Maybe Martin was expecting a punched card reader instead? ;-)

It's not as silly as it sounds. The 80-column punched card specification has been unchanged since IBM patented it in 1928 - long before computers - and data can be input mechanically, without using an electrical device. I learned to do that safely (without RSI) during a summer job in 1969, and it defined the way I'm typing this today! [use middle fingers, not index fingers]

I really wasn't meaning it to be silly actually Richard as the finance computers (you know,big clunky things with a number of huge magnetic reel cabinets) at several places I knew of back in the 70's and early 80's (you know,big clunky things with a number of huge magnetic reel cabinets) and their updates had to be done using a punched card reader and 747's were around back then too. ;-)

Cheers.

Yup, that was exactly my experience - summer job in the HQ / data processing centre of a big insurance company, big tape reels and all.

I think it was an ICT 1301.

What do you do when the local airstrip is out of commission due to rain? Use the highway of course.
RFDS use highway to save stroke victim.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Provisional Rail Accident report published:

Passenger train derailment near Carmont – updated 21/08/2020

Three people were killed when the train, after being halted to avoid a landslip ahead, hit a second landslip when returning to a principal station to disembark the passengers.

Note that the driver, on the outward journey, would have passed the site of the second, fatal, landslip, and presumably observed that the line was clear. But the train was stationary in atrocious weather for two hours: the second landslip, I presume, happened during that interval. Or perhaps it was even triggered by the vibration from the same train on its outward journey?

It struck me from the photographs of the original incident, and is confirmed by today's report, that the train was travelling at considerable speed when it hit the fatal landslip. Was that wise under the circumstances?

Unbelievable

This content is not available in your location

Picture a demolition derby, but on a public road with other traffic on it......

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Unbelievable

This content is not available in your location

Try this link. ;-)

https://www.elystandard.co.uk/news/shocking-gta-game-style-video-filmed-in-east-cambs-1-6803113

Cheers.

VIDEO: Runaway Tire Crashes into House at 65 MPH

Link to Video

The tire instantly bounced off a tree root and took out the house’s left pillar, before taking out the mailbox on the front lawn. The smoking tire even rings the doorbell before wiggling to a stop in the grass, still smoking from the road....

---

I bet they couldn't do that again if they tried.
So glad nobody was in its flight path.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

As if things aren't already interesting enough when it coms to transport safety, they appear to be not too far away from becoming even more so.
Meet George Jetson... Japan wants flying cars in its skies by 2023 — and they might actually pull it off

And there is the huge challenge of regulating traffic at an altitude of 150 metres — somewhere between the maximum height of a consumer drone and a helicopter. "When we have cars on a road, we have things like traffic lights and stop signs and roundabouts. Everybody knows what to do," the University of New South Wales' Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Design Sonya Brown said. "With electric vehicles up in the air, we need these vehicles to be able to talk to each other. We can't put a stop sign up in the air.
"We need a lot of thought about how we're going to control the traffic to make this work and what happens if something goes wrong up there."

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I wonder what decibels that thing puts out?

It could be like having thousands of petrol powered chainsaws, lawn movers, brushcutters and leaf blowers going over your head by the time they do it. :-O

Cheers.

As if things aren't already interesting enough when it coms to transport safety, they appear to be not too far away from becoming even more so.
Meet George Jetson... Japan wants flying cars in its skies by 2023 — and they might actually pull it off

And there is the huge challenge of regulating traffic at an altitude of 150 metres — somewhere between the maximum height of a consumer drone and a helicopter. "When we have cars on a road, we have things like traffic lights and stop signs and roundabouts. Everybody knows what to do," the University of New South Wales' Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Design Sonya Brown said. "With electric vehicles up in the air, we need these vehicles to be able to talk to each other. We can't put a stop sign up in the air.
"We need a lot of thought about how we're going to control the traffic to make this work and what happens if something goes wrong up there."

Need to be sure an intentional bad actor can't leverage the communications to cause death. Also must handle a no communications device.

As if things aren't already interesting enough when it coms to transport safety, they appear to be not too far away from becoming even more so.
Meet George Jetson... Japan wants flying cars in its skies by 2023 — and they might actually pull it off

And there is the huge challenge of regulating traffic at an altitude of 150 metres — somewhere between the maximum height of a consumer drone and a helicopter. "When we have cars on a road, we have things like traffic lights and stop signs and roundabouts. Everybody knows what to do," the University of New South Wales' Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Design Sonya Brown said. "With electric vehicles up in the air, we need these vehicles to be able to talk to each other. We can't put a stop sign up in the air.
"We need a lot of thought about how we're going to control the traffic to make this work and what happens if something goes wrong up there."

Of course, if only because most of them will still follow the road system to get from A to B and so all crossings and junction points are going to be chaos city.

12' Bridge, 14' bus

12' Bridge, 14' bus

Did the two short planks belong to the bus driver or his dispatcher?

Or did they share the honours?

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Or did they share the honours?

They could pick one short plank each and duel it out at dawn...

12' Bridge, 14' bus

Did the two short planks belong to the bus driver or his dispatcher?

Whilst the dispatcher may get some blame, it's down to the driver to read all relevant road signs, whether on poles or bridges. Unless the driver suffered a medical mishap, he/she should be fired and have his/her PSV licence revoked, forthwith.

P.

---