The long answer (and previously blogged): the study was a before and after study that claimed that cell phone laws have no effect.  Such is the case when you don’t and can’t enforce it.  Cell phone bans are difficult to enforce (as are speed limits).  Most police departments have their hands full as it is, and their budgets are being affected (negatively) by the economy.  The original study was basically a before and after study of the same conditions on both sides.

Why Cell Phones and Driving Aren’t Dangerous | Psychology Today.

While a little odd, I applaud the mayor for experimenting with a low-cost, low-impact way to handle the problem.  I hope it works.

Romanian street sign warns drivers of ‘drunk pedestrians’ – Telegraph.

• For the $400 I would have spend on APA+AICP, I can have ITE+TRB, which are more vital to any transportation planner
• I really don’t want to be a member of APA.  It has done little for me, and Planning magazine has published questionable articles on more than one occasion.  One article even made me think that the author was high on drugs.  However, you cannot split APA and AICP.
• While the AICP Commission tried to make AICP actually mean something by requiring CM, their one step forward took two steps back when they attempted to use it as a money-making opportunity for APA and requires approval for all hours.  This means that if you go to Ohio Model User Group meetings or attend Travel Model Improvement Program webinars, you’re not getting any certification maintenance credit for it.  If you are a Professional Engineer or a Professional Transportation Planner (the certification through TCSB), you get credit for these things.

In keeping up with things going on in the field, I received an email from the Florida DOT Weekly Briefs.  In it, they had a link to “State of Transportation Planning 2010″.  They had an overview of some important topics (with suggested reading), but missed two, including:

• FINANCE. one of the biggest topics currently impacting transportation.
• SAFETY.  There are almost 40,000 people killed on America’s roads and another 300,000 injured.  Distracted driving has received a lot of attention because of the crashes that it causes and has the potential to cause.  Toyota has recalled some 8 million vehicles due to problems with sticking gas pedals, brakes, or steering.

Aside from the obvious blunders above, there are a few more that I think need to be pointed out.

First off, this is not a “state of” anything.  This is a very basic introductory document that points people to a few seemingly randomly selected works in that field.  Looking at the travel behavior section, there are several research works (and having met some of these authors, I know they are great resources).  The one thing that we already have as travel demand modelers that illustrates the “state of” is Transportation Research Board Special Report 288.  It is so vitally important to us that we know it by number (and it is the only one, in my case).  SR288 goes through in sometimes painful detail to talk about the state of travel forecasting.

Second off, policy is centered entirely around climate change.  They evidently haven’t been following Climategate, else they would have dropped the link to “Moving Cooler” (considering that areas near Washington DC received an uncharacteristic 5 feet of snow in some places, you’d think that might tip them off).  Obviously, the jury is still out on whether the globe is getting hotter or colder, but if you talk with real people, many feel that Global Warming isn’t occurring.  Stuff like that happens when you mess with data and hard code models for certain outputs.

So yeah, as Marty Brenaman (play-by-play radio host for the Cincinnati Reds) says quite often, “A swing and a miss”.

Here’s the link: TPD_State_of_Transportation.

The problem isn’t what Apple is doing by removing or denying, it is that there is no other alternative.

Think about grocery stores.  If you go through one with your young child and it prominently displays porn right when you walk in the door, you’re likely not going to return (with your child, at least), are you?  You would go to a different grocery store.  Depending on your values, you may NEVER return to that store, or you may return only when you don’t have your young child.  Heck, if you have certain values, you may return (likely without your child), and buy some of it.

That scenario above is exactly why the Apple App Store should NOT be the only store.  iPhone users should have the power to choose a different store if they want a different selection.

Will it happen?  No, of course not.  Apple wants the profits from the App Store.  They want control over the iPhone.  Unfortunately, people aren’t voting with their dollars on this one.

First off, the uneducated part.  Evidently the author hasn’t read around at the thousands of news articles discussing apps that were removed from the App Store that were not used to deliver porn, but to, say, sell swimsuits.  The author also didn’t look at another article from the same magazine, PC World, that brings up the fact that Sports Illustrated and Playboy are still available as apps in the app store.  If Playboy isn’t within their criteria of “sex-themed”, then I would question what criteria they are using.

Second off, the pandering to stupidity.  Sometimes people must understand that in the wild world of life and the Internet, there is going to be porn and smut.  It isn’t Apple’s job to police that, mostly because everyone’s values are different.  Apple SHOULD compartment questionable apps, like Playboy and the SI Swimsuit edition (perhaps by using age controls and a special section of the app store).

I know the big argument to this is “Apple is hosting the App Store and therefore can control what’s in it”.  That argument has a few flaws which I will discuss in a future post.

I carry a Blackberry because I don’t want Stevie controlling what I put on MY phone.

Link to full story: AppleInsider | Swimwear seller hit by Apple’s removal of ’sexual’ apps.

The reason I am continually testing to match is because despite being old and having some bugs that I’ve had to fix, the mode choice process is technically sound.  If I started from scratch, I probably would not have done something nearly as in-depth as this.

One of the other tasks I’ve done was a new transit model.  Our old transit network, skimming, and loading models were in TranPlan, which is way old and outdated.  While programming the Voyager upgrade, I did settings and parameters to get things in the range of the what was coming out of the old TranPlan model.  This means that when I actually get the new mode choice ready, I should be close to still having a calibrated model (not! and why in a paragraph!).

The experience with the new mode choice and distribution has enabled me to find bugs in the old mode choice and distribution software.  The bugs include:

• Incorrect file reading format
• Failure to reset certain variables to zero causing transit trips to be assigned when there is technically no transit available
• Potentially incorrect script to calculate auto operating cost in park-n-ride and kiss-n-ride situations

That "not!" from above has to do with that very first bullet.  There was an extra field in the read script causing a fixed file format input of:

ZONE    HH1    HH2    HH3    HH4
  10     33    147    301    132

To be read as:

ZONE    HH1    HH2    HH3    HH4
  10   33.1   47.3    1.1     32

This caused transit trips to drop by about 25%.  Re-calibration, here I come!

Tags: cube, voyager, fortran, programming, software, testing

I haven’t considered using it.  I just dropped MySpace (which is crap anyway), and I am active on Facebook and Twitter, and semi-active on LinkedIn and Flickr.

My concern with it is that based on some posts on Lifehacker (see this post and this post)that the security settings are difficult and not always intuitive – there was a post that likened Buzz to a megaphone.  Reading the comments, it sounds like Buzz is doing some stuff that it shouldn’t (posting tweets in conversations)… the comments on the two posts are quite interesting and worth a read as much as the articles.

Me?  I’m not passing judgement, but I’ve turned it off.

Turning off Buzz: log into GMail, scroll to the bottom, and click on the link in dinky print that says “turn off buzz”.

Consider this, particularly if you have purchased a home built in the last few years.  Most low-voltage wiring companies (Guardian, for example) run only two types of wire, RG-6 and CAT-5.  I personally think it has something with the (lack of) intelligence of their hiring pool, but that’s another issue altogether.  However, with all the phone lines being run as CAT-5 cable, you can easily replace the phone jacks with network jacks, and you can purchase IP phones for about $100 each.  The PBX, normally the expensive part of the equation, can be done with a halfway (only halfway by modern standards) machine running Asterisk open source IP PBX.  Heck, just about any geek has an extra computer collecting dust somewhere.

Imagine how much geek envy your friends would have when their calls are routed via an auto-attendant to the proper ring or phone, and when your spouse transfers their call to another phone.

No Storage

Looking at how much of my hard drive is devoted to my iTunes Library (40 GB) and thinking about what I would actually do with something that I don’t have to squint to look at, I would want more.  More Movies, probably.  More 1.5 GB movies, likely (I looked at the three movies I’ve ripped to my hard drive, and they range from 1.3 to 1.67 GB).  I could run out of space on even the 64 GB (most storage) model pretty quickly.  So why, then would I buy something with such limited storage?  Hell, I can get an iPod with 160 GB of storage!  Why can’t I even get half of that on the iPad?

Unreplaceable Battery

Why does Apple keep creating products that have batteries that are damn near impossible to change?  Does Stevie really expect us to buy more stuff when the batteries go bad?  This is probably going to be like the iPod and the Mac Mini that are extremely difficult to open?

App Store?

I’m guessing that most apps on the app store were written with the iPhone and iPod Touch in mind.  That being said, why then, would I want an app designed for a screen that is something like 1.5″x3″ on anything larger than maybe 2″x4″?  Heck, FB for Blackberry is great… ON MY BLACKBERRY!  It would completely suck on my MacBook Pro.  This “feature” isn’t one at all – it basically says that there are no apps for this thing (other than a few that Apple brought out) and it isn’t going to get better for a while (if it ever does).

No Card Reader?

When I heard that Stevie was showing photos in the media event, I figured that he would have the wherewithal to put a minimum of a CF and a SD card slot on the thing.  Guess I was wrong.  Not even a USB port for those that have their camera cable.

My Expectations

I EXPECTED an Apple tablet to be similar in form (but with a reasonably easy to replace battery) running a special version of Snow Leopard that would allow me to run programs like Safari, Mail, iPhoto, iMovie, Quicktime+iTunes, iCal, Address Book, and iWork.  I EXPECTED something that would have plenty of storage for all my music, movies, and pictures.  I’m not expecting something that could run Parallels, or have a Terminal interface… basically not a desktop replacement, but something better than an overpriced e-book reader.

I’ve heard of software unexpectedly closing.  I’ve never heard of software that, due to an error, cannot close.

This one comes with a story.  I downloaded a file from the US Census Bureau at work.  I tried a few ways to unzip the file, but kept getting the error below:

However, when following the instructions to unblock the file, it doesn’t work.  I ultimately copied the file over to my trusty MacBook Pro and tried (by double-clicking on it), to no avail.  Then, I opened up Terminal (which has its own space on the dock on my Mac), and unzipped it with a minor complaint.  After this, I talked to our IT consultant, who also tried to unblock the file, and while he could get the instructions, he did not have an unblock button (which wouldn’t have worked).

I tried to get updates from Windows Update after upgrading to IE 7.  Just as much of a mistake as using FireFox.

This was made a while back, I just haven’t got around to uploading it until now.

This is another example of piss-poor tech writing.  This retard author tries to claim that there is no way that Snow Leopard can cause battery problems.  There is proof on the Apple discussion thread that he could be incorrect, and even in my case, with my 3-year-old MacBook Pro with a 14-month-old battery, it appears that those that claim that Snow Leopard could be causing battery problems may be on the right track.

Consider this:

15 minutes ago, I checked Coconut Battery against System Profiler.  They match.  I’m only bringing this up to establish that Coconut Battery reads correctly.

Then, I read the life in Coconut Battery… 37% (2087 mAh)

Then, I shut down the computer, reset the SMC, and re-read the battery… 41% (2287 mAh).

Proof:

Now, if the battery was indeed going bad, I shouldn’t have gained an extra 200 mAh by just resetting the SMC.  A bad battery is a bad battery, and its capacity would continue to decline.

That being said, I’m not pleased at all with the quality of Apple Laptop Batteries.  The battery currently in my computer was acquired around 2008-11-12.  In the 1 year and 2 months since then, the capacity has dropped from 95% to 41% (or 37%, hell, I don’t know anymore).  Who knows, maybe Snow Leopard EXACERBATES an existing battery problem.  Maybe it CAUSES a new battery problem.  Regardless, the 48 pages of comments on Apple’s own discussion forum are probably a lot more than what happened after Tiger and Leopard were released, and since the last comment was today, I’m willing to guess that there is a problem in both the batteries and in Snow Leopard.  We should expect 3 years or so out of a battery, not a >50% loss of capacity after 1 year.

As I was writing this, I saw my remaining time jump from 40-something minutes to an hour.  Maybe Snow Leopard isn’t eating the battery, but it certainly is confused by mine, and probably many others.

Cupertino, we have a problem.

Getting back to the reason for writing this, 10.6 Falsely Reports Service Battery?  I think so!  Whatever is going on, SL is obviously not doing something right.  I imagine that it isn’t eating the batteries (as is suggested by some of the posts on Apple’s discussion board), but it definitely is flawed in the reporting of the information.  I don’t buy the thought that it was intentional by Apple to do something to cause batteries to go out to get more revenues from batteries.  I imagine that there is some very questionable manufacturing (after all, these are Sony batteries, which have been known to catch fire in Dells) and that SL can’t read it right.  Probably a combination of the two.

First off, the Salahis deserve jail time, but not much.  They knew what they were doing was wrong, but their intentions don’t appear to have been to commit murder.

Second off, the fact that the Secret Service did NOT do their job indicates one thing: those under their protection are not safe.  They have the PRESIDENT to protect.  The most powerful man in the world – he controls the most powerful military force in the world.  No wonder 9/11 happened.  The Secret Service was likely asleep on the job.  We just didn’t know it then.

I read some of the comments on the linked article below, and someone brought up that some Northwest pilots were allowed to fly for over an hour, off course, without contact from the air traffic controllers.  We may never know if the air traffic controllers contacted the Secret Service, but that was also a definite failure of national security.

So what do we do?  We spend billions every year in homeland security, and we can’t even protect the president in the White House.  Terrible!

White House Party Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi: How They Slipped by the Secret Service – ABC News.

1. If I look at your Twitter page and it says you are affiliated with The Don, I’m instantly skeptical.  If you’ve had almost 20,000 tweets, not only do I not believe you have any affiliation, but… no.
2. Just because I follow someone that you follow doesn’t mean that I will follow you.  I’ve seen a few do this (they see that I follow one user and go through their entire list to harvest people to follow).  Don’t take it personally, but… no.
3. Similar to above, following me because I am in Cincinnati… no.
4. If I pull up your Twitter page, and you have three tweets of crap… no.
5. 9 tweets 9 days ago with nothing in between then and now… no.
6. If you aren’t tweeting something I’m interested in getting annoyed by up-to-date announcements about, such as parenting or pets… no.
7. If I pull up your twitter page and see 4 tweets directed at someone and one that has no apparent substance whatsoever… no.

Furthermore, for the few one that did get me to follow them, here is how to not get un-followed:

1. Do not post links that ought not be posted, such as to bing or google.
2. Do not over-tweet me.  With the exception of one place, I don’t follow many because I want to be able to read those 140-character blog entries.

Lastly, here is some guidance of what people I want to see in tweets:

1. Post some useful links.  If you blog only every-so-often, feel free to let me know that there is a new post.  However, if you post with the frequency of Life Hacker, do NOT do this!
2. Make a few jokes.  Maybe I’ll retweet one of them (which I’ve done… once!)
3. If you are a radio host, feel free to let me know what you are doing on the show.  I may not tune in, but if I am really interested, I will probably tune in.
4. Don’t expect a reply unless I personally know you or really respect you, or I have something snappy to say.
5. Don’t expect me to follow you unless I am really interested in what you have to say.

With that… feel free to follow me on Twitter.  Just don’t cry in your Wheaties if I don’t follow you back

The third comment from “Truthfairy”.

I have always shied away from anything Tech Crunch, since it has been one of the most likely sites to report hoaxes and rumors.  The above link was posted to PlaNetizen and went out to thousands of readers.  I’m sure there are hundreds saying “Get your head out of your ass!  We have that here!”

Those hundreds are in Tampa.  They have an elevated freeway above the Lee Roy Selmon Cross Town Expressway.  They were finished in 2007 or so.  I’ve heard that they are really, really cool to use.  It was also really, really expensive, and it suffered a setback after one of the support piers sunk, bringing a 3 lane section down to the ground level freeway below.

Another thing that should be pointed out is that in this country there are dozens of bridges that are double-decker.  We have one here in Cincinnati, the Brent Spence Bridge, which carries I-71 and I-75 over the Ohio River.

That bridge needs to be rebuilt.  It is roughly a half of a mile (including the approaches), and the costs are measured in the billions.

Dear author, if you are going to tell people to start a company, make sure it hasn’t already been started first.

EDITS:

(1) I figured I needed to come back to this and bring up an important issue that I only touched on.  That is the potential for problems caused by natural disasters.  After one of the “Big Ones” in California, it was brought up that Cincinnati is somewhat earthquake-prone.  The thing that made the nightly news?  ”Is the Brent Spence Bridge Going to Collapse if Cincinnati gets hit with a Big One?”  Certainly the Tampa Crosstown Expressway sink was a scary, serious issue.  It was one that was not planned for, and required a complete redesign of an area of the elevated expressway.  The reason roads tend to be on the ground is because there is a limited set of catastrophic natural disasters that can happen.

(2) I dogged TechCrunch above, and I figured I should mention that despite my general poor opinion, I did read another article that sourced a number of topics to TechCrunch, and the source data sounds spot-on.  I’m not a TechCrunch reader, and my opinions are still mixed.

Time Warner has the absolute WORST interface to compare.  You can’t get a channel list of the basic, digital, family, etc. tiers.  On the opposite side of the spectrum, DirecTV has the best – you can go to each of the packages and click on ‘print’ and you get a nicely formatted page to print and make notes on.  I had to copy Dish Network’s packages out to NeoOffice Calc (like Excel, but open source and based on Open Office).  At least it was easy to read and see the differences among their packages.

What does bother me?  Delays.

Last Thursday, I flew from Palm Springs, CA to Dayton, OH.  Two flights (Palm Springs to Dallas, TX, and Dallas to Dayton).  I’ve flown many times before (2 flights on US Airways, 4 flights before on AA, 2 on Continental, and 16 that I can remember on Delta).  I’ve been to several airports (CVG, DAY, DFW, IAH, PSP, HSV, TPA, MIA, FLL, ATL, CLT… that I can remember).  Prior to my first flight on AA, I had been delayed on a plane once, and it was short.

Enter AA.  Last year around this time, I went to Palm Springs and was delayed 1.5 hours because maintenance decided to ground the plane that was supposed to take us there.  Adding that to the gate debacle (below), I was pretty pissed.  I vowed never to fly AA again.

The Gate Debacle

While flying from CVG to DFW, the flight attendant gave us the gate numbers to connecting flights.  We landed at gate D-something.  The flight to Palm Springs was going out of A-something.  I went to gate A-something with one of my associates, and noticed that gate A-something was going to Seattle.  My companion asked the gate attendant what was going on, and he told us that the assignment had changed, and it was going to leave from gate D-something.  We return to gate D-something, and around the time to board, they announced that there was a maintenance problem and the pilot wanted maintenance to look at it.  Ultimately, the plane was grounded, and they scrambled to find another plane to send to Palm Springs.  They found one… at gate A-something.  In retrospect, we should have checked the board.  Still, there was a 1.5 hour delay going to Palm Springs, causing us to arrive after they closed several restaurants in the area where we were staying.

Back to the current mess…

Despite my vow, I have a travel budget to preserve (I may want to travel to another conference later this fiscal year).  AA came up the cheapest.  Flying to Palm Springs was surprisingly easy, but I did learn from The Gate Debacle, and it didn’t matter because I couldn’t hear the flight attendant when she called the gates anyway.

Upon returning from Palm Springs is where the problems started.  Before leaving the ground in Palm Springs, the flight was delayed 15-30 min or so while they drained off the “over serviced” hydraulic fluid.  I passed this off as being chance and nothing more.  Seriously, would I have the bad luck of having another problem on this flight?

Then it happened.  They had just called the priority boarding, and then immediately came over the speaker and said that the pilot wanted us to wait so maintenance could look at the pedals.  Ultimately, maintenance grounded the plane.  We were 1.5 hours late to Dayton.

I know stuff happens sometimes, but seriously. I was delayed on  3 out of 8 flights with American Airlines.  In 20 flights on OTHER airlines, I was delayed once for 15-30 minutes.  So, with AA, there is a 37.5% chance of being delayed (and 25% chance that the delay will be in excess of 1 hour), and with the other airlines, there is a 5% chance of a delay.

To add insult to injury, I noticed that the gate attendants were having such a great time.  After telling my experience to a friend that works as a gate agent for another airline, she indicated that they are not allowed to joke (etc) in these types of situations – they would get ‘chewed out’.  I admire the forced professionalism.

If Microsoft had one ounce of intelligence in them, they wouldn’t have scrubbed the “The Family Guy” episode sponsorship.  Microsoft could have finally had a great idea before Apple, but unfortunately Microsoft lacks the kahunas to do a one-up on Apple.  Such a shame.

First off, the fact that Microsoft is putting up videos on how to run a party suggest that they expect everyone is socially inept.

Then, they seemed to have missed the boat when it comes to doing a real launch party.  I’ve seen a lot of launch parties (never been to one) that were put on by either bookstores promoting Harry Potter books or Apple promoting their latest OS.  Both had strong corporate backing.  Neither fit into my social schedule (the permanent scar on my forehead is the closest I’ll get to dressing up like Harry Potter, and I really don’t care for the local mall where the Apple Store is here in Cincinnati).

You would think that Microsoft could have taken those 4 people and made them look like an actual party, maybe at least a beer or two, but let’s face it, they took 4 people that would not likely be partying together and made them “party” together.  Microsoft meets a Spongebob-style party.

Hopefully, Microsoft has made a better OS than the last one, but I think they successfully shot themselves in the foot already with Vista and the outpouring of people recommending to NOT upgrade a computer to 7, but rather, buy a new one.  Me?  I’ll consider buying it, and it seems like it runs fine on my MacBook Pro.  However, it is not a priority.

We need to learn from the Microsoft “Danger” Debacle (or the T-Mobile Sidekick Debacle, if you will), and the Amazon Kindle disaster.  Don’t expect companies or people to give a damn about you when they mess up.  Sometimes, it isn’t even the companies, it is some ignorant fool behind the scenes with a score to settle with the company.  Sometimes it is a disaster (whether Cyber or real).

Even worse, don’t even ask the question when the data in Google Docs is pretty easy to back up.  Take a look at http://1st-soft.net/gdd/ and see TWO ways to backup you docs on Google Docs.  They’re both pretty simple… Okay, I guess the Python one isn’t that simple for most people, but the GreaseMonkey/DownThemAll one is!  With tools so simple to use to backup that data, why would you not periodically do that?

Reference: Should I back up data stored in the cloud? | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld.

After looking at the comments, I realized I wasn’t the only one to see the “Add-On May Be Causing Problems” window in FireFox, see something from Microsoft, and think “what, wait…. did I install that?”.

Microsoft has been pushing add-ons to FireFox through Windows Update.

Let me type that again…

Microsoft has been PUSHING add-ons to FIREFOX through WINDOWS UPDATE.

This is terrible.

First off, if I want an add-on for FireFox, I will add it myself.  I don’t need Windows Update to do it for me.

Second, I don’t want the Windows Presentation Framework.  I don’t know what it is, but I surely don’t use it.

Third, Microsoft, if you are going to silently install add-ons to FireFox, at least make sure they don’t have unintended side-effects, like SLOWING the startup of FireFox.

After uninstalling this garbage off my machine, I’ve noticed that the 1-2 minute delay when starting FireFox is gone.  I’m glad, too, as it has had a tendency to delay our attendance-on-demand website where I clock-in.

Apple Will Feel The Pain From Windows 7 Launch – Software – IT Channel News by CRN.

Let’s go through this in stages.

“Here’s what I believe will happen: The Windows 7 launch will take those market-share gains Apple has seen over the past several years and make them disappear.”

Really?  So the fact that a lot of Macs were bought when XP was still out has no bearing on the fact that Apple has been gaining market share?  Granted, Vista was the best thing to happen to Apple, but do you think that people aren’t wondering why they would purchase ‘fixed Vista’ in the first place?

“How frightened is Apple that its about to be whammied by Windows 7? Well, BusinessWeek is reporting that Apple is planning to launch a marketing blitz aimed at convincing PC buyers to instead choose a Mac.”

And MS didn’t do the same thing leading up to Snow Leopard’s release?  Remember those “I’m not cool enough to be a Mac person” ads last summer?  Microsoft is planning their own advertising blitz, too, and it is even advertised on your site, and it involves a full “commercial free” episode of The Family Guy.

“BusinessWeek says that Apple will likely make the case that Macs are more susceptible to viruses. A flat-out false claim. There are a bunch of Mac myths. And better security than Windows is the biggest one. Security experts say that if Mac users are less susceptible to attack, it’s simply due to the fact that there are fewer viruses written for Macs than for Windows.”

Yeah, some of the security stuff is myth, but a lot of the “Mac Myths” were based on user intelligence, something neither MS nor Apple can do anything about.  There are still less viruses out for Apple compared to MS, just like less attacks on FF and Opera than IE.

“BusinessWeek also claims Apple will make fun of Microsoft for making Windows XP owners go through what is by all accounts a cumbersome process to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Talk about a canard. That duck just don’t fly. No one in their right mind would even think of upgrading a Windows XP system to Windows 7. That’s an exercise for unemployed nerds with too much time on their hands. It simply doesn’t make sense. Windows 7 is a cause celebre to look at buying a new system. It is not a reason to look at upgrading a well-running Windows XP system. You wouldn’t upgrade a well-running Mac system either. Get a life.”

BULL SHIT.  I have upgraded my MacBook Pro once, and I’m going to do it again once I make it to my computer store of choice and get Snow Leopard.  A new OS should NOT be a reason to drop $2k on a new computer.  Of course, my MacBook Pro is working as well as day 1 at 3 years old.  I can’t say the same about my quad-core Dell desktop until I reloaded XP on it.  If we can’t upgrade a perfectly good system, then why even give Windows 7 the time of day?  Oh, I get it.  We’re supposed to go out and buy a $400 junk PC with Windows 7.  I guess you can’t upgrade one of those, just like you can’t polish a turd.  Dell, HP, Sony, etc. all have $2k laptops and desktops.  You COULD upgrade those from XP to W7, but yeah, I guess that process will be too cumbersome, thanks to MS.

Additionally, the upgrade process that I did to go from Tiger to Leopard was quick and easy and resulted in no data loss.   It has been YEARS since I messed with upgrading a computer with an MS system, partly because 8 out of the last 10 computers I owned or used were so terrible to begin with that they were replaced instead of upgrading to a new OS and had to be reloaded on a yearly basis (not MS’s fault, of course).

Speaking of reloading every year, even my bad-ass Dell Quad-Core had to be reloaded after a year (with XP, of course, no way I’d even think about Vista given what I do).   Computers should not become so painfully slow or error prone that they need to be reloaded regularly.

EDIT (2): Take a look at this page from the Washington Post where tech writer Rob Pegoraro calls the XP -> 7 upgrade process a “Destructive Install”. Mr. Pegoraro has a pretty good assessment of Windows 7 in his article.

“Yes, the Mac has had a great run for the past couple of years. Gartner says Apple’s share of the U.S. computer market for the third quarter amounted to 8.8 percent, up from 8.6 percent in the year-ago period. My bet is that market share is going to drop below 5 percent by the end of 2010.”

That is an awful strong statement considering the reduced liklihood that people will purchase new computers just to get a new OS in the current economy.  You can consider 2009 dead – the holiday season is about to start and the US unemployment is at 9.8% or so.  There may be some purchases at tax time, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for the expectation.

What about the market share of dual-boot computers – such as a Mac running both OS X and Windows 7 under Boot Camp, Parallels, or Fusion.  Is this even going to be measured correctly?

“Apple CEO Steve Jobs has done a great job of exploiting the shortcomings of Vista for some significant market-share gains. Windows 7 has none of those shortcomings and all the advantages of the Windows brand at its best.”

And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn’t attempt to exploit the price-point of Apple Hardware?  Of course, he also poo-pooed the iPhone and the iPod, both of which have outsold their MS counterparts so much that you don’t hear much about Windows Mobile or the Zune.

All in all, I think Windows 7 will be a great OS.  I will probably purchase it and run it on under Parallels or on Boot Camp (or both, even).  However, unless major changes happen, my next computer will be a Mac… whenever I buy that computer.

Let’s be realistic, though.  Windows 7 will not be a cure-all for MS.  Bing is more or less a failure, Windows Mobile is looking like a failure, Zune is a failure, Office for Mac is a failure (probably part of Microsoft’s business plan), and Vista was a failure, to name a few.  Steve Ballmer seems to be delusional, having been associated with a number of articles where he laughs at the iPhone, calls Vista an “unqualified success”, and the “Vista Capable” lawsuit.  Office for Windows is the only software product that Microsoft makes that can be competitive, and it is under assault by free online services like Google Docs.  Microsoft’s innovation has been surpassed or matched in EVERYTHING THEY DO.  Windows and Microsoft will not die, and that is great.  We need them.  However, Microsoft would do better to refocus and make sure that I’m not wrong on that.

EDIT: In addition to above, Microsoft acquired “Danger” in April 2008.  In 1.5 years, they didn’t learn to backup their server or store things like photos locally on a device.  Instead, it appears that they had them on a server.  I’m not too familiar with the T-Mobile Sidekick, but not storing pictures to local memory?  Bad news, and a bad move by Microsoft to not do something better.

Now, back to the author and article.  The linked article was the most biased and uneducated crap I have ever read.  This reads as if it was written by a business person that thinks they know a lot about technology… a person that thinks their PocketPC is cool because it has built-in Wi-Fi… a person that thinks they know a lot because they have 2 GB of RAM in their computer… a person that thinks they are smart because they setup a wireless network in their house and it has 128-bit WEP security.  Get with the times.  Blackberries and iPhones have replaced PocketPCs a long time ago.  2 GB of RAM is nothing.  WEP security is crap, try WPA, and it is pretty easy to set it up.  Let me know when you’ve figured out a program that does more than:

10 PRINT “Hello World”

20 GOTO 10

I agree with the thoughts of increased tolling and more fees other than the gas tax.  I also agree with $1B per year for technology, but it has to be managed right.

I’m also glad that the performance measures are measurable:

• Congestion (we can measure that – it is the percent of a region’s network that is operating with a demand greater than its capacity)
• Costs (we can measure that, although we have to watch how we do it, as we don’t want to have a system be considered bad if gas prices hit $4/gallon)
• Safety (we DO measure this – it is the number of injuries and deaths on the road)

It amazes me from a software based magazine that such a pathetically stupid question was even asked.

The answer is NO.

If we were talking about a paperback novel, then what happened would have went as such:

1. Amazon sells stolen book
2. Amazon steals stolen book back from unsuspecting consumers
3. Amazon gets busted for selling stolen property, breaking and entering (potentially), assault (possibly) and theft.

Apparently, there some difference between the paperback version and the digital download?  This is what happened:

1. Amazon sold book that they had no right to sell
2. Amazon illegally entered user’s Kindle devices
3. Amazon stole legally purchased digital download

The difference is only format.  What Amazon did was basically stealing (twice), and they aren’t getting busted for it.  No, we can’t drop it until Amazon does get busted and we have devices where WE have control enough to lock the windows and doors.

Someone calls this person names, and she fights Google in court over the “attack”.

First off, three words: FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.  The person in question had the right to their speech.  It was dirty words, but in the end, that appears to be all it was (now if it was giving away privileged information, like model Cohen’s home address or phone number, I stand corrected).

Second off, bloggers must be aware of the ramifications of what they post.  If it can be backed up, it is fair game.  If it can’t, it is probably better left untyped.

Google reveals identity of Cohen ’skank’ blogger | ZDNet Government | ZDNet.com.

Soft Serve and Jingles Jangle Moms – NYTimes.com.

It amazes me that the parents in this article don’t put their foot down and say “no” to their kids.  “I’ve left my wallet at home” and “that’s not an ice cream truck, it’s a music truck” are signs of “I don’t have the guts to be a parent”.

For the record, my daughter, who does run to the door for the ice cream truck, knows what we mean when we tell her “no”.  We don’t make stupid excuses, and I think it breeds respect from her to us as parents, and she does enjoy the occasions that we do take her up to the truck for some ice cream.

The 30 Strongest Housing Markets in the U.S: Boulder rocks – BusinessWeek.

In this one, there are several things that make me want to question their ranking capability:

1. #6 is Pittsburgh.  If that isn’t reason enough to question the entire thing, look at the median value of only $119,800.  Not many rich people there, and ‘median’ means that half of the homes sold for less than that.

2. Pictures on 8, and 12 are bad in some way shape or form.  #8 looks like it is falling over, and #12 looks like a scan of an old slide… almost like they found something on Flickr or Panoramio instead of something from Realtor.com or the local convention-visitor’s bureau.

3. #10 is Oklahoma.  Not Oklahoma City, but Oklahoma… which was a state last time I checked.  Evidently, this article lacked the proofreading of someone with a degree higher than a GED.

4. #14 is Springfield, Ohio.  Locally, we know Springfield as the capital of antique malls.  Also, the median value is $93,500.  Perhaps due to foreclosures?

5. #22 is Bay City, Michigan.  The median value is $80,100, the annual change is -11%, and the economy is built on manufacturing (which includes a GM plant).  Take a look at some of the old steel cities (Youngstown, Ohio, for example) and look at what happens to the economy when a major employer tanks.  Not good for home values, is it?

6.  #25 is in California.  That not being enough, look at the median value (over $500k) and the annual change (-10.8%).    The 2008 National Average was 196.6.  Anything more than twice that is asking for disaster.

Some ideas to fix or avoid this:

1. Don’t publish lists of things that are currently under impact by wildly irregular circumstances.  The country is in the middle of a recession caused by a complete implosion of the housing market.  There are some great places to own houses that are not on this list because they are impacted by the mortgage crisis.

2. Make sure the criteria is obvious.  I don’t want to have to look for it.  When looking at the results, it should be obvious.  Don’t show things in the result that don’t relate or obscure the criteria.

3. Rankings should be geared towards the readers.  BusinessWeek readers are, presumably, business oriented.  Why show them half-metrics (annual change, but no indicator of which annum) or omit important metrics (change over last 5 years, change over last 10 years).

So I brought up Poynt and searched for restaurants. I got a list of restaurants, and touched the one I wanted to eat at. Then, I was able to get directions.

I was happy enough that I used my phone to write this post.

/tink/ n. 1. Sound a nail makes when it falls on a metal object. 2. Word overused by New Kids on the Block (specifically Jordan Knight) to generate interest on Twitter.

New Kids on the Block

/loozerz/ n. A group of 5 singers that are complete and utter losers.  They were big with 12 year old girls in the early 90s, and unfortunately, some of those girls haven’t grown up (as evidenced by the number of Twitter followers they have).  One of the losers, Donnie Wahlberg, attempted to burn down a hotel in Louisville, KY with a home-made molotov cocktail.  This apparent suicide attempt marked what was thought to be the end of the band.  Their Twitter antics tend to pollute TwitScoop and overshadow more impportant things, such as the second un-retirement of Bret Favre, the death of Dom Deluise, and the general panic over the H1N1 “swine” flu.

Microsoft

/sh-it/ n. A company built up by Bill Gates only to be torn down by the loser Steve Ballmer.

Steve Ballmer

/eediut/ n. An idiot known for being the CEO of the company that released the Vista operating system, getting on stage and yelling “Developers!”, throwing furniture, and laying off some 5,000 people at Microsoft.  Commonly referred to “jackass”.

Vista

/vis-tuh/ n. 1. A beautiful view. 2. A set of operating systems released by Microsoft that lasted realistically for 8 months before Microsoft announced the next operating system.  During said 8 months, support for Windows XP was extended… twice.

First, the things that work right.  Thank God for Google!  They have a nice sync program for BlackBerry devices right here.  If you can sync your calendar and contacts to Google, that gives you an online ‘cloud’ that stores your contacts and calendar.

Second, the things that don’t.  Apple’s address book (which is installed by default on every OS X Tiger and Leopard computer) only syncs with Google if you have an iPhone.  However, check the link, as you can hack your computer a little to make it work.

Do these things, you don’t need to install the PocketSync for BlackBerry.

Then…

Install the BlackBerry App World and install Flickr, FaceBook, and bbtweet and you can do anything.  Now, if I could only get a Snooth plugin…

Traffic Counter on side of road

First off: how these things work

Those that have been around for 30 or more years may remember when some gas stations had a hose that rang a bell to call a station attendant to pump your fuel.  Those that don’t should watch Back to the Future.  This is the same basic concept for most traffic counters.  There are hoses that go across the road, and based on what the sensors feel and the time between them, these little green (or sometimes gray) boxes calculate the number of axles, distance between them (which can be used to derive the type of vehicle), and the speed.

I know that speed is a big issue with a lot of people.  After all, some of these counters are being used for speed studies to see if they want to put a cop on a road at a certain time.  This does happen, despite my wishes that cops and others would use less-detectable methods for enforcement.  There are two other ways that counts, with speed, can be taken.  One is by RADAR (the same thing they use for active speed enforcement).  Mind you, for speed sampling, RADAR is pretty useful when installed correctly, and the boxes can be hidden quite well.  The other is using magnetic loops.  There are portable models of these that sit in the lane and are difficult to see (and also susceptible to theft).  There are also permanent models that can be completely hidden from view.

One thing I can say with ALL hose counters: WE CANNOT USE THEM FOR SPEED ENFORCEMENT!  The units do not have any cameras (etc), so if you speed while going over them, we know you did, but we don’t know who you are!

Second off: How We Use The Data We Get From These Things

This one differs by jurisdiction, but most use it for traffic studies.  Speed, count, and vehicle type are very useful for roadway improvement design.  Another use is for travel model validation.  We (specifically me, since it is my job) use this to ensure that the region’s travel model is accurate so when we use it to plan billions of dollars in improvements, we know we’re not just guessing, which would be a waste of money.

Law enforcement will use the number of speeders per unit of time to plan when to run patrols.  As I indicated, I wish they wouldn’t use hose counters for this, but they do, and the data they get is accurate.  However, hoses are pretty conspicuous, which is why I wish they wouldn’t use them.

We cannot use the data in court.  You cannot be detected to be going 45 MPH in a 25 MPH zone based on a traffic counter.   The counters do not have cameras in them, and none that I know of can connect to a camera.  A camera would be required to prove who was speeding.  Without the connection, it would be difficult to prove, since the times would have to be the same, the counter has to be operating perfectly, and the hoses have to be measured very precisely.  Some states also forbid the use of cameras for passive law enforcement (a cop can actively use a RADAR+camera, but not mount one on a pole and get every car that is speeding).

The War Stories

I have two, both given to me by a salesperson for Jamar Tech, one of the leading traffic counter manufacturers.

City of Boston Thinks a Counter is a Bomb.  This one is proof that some cops don’t use hose counters, else they would have known what this unit is.

Counter burned, likely by an accelerant.  PDF from Jamar, which the salesperson sent me just after I bought 8 counters from him.

Don’t Mess With Them!

It amazes me that 1 month into the season, I’ve had to replace several hoses because of cut or stolen hoses.  This is your tax dollars at work.  The more hoses we have to replace, the less money we have to improve the roads.

One of the most important things when using social networking in government is keeping things current.  Nobody likes a dead page, and all-too-often project websites suffer from not being kept up-to-date.  The same thing can easily happen to a MySpace or Facebook page.

Another important thing is prompt replies to questions/etc.  People don’t want to wait several days for an answer.

Things to keep in mind:

• Anything on the Internet is searchable, indexed, and stored.
• MySpace and Facebook pages for governments or projects are public documents.  Be prepared for media requests about information, etc.
• The visual quality of such pages reflect on the government that is operating them.  They should be visually pleasing, not gaudy.  Keep animated stuff to a minimum.  Pictures should be of plans/alternatives, pictures of public meetings, renderings of alternatives, etc.

If done properly, social networking can be a great way to augment the public involvement in any planning (or related) process.

We’re waiting for “trees begin to bud”, and “grass grows”, and the ever-so-exciting “paint dries”.

To fix this (assuming OS X 10.5):

1. Close Address Book, Mail.app, and anything else that may use the address book.  Really, just close everything but Finder.

2. Go to /Users/username/Library/Application Support/ and copy the AddressBook folder somewhere safe

3. ONLY AFTER MAKING THE BACKUP ABOVE, look for any files that are something like ABPerson.skIndexInverted and/or ABSubscribedPerson.skIndexInverted and delete them.  I also deleted a file called AddressBook-v22.abcddb.  The skIndexInverted files are indexes, and they were likely what was corrupt (I found a post via Google that indicated something similar).

4. Reopen the address book and see if the problems are alleviated.

Take a look at the IE webpage

Take a look at the IE webpage.

Ice on a branch

Ice on Pine Needles

Front Yard Area

Side of Garage

Technical info about the pics: I used flash with a CTB (color temperature blue) gel to accenuate the snow and give it a cold appearance.

1. Go to /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles/<???>.default/chrome/

(or, in OS X 10.5 Leopard, click on your “home” on the left sidebar in Finder and then Library, Application Support, Firefox, Profiles, something.default, chrome… see the screenshots below)

->

->

->

2. Copy userChrome-example.css and rename to userChrome.css

3.Open userChrome.css in a text editor (textedit.app works well and comes with Tiger and Leopard)

4. Get the last code snippet in the link and paste it at the bottom (note: the copy to clipboard in that does not work, or at least not for OSX.  Copy and paste manually, and get rid of the line numbers!)

The code I used:

#bookmarksBarContent
{display:block !important;}
.places-toolbar-items
{display:block !important;
height: 35px !important;
overflow-y:auto !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent toolbarseparator{display:inline !important;}
#bookmarksBarContent
.bookmark-item{visibility: visible !important;}

.chevron {height: 0px !important;}

5. If Firefox is open, Quit (Command-Q or Firefox – Quit Firefox) and restart.

Post originally published on 2009-01-24; updated 2009-01-31 to add screen shots

It seems to me that there are three categories of all these sites: full network, specialized network, and link sharing.

The full network sites include Facebook and MySpace.  I have accounts on both, and they are quite different.  Most of the same stuff is posted on them.  However, half my friends are younger than I am, and MySpace in general has the high school and college party atmosphere (even on the friends that are older than I am).  On Facebook, the pages are more mature-feeling, but I have fewer friends, and those that I do are my age.  However, there are less posts about getting drunk and more about drinking wine (I know few wine drinkers that drink wine to get drunk; most people that I know that get drunk use shots or beer).  Then there’s LinkedIn, which is geared towards business.  I have the most friends on that, and have spent the most time on it.  Some of those friends are personal, but most are people that I’ve met at a variety of different locations.  All of those personal friends are coworkers or former coworkers.

The specialized network sites include Flickr and likely YouTube (I don’t have a YouTube page, but from what I’ve seen, it falls in this category).  They can be used as a full-blown networking site, but lack the numbers to really be able to do that (MySpace has around 250,000,000, where Flickr has around 3,000,000).  The profiles on the full network sites are larger, whereas the Flickr and other specialized sites have smaller profile pages.  The benefit with Flickr (and likely all of the specialized sites) is how well it is geared towards its subject matter.  On Flickr, I can view how a photo was taken – focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, camera make/model, etc.  For an amateur photographer, I like being able to see this type of data (see this page for what I am referring to – you can see what camera settings I used to create this image).

The link sharing sites, like Del.icio.us are geared towards sharing links only.  I have one, but don’t use it very often to post.  I do look at what is popular, though, since there have been many occasions where I have found some really cool stuff.  However, it isn’t a place I spend a lot of time.

RC Car in the Snow 1

RC Car in the Snow 2

RC Car Aftermath (Body On)

RC Car Aftermath (Body Off)

My RC Car is a Traxxas Rustler, which is on the fairly inexpensive side (compared to some of the Nitro models!).  It is great for just messin’ around on the driveway, and some of the parts (like the motor) are powerful but inexpensive – I’ve only owned the car for about 6 months and I’ve already burned out one motor.

It was dfficult to get these pictures, since I was controlling both the car and the camera.  It was about 20ºF out, and I couldn’t wear gloves (not even driving gloves), since it would interfere with being able to get my finger into the throttle trigger on the RC controller.

Hint: it is in the upper right-hand corner.

Press Cancel?

New! Axe Garlic Scent!

DISCLAIMER: This is not a real product.  If you even thought for one remote second that Axe actually made a Garlic scent, you need to do the world a favor and kill yourself, considering that your intelligence level is that of a shovel.

REAL DISCLAIMER: I don’t work for Axe, but I do use some of their products.  I did not ask Axe for permission to use their can likeness, so hopefully they won’t decide to sue me.

The browsers talking about their support for CSS

After seeing that, you can check out http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/8/16/4999, which is a response to IE Group Program Manager’s response to people bitching about IE and standards compliance.  I found this after building a Web Site in Visual Web Developer 2005 (a Micro$oft product) and having it look perfect in FireFox, only to bring it up in Internet Explorer and having some wierd shit happen.  An ASP:Panel changed border styles and text colors (white text was showing up as blue, even if I used ‘#FFFFFF’ instead of ‘White’).

Binomial Logit Mode Choice: A process that compares the utility of two travel mode choices and determines the probability of using each mode.

BPR Equation: An equation used to determine the speed on a network link based on the ratio of the volume to the capacity.

Centroid: A point that is linked to a TAZ that loads traffic onto the network

Centroid Connector: The link that connects a centroid to the rest of the network.

Equilibrium Assignment: An assignment method that iteratively assigns and reassigns traffic based on revised travel times on each link.

Friction Factors: Factors that are used in distribution to refine the distance measure between zones.

The Four Step Process: A process of modeling that began in the 1950s that performs four major steps: trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice, and assignment.

Fratar Model: An iterative gravity model used to determine trip interchanges where total productions and attractions are known, but not necessarily balanced.

Gravity Model Distribution: A process to determine the likelihood of traveling from one zone to another based on the attractiveness of the destination compared to the distance from the origin to the destination.

Link: A piece of roadway in the network

Mode Choice: A process that determines the economic utility of all available forms of travel from one zone to another and splits trips (from the trip distribution step) into a variety of modes (depending on those that exist).

Multinomial Logit Mode Choice: A process that compares the utility of multiple travel mode choices where each is a separate and distinct choice.

Nested Logit Mode Choice: A process that compares the utility of multiple travel mode choices as a string of choices and sub-choices.  An example would be a structure illustrated below (click on the image for a larger view).

Network: A collection of links, nodes, centroids, etc. that simulate the major travel facilities in the model area.

Traffic Analysis Zone (AKA: zone, TAZ): A geographic division, much like a census block, that defines an area of homes and businesses used in the travel demand model.

Trip Generation: A process of counting the homes, employees (usually by type), schools, and other activities that generate traffic to and from them.  Trips are generated as attractions and productions.

Trip Distribution: A process of determine where generated trip productions are linked to generated trip attractions.  This determines the number of people that will go from one zone to another.

I wouldn’t have cared if I had opened PowerPoint a million times before this one, but this was the first time that I opened PowerPoint 2008 on my Mac.  However, considering that this is the same company that released Vista AFTER XP and ME AFTER 98, what should I expect?

Click on image to see what I am talking about.

Then you find something like this.

That 3.8 GB USB 2.0 FD is my “Jump Drive”.  Why would I EVER want to allow Windows Media Player to mess with that?  In fact, why does it need to touch the drive at all?  I just happened to plug it in when WMP was running.

And I can make it go larger by producing some *REALLY* big reports.  There was one I produced that was 800 MB of plain text.  When opening it in Notepad, it would take forever as Notepad read the entire file.  I thought that maybe Word would read it progressively and allow me to look at the the file while it was loading.  I was wrong.  Word instead of telling me that the file was too big, it told me:

• Malfunction Junction (I-275 and I-4, Tampa, FL)
• The Riddle in the Middle (Alaska Way, Seattle, WA)
• Spaghetti Junction (I-85 and I-285, Atlanta, GA)

I’ve also started calling a strech of Columbia Parkway (Cincinnati, OH) “The Suicide Side”, which is a 45 MPH arterial that everyone goes 60 MPH.  The divider is a double-yellow line… only.

Got any more?  Add ‘em in the comments.

The socioeconomic data for most models includes the following attributes for every zone in the model area:

• Population
• Households or Dwelling Units
• Dwelling Unit Occupancy
• Auto Ownership Information
• Hotel Information
• School Enrollment
• Employment Information (number, type)
• Special Cases (airports, amusement parks, etc)

Many models have several fields that describe these basic attributes.  In some, auto occupancy may be defined as a percentage of households with 0 autos, a percentage with 1 auto, and a percentage with 2 or more autos.  In others, there may be percentages based on the number of vehicles compared to the number of workers in a household.

The simple part of trip generation models is that once the socioeconomic data is in place and trip production factors are in place, trip generation is simply applying factors to determine the number of trips generated by and attracted to each use.  These factors are determined by a trip survey.

Trip generation is normally done with a cross-classification model.  This is where multiple factors are used to determine the rate of trips per unit (household, employee, etc).

This spreadsheet is an example of trip generation calculations. It is a cross-classification model based on household size and auto ownership.  For each purpose, the dwelling units with each criteria of auto ownership is is calculated and then applied to the trip rate in the ‘Production Table’ tab.  For attractions, I simply applied a rate per employee to the employees by sector.  The SEData sheet indicates the inputs and outputs.

The final output is a set of productions by trip purpose and a set of attractions.  These are intentionally close with attractions higher than productions.  The reason why will be discussed in the Trip Distribution post.

A trip purpose is basically a reason for travel.  Most models include home-based work (which are any trip going to or coming from the home and work), home-based school, home-based other (trips for purposes other than school and work), and non-home-based (trips that do not go to or from the home).  Some models may include home-based shopping or home-based social-recreation separately, and some combine it into home-based other.

trip-generation-worksheet

1. Trip Generation
2. Trip Distribution
3. Mode Choice
4. Trip Assignment

The first step in the process, Trip Generation, uses socioeconomic data to determine the number of trips produced by a traffic analysis zone (or census tract, census blockgroup, or other geographic division).  The socioeconomic data normally includes population, auto ownership, and employment information at the very least.

The second step is trip distribution.  Once the number of trips are known, trip distribution determines where the trips will go.  This normally uses a gravity model, which will be discussed in a future post.  This step takes in several factors, including the number of trip productions, the number of trip attractions, and an impedance value.  The impedance value is the resistance to travel, which could include distance, time, tolls, or a combination of those.  Each model is different in this regard.

The third step is mode choice.  This step determines what vehicle trips will utilize when going from one zone to another.  This step can be particularly complex or extremely simple, depending on the area included in the model.  Some models have very simple mode choice steps because transit isn’t available, or it doesn’t have a significant effect.  Other models can be extremely complex, such as a model for Chicago or New York, which would include autos, bus transit, subway transit, urban rail (such as Chicago’s Metra Rail), and intercity rail transit (such as the Amtrak service that connects New York to Boston, Baltimore, and Washington, DC).

The final step is trip assignment.  This step takes all of the trips from mode choice (which it now knows if they are trips that will drive alone, share a ride, use the bus, or use another mode of transportation) and assigns them to a transportation network.  Prior to the mid-1980s, these networks were largely text based, but with the advent of Geographic Information Systems and personal computers in the mid-1980s and moving forward, these networks became graphical.

These four steps represent the basic building blocks of most transportation models.  These steps are a basic way to ask:

• How many people are going to travel?
• Where are they going to go?
• What transportation mode are they going to use to get there?
• What route will they take to get there?

Despite Google having servers across the world, RoadRunner (which likely has fiber across the country) couldn’t get to any one of them.  Now I did notice that the search bar (see this image, which is the entire screen capture), is powered by Yahoo, so maybe they have some strategy increase their paltry share value by forcibly swinging people away from Google.

(Full Size)

This is why GIS people shouldn’t piss off others.

Really, does it?

Click here for a larger view

• Engineer
• Planner
• Architect
• Lawyer
• Doctor
• Real Estate Agent
• Computer Geek
• Photographer
• News Reporter
• Sales Representative
• Account Manager
• Accountant
• President, CEO, CIO, CFO, C-Whatever-O
• Administrative Assistant
• Call Center Rep
• Insurance Agent
• Human Lifeform that uses a computer

Click here for a larger view

UPDATE:

Another software company and business partner to ESRI has claimed (informally) that they “borrowed” the “flower” idea from them.  I don’t have the impression that the other company (that will go unnamed) is bothered by it, but I just thought that I would add that.

Click here for a larger view

Click here for a larger view

Nonetheless, I always got this stupid thing that said “report this error to Microsoft”, which is either a direct connection to a cyber trashcan or Microsoft’s big-brother database of software errors that users are getting.  Just what I like to know – Microsoft is spying on us, and not sending these error messages to the programmer and company that produced the software.

Note that the inclusion of this is an example, and I tended to poke fun at the programmer of this software – the inclusion here is against Microsoft, not vTIMAS.

Click here for a larger view

Click here for a larger view