Why not set to auto reboot?
Seems odd a sign would not attempt an auto reboot, obviously if it fails to boot multiple times the repair menu normally comes up.
Today's addition to the encyclopaedia of borkage comes courtesy of some digital signage sat next to ticket machines in the fair city of Southampton, UK. Southampton ticket machine BSOD Click to enlarge It is a return to form for our old friend, the blue screen of death (BSOD), although in sideways form. Either the screen is …
There are amazing railway stations from the Victorian and Edwardian eras all over the world.
They are a testament to the huge contribution that the railways made to both trade and freedom of movement.
Just the cast iron work in some of the structures, in terms of size and decoration, couldn't be made economically even with modern technology.
I'm not sure his his claim of "the most famous clock in London" stacks up... it's just a clock high up above the station that few people even realise is there (or that it was working)
Famous London clocks... Big Ben, Fortnum & Mason, 'Little Ben', "under the clock at Charing Cross"... and,erm...
The architect of the Milan station was apparently somewhat enamoured of a certain Italian dictator who had a penchant for statement architecture that sang the praises of his political opinions.
The station's architect is by no means as infamous as Albert Speer (obviously, in that his name escaped me only moments after it was mentioned on the documentary), but clearly there were similarities in style and purpose.
Recently made the journey from Singapore to Penang by rail. All of the stations were purely functional modern architecture except Kuala Lumpur. While the main KL Sentral was a cavernous concrete and steel multi level thing, the original Kuala Lumpur station, I think Edwardian vintage, is a fascinating pseudo-Indian Mughal architecture, combined with the KTMB (Malaysian Railways) headquarters across the road, quite astonishing.
I clocked that the picture was Southampton before reading the article even though I generally only go there once a year. In Paddington they have ticket machines with very large touch screens and one of those had a BSOD though I didn't have the presence of mind to photo it.
"Old fashoned"? Clicking through reveals a rather nice Art Deco façade. Those unit pavers out the front don't look period-correct though,
Back in the 1930s, they didn't have advertising kiosks running Windows, but they did tend to have advertising posters using nice graphic design.
Actually it was John Saxby in 1856 that was granted the first patent for a system of interlocking railway signalling to ensure the correct sequence of operation and prevention of conflicting route setting. Although as early as 1843 a system of mechanical points interlocking was operating at Bricklayers Arms Junction in England. I suppose one could view such mechanical computers as the first programmable railway infrastructure. There was also a complex system of electrical communication between signal boxes and even between stations by way of coded bells, and all train movements and communications used to be logged in massive ledgers in the signal boxes. It's a fascinating insight into process... there were special bells for direction, line, the class of train (goods, passenger express, special service etc.), destination... and it was all signalled downstream ahead of the arrival of the train itself, like a virtual representation of the train travelling ahead of and parallel to it. A Victorian version of a hybrid circuit/packet switched network.
The signalling might be thought of as that... but it's the railway itself I was referring to, with the information about the train being considered as an analogy to header information and the train as the payload. There's an element of the whole route of the train being known in advance, akin to circuit switching, but during the journey the route is set block by block in response to information "carried" by the train, akin to packet switching. Though the train is not broken up and arrivies at its destination in one pieces rather than needing to be reassembled... apart from the old system of slip coaching of course which sounds like a horrendous idea.
And the word circuit wasn't attached to hybrid. Hybrid was attached to the distinction between circuit switching and packet switching, and suggesting an intermediate situation where circuits where switched to convey traffic from one routing point to the next routing point rather than being established end-to-end, used, then torn-down. One might say that packet switching does similar, but the ROUTE is not laid down or pre-defined in packet switching, whereas with railway switching it is.
American here, and I read stories like this with amusement. Outside of a few coastal cities, most people live their entire lives without seeing an active train station. If you want to see one, it is likely a museum, and you have to get into your car... sorry big gigantic SUV... and drive 100 miles to see it.
Trains were a goner in the US for passenger travel as soon as air took hold. The sheer size of the US means cross-country travel takes days. For example, *driving* Brighton to New Caste is around 6 hours (according to Google), where 6 hours from Philadelphia gets me to Pittsburgh, and I haven't even left the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Then, the US built a tremendous network of roads and auto companies bought up train operators and put them out of business. It's little wonder trains didn't take hold here.
Worse, regulations slow trains down to a crawl. A little quick research shows it is about 2430 train-miles (3910km, or 177925 brontosauruses) from San Diego to New York. It's real passenger service, in that there are 9 trains leaving SD for NY per day. The fastest makes the trip in just over 72 hours on a good day (or three). That's an average of about 33.7 MPH (54 KPH, or 0.0005% of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum) ... I can drive cross country faster than taking the train. And for two or more people, it's cheaper to drive. Sad, that.
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It occurs to me that ElReg needs a couple of units of length that are slightly longer than a London bus or a brontosaurus.
May I suggest a pair of units, the Bars[0] (at 3.4km, 155ish Brontosauruses) and the Hadrian (at 117.5km, or 839285.7143 Linguini (obviously)).
For a unit of negative measurement, perhaps the Trump (93 miles (150 km, or 2338 Devon fatbergs) of unnecessary replacement, no actual new wall to date) would be appropriate.
[0] Not bar, Bars. See: York. And have a homebrew while you think about it, not that that has anything to do with it ... but it can't hurt.
Trains were a goner in the US for passenger travel as soon as air took hold.
I haven't been a frequent visitor to the USA, but I have had the opportunity to sample the rail services on a couple of occasions.
In 1984 (I think it was) I travelled from Philadelphia to Washington DC by train -- no sorry, it wasn't a train it was a "Metroliner", which was slightly more expensive, made the same journey slightly faster, and (more important to me, at the time) was leaving in only 15 minutes. That was OK -- a bit like an Intercity train in the UK. As I recall the main booking hall of Philadelphia Station was quite magnificent -- I rather wished I had more time to enjoy it.
More recently (but still around a couple of decades ago) SWMBO and I travelled from Boston (not in Lincolnshire) to New York by train. That worked, too, though we rather got the impression that this was not regarded as the prestigious way to travel. Cost more than flying, but only about the same as taxis to and from the respective airports would have done, and the stations were conveniently placed.
Come on, you're selling yourself a bit short here. Can remember "your" Chicago Grand Central on my way to Minneapolis. The main hall was pretty grand TBH. And while we're on the subject anyway, what about NY Grand Central? I mean, if you want a good example of art deco, there you are. Talking about clocks: nice clock on the info stand BTW. When I was there, there were a lot of people in that museum who seemed to be going somewhere...
I'm in metro-Cincinnati. There is a beautiful Art-Deco train station 15 minutes drive from me. But it is now a big museum. I could be the victim of old information but the last I heard there was one Amtrack train a week stopping there, and it arrived at 2am. That train station is in a neighborhood that you do NOT want to be in at 2am.
I've just listened to an episode of BBC Radio 4's "The Infinite Monkey Cage", which featured Chris Hadfield and a number of astronauts dating back to Apollo. It was an excellent program in general, but the point relevant to Borkage was when the Soyuz needed rebooting on the launchpad prior to take-off. Chris Hadfield described how all three of them were laid there, waiting, things not going well, being asked to press the relevant button.
Some moments later, the Windows XP just-booted jingle sounded out inside the capsule. A most notable sound to hear, in a rocket, with hundreds of tons of rocket fuel just below one's seat, about to be lit...
Happily all went well thereafter.
Not the ideal place to see a Blue Screen of Death. Soyuz is fairly old, but it has been upgraded in all that time, to some extent. I also wondered if they used a retail or OEM licensed version...