off topic: new car advice for senior

We do computer aided dispatch for emergency responders and a good deal of my work is on the GIS side. Some of the GIS data we get is enough to give you heartburn. I've got a couple of tools I've developed that runs a sanity check on the data.

Do that for a while and you get a certain respect for Google's maps. Of course, Google has more people just working on their map product than we have in the whole company.

The worst is Puerto Rico. They're not very imaginative so they keep recycling street names in the same political boundary, if they bother naming the street. Street numbers are highly optional too. There's a USPS document that details addressing requirements and conventions. After doing their best to explain PR they eventually admit mail delivery often comes down to the letter carrier knowing who lives where in their part of town.

I haven't been in DC for years but the last time I got out of the touristy part I was wishing for a Bradley.

The city engineer here fell in love with roundabouts. Often that consists of planting flowers in the middle of the intersection of residential streets. They don't last too long. Being residential areas they tend to attract moving vans. 18 wheelers only bend in one place.

Some are larger and work fairly well. One I loathe is bigger than the flower pot version but is still too small. one car will fit into each quadrant but it's impossible to tell when the driver intends to leave the circle so all traffic stops until people figure out what the driver is going to do.

The same engineer also loves bulb outs. I guess the theory is if you extend the sidewalk out into the street the pedestrians will have a shorter dash. What it means in practice is the bike lane you've been pedaling down suddenly ends and you're forced out into the traffic lane.

Don't you love that? The IBM 5110 had a way to 'lock' the BASIC source code on the floppies. They also threw a binary disk editor into the software set. Lemme see... locked source has these bits in the header set, unlocked doesn't. Bingo!

I have a friend who lives in England. His *house* has a *name*! WTF? Do you have to commit every house name to memory in order to get around?? (The house's name is unrelated to *his* name; sort of like vanity addresses in the US -- though I expect these are more "historical addresses"... like "Paul Revere's House")

Yeah. Something about "left hand" and "right hand" and their knowledge of each other's actions springs to mind! :>

I was tasked with bringing up a fairly large bit of ATE on a subcontract to one of the IBM divisions. Used a "series 1" (IIRC) minicomputer to drive the test program (used to verify that the device we had built was performing according to spec).

Test procedure (script of some sort) resided on an 8" floppy.

Many of the tests were incredibly long (time wise) -- e.g., memory test. As a result, if you ran those tests in the test suite, you were unable to get many "passes" in an 8 hour shift. And, tedious to select just *one* particular test (esp if you've made some change to the device that could cause some other test to fail -- without your being aware of that fact cuz you're focused on another test!).

System came with facilities to "edit files" (IIRC, similar to a hex editor as the "script" wasn't in an "English" language). So, I'd routinely patch the test floppy to eliminate the lengthy tests (that I "knew" would pass) so i could concentrate on the tests that were catching faults.

Time for sell-off came. IBM technician came out. Lots of handshakes all around (they're happy cuz we're done; we're happy cuz we're getting PAID! :> ).

Sat down for the test (hours!). Memory test came up and announced itself: Testing memory. Go for coffee. Technician frowned. Test never said "Go for coffee" before!

Ooops! *Busted*.

He calmly opened his briefcase and pulled out *his* copy of the floppy and said, "Shall we start, again?"

There used to be a traffic circle near here, that had a lot of traffic (5 highways). It was often blocked because a truck was going too fast and fell over. That circle has been replaces with a light.

There is another circle about 15 miles away, but it's not on any major highways and gets little traffic.

I've frequently seen trucks wedged under low underpasses. It's not the underpasses' fault. :>

A dongle is livable. Something like Superlok that demands a file be written in a non-standard way, not so much. I recall we came in on two Mondays in a row with the entire network locked up because the backup had failed due to Lotus' copy protection failing verification.

Plans to replace Lotus with Excel were soon underway and it was gone by the next accounting cycle with only a few die hards having Lotus still on their desktops. When tech inquiries to Lotus made it clear they weren't going to work with us on the subject of failed restores we chose another option.

There are still plenty of industrial programs that use dongles, but very few that I know of that use deliberately corrupted media. (Ducks in fear that I will now learn about all the software that still uses corrupt media to protect their IP).

That traffic circle out by Flesh Pond was never in any danger of hitting freeway speeds. I lived in Springfield for a couple of years and had to get a MA DL. The only thing I remember from the written test was the one law pertaining to rotaries: thou shalt go counter-clockwise.

There was only one traffic circle near where I grew up. If nothing else rotaries were associated with Massachusetts and in New York we remembered how we almost had our own private little war with Massachusetts during the Revolution.

The takeaway message from that article is:

"Prior to the 2002 work, the accident rate at the circle was about one per week, but were of low severity."

That's the one known and loved here. They're a blast on the bike and they're doable at a fairly brisk speed in the Yaris. For the favored ride, a F250 with the long bed and extended crew cab, they're a great way to destroy a couple of hundred bucks worth of tires.

I like the part about bicyclists having a choice. Become a pedestrian for a while or die.

https://www.google.com/maps/@46.9198963,-114.0713645,179m/data=!3m1!1e3

I don't know how well the link will work, but it's a real gem. It's your basic traffic circle except if you're just taking the first 90 degree right leg there is a lane outside of the circle. You can also do that from the circle but it's pretty awkward. The signage sucks so there are quite a few oh s*it moments as drivers realize they're in the wrong lane for whatever they wanted to do. Luckily, despite the grandiose street names it's a low traffic area.

DVD video relies on this heavily.

Ages ago, floppy "key disks" were "marginalized" -- so that their contents were not *reliably* read. The verification software simply tried to read them several times. If it got consistent results, it knew this was a forged copy. If the data changed "mysteriously", it knew that this was a genuine medium that was deliberately "flakey".

You have to show some sympathy for (pure) software vendors -- folks that don't ALSO sell a piece of hardware that their software uses/runs on. I always chuckle when I hear folks wanting "free" -- yet also wanting to be *paid* for THEIR work efforts! The Other Guy is always OVERPAID; but never oneself! :>

I note the large numbers of folks who run FOSS and suspect that many of them do so simply because it is "Free". They simply don't want to have to PAY for these "products" and will "settle" for things that are inferior, lack any sort of support, etc. JUST to avoid paying for them! They also seem to be the sorts of folks who don't value their own time.

If you could have a "free" car but had to spend an hour running around pushing levers, adjusting settings, mixing fuel, etc. just to get an hour's worth of use out of it, would you? Knowing that you'll have to do the same thing *tomorrow* for an hour's use at that time?

Would you use a "free" cellphone (exclusively) if the chances of getting signal were 50% at any given time?

How much time would you be willing to post comments on user forums HOPING to find a GENUINE solution to the problem you are having trying to get your FOSS spreadsheet program to calculate your income tax bracket before you could file your tax return?

How many times will you tolerate downloading and installing updates in the *hope* that something that you are having problems with gets fixed? How much RISK do you run that those updates don't BREAK something else? Or, change its behavior in a way that sends you scurrying back to those same forums asking how you NOW perform the task that you previously KNEW how to perform?

Someone has to pay for the efforts of those developers. Just like someone has to pay for the doctor who treats/cures your malady, the accountant who balances your books, the farmer who grows your food, etc.

So, why is software considered different? Free to steal -- if not outright free?

Well, most of the time. People have been know to repave and not change the signs. I took some time away from the high tech world in the 90's and drove a truck OTR, something I wanted to do when I was a kid. I had a delivery in Brooklyn so I snuck in at 3 AM. I got off the BQE and soon came to an underpass marked 12'. This was before GPSs and the thought of exploring Brooklyn with a 53' trailer in tow wasn't appealing. I was contemplating my next move when another trucker stopped, told me they had reworked the underpass and never changed the signs so I was good to go. I crept under, expecting to hear bad noises, but he was right.

Boston was the real joy, particularly Memorial Drive. It's well marked and accurate, but Mom & Pop bringing junior and his junk to Harvard or MIT in a rented U-Haul don't think the signs pertain to them.

Traffic moved through there at a pretty brisk pace when I lived near Spy Pond. Not 65MPH but surely not 35MPH. Come off 128, down 2 and zip around the rotary.

There were also two VERY large circles on the way to Melrose (?)... probably half mile or more in circumference?

Driver *in* rotary has the right of way. And, never 8stop* in rotary; if you screw up and find yourself in the wrong lane (larger rotaries) to make your desired exit, come around again! :>

There has been a push (though resisted) here for grade-separated intersections -- thru traffic (any direction) passes unimpeded. Folks wanting to exit or enter a roadway are forced to stop/merge. But, they are expensive to construct as you have to create artificial overpasses and underpasses.

Ours are obvious "afterthoughts". Someone decided that traffic in a particular area (typ residential) had increased and didn't want to invest in a stop sign! So, let's totally screw things up with this "pile of debris" in the middle of the roadway (doing nothing to increase the size/width of the intersection -- just placing obstacles in the middle!)

I've seen circles where there is an *inner* set of "paths". Others that allow you to enter the rotary and essentially make a U-turn -- heading back *out* the way you came in! (in England, they have some weird variations on this -- you never know which way someone in the intersection is likely to go!)

As with much of driving, folks who are hesitant tend to be the ones who muck things up! "Sh*t or get off the pot!"

It's hard to believe that MS, Intel and ARPA both thought we would all be one big happy family of computer users and security wasn't really necessary. Hence the net and PCs have been insecure from the ground up for a long time.

They are real popular in New Zealand (we were just there) and I am aware of how they are supposed to work from DC but the problem comes when the traffic overwhelms the circle. Because the car in the circle has the right of way, if it is a steady line of cars entering up stream of you, there is never a chance to enter. Then they have to install a light on the feeder roads and all of the advantages of the circle fade away. It also becomes an issue when they have multiple lanes. Even if you know where you are going, getting into the correct lane can be a hassle. I understand they may be safer on paper but that is just because all of the crashes are "rubbin" not hitting. It doesn't mean people are not swapping paint.

They ended up tunneling under the biggest circles in DC to keep the cars moving.

BTW I doubt "defense" had anything to do with the layout in DC. L'enfant wanted it to be just like Paris.

Just the reverse here. I am getting into telemedicine and the iPhone has a lot of features that will be very useful.

I always found Storrow drive (esp around MGH) to be the one that got on my nerves, most. Too many roads that "had no place to grow up". Same sort of thing in NYC -- Henry Hudson, FDR, etc. I've learned that I *really* take comfort in median strips! A guardrail separating lanes with no shoulders and high traffic volume (at high speeds) doesn't set well with my peace of mind!

Here, we have bigger/wider/more divided roads IN TOWN!

The 'net was initially an elitist tool. Effectively "invitation only"; you counted on someone ELSE to get you *onto* it so "behaved responsibly". You always had someone who was effectively your benefactor (remember "bang" routing for mail??)

The PC's problem was that it was underpowered to start with. It was just a fancy CP/M machine -- single user, etc. Security was commonplace in bigger systems (MULTICS, etc.) but too troublesome to implement on a tiny dog like a PC (XT).

And, of course, MS was never an innovator. So, they just looked at CP/M and figured "good enough"...

How is that any different from cars "stopped" in the middle of an overloaded conventional intersection? The problem lies with the drivers, not the intersections.

Got me. I haven't been back in that area for close to 15 years.