily.
This is all well and good, but most of these factors seem like they would equally apply to highways
You're absolutely right, these issues also apply to highways, but you still have to consider them when you building a capital project, especially if they are going to be build in areas where neither exist. A knife wound might be preferable to a hollow-tipped bullet wound, but neither is particularly pleasant.
I wonder if they've ever considered raising the railroads off the ground, to prevent many problems with weeds, wild animals, etc.,
What generally happens (IME) is that culverts are placed at appropriate locations under the tracks to allow animals to cross high-traffic (or high-speed) rail lines safely.
and possible (not sure about this) lowering construction costs. Instead of laying millions of wooden ties in the ground with tracks on top, as they've done for 150 years,
Railroads have become quite efficient at placing wooden (and concrete (and sometimes even steel)) ties under the rails. It isn't like the 1800's where each tie was laid and spiked down by Chinese indentured servants, there are construction vehicles that can lay down ties, swap out ties, and lay down the ballast as needed.
why not have big T-shaped concrete-and-steel pieces which are sunk into the ground every 20-50 feet or so, with rails run along these?
That's a lot more infrastructure that has to be built and maintained compared with standard ballast and tie rail. If there's a problem with the rail, you send out a maintenance vehicle to mix the ballast or replace a tie, which you can do overnight during the off-hours. If you have a problem with the concrete structure, you shut it down and put people on buses for (hopefully only) a few days while you cut around damaged sections, pour new concrete and wait for it to set.
Obviously, the rails would be much thicker to handle the span, perhaps using concrete sections under the rails. These parts could be made in factories, and then installed on-site more cheaply than building everything on-site as is done now.
"Cheaply" remains to be seen - like I said, construction companies are pretty good at building rail quickly. Again, IME, most of the cost and time issues when it comes to construction is resolving land and ROW access issues, which will still be there no matter how you chose to build your rail.
Raising the railroad off the ground 5 feet or so would eliminate most wildlife crossing problems, and any weed problems too, and probably any problems with drainage or minor flooding too.
It's not just weeds, it's trees and brush, so you'll still have problems with elevated structures. Elevating a structure also makes the noise worse since you'll get less absorption from the ground since the source is elevated, and the vibrating structure will also re-radiate sound.
You are missing the point. It's not that anyone isn't sure that as far as energy use and carbon emissions goes the train will be better, the point of the environmental impact study is to determine if their are any especially environmentally sensitive areas that should be routed around.
Exactly. Trains in the long run may be more environmentally sensitive than other transit modes, but rail lines to have real environmental effects that need to be considered: noise & vibration, drainage, impervious surfaces (at the stations), wildlife disruption, fire danger from sparks off the rail or electrical components, defoliants used to kill weeds along the ROW, construction disruptions, exhaust soot (for diesel-powered locos), lubricant leakage from the vehicles, grade crossings, toxic soils that may be unearthed for ROW cuts and/or tunnels, and etc.
All of these things can be overcome, but it has to be done right, otherwise you'll wind up getting sued and have to rip up your project and rebuild it again to meet the appropriate standards.
The security should lie with the central system.
flink lays out one reason why central system doesn't make a lot of sense on a multimodal transit system (don't forget they also have boats).
In the case of rail transit, a centralized fare system will also require a communications system with 100% uptime between the stations and the central system. I've had experience with the station-to-dispatch communications system and it's anything but reliable because the infrastructure is so old. The MBTA is in the process of upgrading the system but it's probably going to be years before 200+ stations are all upgraded.
In the meantime, if the comm goes down between the station and the centralized fare system, you either close the station until communications are restored (bad) or you let people ride for free until communications are restored (bad).
Stored values on the card is a decent compromise, but the security on the card should have been tighter.
The boxed OS X is an upgrade from the OS X that comes with a Mac.
Is an MS Windows or Office Upgrade illegally tied to the previous full version?
Why should the value available on a smart card actually be something that can be changed by the person holding the card. Shouldn't the card just have an ID, and that ID is tied to an account, which is tied to a person. Maybe put the amount on the card, so the bus doesn't have to call home every time someone steps on a bus, but at least keep all transactions in a database so they can check for fraud after the fact.
For the record, I'm writing this response wearing two hats: one as a proud MIT alum and another as a proud occasional MBTA contractor.
I worked on this project a couple of years ago when the T started to upgrade the PA systems at the transit stations. One thing the project showed me was just who old and decrepit the MBTA communications infrastructure really is -some of the equipment in the utility rooms is older than I am (by several decades) and made by companies that went out of business in the 1970's!
The stations are, in theory, linked up with the MBTA dispatch building on High Street, but in reality the communications between the station and High Street are pretty unreliable. Part of the upgrade involved installing redundant fiber links between the stations and HQ but last I heard, a lot of the funding for the project got moved into other areas (see below) so I'm not sure if/how the fiber links were actually implemented. I can tell you that the advanced PA systems that were installed in my stations are just a pale shadow of what was envisioned at the project start.
What I'm getting at is that I can see why the T might want to have the currency values embedded on the cards rather than in a central database - if the links between the station and the central database go down, the T either has to shut down the station (bad) or let people ride for free until the connection comes back up (also bad). As mentioned in other posts, there is also the fact that buses aren't hard-linked to the network.
I'm sure the T's contractor could have used stronger encryption but I'm reasonably sure that the MBTA bought the absolute cheapest system they could for one reason - the MBTA is flat out broke. Pretty much every cent that the T receives in Fed/State subsidies and fare recovery goes into making sure that the buses, trains and boats run. Everything else takes a back seat to that. I'm pretty sure that the communications upgrade was gutted so the money could be shifted to maintenance.
Every engineering professor I had (yes, I went to a respectable university) graded on a curve. Trust me, if they didn't, MIT's graduation rate would be around 10%.
And engineering is not just about knowing algorithms and properties, it's about making assumptions and choosing from different valid approaches. There's not always a "right" answer and my professors were smart enough to recognize that.
Ask any two engineers for a solution to a complex problem and you'll get five different solutions - hence the use of safety factors in practice.
You'd be surprised what kind of dangers engineers from different disciplines have to face. Remember the ICE high-speed rail crash from a few years back? That crash happened because a resilient wheel came apart, which derailed the train. Resilient wheels are used as a noise control measure for train wheel/rail noise - thet are designed and spec'd by acoustical engineers.
The Patriots had broken a rule that had recently been explicitly laid out by the league. (See article).
Pats fan here. Yes, the Patriots broke the rules and were punished for it, but let's put this into perspective:
The Pats got in trouble for #3, not #1 & 2.
Of course #3 apparently contradicts league guidance on shooting from end zone positions ("but there are no restrictions on shooting from both upper end zone positions as long as the opportunity is provided to both teams") which apparently means there is some room for interpretation.
And c'mon... did they REALLY need to cheat against the Jets? The 4-12 Jets? You would think that wiser head couches would save their cheating for games against stronger teams.The incident happened in the first half of the first game of the '07 season. In the prior year, the Jets were a playoff team that beat the Patriots in November '06 (which I remember because I was there). There was every reason to expect that the Jets would have been a strong contender this past season.
...if the economy is an issue, Mitt deserves some credit for his experience.What did he do for the Massachusetts economy? (keep in mind I'm a Massachusetts residents).
And of course, Mitt is largely credited with saving Boston, and fixing the enormous big dig boondoogle.By doing what exactly? Most of the Big Dig problems were solved by the Feds and new MTA appointees that were in place before Mitt became governor. How did Mitt "save" Boston (and what did it need saving from?)
Of course Massachusetts doesn't love him, since he's a republican and anti-union, but I don't think that he did the state harm.Mitt's anti-union stance led directly to hundreds (I'm not exaggerating, I mean *hundreds*) of well-qualified and enthusiastic teachers fleeing the Springfield MA school system because his state-run control board (made up of Republicans) wanted to break the union and refused to give those teachers 3 years worth of raises they were entitled to before the state froze their wages. Our school system, in a city with a median income and test scores well below the rest of the state, is still trying to recover from that. Call me silly, but I would consider that to be "harm."
I think the state, and Boston in particular, greatly benefited from his leadership... relative to predecessors of course.His predecessors at least paid some lip service to people who loved outside of Boston. His successor visited Western Massachusetts more times in his first 3 months in office than Mitt did in four years. Yeah, but clearly we're just bitter because Mitt is a Republican (ignoring the fact that our last four governors have been *gasp* Republicans).
Maybe, but his economic success in business certainly didn't translate to success in running Massachusetts - his tenure here consisted of making Massachusetts the butt of his jokes, and doing everything he could to break unions in preparing for his presidential run. The Boston area is doing okay, because, well it's the Boston area, but the rest of the state is trying to dig ourselves out of the hole he dug for us.
It's been a long time since I've been on a cross-country or international flight that didn't have power outlets in the coach seats. Ditto for Amtrak train rides.
First I've heard of this as well. I've been looking for a way to DVR without having to deal with a living room PC or a subscription service like TIVO - something like the SanDisk V-Mate but with an integrated tuner - and such a beast doesn't seem to exist. A TV with an embedded HD looks like an interesting compromise, especially if the video is encoded in a relatively open format like MPEG2 or MPG4 (but I'm not counting on it).
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I for one would like to see this happen several more times until the manufactures get their heads out of the sand. This is unfortunately what it takes to motivate them. They won't lift a finger until it starts to cost them.
This type of logic is exactly the reason why corporations will always try to force some form of DRM down our throats. Trusting people won't work when people can't be trusted.
Yes, but it's not that simple. Remember, in addition to iPod, Apple also has another product line - Macs. If Apple's DAP's are going to play protected-WMA files and the iTMS is going to sell protected-WMA files, than Apple's own computer line will need to play protected-WMA files.
Only there's one problem: Microsoft doesn't license WMA DRM for any PC platform except Windows. So yes, even if Steve Jobs showed up in Redmond with a briefcase full of 50's and 100's, he won't get WMA-DRM files to play on the Mac.
So why should Apple be forced to support a DRM'd music format on it's players that isn't supported on it's computing platform?
Enough with the 24/96 wet dreams. Yes, 24/96 does offer real advantages for mixing houses in terms of being able to normalize levels generated by different sources and reducing the complexity of filters. But 16/44.4 is perfectly fine for home audio playback.
What does >16 bits get you? More dynamic range. BFD. 16 bits gets you (realistically) 90+ dB of dynamic range. Unless your listening room has a background noise level of 20 dB or less (trust me, it doesn't), you're not even enjoying the true benefit of the 16-bits you have now.
What does > 44.1kHz sampling give you? Wider frequency response. BFD. Let's assume that most people have good hearing beyond 20 kHz (very few do). Let's assume that most music/movie content has lots of information above 20 kHz (some do, most don't). Let's assume that your speakers can reproduce signals above 20 kHz (some can, most can't). There is still the issue of how you get that > 20kHz info on your recording on the first place. You see, most microphones don't record signals out that high, and of those that do, they only do so over a very narrow angle. When we have tech that can produce mics that are omni-directional above 20 kHz for reasonable costs then maybe you'll have an argument.
Let's deal with the loudness wars before we start worrying about 24/96.
...all of which they knew after retreiving the first one.Let's look at the timeline again - I-93N was closed for 60 minutes when they found the first one. They later found a second one at the corner of Stuart Street and Charles St, but no street closures are mentioned. Presumably they thought it wasn't an issue. Ten minutes later, a pipe bomb with a threatening note is found two blocks away at the New England Medical Center. Ten minutes after that, Mooninites are found under two bridges, which are closed. We now know that events were a bunch of unfortunate coincidences, but I can't see how the response was unreasonable because the authorities didn't immediately jump to that conclusion. BTW, it appears those bridges (along with Storrow Drive) were closed for about 30 minutes. That's about the same traffic disruption that would happen for a traffic accident.
Oh, did you miss the link someone else posted of a cop on a ladder taking one down? No 'special precautions', no "booms" (pun intended), no lifts or lane closures. Just a cop on a ladder.So, when and where was that photo taken? Was is the first one under I-93? Or was is one of the later ones when the police knew what is was? Not to mention that even using "just" a ladder requires adequate clearance for safety.
I've worked plenty of jobs where I'm 'supposed' to follow certain safety rules. However, if I actually bothered to follow all of them, my productivity would slow to a crawl and I'd be fired. A trivial example from my early years in retail would be ladder safetyLugging computer peripherals off a shelf is not in the same ballpark as working a few feet away from a roadway carrying 3,800 cars per hour or an electrified railroad ROW. I've done all three and had 0 near-death experiences working in retail compared with a half-dozen or so working on/near active transportation infrastructure. When you work around roadways and transit lines, you follow the rules or workers (and innocent bystanders) get maimed or killed.
Disregard my earlier response to you on this point, I thought you were referring to the timeline of the lane closure.
Regarding your point - that depends on the exact time of events. If the bomb squad showed up on site at 9:00am and 10:21am is the time where the guy on site declares "it's not a bomb!", then the timing does appear to be a little slow, but (IMO) not unreasonably so.
On the other hand, if 9:00am is the time it was called in, and 10:21am is the time where the BPD/Staties issues the press release stating "it's not a bomb!" that sound about right when you consider the time needed to mobilize to the site, close traffic, get suited up, carefully get up close to it, carefully move it, etc.
From personal experience, I can tell you that it takes 20-30 minutes just to close off a lane on a heavily trafficked road - and this is Boston's I-93 during rush hour that we're talking about.
From the BPD timeline: "At 9:00 a.m. The Boston Police Bomb squad is requested by the MBTA to Sullivan Square and examines the item. As a precaution I-93 is closed [...]"
From Wikipedia: "Northbound I-93 reopened to traffic at about 10:05 a.m."
Like I said, it was I-93N was closed for about 60 minutes. That is pretty quick for a highway closure.
So how did the perps safely place them?Asked and answered.
But after police determined that it was not a real bomb, couldn't they just have waited until traffic slowed down for the next night? So there would have been exactly one road closure... for the first device. After that, they should have known what these kind of devices really were.To determine whether the first device was a bomb, they needed to get up close to it, necessitating the I-93N closure. The Longfellow and BU bridges were closed after the NMC pipe bomb was found. Just because the first device wasn't a bomb, doesn't mean that the subquent devices weren't bombs. Then again, if Turner had put some identifying info on the lights, the authorities could have gotten some clarification.
So, this was 4 hours later than the aqua teen scare. Are Boston Police gifted with premonition, or how else could a 1pm incident cause their poor reaction to a 9am incident? Oh, and if we read on:WTF? How is responding to an unknown object on public infrastructure using caution a poor reaction?
This is a fast reaction. Unlike the 81 minutes earlier in the morning...Again, from the timeline: "At 12:54 p.m. the Boston Police Bomb squad receives a call for a suspicious device at the intersection of Stuart and Charles Street. "
"Six minutes later at 1:02 p.m. Boston Police received a call from New England Medical Center Security that they had uncovered a pipe bomb in their building in a desk drawer."
New England Medical Center is about two blocks away from the Stuart/Charles Street intersection - the bomb squad was already in the area.
That assumes that you know what it is, and you know how it's attached. Even if you proceed with the assumption that it's not a bomb, there are other issues that a worker needs to be aware of - for example, is it powered using AC power ( a shock hazzard)? How is it attached to the structure? Is there any identifying information on it that authorizes its placement? Are there any "surprises" like bottles of urine or bags of feces behind it? (you may think that last one was contrived, but I've seen it first hand, and it's something very real that public workers deal with on highways and transit properties).
These are issues that are best addressed by getting a close look. On the other hand, if Mr. Berdovsky had told the authorities on site what he knew instead of staying quiet and video taping it, maybe things could have gone more efficiently.
No need to "close the street" for the day.I don't know where you're getting this '"close the street" for the day' stuff - consult the timeline and the Wikipedia summary. The northbound lanes of I-93 were closed for about an hour. If you've ever been involved in traffic closures (I have lots of times as part of my work), that's pretty damn quick.
Even if a 'cherry picker' truck was needed to 'safely' get the worker up the 10 feet or so, that also only requires the closing on a single lane, if that.I hope you're not basing "closing a single lane" on the footprint of the man-lift - it's not just the footprint, you also need clearance for the radius of the boom (for a bucket truck or cherry picker) or you need adequate clearance for scissor lifts in case they fall over. Of course don't forget adequate clearances for any power or signal lines that might be in the area as part of the Orange line electrification system.
I know it's easy to sit behind your keyboard and second guess these things but I've actually had to work in situations like that. Even in the most benign of circumstances, there are lots of dangers.
Because he wasn't doing it safely. You want to hang off the side of a highway and get yourself or someone else killed hanging an electric sign for an advertiser, go ahead. But if the city or state agency sends an employee to do that without the proper safety precautions and that worker (or an innocent bystander) gets killed, that agency will be held accountable.
And unfortunately, accidents do happen.
If you read the timeline of that day you'll see that the police did determine pretty quickly that is wasn't a bomb. The main issue during the day was that the streets had to be be closed so investigators could safely access the devices - even if the authorities didn't think it was a bomb, the street would still have to be closed to workers could safely remove them. There was also the issue that a real pipe bomb turned up at New England Medical Center during that ordeal.
As I wrote before, the biggest mistake those guys made was hanging the devices off of public property - even before 9/11, doing something like that is just guaranteed to get the bomb squad out there (and contrary to popular opinion, the device that was first called in to the police had only been there for less than 24 hours). Some of the other devices on storefronts though had been there longer.
IMHO the police reaction in this one instance was reasonable - up to the arrest & prosecution part. There were no mass evacuations, no arrests of Middle-eastern people for being Middle-Eastern. They closed the roads, investigated the devices, and reopened the roads. The arrests and press releases after that though were clearly CYA.
On the other hand, the arrest of Star Simpson was a fucking travesty, and my alma mater's response to the incident ("reckless"? WTF? Is wearing a blinking tie to the airport also reckless?) has ended my participation in their alumni fundraising activities.
I'm a Massachusetts residence who's been observing the whole gambling thing over the past six months. I don't know exactly why Deval wants to criminalize online gambling, but I can give you some background into the whole debate.
First of all, why does the state want to legalize gambling in the first place? You guessed it: money. The state is facing severe budget shortfalls in pretty much all areas, but especially the transportation infrastructure (and for you non-Mass Romney supporters out there: remember this when Romney brags about his economic accomplishments. He didn't to shit except turn Massachusetts into the butt of his jokes). Some of the state's biggest cities (Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, Lowell, etc) have violent crime problems and these cities are looking for money to fund the police and outreach programs.
The state is trying very hard to develop new revenue streams by encouraging investment in biotech and green energy. But the problem with trying to bring those industries into Massachusetts is that land/rents in the eastern part of the state (with access to MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, etc) is very expensive. Costs in the western part of the state is significantly cheaper, but you don't have the highly-educated workforce like you do in the eastern part of the space. Also, these initiatives are long-term fixes, and we need money now.
So some Mass residents have been gazing longingly at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut (especially since lots of Mass residents spend money there) and have decided "we want some of that!" Hence the push to legalize gambling.
Of course the push toward casino gambling has created opposition with their concerns. Most of the concerns center around the potential for increased crime - some of the proposed locations (including Springfield) are dealing with crime problems and are worried that the casinos may create more crime, but since the state will be taking most of the money, the city/town will have to deal with the crime levels on their own. This isn't an unreasonable concern - western Massachusetts used to have homeless and public assistance centers all over the region, but they were consolidated by Romney into Springfield. Since western Mass doesn't have an extensive public transporation infrastructure, people on public assistance (and in too many cases, their deadbeat/criminal children/SO/spouses, etc) came to live in Springfield without a corresponding increase in the LEO/outreach budget which help cause our crime levels to spike.
Patrick (or his advisers/aides) spent some time meeting with people on both sides of the issues and researching the expected benefits and disadvantages to weigh the tradeoffs. Patrick finally recommended legalizing gambling at three casinos (eastern Mass, western Mass, and the Cape) after deciding that those three casinos could be prove beneficial, and create manageable problems.
That's where we are. So why the harsh penalties for online gambling? Maybe he is corrupt, but having seen how he kept his composure in response to a brutal campaign waged by his gubernatorial opponent last year makes me doubt that. My guess would be that it's a gift to casino opponents who are worried that unchecked gambling in the state might lead to increased problems in already high crime areas.
I can't say I'm all that happy that these penalties are in the bill, but given the various problems the state is