The Toronto line failed because it basically only catered to rich business travelers. By only having two stops — downtown and airport — it significantly constrained its TAM just to shave a few minutes off of its travel time.
California HSR goes to San Francisco, Millbrae, San Jose, Gilroy, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Hanford, Bakersfield, Palmdale, Burbank, Los Angeles, and Anaheim. It provides frequent single-seat rides between every origin-destination pair of these cities. Many of these routes don't currently have any similar commercial air service (or the air service that does exist has very high fares due to low competition and scale), so HSR is providing new connectivity that didn't exist before.
The San Jose to Bakersfield segment is scheduled to begin operating in 2021. It will provide 1 hour travel time between Fresno and San Jose[1]. High speed rail isn't replacing regional rail -- it's providing it over a much longer distance than would otherwise be possible.
Regional rail facilitates regular trips between satellite cities and core cities, usually for commuting. Fares on Metro North/MARC/Metra/SEPTA are on the order of $5. On the California HSR, the fare from Fresno to San Francisco is estimated to be over $60. That puts it completely out of the ballpark of regional rail into Amtrak territory.
1. I posit (without evidence, because I'm lazy) that most people who buy "fast" new cars are more concerned about image than the actual performance specifications. For example, I suspect that the vast majority of original owners of Corvettes never take their cars to the racetrack. And in terms of image, number of cylinders and liters of engine displacement are much higher priority than dyno readouts.
2. More combustion chambers in an engine = higher power, higher manufacturing cost, and lower fuel economy. If you have less than $2000 to spend on a car, and you spend it on a 1980's V8, it's probably going to be slower than a three-cylinder 1.0L 2016 Ford Focus. But it's still probably the fastest option in your price range, so it's a good representation of how much you value performance in the car you choose to buy.
This is a great explanation. I'd add one small clarification:
> Back to four stroke engines: Momentum and the firing of other pistons keeps the whole thing cycling back around
The firing of other pistons helps, but really, momentum alone is sufficient. There are tons of single-cylinder, 4 stroke motorcycle, scooter, and off-highway engines out there.
There are LED bulbs on the market that have great compatibility with all dimmers. I hope that market forces eventually weed out all of the less compatible LED bulbs. At that point, LED bulbs should be truly interchangeable with incandescents for lighting (heat generation, not so much).
I've got a few of the good ones for dimmers, I have however had a problem with them still. They're too efficient, all of the dimmers I have don't got low enough to be able to actually get them dark at the low end. They're all still fairly bright and I've already gone to bulbs rated at half of what I had originally. I think it's just something that's going to take a bit to actually catch up properly.
True, but it depends. I bought a bunch (16?) of top-end Soraa MR16 bulbs at about $30 apiece to replace the halogens in my new house. This is not something everyone can easily afford.
Of course, it turns out that even though they have great dimmer compatibility, they're not 100% compatible with my magnetic dimmers. I have to trim them to 80% of peak; if I try to run them over 80%, the transformer resets and the bulb turns off. Sometimes they strobe for a few seconds when they're running at max brightness, I haven't solved that issue yet.
So unless I want to replace every transformer at ~$60 a pop or more (plus labor costs if not doing it yourself), plus likely a bunch of switches.. It's either $100 per bulb to go LED, or suffer with not-quite-perfect replacements.
I think often the answer is "you won't know until you try it". Forward-phase, reverse-phase, symmetrical... Low voltage in particular makes things more complicated.
Why can't the LED controller circuits come with a calibration feature that detects (with user help) the minimum level the dimmer will support, and makes that the all-black point?
Partly because the usual minimum level the dimmer will support is off. That is the all black point :)
I know what you mean though. It'd be nice if there was some way to adjust them to change the brightness curve to match what you'd expect. It's one reason I'm considering something like the Phillips Hue bulbs instead of dimmers in the future despite the cost difference.
NOW there are LEDs on the market. I'm a bit of bulb person and have tried all sorts of LEDs. The other problem is that many of the LED bulbs used to look bad if they were not in a shade. Fortunately that situation has also improved.
In m_st's defense, this wasn't really an "arcade" version of SMB, but rather they took an NES, slapped 10 games in it, and put it in an arcade cabinet (not literally, but functionally).
Most games that originated on the arcade and later became console games were usually ports. However, in the case of PlayChoice 10, all of these games originated on the NES, and were "ported" (but mostly unmodified) from the NES.
So when sehugg thought they were playing an arcade game, they were actually playing a (slightly modified) NES.
Mario Bros. arcade was ported to the NES, and it was modified. [1]
That's a distinction without a difference. Sega built arcade hardware almost identical to their SG-1000 console and ported some of its games to it. Most Neo-Geo arcade "MVS" cartridges were the same as the home "AES" carts except for the physical connector and arcade-specific stuff (checking for coin switches).
There's no platonic ideal that makes an "arcade" game vs a home system. They come in all shapes & sizes of cabinets. Some take coins, some take cards, and some are kept on free play to keep kids from running around a restaurant screaming.
I'd say the only real difference between an arcade game and a home game is where they were meant to be played.
Agreed. My point is that back then, most console versions of arcade games were "watered down" software ports after the fact. PlayChoice 10 was one of the first, more popular exceptions to this (the software remained practically unchanged).
There was the Playchoice release and also Vs Super Mario Bros. Vs Super Mario Bros is a true arcade version of SMB, which had harder and different levels from the home version.
Usually, older aircraft that are being phased out are mothballed shortly before their next heavy maintenance check. And the resale value of used aircraft, especially older ones, is heavily influenced by how soon the next D check is.
Because Comcast uses cable (instead of satellite), they actually have two-way communication with most of their equipment. And even one-way-only equipment (like CableCard and DTA) can still be restricted to only work on the encryption keys for a very small geographical area. If Comcast equipment is moved to a location other than the address where it's supposed to be, it usually won't work.
For what it's worth, a lot of bars and restaurants use DirecTV (it has popular exclusive sports packages). Even though it's satellite-based, I've never noticed any sort of "pub glass" or the licensing indicator. So I'm not sure how they enforce licensing.
The link you pasted says it's actually $189.95/month for the sport pack.
Also, this is aside from any premium sports subscriptions like NHL/NBA League Pass/NFL Sunday Ticket channels, which charge based on the occupancy of the bar/restaurant and costs thousands of dollars per year.
There is a great write up of why it failed here: http://humantransit.org/2016/03/keys-to-great-airport-transi...