No. If trains could replace flights, that would be great.
But trains aren't fast enough for that.
Except that they are fast enough for that! The problem is that the American train system sucks- it has a lack of funding, illogically placed stops, and absolutely insane routes. This is why we need to fund the rail system, because when it is built correctly it will be faster to take a train than a plane in many cases.
Example:
Traveling to western NY (Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara) from NYC takes these amounts of time: (adjust everything +/- a bit to account for different city locations)
By car: ~5.5 hours
By plane: ~3.5 hours (1 hour flight, 2 hours of waiting around, 30 minutes for all the other BS that comes with flying)
By train: ~8 hours
One of these is not like the others. There's no reason a train couldn't make the route from NYC up to Buffalo in under 5 hours. A comparable distance would be going from Hamburg to Munich in Germany. This can be done in 5.5 hours, and there are a good number of stops along the way. The route through NY has less stops, and could potentially be more direct (don't have to avoid villages/small cities).
With the right funding, this can happen, and that will take thousands of cars off of the highways crossing NY.
Given a 5 hour train ride, why fly? You don't have to deal with lost luggage, no security checks. You just sit down on the train, use a laptop, phone, whatever. It's more comfortable also (trains have much more legroom than planes). Such a train ride should be cheaper as well, but knowing Amtrak we'll see if that actually happens.
What exactly is your point here? Yes, the rails have a targeted audience. The US is big and you can't give everyone a completely convenient train stop. But it is a reasonable goal to give most people a convenient rail line, and that's what this plan start to do.
How do you say "We're going to flood this million acres, all of you need to move now. You'll be paid for your property. Have a nice day."
This doesn't seem to be a problem in China. And with the eminent domain laws in the US the way they are (see: Kelo v. New London), it's entirely possible to do this in the US as well.
It's called patience. Maybe you could learn about it and teach your fellow motorists. That is what will lead to less accidents more than anything else.
How about you wait until the pedestrian crosses, and then try to turn? Oh, you never thought about yielding the right of way to a pedestrian, did you. Well you have to, so suck it up and stop being that asshole stopped in the crosswalk.
First of all, who cares what Al Sharpton thinks. Leave him out of the discussion. We all know he profits from racial outrage, and the merits of this stand without bringing him into it. There would be plenty of people outraged about referring to Bush in any racist manner.
I think Bush was one of the worst things to ever happen to the USA, which is exactly why I'd be outraged about anyone trying to demean him racially. There are plenty of other options to demean him. Using a racial slur is simply insensitive and your accusation has absolutely no evidence.
Not to mention your argument adds nothing to the discussion to begin with- so what if there wasn't any outrage from the "other side"? Claim your moral superiority and get over it. Whether or not there is outrage from the "other side" in no way justifies using racial slurs for Obama.
"Some products sell real well, most sell average"? Why not take it further? "Bell curve distribution confirmed for the 4,000th time!"?:-)
Sounds more like a power law than a gaussian. In other words, a few games are making most of the money, and then there's a lot of games making the rest of the money (long tail)
If you're using vim and writing html by hand, then as a web developer you don't know what you're doing.
You talk about HTML as if it is something complex and difficult. Give me a break, if anything was meant to be done in vim it was that. And fine, maybe someone using dreamweaver can make a site faster than someone using vim, but the code will be ugly, it won't be easily maintainable, and the person using vim will have a much finer control over the elements of the site.
I'm actually ashamed someone with such a low user-id is suggesting such a thing... Did they move you into management?
I am enjoying your posts. How is it that someone can have such an incredible ego, and post with such arrogance, but at the same time not even understand how averages work? While you post away, acting all confident, the rest of/. is laughing at you.
I have decided, for the purposes of acquiring tellurium, that there should really be more of it available on the Earth. I have updated the Wikipedia article to reflect this. Hopefully this update gets pushed to the Earth so we can get some cheap solar panels.
They did? So that's why their market share has been dropping for the past 5 years or so now? Yes, Americans did demand big fuel guzzling cars, and the American auto makers certainly delivered those, but times are changing and GM/Ford/Chrysler have been failing for the past 5 years to see that more and more people want smaller, more efficient cars. These companies didn't get into a dire financial situation overnight- it may have appeared that way from the outside since all of the sudden they said "We need help!" But the reality is, their decline has been present for a while now, and their management failed to see what many of us saw a while ago.
This AC is actually correct. Having worked at a defense contractor as well, although not in a top secret capacity, the GP only has some of their information correct. It's not like there's some big bouncer standing at every door to a TS area frisking people... stop watching so many damn movies. But with that said, control to the data is quite tight, and this whole thing is overblown. If anything TS leaked from a TS network from a file sharing program, there would be many people getting fired, and the company would likely lose any TS contracts that they had.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong... The problem with this study is that their sample isn't at all random, so the result are junk. But the sample size is perfectly fine. A study population of size 1000 to 2000 is adequate for damn near any survey of a large population, certainly for 956 million. If you knew anything about the topic, you'd know that as the population size grows arbitrarily large the sample size really doesn't have to grow once you're after a certain point. (so the population for a size 100 population doesn't scale to 956 million, but the sample population for 2 million scales to 956 million without a problem)
That quote is indeed stupid, since Paris was charged with a relatively minor offense in comparison to being charged with hijacking the network of a city government, so obviously her bail would be fairly easy to make, especially with her wealth.
However, the vast majority of people, poor or rich, can post bail through bail bonds, since in general, the vast majority of crimes don't involve people who are very likely to run away. And it's perfectly fine if a rich person is able to afford bail, the idea is that it is high enough so that they can't run away, despite their wealth. People even routinely post bail at amounts they can't afford through bail bondsmen, resulting in a huge incentive to show up to trial (they will have absolutely no money to run away with if they don't).
Oh will all you greedy tax haters stop with all of these "double dipping" arguments? Stop acting like society owes you something- civilization is paid for in tax dollars. I'm so sorry you don't get to keep every cent of what you earn- but then again, you wouldn't be earning anything if it wasn't for the government around you protecting your interests and your rights.
If anything, the idea of adding tolls is really no different than a gas tax- it taxes usage, so if you have a problem with it don't use those roads as much! Take a train, ride the bus, carpool!
In theory, since it costs more to drive on the toll road, people will do it less. With less people driving on it there's less wear and tear. Admittedly, I don't think this idea really extends to that much improvement in road quality.
However the idea that all the money is taken by these companies and shipped away is simply false. It costs money to set up and maintain the systems (which will be done by americans most likely) as well as the fact that the state generally gets either a percentage of the money earned (like in the lotto- guess what, your money is paid to the company there too), or they pay a large up front fee to put the booth there that expires in n years.
What an interesting religion global warming is... one in which scientific data and theories are put to the test and, if they hold up to scrutiny, are accepted by the scientific community at large until a better, more accurate model can replace them. The IPCC report would be a good place to start, but I suppose nothing will convince you that you are mistaken.
Your post shows a clear misunderstanding of science and scientific progress. People described what they saw with models that tried to predict what they saw. Even if the models had terms and ideas that today we know to be false, that doesn't mean they weren't able to predict phenomena within some approximation of the actual event. For example, we know the "Plum Pudding" model of the atom to be incorrect, but at the time that model predicted correctly that the atom was composed of positively and negatively charged elements- the model was even correct that negatively charged elements move around while the positive elements stay stationary. Sure, it wasn't exactly correct, but it was a valid advancement towards a better approximation of reality. In the cases I mention, a majority of scientists agreed with the model, and worked to improve it.
When it comes to global warming, a majority of scientists agree with the current model, which may not be perfect, but is a pretty good approximation to what is happening. And it is important that a majority of scientists agree, because they are saying that they have reviewed the math, the assumptions, and the data in the model and agree that it is correct, or at least as correct as we can make it at the current time.
And can't you come up with any better arguments than the "2 CO2 spikes"? Clearly climatologists have considered those spikes, if they actually exist, and incorporated them into their model.
That's great, I do want one. We need large organizations making these and distributing them, while scientists explain the risks. (If only people trusted scientists...)
Don't blame this on the "eco lobby". The ever-powerful eco-lobby that can't even get us to limit carbon emissions barely has the power to stop nuclear power plants. Many environmentalists, like myself, support nuclear power when it's properly regulated and well thought out. The problem is too many people can't get Chernobyl and 3 mile island out of their heads, despite the fact that the pollution from coal and oil is ultimately more destructive than nuclear power.
The solution is to educate people about the pros and cons, and reasonable people will start siding with nuclear. (Of course, whether or not people are reasonable is another question entirely...)
This calculation is flawed simply because most people can get work done on a train, or benefit from the relaxation of a train ride. Simply staring out the window on a train is much nicer than dealing with all the slow pokes driving in the left lane, and idiots speeding in the right. (Before/after work you can just read a book or the paper. Can't do that in a car. Please don't try.)
It is also fairly obvious that you can't write a report or program while driving, but on a train it is possible. Now I will concede that many commuter rail trains in the US are relatively crowded and uncomfortable, making this difficult (MetroNorth for example), but you can still get something done. Amtrak is fine for this, and if you ever ride a European train like the German IC or ICE, or French TGV, it's actually a really great working environment. (Many of those trains are being equipped with wireless internet access now too)
One problem you allude to is the fact that trains are often late here, and that adds in extra time when you indeed cannot get work done. This is a real problem and we need to address the issue of the rail structure in this country- hopefully Obama will make rebuilding and improving it important, so that people are valued over freight trains and the rail network is reliable and complete.
While I agree that insurance is mostly a fixed cost, the fact that driving a car more raises the probability of having an accident, and accidents raise insurance costs. Leaving your car in the driveway is a very good way of preventing your insurance rates from increasing (whether through speeding tickets or mistakes, even those from other drivers).
This analogy doesn't work at all- Paying the same amount per month for access to the game in no way amounts to socialism. People have different items and different abilities in games based on how much/how well they play them. Some sort of marxist model of gaming would give everyone the same items and abilities and tell them to have at it.
The current model of pay monthly and play actually has way more in common with capitalism. People who put time in and succeed tend to get better items and abilities, and are more powerful in the game. And, of course, rich people can simply buy these things on ebay.
So then when the idea of micro-transactions come into the game, we end up with a game in which power is based solely on your monetary worth (or at least, what you are willing to spend) rather than your abilities.
I could continue to abuse the capitalism/marxism analogy, maybe throw in a car analogy, but instead I'll simply point out a major downside of this type of game for gamers: Sunken costs. I'm not sure I buy the idea that games are literally addictive, but I have no doubt that sunken costs in a game will definitely influence gamer's behavior in a negative way for them. I also have major problems with the idea that players can buy the best items in the game, and then the company can come and simply keep making better items, so gamers are constantly forced to buy better items if they wish to play the game. And due to their sunken costs, they may perceive it as cheaper to keep paying those fees than switch to a new game. (Hopefully they will see this and quit early on)
That article mentions how better diagnostic techniques have resulted in kids being diagnosed with autism (and related problems):
Diagnostic criteria changed dramatically in 1987, broadening the number of people who could be considered to have ASDs. In decades earlier, only those with severe autistic characteristics would be diagnosed with autism; others might have been categorized as mentally retarded, for example. So making comparisons across decades is difficult.
But it is worth noting that they mention there may be a true rise in cases on the second page.
I suppose the real question is why is it disconcerting to you that vaccines are no longer being considered a cause? The studies show that vaccines haven't caused it, so looking into them further would just be a waste of time- time that could be used to find the actual cause.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that they are fast enough for that! The problem is that the American train system sucks- it has a lack of funding, illogically placed stops, and absolutely insane routes. This is why we need to fund the rail system, because when it is built correctly it will be faster to take a train than a plane in many cases.
Example:
Traveling to western NY (Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara) from NYC takes these amounts of time: (adjust everything +/- a bit to account for different city locations)
One of these is not like the others. There's no reason a train couldn't make the route from NYC up to Buffalo in under 5 hours. A comparable distance would be going from Hamburg to Munich in Germany. This can be done in 5.5 hours, and there are a good number of stops along the way. The route through NY has less stops, and could potentially be more direct (don't have to avoid villages/small cities).
With the right funding, this can happen, and that will take thousands of cars off of the highways crossing NY.
Given a 5 hour train ride, why fly? You don't have to deal with lost luggage, no security checks. You just sit down on the train, use a laptop, phone, whatever. It's more comfortable also (trains have much more legroom than planes). Such a train ride should be cheaper as well, but knowing Amtrak we'll see if that actually happens.
What exactly is your point here? Yes, the rails have a targeted audience. The US is big and you can't give everyone a completely convenient train stop. But it is a reasonable goal to give most people a convenient rail line, and that's what this plan start to do.
This doesn't seem to be a problem in China. And with the eminent domain laws in the US the way they are (see: Kelo v. New London), it's entirely possible to do this in the US as well.
It's called patience. Maybe you could learn about it and teach your fellow motorists. That is what will lead to less accidents more than anything else.
How about you wait until the pedestrian crosses, and then try to turn? Oh, you never thought about yielding the right of way to a pedestrian, did you. Well you have to, so suck it up and stop being that asshole stopped in the crosswalk.
First of all, who cares what Al Sharpton thinks. Leave him out of the discussion. We all know he profits from racial outrage, and the merits of this stand without bringing him into it. There would be plenty of people outraged about referring to Bush in any racist manner.
I think Bush was one of the worst things to ever happen to the USA, which is exactly why I'd be outraged about anyone trying to demean him racially. There are plenty of other options to demean him. Using a racial slur is simply insensitive and your accusation has absolutely no evidence.
Not to mention your argument adds nothing to the discussion to begin with- so what if there wasn't any outrage from the "other side"? Claim your moral superiority and get over it. Whether or not there is outrage from the "other side" in no way justifies using racial slurs for Obama.
Sounds more like a power law than a gaussian. In other words, a few games are making most of the money, and then there's a lot of games making the rest of the money (long tail)
You talk about HTML as if it is something complex and difficult. Give me a break, if anything was meant to be done in vim it was that. And fine, maybe someone using dreamweaver can make a site faster than someone using vim, but the code will be ugly, it won't be easily maintainable, and the person using vim will have a much finer control over the elements of the site.
I'm actually ashamed someone with such a low user-id is suggesting such a thing... Did they move you into management?
I am enjoying your posts. How is it that someone can have such an incredible ego, and post with such arrogance, but at the same time not even understand how averages work? While you post away, acting all confident, the rest of /. is laughing at you.
I have decided, for the purposes of acquiring tellurium, that there should really be more of it available on the Earth. I have updated the Wikipedia article to reflect this. Hopefully this update gets pushed to the Earth so we can get some cheap solar panels.
They did? So that's why their market share has been dropping for the past 5 years or so now? Yes, Americans did demand big fuel guzzling cars, and the American auto makers certainly delivered those, but times are changing and GM/Ford/Chrysler have been failing for the past 5 years to see that more and more people want smaller, more efficient cars. These companies didn't get into a dire financial situation overnight- it may have appeared that way from the outside since all of the sudden they said "We need help!" But the reality is, their decline has been present for a while now, and their management failed to see what many of us saw a while ago.
This AC is actually correct. Having worked at a defense contractor as well, although not in a top secret capacity, the GP only has some of their information correct. It's not like there's some big bouncer standing at every door to a TS area frisking people... stop watching so many damn movies. But with that said, control to the data is quite tight, and this whole thing is overblown. If anything TS leaked from a TS network from a file sharing program, there would be many people getting fired, and the company would likely lose any TS contracts that they had.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong... The problem with this study is that their sample isn't at all random, so the result are junk. But the sample size is perfectly fine. A study population of size 1000 to 2000 is adequate for damn near any survey of a large population, certainly for 956 million. If you knew anything about the topic, you'd know that as the population size grows arbitrarily large the sample size really doesn't have to grow once you're after a certain point. (so the population for a size 100 population doesn't scale to 956 million, but the sample population for 2 million scales to 956 million without a problem)
That quote is indeed stupid, since Paris was charged with a relatively minor offense in comparison to being charged with hijacking the network of a city government, so obviously her bail would be fairly easy to make, especially with her wealth.
However, the vast majority of people, poor or rich, can post bail through bail bonds, since in general, the vast majority of crimes don't involve people who are very likely to run away. And it's perfectly fine if a rich person is able to afford bail, the idea is that it is high enough so that they can't run away, despite their wealth. People even routinely post bail at amounts they can't afford through bail bondsmen, resulting in a huge incentive to show up to trial (they will have absolutely no money to run away with if they don't).
Oh will all you greedy tax haters stop with all of these "double dipping" arguments? Stop acting like society owes you something- civilization is paid for in tax dollars. I'm so sorry you don't get to keep every cent of what you earn- but then again, you wouldn't be earning anything if it wasn't for the government around you protecting your interests and your rights.
If anything, the idea of adding tolls is really no different than a gas tax- it taxes usage, so if you have a problem with it don't use those roads as much! Take a train, ride the bus, carpool!
In theory, since it costs more to drive on the toll road, people will do it less. With less people driving on it there's less wear and tear. Admittedly, I don't think this idea really extends to that much improvement in road quality.
However the idea that all the money is taken by these companies and shipped away is simply false. It costs money to set up and maintain the systems (which will be done by americans most likely) as well as the fact that the state generally gets either a percentage of the money earned (like in the lotto- guess what, your money is paid to the company there too), or they pay a large up front fee to put the booth there that expires in n years.
What an interesting religion global warming is... one in which scientific data and theories are put to the test and, if they hold up to scrutiny, are accepted by the scientific community at large until a better, more accurate model can replace them. The IPCC report would be a good place to start, but I suppose nothing will convince you that you are mistaken.
Your post shows a clear misunderstanding of science and scientific progress. People described what they saw with models that tried to predict what they saw. Even if the models had terms and ideas that today we know to be false, that doesn't mean they weren't able to predict phenomena within some approximation of the actual event. For example, we know the "Plum Pudding" model of the atom to be incorrect, but at the time that model predicted correctly that the atom was composed of positively and negatively charged elements- the model was even correct that negatively charged elements move around while the positive elements stay stationary. Sure, it wasn't exactly correct, but it was a valid advancement towards a better approximation of reality. In the cases I mention, a majority of scientists agreed with the model, and worked to improve it.
When it comes to global warming, a majority of scientists agree with the current model, which may not be perfect, but is a pretty good approximation to what is happening. And it is important that a majority of scientists agree, because they are saying that they have reviewed the math, the assumptions, and the data in the model and agree that it is correct, or at least as correct as we can make it at the current time.
And can't you come up with any better arguments than the "2 CO2 spikes"? Clearly climatologists have considered those spikes, if they actually exist, and incorporated them into their model.
That's great, I do want one. We need large organizations making these and distributing them, while scientists explain the risks. (If only people trusted scientists...)
Don't blame this on the "eco lobby". The ever-powerful eco-lobby that can't even get us to limit carbon emissions barely has the power to stop nuclear power plants. Many environmentalists, like myself, support nuclear power when it's properly regulated and well thought out. The problem is too many people can't get Chernobyl and 3 mile island out of their heads, despite the fact that the pollution from coal and oil is ultimately more destructive than nuclear power.
The solution is to educate people about the pros and cons, and reasonable people will start siding with nuclear. (Of course, whether or not people are reasonable is another question entirely...)
You clearly have absolutely no idea what a monopoly is. IPhones? A monopoly? Just stop posting.
This calculation is flawed simply because most people can get work done on a train, or benefit from the relaxation of a train ride. Simply staring out the window on a train is much nicer than dealing with all the slow pokes driving in the left lane, and idiots speeding in the right. (Before/after work you can just read a book or the paper. Can't do that in a car. Please don't try.)
It is also fairly obvious that you can't write a report or program while driving, but on a train it is possible. Now I will concede that many commuter rail trains in the US are relatively crowded and uncomfortable, making this difficult (MetroNorth for example), but you can still get something done. Amtrak is fine for this, and if you ever ride a European train like the German IC or ICE, or French TGV, it's actually a really great working environment. (Many of those trains are being equipped with wireless internet access now too)
One problem you allude to is the fact that trains are often late here, and that adds in extra time when you indeed cannot get work done. This is a real problem and we need to address the issue of the rail structure in this country- hopefully Obama will make rebuilding and improving it important, so that people are valued over freight trains and the rail network is reliable and complete.
While I agree that insurance is mostly a fixed cost, the fact that driving a car more raises the probability of having an accident, and accidents raise insurance costs. Leaving your car in the driveway is a very good way of preventing your insurance rates from increasing (whether through speeding tickets or mistakes, even those from other drivers).
This analogy doesn't work at all- Paying the same amount per month for access to the game in no way amounts to socialism. People have different items and different abilities in games based on how much/how well they play them. Some sort of marxist model of gaming would give everyone the same items and abilities and tell them to have at it.
The current model of pay monthly and play actually has way more in common with capitalism. People who put time in and succeed tend to get better items and abilities, and are more powerful in the game. And, of course, rich people can simply buy these things on ebay.
So then when the idea of micro-transactions come into the game, we end up with a game in which power is based solely on your monetary worth (or at least, what you are willing to spend) rather than your abilities.
I could continue to abuse the capitalism/marxism analogy, maybe throw in a car analogy, but instead I'll simply point out a major downside of this type of game for gamers: Sunken costs. I'm not sure I buy the idea that games are literally addictive, but I have no doubt that sunken costs in a game will definitely influence gamer's behavior in a negative way for them. I also have major problems with the idea that players can buy the best items in the game, and then the company can come and simply keep making better items, so gamers are constantly forced to buy better items if they wish to play the game. And due to their sunken costs, they may perceive it as cheaper to keep paying those fees than switch to a new game. (Hopefully they will see this and quit early on)
But it is worth noting that they mention there may be a true rise in cases on the second page.
I suppose the real question is why is it disconcerting to you that vaccines are no longer being considered a cause? The studies show that vaccines haven't caused it, so looking into them further would just be a waste of time- time that could be used to find the actual cause.