Outside the Northeast Corridor, the vast amount of passenger delays for Amtrak are related to having to use freight train routes where preference is given to their own trains over the passenger service. Stations on the corridor could benefit from boarding on one end of the car and exiting the other, or having red lights over the doors while people are exiting and switching to green when you can start boarding, or even just painting the platform with green and red paths to show where to line up to enter and where to leave clear for those exiting. As mentioned above, you could also use gates that open like on rides, but this might be hard with ADA concerns. None of this is rocket science but does require some upfront thought and investment.
I highly agree. I live in Indiana, which until a little over 10 years ago, never observed DST. We'd be on EST 1/2 the year and on CST the other half. The practice seems to have no real benefit and certainly has a lot of negative side-effects (increased accidents, heart attacks, etc).
I'd expect this practice of distribution companies buying up content that they can hold ransom over other distribution companies to become more common place. AT&T of course directly competes with Dish with its Uverse and DirectTV products, so trying to leverage as much as they can over them will be common. I'd expect Comcast to get into the game as well, with their NBC/Universal companies and try to squeeze more out of rivals. The biggest losers in all this is of course the consumers, who will at best have to pay more for their shows, or worst, have to subscribe to multiple services (e.g. cable and satellite) if they want everything.
At this point, Netflix should seek out media company acquisitions to bring some established IPs in-house. With Disney and Comcast gobbling up everything in sight, there may not be a lot of low-hanging fruit left, but they could try and pick up a smaller movie & TV studio like Paramount or Dreamworks so that they can establish some exclusivity around big IPs. They have some decent self-made programming, particularly their comedy specials, but it feels a lot like a moving conveyor where nothing sticks or is that special.
I had a lovely run in with TSA this morning as I was flying out for a business trip. I was trying to pull my laptop out to put in a separate bin and a rude TSA agent came over and told me to stop and put it back. I tried to send the laptop bag through on its own only to more scolding (apparently it was fine to put the backpack and all my items in one bin). They seem to change what they want everytime you go to the airport just so you look like a crazy person trying to comply. Ask any breastfeeding mother about how arbitrary the agents can be about breast milk.
Ecuador can show him the exits to the embassy and how to use them if Mr. Assange believes his proverbial 'living in his parent's basement without free wifi' is tantamount to human rights violations. He's more than free to walk out the door and find out what real prison looks like.
I have an Epson inkjet printer I use at home for infrequent printing of mostly B&W documents. Much to my dismay a few weeks ago, the printer refused to print a standard Word document because it was claiming the cyan cartridge was out. I had no color in the document and couldn't find a way around it locking out all printing until I replaced it. Further, once I did replace the cyan, it printed 1 B&W document and then shutdown again, claiming yellow was out. It seems Epson has a time-expiration on their cartridges, even if ink is still in them, and refuses to work until you feed the beast. Needless to say, when the printer dies, either naturally or by baseball bat, I won't be buying Epson again.
I've come up with more efficient ways to generate reports or to do work, but find while it helps improve your work to not be doing mundane tasks, your employer may find you don't have enough to do and fold your role into someone else. Most employers I've worked for though are good about recognizing your improvements and hand you more problems to tackle.
I largely agree with you. I didn't hate The Last Jedi, but just thought it was OK. There were a few grimacing scenes like Leia returning to the ship and the casino planet scenes and forced love-relationship between Finn and Rose (which is too bad, I like both the actors). But overall, it was decent, and the light sabre battle in the throne room was quite good.
Some did. We were working on lowering a tri-sulfide bridge forming in a particular drug during manufacturing and lowering the number of process steps. There were small wins and loses as we went along. I've since left the company, but last I heard they're looking to ramp up the new process into production.
Some of the better scientists I've worked with in pharmaceutical chemistry and manufacturing were women. There were also great men as well. We worked in an encouraging environment that gave opportunities to present our data and to try out new hypothesizes without fear of being belittled for the experiments failing. Removing the competition aspect of the job (i.e. I've got to be better than s/he to get ahead) and focusing on collaboration and brainstorming with your fellow scientists allowed both genders to do great work.
I remember it was one of the first games I got that came on CD. I had first seen the game at a friend's house and was enamored with the graphics and music. I even ended up getting a collector's edition later that came with a Myst t-shirt and a game music CD which I listened to numerous times. I went on to read the Myst book trilogy (they were OK, but still a fun read), but never really explored the computer games beyond the first one. I still have fond memories of the game and can envision the various worlds if I close my eyes.
I'm skeptical that you'd ever be able to fully get away from having a locomotive engineer in the cab. PTC (positive train control) allows trains to have enforced speed limits and automatically kicks them in if the engineer doesn't respond in time. It also locks out sections of track occupied by another train to prevent collisions. But there are too many spots where cameras and lidar wouldn't pick up in time on idiot cars or environmental hazards blocking the tracks due to buildings, curves, and vegetation. You'd need a human to be able to access accidents (I can't imagine you'd ever have enough cameras to see 360 degrees around the whole train, and struck vehicles can be a quarter mile behind the locomotive once it stops) and aid passengers or strike victims until emergency services arrive. In rural areas, this could be some time, especially if the train strikes a downed tree or landslide away from road crossings.
I wish Excel included more advanced analysis and charting features like those found in some of the statistical software packages. Beyond Pivot Tables, I haven't really seen a feature added that is actually useful in daily use in the past few releases. I trade a lot of the fluff to be able to do some better charting and forecasting without having to whip out SPSS or Minitab.
What year were we supposed to make first contact? Should we send this Vulcan-ish planet some sort of signal to let them know we're ready (though are lagging on our warp drive tech)?
Mr. Ma has found a convenient way out of his promise he knew he'd never be able to keep. If it wasn't an excuse on trade relations, it would be the sky is too blue or the sun is orbiting in too predictable of an orbit.
The OP may be referring to games like Hearthstone which is a purely digital CCG. If Blizzard decided to shut it down tomorrow, you'd have nothing for the money you spent.
I'd be curious on how these agencies delineate between loot boxes which you buy and have random pulls based on probability and digital CCG packs which you buy and have random pulls based on probability... The former I think is poor game design when you are trying for a skin or weapon and have to keep buying to get it (I'd rather have an in-game way to earn it). The later is inherent in the design to keep players buying packs in hopes of landing powerful rare cards (which carry a lot of value in platforms that allow trading). In either case, I can see a kid wrecking their parents' credit card trying to get the card or item they're hoping for.
There are real-world problems in supply chain and logistics that blockchain might be a good tool. Trying to solve the homeless problem with blockchain is much like trying to repair a bridge with a banana
It sounds like all this could be avoided on Blizzard's part by creating a Linux native port of the game. With all the Linux gaming love coming from Valve/Steam, it seems like as good of a time as any.
I'd anticipate a growing shift to automation and intelligent business systems over the next 10 years, but I don't think the pace is going to be as fast as predicted. Technology always moves faster than society, and businesses usually adopt new tech when it is convenient for them. In the late 90s, the pundits claimed any business not on the internet was doomed, and then the dot-com bubble burst and people realized only some businesses benefit from e-commerce. Shipping 50lb. bags of dog food over the internet was a bad idea (ask Pets.com).
The same thing will occur in this new wave of manufacturing and automation. There will be early adopters who try out the tech and see where reality meets the hype. Once other companies see what those early adopters are able to accomplish (and the money they're making), they'll gradually transition as well. I once thought that by the early 2020s truck drivers and other driver professions would be out of work. It now turns out that self-driving vehicles aren't as far along as once thought, and automated trucks won't likely be out in force until much closer to 2030 or later.
I'll be curious if people are able to see those speeds in the real world. The 5G signals are susceptible to weather and obstruction blocking and I'd be worried that you might have a lot of variability in the signal. I'd still prefer a hard-wired fiber line that can do 1Gb than worrying my internet will drop out everytime it rains.
I'll admit I'm ignorant on the ramifications of this regulatory change in the EU, but couldn't sites like YouTube get around changes to their business by setting up location blocking for the EU nations and effectively say they no longer operate in the jurisdiction of the EU? As it sounds from the summary, these social media sites would have to confirm the millions upon millions of videos and photos uploaded are not breaking copyright. I don't see how any sort of automated bot could handle the task, since it would have to be able to pick up on things like someone recording a movie or song on their phone where it is not exactly the original quality, and the volume of work would be beyond any reasonable human staffing capability.
Slashdot Mirror
Outside the Northeast Corridor, the vast amount of passenger delays for Amtrak are related to having to use freight train routes where preference is given to their own trains over the passenger service. Stations on the corridor could benefit from boarding on one end of the car and exiting the other, or having red lights over the doors while people are exiting and switching to green when you can start boarding, or even just painting the platform with green and red paths to show where to line up to enter and where to leave clear for those exiting. As mentioned above, you could also use gates that open like on rides, but this might be hard with ADA concerns. None of this is rocket science but does require some upfront thought and investment.
I highly agree. I live in Indiana, which until a little over 10 years ago, never observed DST. We'd be on EST 1/2 the year and on CST the other half. The practice seems to have no real benefit and certainly has a lot of negative side-effects (increased accidents, heart attacks, etc).
I'd expect this practice of distribution companies buying up content that they can hold ransom over other distribution companies to become more common place. AT&T of course directly competes with Dish with its Uverse and DirectTV products, so trying to leverage as much as they can over them will be common. I'd expect Comcast to get into the game as well, with their NBC/Universal companies and try to squeeze more out of rivals. The biggest losers in all this is of course the consumers, who will at best have to pay more for their shows, or worst, have to subscribe to multiple services (e.g. cable and satellite) if they want everything.
At this point, Netflix should seek out media company acquisitions to bring some established IPs in-house. With Disney and Comcast gobbling up everything in sight, there may not be a lot of low-hanging fruit left, but they could try and pick up a smaller movie & TV studio like Paramount or Dreamworks so that they can establish some exclusivity around big IPs. They have some decent self-made programming, particularly their comedy specials, but it feels a lot like a moving conveyor where nothing sticks or is that special.
I had a lovely run in with TSA this morning as I was flying out for a business trip. I was trying to pull my laptop out to put in a separate bin and a rude TSA agent came over and told me to stop and put it back. I tried to send the laptop bag through on its own only to more scolding (apparently it was fine to put the backpack and all my items in one bin). They seem to change what they want everytime you go to the airport just so you look like a crazy person trying to comply. Ask any breastfeeding mother about how arbitrary the agents can be about breast milk.
Ecuador can show him the exits to the embassy and how to use them if Mr. Assange believes his proverbial 'living in his parent's basement without free wifi' is tantamount to human rights violations. He's more than free to walk out the door and find out what real prison looks like.
I have an Epson inkjet printer I use at home for infrequent printing of mostly B&W documents. Much to my dismay a few weeks ago, the printer refused to print a standard Word document because it was claiming the cyan cartridge was out. I had no color in the document and couldn't find a way around it locking out all printing until I replaced it. Further, once I did replace the cyan, it printed 1 B&W document and then shutdown again, claiming yellow was out. It seems Epson has a time-expiration on their cartridges, even if ink is still in them, and refuses to work until you feed the beast. Needless to say, when the printer dies, either naturally or by baseball bat, I won't be buying Epson again.
Awesome, now we're going to have smiley-face cardboard boxes polluting the moon.
I've come up with more efficient ways to generate reports or to do work, but find while it helps improve your work to not be doing mundane tasks, your employer may find you don't have enough to do and fold your role into someone else. Most employers I've worked for though are good about recognizing your improvements and hand you more problems to tackle.
I largely agree with you. I didn't hate The Last Jedi, but just thought it was OK. There were a few grimacing scenes like Leia returning to the ship and the casino planet scenes and forced love-relationship between Finn and Rose (which is too bad, I like both the actors). But overall, it was decent, and the light sabre battle in the throne room was quite good.
Some did. We were working on lowering a tri-sulfide bridge forming in a particular drug during manufacturing and lowering the number of process steps. There were small wins and loses as we went along. I've since left the company, but last I heard they're looking to ramp up the new process into production.
Some of the better scientists I've worked with in pharmaceutical chemistry and manufacturing were women. There were also great men as well. We worked in an encouraging environment that gave opportunities to present our data and to try out new hypothesizes without fear of being belittled for the experiments failing. Removing the competition aspect of the job (i.e. I've got to be better than s/he to get ahead) and focusing on collaboration and brainstorming with your fellow scientists allowed both genders to do great work.
I remember it was one of the first games I got that came on CD. I had first seen the game at a friend's house and was enamored with the graphics and music. I even ended up getting a collector's edition later that came with a Myst t-shirt and a game music CD which I listened to numerous times. I went on to read the Myst book trilogy (they were OK, but still a fun read), but never really explored the computer games beyond the first one. I still have fond memories of the game and can envision the various worlds if I close my eyes.
I'm skeptical that you'd ever be able to fully get away from having a locomotive engineer in the cab. PTC (positive train control) allows trains to have enforced speed limits and automatically kicks them in if the engineer doesn't respond in time. It also locks out sections of track occupied by another train to prevent collisions. But there are too many spots where cameras and lidar wouldn't pick up in time on idiot cars or environmental hazards blocking the tracks due to buildings, curves, and vegetation. You'd need a human to be able to access accidents (I can't imagine you'd ever have enough cameras to see 360 degrees around the whole train, and struck vehicles can be a quarter mile behind the locomotive once it stops) and aid passengers or strike victims until emergency services arrive. In rural areas, this could be some time, especially if the train strikes a downed tree or landslide away from road crossings.
I wish Excel included more advanced analysis and charting features like those found in some of the statistical software packages. Beyond Pivot Tables, I haven't really seen a feature added that is actually useful in daily use in the past few releases. I trade a lot of the fluff to be able to do some better charting and forecasting without having to whip out SPSS or Minitab.
What year were we supposed to make first contact? Should we send this Vulcan-ish planet some sort of signal to let them know we're ready (though are lagging on our warp drive tech)?
Hmm, probably should have said the Moon, since obviously, the Earth orbits the Sun, not the other way around. Thanks Galileo!
Mr. Ma has found a convenient way out of his promise he knew he'd never be able to keep. If it wasn't an excuse on trade relations, it would be the sky is too blue or the sun is orbiting in too predictable of an orbit.
The OP may be referring to games like Hearthstone which is a purely digital CCG. If Blizzard decided to shut it down tomorrow, you'd have nothing for the money you spent.
I'd be curious on how these agencies delineate between loot boxes which you buy and have random pulls based on probability and digital CCG packs which you buy and have random pulls based on probability... The former I think is poor game design when you are trying for a skin or weapon and have to keep buying to get it (I'd rather have an in-game way to earn it). The later is inherent in the design to keep players buying packs in hopes of landing powerful rare cards (which carry a lot of value in platforms that allow trading). In either case, I can see a kid wrecking their parents' credit card trying to get the card or item they're hoping for.
There are real-world problems in supply chain and logistics that blockchain might be a good tool. Trying to solve the homeless problem with blockchain is much like trying to repair a bridge with a banana
It sounds like all this could be avoided on Blizzard's part by creating a Linux native port of the game. With all the Linux gaming love coming from Valve/Steam, it seems like as good of a time as any.
I'd anticipate a growing shift to automation and intelligent business systems over the next 10 years, but I don't think the pace is going to be as fast as predicted. Technology always moves faster than society, and businesses usually adopt new tech when it is convenient for them. In the late 90s, the pundits claimed any business not on the internet was doomed, and then the dot-com bubble burst and people realized only some businesses benefit from e-commerce. Shipping 50lb. bags of dog food over the internet was a bad idea (ask Pets.com). The same thing will occur in this new wave of manufacturing and automation. There will be early adopters who try out the tech and see where reality meets the hype. Once other companies see what those early adopters are able to accomplish (and the money they're making), they'll gradually transition as well. I once thought that by the early 2020s truck drivers and other driver professions would be out of work. It now turns out that self-driving vehicles aren't as far along as once thought, and automated trucks won't likely be out in force until much closer to 2030 or later.
I'll be curious if people are able to see those speeds in the real world. The 5G signals are susceptible to weather and obstruction blocking and I'd be worried that you might have a lot of variability in the signal. I'd still prefer a hard-wired fiber line that can do 1Gb than worrying my internet will drop out everytime it rains.
I'll admit I'm ignorant on the ramifications of this regulatory change in the EU, but couldn't sites like YouTube get around changes to their business by setting up location blocking for the EU nations and effectively say they no longer operate in the jurisdiction of the EU? As it sounds from the summary, these social media sites would have to confirm the millions upon millions of videos and photos uploaded are not breaking copyright. I don't see how any sort of automated bot could handle the task, since it would have to be able to pick up on things like someone recording a movie or song on their phone where it is not exactly the original quality, and the volume of work would be beyond any reasonable human staffing capability.