The main culprit of the dead end branch is actually a thing as simple as the non-standard track width.
The remaining parts aren't a big deal, but due to the non-standard track width the number of manufacturers for cars usable in the system is quite limited.
Re:People say "custom-made" like it's a bad thing
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Why BART Is Falling Apart
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· Score: 5, Informative
The only thing that they really messed up was the track gauge, not using the standard gauge but a more or less unique for the BART system.
When it comes to electronics it's not impossible to replace. I don't see a $1000 price of a thyristor as something remarkable if it's a high power type.
What's more amazing is that in many cases processors designed in the 70's are still manufactured today while processor designs from the early 90's are almost unobtanium now. Just look for Z80 processors (a 70's design) at Mouser and then look for 386, 486 or 68040 processors. You can find the latter but only at more obscure vendors and sometimes they are refurbished from scrapped computers. With that as background I'd rather try to fix a computer board from '72 than one from '92 if I have the schematics. A '72 computer is either wired or hole-mounted 0.10" split DIL chips on a PCB with maybe 2 or at worst 4 layers. A '92 computer board is way tougher and requires patience since some chips aren't just surface-mount soldered but glued as well on a PCB with multiple layers.
If you want to make a system that is going to have a long lifespan, then you have to design it with a lot of standardized interfaces using connectors that are extremely common and that are easy to manufacture. And when you do that also make sure you document the interface very well, since that allows people in the future to manufacture plug-in replacement modules using modern hardware. The overall design will be more expensive but the concept lifespan will be a lot longer.
There are only a few bank offices left and only a few of them handles cash. We are here talking about the bank office death. Same thing with post offices they are rare these days - and placed in obscure locations to keep down the number of drop-in customers.
For most people the bank transactions today are done online.
I assume that with PAP you mean Pre-authorized payment. (Acronyms don't do well when you are in circles outside your business)
For Cobol programmers the problem is that when the old ones retires and dies off there are too few new ones coming in that knows how to handle the code. Cobol is only easy to read for someone used to that paradigm.
Considering that the last eruption was a long time ago - long before Homo Sapiens had appeared it's unlikely that it's the source of such stories. There have been other major events later that are more likely to have ended up in the legends. Like a break-through between the Mediterranean and Black Sea causing a flooding of the plains that are now under the surface of the Black Sea.
3 days of coding at home or 3 weeks of coding in India yields the same result. This because people in India don't have a clue about why we in the western world do some things that are natural to us but unknown to them.
I want a snowflake to be displayed in the instrument cluster when it's between +4 degrees C and -4 degrees C. It's logical to anyone living where snow and ice appears every year. But to explain why that's wanted to someone in India can take a few hours.
To know how to design you need to know how to code. Otherwise you will end up with horrible designs because the designer don't know the abilities and shortcomings of the platform they design for.
But coding alone doesn't make you useful, it's knowing the business for what you design and code for that makes you useful.
It's killing the branch offices but the central offices are still doing pretty well.
Banks makes money on lending money to people and collecting interest on that money. They actually don't want you to mortgage the loans you take but they accept it as it is also lowering the risk for them.
Personnel and offices - that's what costs banks money so therefore they want to centralize. Online banking is cheap for the banks. But a fast-changing economy is requiring system updates on a frequent basis and when the old classic systems are written in Cobol there are a massive number of things that can go wrong if the changes made aren't tested thoroughly. Cobol is a bit dated when it comes to coding strategies and even though there are object oriented variants they aren't easy to integrate into the minds of people that have been coding Cobol for the last 40 or more years. But coding Cobol is actually pretty well-paid since not many are good at Cobol today and it has even created a market for retired people to come back and code.
What the current banks shall fear is new upcoming banks that have thrown off the old Cobol yoke and started to look at modern languages with strong typing and strict bounds checks.
I agree here, I can work flexible hours and up 05:00, leave work at 15:00 and get home to be able to get a nap if needed. Seems to me that a nap a few times per week helps a lot. I don't need it every day, just some days. The need to nap also seems to be somewhat related to what I eat.
Also realize that all the jokes about having Siesta is actually just part of the normal sleep cycle for humans.
Inability to sleep - that's often stress related, and sometimes lack of exercise.
Heart problems may result in both fatigue and trouble to sleep, especially congestive heart failure. It prevents sleep due to too low oxygen level in the bloodstream. But that's hardly corrected by proper daylight and due to all the other symptoms related to that heart condition it's not likely to be the cause in that case.
As for sleeping pills - there are many different variants, some are better than others, and side effects may vary.
Many workplaces have this so called "warm white" light, which is to reflect incandescent light, not daylight.
If the fluorescent lights were to be replaced with "daylight white" light instead then the natural cycle would be improved, especially in the winter. It's a long term test that has to be done so it's hard to see any immediate result from such a change.
Too little light has never caused any eye harm, it's too bright light that can burn out the retina. Otherwise we would all be blind now due to the darkness of the night.
The only problem with too little light is that it's easy to trip over stuff in the middle of the night.
Except that this will not have any effect on the suicide bomber use of burn phones.
If the period between the purchase and the strike is short the paperwork won't land in the hands of the authorities until it's too late. And after the strike the suicide bombers want to be known so that they can be used in propaganda as martyrs.
And PayPal accounts can also be handed over once they are created. Just round up some dude with more interest in booze than anything else and get a card number in his name to use to create the eBay account. As long as that credit card is used only for online use there's no ID check. And as long as the bills on the card are paid it works just fine. When the cops start to look for that dude he wouldn't even remember that he has a card.
A lot of accounts out there on various systems also only require a mail address. Nothing in the systems do an ID check.
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Maybe enforcing everyone in congress and senate to be armed. If they take offense they can have a duel on the spot.
Even more ridiculous is the use of "Liberal" for and by those that are far from actually being liberal.
It makes the left and right wing categorization seem sane.
Pol Pot did a great job too.
A 25kV overhead powerline would put a stop to the habit on riding the outside of the cars.
Depending on the type of thyristor $1000 per piece isn't remarkable. It's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive for the loads handled either.
The main culprit of the dead end branch is actually a thing as simple as the non-standard track width.
The remaining parts aren't a big deal, but due to the non-standard track width the number of manufacturers for cars usable in the system is quite limited.
The only thing that they really messed up was the track gauge, not using the standard gauge but a more or less unique for the BART system.
When it comes to electronics it's not impossible to replace. I don't see a $1000 price of a thyristor as something remarkable if it's a high power type.
What's more amazing is that in many cases processors designed in the 70's are still manufactured today while processor designs from the early 90's are almost unobtanium now. Just look for Z80 processors (a 70's design) at Mouser and then look for 386, 486 or 68040 processors. You can find the latter but only at more obscure vendors and sometimes they are refurbished from scrapped computers. With that as background I'd rather try to fix a computer board from '72 than one from '92 if I have the schematics. A '72 computer is either wired or hole-mounted 0.10" split DIL chips on a PCB with maybe 2 or at worst 4 layers. A '92 computer board is way tougher and requires patience since some chips aren't just surface-mount soldered but glued as well on a PCB with multiple layers.
If you want to make a system that is going to have a long lifespan, then you have to design it with a lot of standardized interfaces using connectors that are extremely common and that are easy to manufacture. And when you do that also make sure you document the interface very well, since that allows people in the future to manufacture plug-in replacement modules using modern hardware. The overall design will be more expensive but the concept lifespan will be a lot longer.
That's not what we have here in Sweden.
There are only a few bank offices left and only a few of them handles cash. We are here talking about the bank office death. Same thing with post offices they are rare these days - and placed in obscure locations to keep down the number of drop-in customers.
For most people the bank transactions today are done online.
I assume that with PAP you mean Pre-authorized payment. (Acronyms don't do well when you are in circles outside your business)
For Cobol programmers the problem is that when the old ones retires and dies off there are too few new ones coming in that knows how to handle the code. Cobol is only easy to read for someone used to that paradigm.
Considering that the last eruption was a long time ago - long before Homo Sapiens had appeared it's unlikely that it's the source of such stories. There have been other major events later that are more likely to have ended up in the legends. Like a break-through between the Mediterranean and Black Sea causing a flooding of the plains that are now under the surface of the Black Sea.
That's like saying that designing a house as an architect doesn't have anything to do with knowledge of building materials and how they are used.
3 days of coding at home or 3 weeks of coding in India yields the same result. This because people in India don't have a clue about why we in the western world do some things that are natural to us but unknown to them.
I want a snowflake to be displayed in the instrument cluster when it's between +4 degrees C and -4 degrees C. It's logical to anyone living where snow and ice appears every year. But to explain why that's wanted to someone in India can take a few hours.
Don't forget to include the ability to understand what the customer really need. Essentially the unspoken part of the requirements.
The worst thing you probably can do is to use Simulink for coding.
To know how to design you need to know how to code. Otherwise you will end up with horrible designs because the designer don't know the abilities and shortcomings of the platform they design for.
But coding alone doesn't make you useful, it's knowing the business for what you design and code for that makes you useful.
Ada is at least object oriented from the beginning, so that language may still be useful.
So far I just pointed out that it was a problem running Cobol in the long run due to the problem of programmers fluent in that are dying off.
It's killing the branch offices but the central offices are still doing pretty well.
Banks makes money on lending money to people and collecting interest on that money. They actually don't want you to mortgage the loans you take but they accept it as it is also lowering the risk for them.
Personnel and offices - that's what costs banks money so therefore they want to centralize. Online banking is cheap for the banks. But a fast-changing economy is requiring system updates on a frequent basis and when the old classic systems are written in Cobol there are a massive number of things that can go wrong if the changes made aren't tested thoroughly. Cobol is a bit dated when it comes to coding strategies and even though there are object oriented variants they aren't easy to integrate into the minds of people that have been coding Cobol for the last 40 or more years. But coding Cobol is actually pretty well-paid since not many are good at Cobol today and it has even created a market for retired people to come back and code.
What the current banks shall fear is new upcoming banks that have thrown off the old Cobol yoke and started to look at modern languages with strong typing and strict bounds checks.
I agree here, I can work flexible hours and up 05:00, leave work at 15:00 and get home to be able to get a nap if needed. Seems to me that a nap a few times per week helps a lot. I don't need it every day, just some days. The need to nap also seems to be somewhat related to what I eat.
Also realize that all the jokes about having Siesta is actually just part of the normal sleep cycle for humans.
Inability to sleep - that's often stress related, and sometimes lack of exercise.
Heart problems may result in both fatigue and trouble to sleep, especially congestive heart failure. It prevents sleep due to too low oxygen level in the bloodstream. But that's hardly corrected by proper daylight and due to all the other symptoms related to that heart condition it's not likely to be the cause in that case.
As for sleeping pills - there are many different variants, some are better than others, and side effects may vary.
Many workplaces have this so called "warm white" light, which is to reflect incandescent light, not daylight.
If the fluorescent lights were to be replaced with "daylight white" light instead then the natural cycle would be improved, especially in the winter. It's a long term test that has to be done so it's hard to see any immediate result from such a change.
Too little light has never caused any eye harm, it's too bright light that can burn out the retina. Otherwise we would all be blind now due to the darkness of the night.
The only problem with too little light is that it's easy to trip over stuff in the middle of the night.
I'm 50 and have never written a check.
All payments have been direct transfer from bank account to account on invoice one way or another.
Except that this will not have any effect on the suicide bomber use of burn phones.
If the period between the purchase and the strike is short the paperwork won't land in the hands of the authorities until it's too late. And after the strike the suicide bombers want to be known so that they can be used in propaganda as martyrs.
And PayPal accounts can also be handed over once they are created. Just round up some dude with more interest in booze than anything else and get a card number in his name to use to create the eBay account. As long as that credit card is used only for online use there's no ID check. And as long as the bills on the card are paid it works just fine. When the cops start to look for that dude he wouldn't even remember that he has a card.
A lot of accounts out there on various systems also only require a mail address. Nothing in the systems do an ID check.
Checks - something retired people use here in Sweden, nobody else do, just cards with chips or direct electronic transfers from the bank.
If your phone is stolen you shall block it. Failure to do so makes you guilty too.