CalTrain links San Jose and San Francisco, both of which are metropolitan areas somewhat larger than Tucson and Phoenix. And the points between them are just a bit more densely populated than places like Chandler.
CalTrain's 2008 average weekday ridership was about 37,000.
Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities.
CalTrain baby bullets make a ~45 mile trip in an hour with 5 stops or so at a cruising speed of 79 mi/hr, but since the service is driven with diesel-electric locomotives, the acceleration and stopping is a non-trivial percentage of the dwell time. I could imagine a CalTrain express service with EMUs could make that same trip in 45 minutes. That's not 30, but then the CalTrain EMUs would have a maximum top speed less than half of what is quoted for these trains.
Tucson to Phoenix is twice as many miles, but the trains will be more than twice as fast, and since the stops will be further apart than CalTrains, the acceleration/stopping time will be less of a percentage of the travel time.
Whether they could do it in a half hour or not would largely depend on how quickly they can get people on and off the train at the stations.
Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.
Aren't there Indian reservations that would ostensibly prevent that sort of thing? Aren't they the reason there aren't more highway lanes in that corridor?
Localities that deploy CCTV cameras in public thoroughfares in the hope of combating crime are in no way indicative of the oppressive control of Orwell's Big Brother.
The only difference, really, was in what the localities in question defined as crimes. In Oceana, crimes included thinking the wrong thing. Britain has not quite yet reached that level (however, given that parliament has absolute sovereignty, there's precious little that can prevent it), but the level of surveillance by itself wasn't what made the society oppressive.
I gave DS9 until the "move along home" episode and then washed my hands of it. That episode was second only to "who shot JR" in the annals of writers disrespecting the audience - and only because the whole "who shot JR" crap took months to come down to "it was just a dream."
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's *exactly* what Google intends to do. Otherwise, you have to fence the thing in and erect the barn you were talking about, and hire a Veterinarian, and lots of other stuff I'm sure Google doesn't want to do.
Nature abhors a vacuum. The only way for a patch of dirt to stay a patch of dirt is to use herbicides on it. Since the patch of dirt is going to grow things anyway, things which are far more likely than not to at least resemble grasses, you might as well plant grass on it.
And if you really just have a patch of dirt and it is not perfectly flat, then it will erode, which causes all sorts of other problems I won't bother to detail here.
But the trucks only have to transport the lawn mowers once, if they're stored in a shed near the field. By contrast, the goats must either be maintained on-site (which means fencing, veterinary care and lots of other stuff google is unlikely to be interested in providing), or transported back and forth when mowing is required.
Oh, and there are such things as rechargeable battery operated mowers, by the way, just in case you're still fixated on the gasoline.
Los Angeles is what it is today primarily because of Edison's patent thicket around motion pictures. Edison operated out of New Jersey. Those who wanted to make motion pictures without a patent license had to get as far away from Edison's enforcement squads as possible, and Los Angeles qualified and had nice weather for filming.
Move forward a couple decades and you come to the era of the Studio system. The only way to make a movie during that period was under the auspices of the studios. Why? Because they had a patent pool thicket formed around special effects techniques, and nothing more interesting than a talking-head documentary could really be done without impinging on at least part of it.
Nowadays, we stand on the brink of another era of patent thicket in motion pictures - this time around digital special effects. We'll have to see how this one turns out.
1. I have no interest in monitoring encrypted military traffic, even if I were able to tell the difference between background noise and stuff that sounds a lot like background noise. And as for the other traffic, I don't speak Portuguese.
2. I do have a receiver that covers that frequency range, but would have to build and aim a suitable antenna. See #1.
3. Even if I were to hear something, the Secrecy of Communications portions of the Communications act of 1934 would prevent me from sharing the news with you. To wit:
SEC. 705. [47 U.S.C. 605] UNAUTHORIZED PUBLICATION OF COMMUNICATIONS. (a) [...] No person not being authorized by the sender shall intercept any radio communication and divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such intercepted communication to any person. No person not being entitled thereto shall receive or assist in receiving any interstate or foreign communication by radio and use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto. No person having received any intercepted radio communication or having become acquainted with the contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) knowing that such communication was intercepted, shall divulge or publish the existence, contents, substance, purport, effect, or meaning of such communication (or any part thereof) or use such communication (or any information therein contained) for his own benefit or for the benefit of another not entitled thereto.
This section does go on to provide exemptions for stations in distress or transmissions from Amateur or Citizen's Band stations and certain other situations that are similarly not applicable here.
Since the Wired article author was in Brazil when he wrote about the interception of encrypted military traffic, this law may not have applied (IANAL), but if he were in the United States when this happened, he and/or the person actually running the radio might have been subject to a $2000 fine or 6 months in the pokey.
Asides from the fact that these operators were way outside their respective allowed band, they did no harm as these satellites aren't even used anymore by the US-Navy (for whom they were built).
BUZZ!!!!
Oh, I'm sorry, you're incorrect. Thank you for playing, we have a lovely parting gift of TFA for you to read on your way home.
Here's an excerpt:
One week after the "Operation Satellite," Brochi met with Wired.com at a gathering of amateur radio enthusiasts in a bucolic square in Campinas, about 60 miles north of Sao Paulo. Brochi switches on his UHF receiver and scans through the satellite frequencies.
It's relatively quiet now on the satellite underground, except for the static-like sound of encrypted military traffic.
I'd call you a language pirate, but I believe you did do some damage when you used it.
Re:free as in beer matters too
on
Oracle Buys Sun
·
· Score: 1
If Oracle slowly kills MySQL through neglect, it could have ramifications for the broader economy, unless another database software (e.g. PostgreSQL) can fill the void.
What you said. PostgreSQL is teh awesome, IMHO. I actually hope that Oracle pooches MySQL to the point that it benefits PostgreSQL.
Fortunately, it's all based on the SQL standard, but there are still differences between RDBMS's that developers will need to learn to switch.
Alas, SQL is as standard as BASIC. They have a superficial similarity, but none of them really interoperate.
I think part of the point of the Air is that making memory user installable costs weight and size. They went to extremes to minimize both (further extremes that Dell, apparently), and in the process fixed the RAM configuration.
The only thing in it's favor is the higher max RAM (Apple will probably change that) and the integrated 3G option (I'd expect Apple to change that too).
Why?
I can almost see a case being made for 3 GB of RAM instead of 2 (for folks to run a VM with Windows, perhaps), but if you want higher performing graphics, you're going to see either an increase in weight or a decrease in battery life, neither of which is acceptable in that form factor product.
I suspect that Dell didn't get the memo, which is why theirs is heavier and louder.
The reason those other options are not used is cost:benefit. The Pharos advantage in architecting the pyramids was that they perceived a benefit that justified outlandish costs. We in western society don't put nearly that much value in our buildings. On the contrary, we benefit greatly by replacing them with new ones on a regular basis. Las Vegas today is a lot nicer than it was only 20 years ago, just as an example. When a building only has to last a hundred years, it's a lot less costly than when it is designed to last an eternity.
Yeah, well, it's a lot easier to make something structurally sound if it's not expected to have the same occupancy load that would be required for a modern western city. There weren't nearly as many Incans as there are Italians. Particularly since the former weren't Catholics.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it would make all of those car analogies you find here on /. all that much more apropos.
Just some supporting evidence...
CalTrain links San Jose and San Francisco, both of which are metropolitan areas somewhat larger than Tucson and Phoenix. And the points between them are just a bit more densely populated than places like Chandler.
CalTrain's 2008 average weekday ridership was about 37,000.
Then there is that time thing. It's not making the trip in 30 minutes if it stops 5 times between the two cities.
CalTrain baby bullets make a ~45 mile trip in an hour with 5 stops or so at a cruising speed of 79 mi/hr, but since the service is driven with diesel-electric locomotives, the acceleration and stopping is a non-trivial percentage of the dwell time. I could imagine a CalTrain express service with EMUs could make that same trip in 45 minutes. That's not 30, but then the CalTrain EMUs would have a maximum top speed less than half of what is quoted for these trains.
Tucson to Phoenix is twice as many miles, but the trains will be more than twice as fast, and since the stops will be further apart than CalTrains, the acceleration/stopping time will be less of a percentage of the travel time.
Whether they could do it in a half hour or not would largely depend on how quickly they can get people on and off the train at the stations.
Of course the way things are going, eventually this would run right up the middle of one big metro area.
Aren't there Indian reservations that would ostensibly prevent that sort of thing? Aren't they the reason there aren't more highway lanes in that corridor?
Maybe I'm thinking of New Mexico.
Localities that deploy CCTV cameras in public thoroughfares in the hope of combating crime are in no way indicative of the oppressive control of Orwell's Big Brother.
The only difference, really, was in what the localities in question defined as crimes. In Oceana, crimes included thinking the wrong thing. Britain has not quite yet reached that level (however, given that parliament has absolute sovereignty, there's precious little that can prevent it), but the level of surveillance by itself wasn't what made the society oppressive.
You're kidding, right?
I gave DS9 until the "move along home" episode and then washed my hands of it. That episode was second only to "who shot JR" in the annals of writers disrespecting the audience - and only because the whole "who shot JR" crap took months to come down to "it was just a dream."
a series that's been in the shitter since 1996
I think you meant 1986.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's *exactly* what Google intends to do. Otherwise, you have to fence the thing in and erect the barn you were talking about, and hire a Veterinarian, and lots of other stuff I'm sure Google doesn't want to do.
Or no grass at all.
Nature abhors a vacuum. The only way for a patch of dirt to stay a patch of dirt is to use herbicides on it. Since the patch of dirt is going to grow things anyway, things which are far more likely than not to at least resemble grasses, you might as well plant grass on it.
And if you really just have a patch of dirt and it is not perfectly flat, then it will erode, which causes all sorts of other problems I won't bother to detail here.
Why would you sequester the carbon?
To make up for the carbon coming out of the tailpipe of the trucks moving the goats around, of course!
But the trucks only have to transport the lawn mowers once, if they're stored in a shed near the field. By contrast, the goats must either be maintained on-site (which means fencing, veterinary care and lots of other stuff google is unlikely to be interested in providing), or transported back and forth when mowing is required.
Oh, and there are such things as rechargeable battery operated mowers, by the way, just in case you're still fixated on the gasoline.
If by "magical pixies" you really mean the gardner wheeling the mower the 15 feet from the shed to the edge of the field, then yes.
By contrast, the goats must be either maintained on-site or transported back and forth. They cannot be stored in a shed between mowings.
Los Angeles is what it is today primarily because of Edison's patent thicket around motion pictures. Edison operated out of New Jersey. Those who wanted to make motion pictures without a patent license had to get as far away from Edison's enforcement squads as possible, and Los Angeles qualified and had nice weather for filming.
Move forward a couple decades and you come to the era of the Studio system. The only way to make a movie during that period was under the auspices of the studios. Why? Because they had a patent pool thicket formed around special effects techniques, and nothing more interesting than a talking-head documentary could really be done without impinging on at least part of it.
Nowadays, we stand on the brink of another era of patent thicket in motion pictures - this time around digital special effects. We'll have to see how this one turns out.
I would try it myself, but
1. I have no interest in monitoring encrypted military traffic, even if I were able to tell the difference between background noise and stuff that sounds a lot like background noise. And as for the other traffic, I don't speak Portuguese.
2. I do have a receiver that covers that frequency range, but would have to build and aim a suitable antenna. See #1.
3. Even if I were to hear something, the Secrecy of Communications portions of the Communications act of 1934 would prevent me from sharing the news with you. To wit:
This section does go on to provide exemptions for stations in distress or transmissions from Amateur or Citizen's Band stations and certain other situations that are similarly not applicable here.
Since the Wired article author was in Brazil when he wrote about the interception of encrypted military traffic, this law may not have applied (IANAL), but if he were in the United States when this happened, he and/or the person actually running the radio might have been subject to a $2000 fine or 6 months in the pokey.
Asides from the fact that these operators were way outside their respective allowed band, they did no harm as these satellites aren't even used anymore by the US-Navy (for whom they were built).
BUZZ!!!!
Oh, I'm sorry, you're incorrect. Thank you for playing, we have a lovely parting gift of TFA for you to read on your way home.
Here's an excerpt:
Unless Brazil has laws against doing that, it's legal in Brazil.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. In fact, if you read TFA, you'll see that it is illegal in Brazil, and people are being fined and jailed when caught.
I'd call you a language pirate, but I believe you did do some damage when you used it.
If Oracle slowly kills MySQL through neglect, it could have ramifications for the broader economy, unless another database software (e.g. PostgreSQL) can fill the void.
What you said. PostgreSQL is teh awesome, IMHO. I actually hope that Oracle pooches MySQL to the point that it benefits PostgreSQL.
Fortunately, it's all based on the SQL standard, but there are still differences between RDBMS's that developers will need to learn to switch.
Alas, SQL is as standard as BASIC. They have a superficial similarity, but none of them really interoperate.
It wasn't too long ago that it was credibly rumored that Sun might buy Apple. Lately, it would have made more sense for the opposite to be true.
And me without my points.
I think part of the point of the Air is that making memory user installable costs weight and size. They went to extremes to minimize both (further extremes that Dell, apparently), and in the process fixed the RAM configuration.
The only thing in it's favor is the higher max RAM (Apple will probably change that) and the integrated 3G option (I'd expect Apple to change that too).
Why?
I can almost see a case being made for 3 GB of RAM instead of 2 (for folks to run a VM with Windows, perhaps), but if you want higher performing graphics, you're going to see either an increase in weight or a decrease in battery life, neither of which is acceptable in that form factor product.
I suspect that Dell didn't get the memo, which is why theirs is heavier and louder.
The reason those other options are not used is cost:benefit. The Pharos advantage in architecting the pyramids was that they perceived a benefit that justified outlandish costs. We in western society don't put nearly that much value in our buildings. On the contrary, we benefit greatly by replacing them with new ones on a regular basis. Las Vegas today is a lot nicer than it was only 20 years ago, just as an example. When a building only has to last a hundred years, it's a lot less costly than when it is designed to last an eternity.
This might be funny if it were even close to being true.
Hmm. Naw, it's still funny. It must just be you. Maybe it's the pedantry. Yeah. Definitely the pedantry.
The computer you typed your post on...is it made of tea leaves?
No, but the site it talked to was made of perl.
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Tip the veal and try the waitress.
Yeah, well, it's a lot easier to make something structurally sound if it's not expected to have the same occupancy load that would be required for a modern western city. There weren't nearly as many Incans as there are Italians. Particularly since the former weren't Catholics.