I'm interested that Tunisia is included in the list. My impression is they used to have a relatively well-meaning monarch/dictator, then the Arab Spring started there and he stepped down without violence to make way for democracy. Early days yet, but my impression is it was one of the few success stories in recent times
Actually the diving around Britain can be excellent, particularly Cornwall and Scotland. I'm off to the Orkney Islands next week to dive the remains of the WW1 German fleet which was interred then scuttled in Scapa Flow.
I love tropical diving, but Plymouth is rather easier to get to for a weekend, and the UK has a lot of world-class wrecks. That said, the visibility in the South-East tends to be pretty poor
"Existence" by David Brin takes a fictional look at exactly this question, along with a number of other existential threats. It's very readable with some interesting science and a good plot
I was out there in November. You'll be pleased to hear they're now very strict about not anchoring near the reefs. Usually they attach to a fixed chain. Sometimes they need to send down a diver to find it. On one occasion, when they couldn't find it (possibly it had been stolen) we actually went elsewhere
TFA appears a bit sluggish (possible Slashdot effect?) so here's the text...
National Rail Have Killed My UK Train Times App Posted on October 29, 2010 by alexmock
About a year ago I wrote a simple web application to present UK train times in a simple format for mobile phone users.
It’s best described by the instructions. The app was deliberately spartan, really just a list of upcoming trains between a collection of stations you specified in the URL. Data came from a free API which National Rail (a body representing the UK’s train companies) has run for years. Output was presented in the cleanest way possible – people on the move don’t want to be encumbered with advertising or excessive page furniture!
One neat feature was multiple start/end points. Say you live halfway between two stations (I do) and don’t care which station you travel from. The app would look up departures from both, combine and reorder them then produce a unified table of all services you could catch. When I wrote the app none of the official train timetable sites could do this and I don’t believe any can now.
Useful, huh? And all for free. I only wrote it to scratch an itch, so that rather than wading through the cluttered National Rail site I could click a bookmark on my phone and immediately know when the next train into town was. To reiterate – I built this because it was convenient and would be useful to others. Not to make a profit.
and today National Rail killed it.
So who runs this SOAP service?
The API is supplied within a website operated by National Rail – a brand of ATOC, the grandly titled “Association of Train Operating Companies”. Their name is confusingly similar to “Network Rail”, a publicly owned organisation which owns and maintains all the infrastructure. Network Rail own the track, members of National Rail / ATOC run trains on it for a profit. Confused? Good, you’re probably supposed to be.
The Live Departure Board API has existed for a few years and I’m not the only person using it. Some kind soul even wrote a CPAN module. The API is well-documented, publicly accessible and presented as something freely usable by the public. A lot of people were doing neat things with it.
It was even listed on the London Datastore site – a state-run list of open data feeds which developers are encouraged to use to provide data to web users in new and innovative ways. There was a lot of buzz around open data like this around the time of the last election.
Edit: the page on London Datastore has now been locked. “Access Denied”. Possibly because a lot of discussion appeared on there which was critical of ATOC’s decision to extract money from users of the service. Here’s the page from before ATOC’s bombshell in Google’s cache and in case that evaporates too here’s a pdf.
After writing the web app last year I had the idea of doing an Android widget to show departure times from the user’s nearest station. It would locate a user from the phone’s GPS, look up their nearest rail station then query the LDB web service to get a list of the next handful of trains they might catch. It even got as far as a Spec for Train Time Autofinder2 – complete with mockups of the widget and definitions of its functionality. Since I’m no Android programmer it’d necessitate paying a developer and I hoped to recoup that cost by selling the app for a nominal fee. I wrote to ATOC asking whether this would be okay. A month later when they hadn’t replied I wrote again, this time by registered post. Their eventual response:
“I can confirm the National Rail Enquiries Website is for personal and non-commercial use only. Therefore, the suggestion made in your letter, to utilise the data to build an Android application is expressly prohibited. I’m sorry that we cannot be of any further assistance
Turns out the concept of terrorism didn't start with Al Qaeda. Although I agree they are not (and should never be) a good reason to say "let's just not bother"
If you've never riden one before you might want to check out http://www.citysegwaytours.com/ - they really are a lot of fun.
I really wanted one after riding one round Paris and Budapest, but can't think of a single use where a bike isn't cheaper and better (plus they're not legal on the road or pavement (sidewalk) here in Britain)
I realize nobody's likely to read this (heck this story's *days* old - the world moves on) but I have an inverse question - why on earth aren't you checking the stolen 'phones list?
I certainly agree that once I've bought a 'phone it's mine to do what I want, but for at least one user of this service there's a good chance the 'phone's not theirs - It's bloody mine!
Apparently there were a lot of tests done on firing into explosives that terrorists might use - it was decided the only sensible course was to go for head shots.
I commend the officers for their professionalism and, like you, feel for all concerned.
I managed to scrape the insulation off the back of the circuit board and stick a bit of paper-clip on using blue-tac. I was astounded when I managed to boot off it and it ran long enough for me to get my data off it.
I've been very impressed with PAdict which is free, and RoadLingua which is not and requires a hack such as CJKOS.
When I looked at the hardware denki-jisho (and to some extent the dead-tree variety) I found the ones using kana/kanji were aimed heavily at Japanese (usage examples, etc.) and the foreigner targeted ones, without exception, used romanji. I failed to find a dedicated device that would fit your (or my) needs. Sorry.
I used to turn up to most of my lectures half way through. With some decent lecture notes and a bit of thought I could generally figure out almost everything I'd missed. Plus the extra effort kept me focused - I'd've probably got less out of the entire lecture due to glazing over.
> other than China, North Korea, or any other totalitarian state
Sorry to get OT but surely this is misleading? China didn't even have copyright law until they joined the WTO - it's the western world that's going worryingly authoritarian on IP law.
My final year project was an AWT modeled on a 3D graphics card. The theory was you can use this second processor, the GPU (that's doing nothing normally) to move windows, render fonts and images, etc. You'd get alpha blending and all sorts of cool effects for practically free. Windows were hanging in 3D space and could cast shadows, even button shading was done properly using camera angles and lights.
It occurs to me that, with this technology I could dig out that old executable and find it actually in 3D!
I think the main advantage of Galileo is the guarunteed availability. The US reserve the right to switch SA back on or even terminate the service as they see fit. This means it can only be used as an aide to pilots (air and sea), never the primary method of navigation.
You see, the idea was you get taught the theory at University and become a bachelor. However you haven't mastered your art until you have some experience to back it up (and anyone that has ventured outside academia knows how much they still had to learn!). In fact, as Oxbridge invented the concept, it's really the other universities that are trying to grab an extra buck by teaching the masters.
Oh and the Arts thing is something to do with any subject, taught to a high enough level, becomes an art form. All very pretentious. Taught masters courses at Cambridge still get a MEng or MSc to distinguish from the automatic version MA(Oxon/Cantab).
They don't study CS at Oxford at all (their closest course is part of the maths dept.) For computer science it's Cambridge you want.
Part of the reason for this extra depth has to be the extent to which UK students specialize. By A-Level (age 16) I was down to my favourite 3 subjects, by second year (age 19) I had only a "major" and that was slightly specialized by the end of University. Supposedly, in the England, we were a year ahead of Scotland/Europe by the start of University and some 2 years ahead by the end. This extra depth comes at the expense of bredth of education.
I seriously considered doing a PhD at MIT but was put off by the 5 year course of which you're apparently treated like an undergraduate for the first 2 - compared to a 3 year course here.
It should be noted our A-Levels are now broader and, presumably, less deep - it remains to be seen what effect this has.
Interestingly Japan has a two track system - the cheap (free?) state Universities have strict entry requirements, the expensive private Universities are... typically less discerning.
I was offered this in Shanghai some 3 months back and couldn't resist. Turned out to be some random 2nd rate fantasy film.
Just wish I'd bought the Titanic II we were offered:)
I have one of these (under the Shuttle brand) and have found the noise acceptable. When lightly loaded (this usually includes DivX, DVD and MP3 decoding) the fan ramps down and the remaining noise is very unobtrusive.
It may not be perfect but it's good enough. I guess it depends if you're listening to Mozart or watching the A-Team.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm interested that Tunisia is included in the list. My impression is they used to have a relatively well-meaning monarch/dictator, then the Arab Spring started there and he stepped down without violence to make way for democracy. Early days yet, but my impression is it was one of the few success stories in recent times
Actually the diving around Britain can be excellent, particularly Cornwall and Scotland. I'm off to the Orkney Islands next week to dive the remains of the WW1 German fleet which was interred then scuttled in Scapa Flow.
I love tropical diving, but Plymouth is rather easier to get to for a weekend, and the UK has a lot of world-class wrecks. That said, the visibility in the South-East tends to be pretty poor
"Existence" by David Brin takes a fictional look at exactly this question, along with a number of other existential threats. It's very readable with some interesting science and a good plot
I was out there in November. You'll be pleased to hear they're now very strict about not anchoring near the reefs. Usually they attach to a fixed chain. Sometimes they need to send down a diver to find it. On one occasion, when they couldn't find it (possibly it had been stolen) we actually went elsewhere
TFA appears a bit sluggish (possible Slashdot effect?) so here's the text...
National Rail Have Killed My UK Train Times App
Posted on October 29, 2010 by alexmock
About a year ago I wrote a simple web application to present UK train times in a simple format for mobile phone users.
It’s best described by the instructions. The app was deliberately spartan, really just a list of upcoming trains between a collection of stations you specified in the URL. Data came from a free API which National Rail (a body representing the UK’s train companies) has run for years. Output was presented in the cleanest way possible – people on the move don’t want to be encumbered with advertising or excessive page furniture!
One neat feature was multiple start/end points. Say you live halfway between two stations (I do) and don’t care which station you travel from. The app would look up departures from both, combine and reorder them then produce a unified table of all services you could catch. When I wrote the app none of the official train timetable sites could do this and I don’t believe any can now.
Useful, huh? And all for free. I only wrote it to scratch an itch, so that rather than wading through the cluttered National Rail site I could click a bookmark on my phone and immediately know when the next train into town was. To reiterate – I built this because it was convenient and would be useful to others. Not to make a profit.
and today National Rail killed it.
So who runs this SOAP service?
The API is supplied within a website operated by National Rail – a brand of ATOC, the grandly titled “Association of Train Operating Companies”. Their name is confusingly similar to “Network Rail”, a publicly owned organisation which owns and maintains all the infrastructure. Network Rail own the track, members of National Rail / ATOC run trains on it for a profit. Confused? Good, you’re probably supposed to be.
The Live Departure Board API has existed for a few years and I’m not the only person using it. Some kind soul even wrote a CPAN module. The API is well-documented, publicly accessible and presented as something freely usable by the public. A lot of people were doing neat things with it.
It was even listed on the London Datastore site – a state-run list of open data feeds which developers are encouraged to use to provide data to web users in new and innovative ways. There was a lot of buzz around open data like this around the time of the last election.
Edit: the page on London Datastore has now been locked. “Access Denied”. Possibly because a lot of discussion appeared on there which was critical of ATOC’s decision to extract money from users of the service. Here’s the page from before ATOC’s bombshell in Google’s cache and in case that evaporates too here’s a pdf.
After writing the web app last year I had the idea of doing an Android widget to show departure times from the user’s nearest station. It would locate a user from the phone’s GPS, look up their nearest rail station then query the LDB web service to get a list of the next handful of trains they might catch. It even got as far as a Spec for Train Time Autofinder2 – complete with mockups of the widget and definitions of its functionality. Since I’m no Android programmer it’d necessitate paying a developer and I hoped to recoup that cost by selling the app for a nominal fee. I wrote to ATOC asking whether this would be okay. A month later when they hadn’t replied I wrote again, this time by registered post. Their eventual response:
“I can confirm the National Rail Enquiries Website is for personal and non-commercial use only. Therefore, the suggestion made in your letter, to utilise the data to build an Android application is expressly prohibited. I’m sorry that we cannot be of any further assistance
While you may be right that hydrogen is inferior to gasoline in some ways, I think "impossible" might be too strong a word
Lotus builds hydrogen fuel cell taxi for London 2012
Lots of terrorists targeting Japan?
Famously, yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway
Turns out the concept of terrorism didn't start with Al Qaeda. Although I agree they are not (and should never be) a good reason to say "let's just not bother"
If you've never riden one before you might want to check out http://www.citysegwaytours.com/ - they really are a lot of fun.
I really wanted one after riding one round Paris and Budapest, but can't think of a single use where a bike isn't cheaper and better (plus they're not legal on the road or pavement (sidewalk) here in Britain)
I realize nobody's likely to read this (heck this story's *days* old - the world moves on) but I have an inverse question - why on earth aren't you checking the stolen 'phones list?
I certainly agree that once I've bought a 'phone it's mine to do what I want, but for at least one user of this service there's a good chance the 'phone's not theirs - It's bloody mine!
Then again, some American conventions are strange as well; like inserting a comma before 'and' in a list
I think you're referring to The Oxford Comma
Apparently there were a lot of tests done on firing into explosives that terrorists might use - it was decided the only sensible course was to go for head shots.
I commend the officers for their professionalism and, like you, feel for all concerned.
I managed to scrape the insulation off the back of the circuit board and stick a bit of paper-clip on using blue-tac. I was astounded when I managed to boot off it and it ran long enough for me to get my data off it.
Next time I fit a new drive, I'll do it sober!
Yahoo recently bought flickr to use their technology for photo stuff.
flickr ties in heavily with Creative Commons licenses (a good place to look if you want CC licensed photos)
I'm wondering if the timing is just coincidence.
> competitive photovoltaic power generation
Ah - a power source where the pollution is *already* off-planet. And it's radiation still gives cancer to millions!
Damned nuclear power!!!
I've been very impressed with PAdict which is free, and RoadLingua which is not and requires a hack such as CJKOS.
When I looked at the hardware denki-jisho (and to some extent the dead-tree variety) I found the ones using kana/kanji were aimed heavily at Japanese (usage examples, etc.) and the foreigner targeted ones, without exception, used romanji. I failed to find a dedicated device that would fit your (or my) needs. Sorry.
Looks like there's a gap in the market!
I already run Apache on my Win2k box and it works like a beut!
I used to have lectures on Saturday morning :-(
I used to turn up to most of my lectures half way through. With some decent lecture notes and a bit of thought I could generally figure out almost everything I'd missed. Plus the extra effort kept me focused - I'd've probably got less out of the entire lecture due to glazing over.
I have a photo of an ATM in Peru booting WinNT.
> other than China, North Korea, or any other totalitarian state
:)
Sorry to get OT but surely this is misleading? China didn't even have copyright law until they joined the WTO - it's the western world that's going worryingly authoritarian on IP law.
With you on the rest though
My final year project was an AWT modeled on a 3D graphics card. The theory was you can use this second processor, the GPU (that's doing nothing normally) to move windows, render fonts and images, etc. You'd get alpha blending and all sorts of cool effects for practically free. Windows were hanging in 3D space and could cast shadows, even button shading was done properly using camera angles and lights.
It occurs to me that, with this technology I could dig out that old executable and find it actually in 3D!
I think the main advantage of Galileo is the guarunteed availability. The US reserve the right to switch SA back on or even terminate the service as they see fit. This means it can only be used as an aide to pilots (air and sea), never the primary method of navigation.
Cambridge does it as well.
You see, the idea was you get taught the theory at University and become a bachelor. However you haven't mastered your art until you have some experience to back it up (and anyone that has ventured outside academia knows how much they still had to learn!). In fact, as Oxbridge invented the concept, it's really the other universities that are trying to grab an extra buck by teaching the masters.
Oh and the Arts thing is something to do with any subject, taught to a high enough level, becomes an art form. All very pretentious. Taught masters courses at Cambridge still get a MEng or MSc to distinguish from the automatic version MA(Oxon/Cantab).
They don't study CS at Oxford at all (their closest course is part of the maths dept.) For computer science it's Cambridge you want.
... typically less discerning.
Part of the reason for this extra depth has to be the extent to which UK students specialize. By A-Level (age 16) I was down to my favourite 3 subjects, by second year (age 19) I had only a "major" and that was slightly specialized by the end of University. Supposedly, in the England, we were a year ahead of Scotland/Europe by the start of University and some 2 years ahead by the end. This extra depth comes at the expense of bredth of education.
I seriously considered doing a PhD at MIT but was put off by the 5 year course of which you're apparently treated like an undergraduate for the first 2 - compared to a 3 year course here.
It should be noted our A-Levels are now broader and, presumably, less deep - it remains to be seen what effect this has.
Interestingly Japan has a two track system - the cheap (free?) state Universities have strict entry requirements, the expensive private Universities are
I was offered this in Shanghai some 3 months back and couldn't resist. Turned out to be some random 2nd rate fantasy film. Just wish I'd bought the Titanic II we were offered :)
I have one of these (under the Shuttle brand) and have found the noise acceptable. When lightly loaded (this usually includes DivX, DVD and MP3 decoding) the fan ramps down and the remaining noise is very unobtrusive.
It may not be perfect but it's good enough. I guess it depends if you're listening to Mozart or watching the A-Team.