Poofy Goof Rant-O-Matic

"The Railway Applications Section (RAS) provides a forum to bring together practitioners, consultants, and academics interested in applying operations research and management science (OR and MS) techniques to the railroad industry."

they're running a contest: http://informs-ras.org/Problem.htm the problem is to find an optimal fueling system for a provided rail network. the trains can't run out of fuel between yards, and the railroad wants to minimize cost. find the cheapest solution!

before fiber optic was the rage, coaxial and microwave transmission systems were used to move data around. mostly voice, occasionally video. they were designed to work after being subjected to nuclear strikes. http://long-lines.net/index.html http://www.thecentraloffice.com/ http://coldwar-c4i.net/

ever taken a phone trip across the telephone network? (the best quality recordings are at ftp://ftp.wideweb.com/GroupBell/ as zipped mp3s.)