| Aug. 2, 1873: San Francisco's First Cable Car Conquers Nob Hill
1873: Andrew Hallidie tests the first cable car in San Francisco. Hallidie is said to have conceived his idea in 1869 while watching a team of horses being whipped as they struggled to pull a car up wet cobblestones on Nob Hill. They slipped and were dragged to their deaths. It so happened that Hallidie's father held the British patent for wire-rope cable and when the son came to the Gold Rush fields he put it to use hauling ore-laden cars from mines. So it wasn't too much of a stretch for him to envision horseless cable cars carrying passengers up the steep slopes of San Francisco's hills. He formed the Clay Street Hill Railroad and was awarded a contract to build the city's first cable-car line up Nob Hill. Fourteen months later, on Aug. 2, the first cable car made its way up Clay Street.
Station Leaders Talk About WISC-TV
Some years ago, our vice president and general manager David Sanks was addressing a company meeting after months of work on the station's mission and vision statements. At the end of his presentation, Sanks summed up the most important goal, indeed the only goal that really mattered: "Keep Liz happy!" Sounds like something you'd say about a tyrant, but no. Elizabeth Murphy Burns -- Liz, to all -- is simply one of the most respected executives in broadcasting and one of the best-liked employers in any industry. "She's the perfect television station owner, in my opinion," says a national industry observer. "She's got her eye on the bottom line and her mind engaged on the whole panoply of business, and she lets her managers do their jobs." We couldn't agree more.
Searingly desperate 'City of Men' is Brazil's 'Boyz n the Hood'
Ace, who has a young son to tend to, as well as Wallace, who longs to meet the father he never knew, are left homeless after their hill is taken by an enemy gang in a bloodbath siege. Ace's detective work helps Wallace track down and stay with his deadbeat dad, who has a sketchy past that worsens with each revelation. Ace latches onto a gang bent on taking Dead End Hill. His homies fill his head with information that turns him against Wallace. .
All at sea? Ocean can find you
It is a challenge that West Australian wireless ISP Ocean Broadband has embraced, and it is tackling the problem with the help of software from two companies that sit at the heart of the Web 2.0 revolution. Ocean has paired up its Salesforce.com platform with the mapping applications of search behemoth Google in a so-called mash-up that information systems head David Wilson says is delivering big benefits for customer service and logistics. The mash-up adds Google Earth images to Ocean's customer files to give technical support staff at the small business instant access to detailed information about where their clients live. The use of Google Earth satellite photography is also proving worthwhile in diagnosing some technical problems, such as trees growing to interfere with line-of-sight reception from wireless towers.
New Customer Wins Drive HP BladeSystem Growth
HP now offers the most comprehensive portfolio of any blade system vendor with more than 100,000 possible blade combinations in a single enclosure to match the needs of any customer.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama (BCBS/AL) is Alabama's largest healthcare provider and insurer, with more than 3 million customers and more than 4,000 employees. BCBS/AL needed more computing power to manage its current workload plus additional new contracts and services. The company was concerned that adding more physical servers to the 500 it already had would make data center management cumbersome and send power and cooling costs soaring.
BCBS/AL turned to HP to install 48 HP ProLiant BL460c and six HP ProLiant BL480 server blades in HP BladeSystem c3000 and c7000 enclosures.
Toll lanes - a good idea?
A first-year economics student can tell you that any resource that is not priced will be wasted. As McDole told us, if electricity was free, we'd leave the lights on all night. In case you hadn't noticed, we pay for all roads one way or another. The difficulty is that we mostly pay through general taxation. So people who use roads sparingly or not at all must pay the same as those who use them a lot. Once you disassociate cost from use, then people will become wasteful. The reverse happened dramatically in London with the congestion charge. There was opposition at the start, but soon people realised that the cost was well worth paying when they needed to drive, and that they didn't have to pay it when they didn't drive. .
Memories Of Johnny Weaver And Saturday Afternoons
“Turn out the lights, the party's over, they say that all good things must end…" — Willie Nelson Whenever I think about Mid-Atlantic Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions, my mind invariably takes me back to the days when County Hall was the place to be on Friday nights and the black-and-white Saturday afternoon wrestling show emanated from a small TV studio in Raleigh. From Charleston to Norfolk and all points in between, it was a territory that thrived on unique characters who could make people believe and have them coming back each week for more. Many of those names from that bygone era are gone now, leaving behind memories that will last a lifetime for those who were lucky enough to be around that special time. No name was bigger, and no wrestler was more beloved, than Johnny Weaver.
Rock's weird one reprised by son Dweezil
Dweezil Zappa, 37, is touring the world as lead guitarist with Zappa Plays Zappa, a tribute band bringing to public performance music that would otherwise be confined to recordings played on home sound systems. Zappa died in 1993 at the age of 52 after releasing 80 albums of songs so challenging to play that pub bands don't cover them. It takes amazing virtuosity to play a piece like Peaches en Regalia from 1969's Hot Rats album. "It's almost like being an athlete in top form to be able to play this stuff," Dweezil said. Dweezil is centre stage through the three-hour concert. Two former Zappa sidemen - vocalist Ray White and guitarist Steve Vai - are guest artists with the six-member band. On a big video screen Zappa himself appeared three times when the band played Sydney's Enmore Theatre.
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