The runs on the LU are too short to do staff-changes in this way. It's easier to just have the new crew take over at some station. Most suburbab trains here don't have staff-cars. Staff who are travelling to a point do so in the passenger cars.

In Australia, there are runs from Melbourne to Darwin, or Sydney to Perth, which are handled by sets of on-board crew, these change at various places where there is no staff-room or even town. Because there are a lot of companies operating, each company would provide its own facilities, and as such one would have a coach behind the engines, where the off-duty crew would ride on.

The Inlander is a main-line passenger train from Townsville to Mt Isa, of some 600 miles. Mount Isa is the terminus, is an unstaffed halt, so the train-crew do things there too. The journey used to be 24 hours when I travelled on it, and they don't have staff-points along the way.

The Pilbara routes are short enough to do the trip in a day. But runs typically in the 600 mile run get staff-cars. The Westlander and Inlander in Qld run staff-rooms in the van. The main reasons for putting on staff-cars are to be able to close remote engine-sheds, like Charleville and Cloncurry.

My brother worked coal trains, and they would depending on the company, work to Mooronbah (where quarters were provided), or crew change at points halfway between depots, so in and out of copperbella.,

It's interesting that AC says that 'decisions about the control of the train are done in real time on the train' and then says 'these trains operate without any people on them'. This sounds like some kind of on-board computer is in place, so what are the people in Perth who oversee all this do?

The trains are being drive remotely, rather like the London Tube trains have been for years. There's still someone at the controls, but no one on the footplate. This means you can change staff half-way through a trip, without requiring a staff-car attached.

Given that in the news too, is where BHP derailed a train that ran away from the driver (who was inspecting the train), they used remote signalling control to throw a set of points and run it into a passing loop with no escape, it would be interesting. But this is a run-away train, the sort that has happened many times before on suburban networks.

I imagine that to forfill the full function of the driver, one needs to deal with the likes of hot axle boxes, cracked and broken tyres, and all sorts of other things before it would be fully remote.

The problem, I think, is that the overall model is lost. That programing has become something different to doing things on the computer.

In younger days, I could program Lotus for DOS, even doing clever things like programmically hiding lines in print, or adding one's own menu to a spreadsheet. Then Windows came along, and it was all hidden in things like VBA. It no longer was a copy of the commands with logic.

When you could get into files, and see what was needed, you could program for it. I used an RTF file as a batch for a rexx processor, that created documents based on the user input file, and checking the file you could produce good copies of letters. It's a lot harder to do this with a binary file.

I still use REXX. It's a simple language, and IBM envisaged it as the glue of the OS. But they did not lock it up like visual basic. The thing is an extension of the command prompt, and you can write neat filters for things, or fiddle with INI and registry, and create desktop icons from a batch. The current install on my computer is to copy a directory structure, and run the batch file to create links to lots of programs.

This is one of the things that eventually forced me to shutdown Facebook for good. I got sick and tired of seeing the same posts over and over. Then I'd switch from "most popular" to "newest", and what do know? There were tons of posts that I never saw because Facebook declined to include them in my feed.

Just let me see what I want to see, not what you think I should see.

The thing with using paragraphs, sentences, etc, is that it allows one to bite off bits of information. We already use em-dashes to mark off particular clauses we wish to emphersise -- to this point -- but now argue about spaces. White-space helps the reader catch the large-scale of the text. Setting a sentence off in double-space is one devise that does this. Even in the font i type here, it is easier to pick sentences off.

Paragraphs are likewise set off by a blank line, or first-line indent. Where first-line indent is not permitted, then one should use blank line separation. Quotes and examples should be set in an indented paragraph, where the quote is the paragraph.

Bold text is appropriate if one wants the text to stand out on the page at first glance. Highlighted text that is meant to be emphersised in context should be in italic.

As they say: Gawd help all of us.

49 other states didn't want it? And yet the article says this is following Delaware, Massachusetts and Oregon who passed similar laws recently. Do you want to revise your opinion after reading the article or persist in your ignorance?

It would seem that the IBM plug-issue as a method of regulating third-party trade might rear its ugly head here. The purpose of some of Apple's 'innovations' are not new ideas, but to prevent an aftermarket of things.

Models and dice. "Gaming" comprises more than just mashing buttons on a keyboard or controller.

But if you oppose a living minimum wage, then you support slavery
Do you not know what a slave is? If I volunteer at the local soup kitchen, does that make me a slave? By YOUR definition, it does. However, slaves are considered property and have no choices. I can throw down my apron and walk out of the soup kitchen. A slave does not have that choice.
In the context of this discussion, if a "slave" doesn't like his wages, he's free to quit, making him not really slave. If he wants to make better wages, he needs to make himself worth more to employers. That's how freedom works.

Add to that the fact that vendors will hoard the money rather than reinvest them
How exactly do vendors "hoard" their money? Do they:
1) Expand to make even more money
2) Cash it out and put in their own pockets
3) Invest it using other means such as bonds or stock market
4) Stick in the bank
5) Buy a giant Scrooge McDuck style safe to store stacks of $100 bills and gold coins.

In the case of 1 and 3, the money goes back into the economy. The business expands, creating more jobs by the expansion itself or running the now larger business.
In the case of Number 2, you need to ask the question again, "How exactly do the stock holders 'hoard' their money?" The answers don't really change. Even if they build mansions, someone has to gather the materials, construct the home, fill it with furniture, and then maintain the house by keeping it clean and repaired. Even this keeps people employed.
Number 4 is an option some use, but it's temporary. Even then, the bank will load the money back out to other businesses or individuals who will also spend the money, expanding the economy.
Number 5, of course, is what you think happens, but that's simply not reality.

Either way, you are missing a basic economic fact, ALL MONEY IS SPENT, and by spending that money, the economy expands. The more money being made, the more the economy grows. Profit is what happens when you increase the value of resources. Profit, by definition, makes the economy larger, meaning more money for everyone.

So you can stop with your rich-envy.