It'd be wrong to blame Richard Branson for the difficulties in running the trains on time. The problem with the British railway network is that it didn't suffer the same fate as the German one in WWII, i.e. get blown to smithereens, and hence instead of being able to build the network from scratch, you Brits are stuck with what you built at the time of the industrial revolution. That means you have congested lines, bottlenecks, and a host of other problems on an old network that your high-speed trains have to share with local services and freight services. The Japanese Shinkansen has often been praised because of its pinpoint accuracy with its schedules, but it runs on dedicated high-speed tracks. Getting that sort of thing into the British network amongst all the NIMBY merchants would be a major achievement, but it's not really in Branson's hands.
I forgot to add that Virgin was the first to get tilting trains (Pendolino) working commercially, if you don't include the old APT that British Rail unsuccessfully experimented with in the 80s.
Glad you asked because I'm currently reading his autobiography.
His first business venture was Student magazine, a publication produced on a shoestring budget but filled a gap in the market for the kind of news and information that students wanted and needed. He was subject to some ground-breaking courtroom action in which he had to fight for the right to publish information on where to get treatment for vinerial desease, and he opened a student advisory centre to help students with problems that they felt unable to speak to parents or their local doctors about.
Virgin records was his next invention - mail-order music at discount prices.
His music shops were the first of their kind. They were hip, cool, the sort of places where young people wanted to go and they only sold albums, as opposed to the dreary basements of corporate bookstores which was the only other place you could buy music up to then and most of which was pop singles.
Virgin Trains, whilst running on a clapped-out and congested network, still introduced a new era of customer service for first class passengers who can now relax in a first-class lounge in major railway stations.
Virgin Atlantic is not 'just another airline.' It was the first truly price-competitive carrier on the transatlantic route and gave British Airways a badly-needed kick up the backside. It was the first to introduce seat-back entertainment in ALL the cabin including economy class, something that some other carriers have still not gotten around to doing. Oh, and you can get a massage in First Class. And they have reintroduced the concept of the on-board lounge to civil aviation.
Then there's the publicity stunts, the world-record challenges like winning the Blue Riband, crossing the Atlantic in a balloon, flying around the world in a balloon etc.
If Virgin were a computer company, it'd be Apple but with even more flair. It's one of the most dynamic, innovative and fun companies I know of.
To the candidates, you talk a lot about the importance of promoting democracy in other countries. However, I have never heard you take on the issue of election reform in our own country. The current presidential system seems to have several shortcomings, including two-party duopoly and the ability to win the Election without winning the popular vote. This hardly seems democratic. What are your positions on instant-runoff voting and proportional representation? Do you currently, and would you in the future, support any reforms to encourage a greater diversity in our political system?
Bush didn't even attempt to answer this question, maybe because he didn't understand it. He just waffled about the so-called 'Help America Vote Act,' (nothing to do with reforming the electoral college or spolier system) and went off on a tangent about campaign finance reform.
Nader used the hot-dog example to explain how it's perfectly okay to change one's mind when new facts come to light. Bush's silence on this one is deafening. Hell, even Tony Blair has the balls to admit that his people had gotten their facts wrong. When is dubya ever going to own up to the cock-ups in his administration?
the rest of the world pollutes far more than the US nowdays and they don't really care that Johnny Q Hippy dosn't like it. They'll happily continue strip mining and using mercery to strip out copper from ore while they eat a tiger mcmuffin. All the eco freaks do is help ensure the US can't compete as well in the global market.
Read my lips. The US contains 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's resources.
I can't fucking believe you people. Free speech is DEAD now that Indymedia has been raided and you guys want to talk about the Fantastic Four? For God's sake, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!!
Er, the Indymedia story has already been covered in the last article. What do you want? Another posting of the same article? Or are you trying to impersonate the Human Torch with your flaming?
I wonder will the Fantastic Car be the same flying bathtub I remember from the old Fantasitc Four animated series. Anyone remember that? Gawd it was lame!
Adding machine invented that uses gears, chains and pulleys to add two numbers together.
And no, I didn't RTFA, but I agree with other comments that this fluid stuff sounds like a very cool hack and may have some practical application somewhere.
The excitement will last right up until one of these flights explodes, killing everyone aboard.
The De Havilland comet's early mishaps didn't seem to deter the airline industry from springing into existence. As for the risks involved in driving to and from the spaceport, don't get me started!
Horses are quite an intelligent means of getting around. You can even ride a horse while drunk without getting cited for drunk driving. Makes a certain amount of sense too. A horse isn't going to let you go into the ditch at high speed, or allow you to wander onto a collision course with a truck.
Imagine a world in which employers could only hire people within walking distance of the company. The quality of the workforce would go down and many people would be stuck in jobs that suck.
On the other hand, people would be forced to live close to their place of work. Traffic would be all but eliminated.
Imagine a world in which the only goods you could buy were those found at tiny neghborhood shops within walking distance. The selection and pricing would suck.
I'm gonna disagree on this one on the basis that you get better selection from a handful of local corner shops than you do from the big Wal Mart on the edge of town that you can only drive to. And assuming that Wal Mart actually paid their workers a living wage, the local mom & pop stores would be in a better position to survive since the price differential would not be as big. The tax burden would also decrease since many Wal Mart employees (I refuse to call them 'associates') are paid so little that they qualify for welfare, effectively turning Wal Mart's payroll into one big government welfare scheme. However, I digress.
The farther people can comfortably commute to work, the better the match between employer and employee.
And the more people who move farther away from work to take advantage of lower property prices and a fast commute, which in turn leads to more out-of-town development causing more traffic and undoing the benefit of the fast commute. 'Induced traffic' is the term for that.
The farther people can comfortable travel to find goods and services, the better the selection and economies of scale.
Enabling people to travel farther is fine. Forcing people to travel farther to meet their daily needs is quite another. Sprawl forces people to travel farther, high-density traditional urban neighbourhoods do not.
Making the transport infrastructure more efficient is all well and good, but if the urban layout forces people to travel big distances then creating a more efficient transport system is akin to putting a bigger bucket under a leaking roof rather than fixing the drip.
The interactive guides to the 50 and 20 are very good. Excellent use of Flash. This is the sort of thing that Flash is good at - slick, well designed, intuitive, interactive guides that respond to user input immediately without clumsy screwing around with javascript, DHTML, and god knows how many other technologies you'd have to employ to get anything near the same effect.
IAAW (I Am A Writer) and I can tell you that the golden rule of dialogue in literature is to make it believable. A different set of rules applies to movies, movie characters talk in a certain way. Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue sometime, then ask yourself who actually talks like that. Who actually says things just for the purpose of explaining or revealing something to a watching audience? Nevertheless, some of the script in the original trilogy was truly dire, and the point I'm making is that people conveniently forget this (because of nostalgia) when slating the new trilogy as being inferior to the original one.
it's my understanding that the galaxy went into a technological recession after the Empire was created. Hence the less-technologically-advanced starships in the original trilogy.
I don't think this is possible. The Empire would have been a strong government with a huge R&D budget for its weapon systems, a bit like Nazi Germany. Weapons systems would have gotten better, not worse. You can't 'uninvent' things, unless you sink into something like the Dark Ages when a lot of the achievements of the Romans went down the drain and all the knowledge of the ages was almost lost but for the industriousness of a handful of monks in places like Ireland.
Have you ever seen some of the hardware the Nazis were experimenting with at the end of the war? Rocket-powered planes, guided missiles like the V2, the mistels, the list goes on. And that was when Germany was getting pounded by the allies. The galactic empire would have had no such problem, their weapons would have gotten a lot more advanced - they had the time, the peace and the funds to develop them. Hell, they came up with a weapon that could nuke a whole planet without the weapon being destroyed itself by the enormous amount of flying debris!
Yet that already reads better than the dialogue in the prequels.
The dialogue in the original trilogy wasn't much better.
"Ah! Governor Tarkin! I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I thought I recognised your foul stench when I came on board!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this!"
"Laser brain!"
"Lap it up Fuzzball!"
But then it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, so maybe that was how people did talk back then.
The 'far away galaxy' thing was a good fudge, explains how they managed to develop all this technology to traverse a galaxy in a few hours but didn't figure out how to fire weapons that locked on target. (Hang on, they did, Jango Fett had one. But how come they couldn't do it years later... )
Think of it as a Tivo for your radio. I'd be surprised if a product with this sort of functionality hadn't already been invented before, the ability to set a device to begin recording at a certain time has been around since VHS and Betamax was invented. It also strikes me as a bit of a novelty not having to have an internet connection to get content.
Up to now I've been content to use the BBC's website to hear their radio on demand, but now I can have the joys of NPR, Free Speech Radio, Air America etc. whenever it's convenient. I want one of these!
Slashdot Mirror
Many merry migrant mynocks mock Muscovite mock mars mission management.
It'd be wrong to blame Richard Branson for the difficulties in running the trains on time. The problem with the British railway network is that it didn't suffer the same fate as the German one in WWII, i.e. get blown to smithereens, and hence instead of being able to build the network from scratch, you Brits are stuck with what you built at the time of the industrial revolution. That means you have congested lines, bottlenecks, and a host of other problems on an old network that your high-speed trains have to share with local services and freight services. The Japanese Shinkansen has often been praised because of its pinpoint accuracy with its schedules, but it runs on dedicated high-speed tracks. Getting that sort of thing into the British network amongst all the NIMBY merchants would be a major achievement, but it's not really in Branson's hands.
I forgot to add that Virgin was the first to get tilting trains (Pendolino) working commercially, if you don't include the old APT that British Rail unsuccessfully experimented with in the 80s.
His first business venture was Student magazine, a publication produced on a shoestring budget but filled a gap in the market for the kind of news and information that students wanted and needed. He was subject to some ground-breaking courtroom action in which he had to fight for the right to publish information on where to get treatment for vinerial desease, and he opened a student advisory centre to help students with problems that they felt unable to speak to parents or their local doctors about.
Virgin records was his next invention - mail-order music at discount prices.
His music shops were the first of their kind. They were hip, cool, the sort of places where young people wanted to go and they only sold albums, as opposed to the dreary basements of corporate bookstores which was the only other place you could buy music up to then and most of which was pop singles.
Virgin Trains, whilst running on a clapped-out and congested network, still introduced a new era of customer service for first class passengers who can now relax in a first-class lounge in major railway stations.
Virgin Atlantic is not 'just another airline.' It was the first truly price-competitive carrier on the transatlantic route and gave British Airways a badly-needed kick up the backside. It was the first to introduce seat-back entertainment in ALL the cabin including economy class, something that some other carriers have still not gotten around to doing. Oh, and you can get a massage in First Class. And they have reintroduced the concept of the on-board lounge to civil aviation.
Then there's the publicity stunts, the world-record challenges like winning the Blue Riband, crossing the Atlantic in a balloon, flying around the world in a balloon etc.
If Virgin were a computer company, it'd be Apple but with even more flair. It's one of the most dynamic, innovative and fun companies I know of.
Nader used the hot-dog example to explain how it's perfectly okay to change one's mind when new facts come to light. Bush's silence on this one is deafening. Hell, even Tony Blair has the balls to admit that his people had gotten their facts wrong. When is dubya ever going to own up to the cock-ups in his administration?
I entirely agree, the rest of the world could care less because they care a lot more than the US. The US, however, couldn't care less.
I tried using that shortcode, but my phone says 'invalid address.' Wazzup?
'Insightful' my ass!
I wonder will the Fantastic Car be the same flying bathtub I remember from the old Fantasitc Four animated series. Anyone remember that? Gawd it was lame!
And no, I didn't RTFA, but I agree with other comments that this fluid stuff sounds like a very cool hack and may have some practical application somewhere.
Isn't the Trash Heap supposed to be all-seeing, all-wise, and all-knowing?
You may jest, but horse dung was a huge problem in cities before motorisation.
PRT seems to be coming along well in Cardiff, Wales.
Horses are quite an intelligent means of getting around. You can even ride a horse while drunk without getting cited for drunk driving. Makes a certain amount of sense too. A horse isn't going to let you go into the ditch at high speed, or allow you to wander onto a collision course with a truck.
Making the transport infrastructure more efficient is all well and good, but if the urban layout forces people to travel big distances then creating a more efficient transport system is akin to putting a bigger bucket under a leaking roof rather than fixing the drip.
The interactive guides to the 50 and 20 are very good. Excellent use of Flash. This is the sort of thing that Flash is good at - slick, well designed, intuitive, interactive guides that respond to user input immediately without clumsy screwing around with javascript, DHTML, and god knows how many other technologies you'd have to employ to get anything near the same effect.
IAAW (I Am A Writer) and I can tell you that the golden rule of dialogue in literature is to make it believable. A different set of rules applies to movies, movie characters talk in a certain way. Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue sometime, then ask yourself who actually talks like that. Who actually says things just for the purpose of explaining or revealing something to a watching audience? Nevertheless, some of the script in the original trilogy was truly dire, and the point I'm making is that people conveniently forget this (because of nostalgia) when slating the new trilogy as being inferior to the original one.
Have you ever seen some of the hardware the Nazis were experimenting with at the end of the war? Rocket-powered planes, guided missiles like the V2, the mistels, the list goes on. And that was when Germany was getting pounded by the allies. The galactic empire would have had no such problem, their weapons would have gotten a lot more advanced - they had the time, the peace and the funds to develop them. Hell, they came up with a weapon that could nuke a whole planet without the weapon being destroyed itself by the enormous amount of flying debris!
Gawd! I sound like Randal!
"Ah! Governor Tarkin! I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I thought I recognised your foul stench when I came on board!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this!"
"Laser brain!"
"Lap it up Fuzzball!"
But then it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, so maybe that was how people did talk back then.
The 'far away galaxy' thing was a good fudge, explains how they managed to develop all this technology to traverse a galaxy in a few hours but didn't figure out how to fire weapons that locked on target. (Hang on, they did, Jango Fett had one. But how come they couldn't do it years later... )
Darth: "No Luke, I am your father!"
Luke: "You're my dad? Oh boy, and you know what the worst thing is?"
Darth: "What, my son?"
Luke: "I'm not even supposed to be here today!"
Up to now I've been content to use the BBC's website to hear their radio on demand, but now I can have the joys of NPR, Free Speech Radio, Air America etc. whenever it's convenient. I want one of these!