Esp. after skimming some of the comments....

1. Amtrak was waiting for frequency bandwidth. Lawsuits... and I'd love to know how a company ended up with frequencies that were
                intended for safety communication.
2. After 9/11, for *months*, the pilots' union was saying that for trips under 300-400 mi, the train was very much the better option. Republicans,
                who are willing to spend tons of public money on airports, and to a lesser extent, roads, have *consistently* underfunded Amtrak.
3. Passenger rail travel, pre-Amtrak, was frequently a loss-leader for the freight business.
4. The idiot who thinks the cost of mass transit ia actually almost on par with Uber is an ignorant idiot. Clue: the regular ads from CSX, about
              moving a ton of freight 457 mi on one gallon of fuel.

And, for ironic grins, Boehner and Ryan denying that their personal refusal to fully fund Amtrak has *nothing* to do with the accident is what is
            known as "lying under oath", an impeachable offence. And, btw, for refusing to fund Amtrak so that they *could* have gotten this in
            sooner, are accessories to manslaughter.

                  mark

Quick questions:
  1.: what are the profits made by the major telecoms in the last year?
    2. what do the alleged false calls cost to
                a) the providers?
                b) the 911 call centers?
    3. What is the value of the 30+% that are *legitimate* screams for help, and the value of the lives if they can't make those calls?

                  mark

Which I had published in the now-defunct SysAdmin magazine in '06. http : //24.5-cent.us/egoless_docu.html

                  mark

Large, shiny reflective surfaces... it's a pair of Monoliths.

                        mark "would like to go there to investigate them...."

Unfortunately, so wrong that I don't know why I bother. See train, which has vastly fewer accidents than cars or busses, cruising by the traffic jams out of Philly and into NYC.

But then, let's also remember that
      a) after 9/11, for months, the pilots' union was saying that for trips under 300-400 mi, trains made *far* more sense, yet
      b) Congress loves throwing money to airports, and roads, but
      c) has yet to fully fund Amtrak.

And then there's outside the northeast corridor, which is where Amtrak owns the trackage and maintains it to high-speed passenger specs, the rest of the lines are leased from other railroads, who don't want to maintain them to the higher specs, and who frequently (there was just an article in mainstream media about this in the last week) will stop Amtrak to wait for their money-making freights.

                  mark

If that phone was on all the time... what *else* did he record? If I were her, I'd have a warrant for the records of what was stored on the phone, or uploaded. I mean, those things have cameras built in, and if it was tracking her all the time... AND HE KNEW WHERE SHE'D BEEN, so he was personally looking at what she was doing off-time, could he have turned on the phone and recorded her personal life?

                  mark

As I'm older than most of you, I remember when The Web!!! was the new big thing, in the mid-nineties, and how M$ went to destroy Netscape, because there *was* talk at the time about browser as desktop.

                    mark

Or just turn it off. Unless they were giving her a 110% for being available off-hours, and double-time on weekends....

                    mark "alternatively, give it back to the boss... as a suppository"

But I suppose almost everyone here is a twentysomething....

                mark

Another datum proving that what Americans know of socialism is exactly what a Good German (tm) knew of Jews in the late 1930's.

Yes, evil socialism. We know how nasty the socialist dictatorships are in, um, Norway and Sweden, and under the British Labour Party, and the French socialists (the ruling party).

              mark "there are two kinds of Republicans (and libertarians): millionaires, and suckers"*

* And since you're posting here, we know you're not rich....

It's that critter that William Shattner saw on the plane's wing....

                mark

From the party of "I'm not a scientist" (but I question what they all say, because I have the Real Answer, which involves God (tm) creating the world 6k years ago, complete with false fossils and strata and radioisotopes, whatever th' hayull they are).

                    mark

I have a friend who teaches at Catholic colleges around the US half the year. One of the classes he teaches is "science for non-science majors". Some years ago, he went down the food chain of the majors that take the course: next to the bottom were the business majors, who didn't get it, but didn't let that worry them. At the very bottom were the communications majors, who didn't get it, and didn't know that they didn't get it. Those, of course, are the folks who go into "journalism" (and HR, and...), which explains why we get so many idiot headlines. And the way they through around "intergalactic" and warp drive, I wouldn't be surprise to see them refer to a small airport for small private planes only as an intercontinental airport for supersonic planes.....

                    mark

Geez, is the idiot running this the same one who was going to have a Koran burning?

How 'bout I have a Bible burning? How would any of you feel about that (ok, I see the guns coming out, that answers that).

Wonder how fast I could burn a Bible... maybe add liquid O2?

                  mark

Or maybe I'll pirate views of them. Give Disney money for screwing the US?

                mark