This is certainly nicer than the standard three phase light, but I’m not convinced that it is practically better than a four phase light. I prefer the simplicity and reliability of a four phase signal to the extra complication and unneeded detail of the Stanković signal. Still, it is good to see someone else promoting the idea of better traffic signals. I’m not sure how many American drivers are alert and courteous enough to take advantage of better signals, but there are probably enough that we could still see some improvement in traffic flow, saving gas.

Source:
A Better Understanding of Stoplights through A Stoplight for the Progress Bar Generation

Flexible cables need stress relief where they connect to solid objects to avoid damage to the cable or the electrical connection. The MagSafe power brick’s stress relief on the outgoing DC cable is primarily designed to keep the cable from pulling away from the electrical connections. It does this well. It misses the other purpose of minimizing the stress of the bending cable near the rigid block. The stress relief portion of the cable is overly rigid, creating a spot where the cable can easily kink, damaging the wires inside. The solution is to add an additional little bit of thinner stress relief. This will eliminate the most likely point for the cable to be damaged. The incoming AC cable is an excellent example of good stress relief, so it is odd that the DC cable has this flaw.

There will always be some who abuse hardware by make the cable bend too tight, or pulling on the cord, so no fix can be perfect. But the stress relief problem on the MagSafe power supplies is bad enough that even someone as careful as I am not to damage an expensive power adaptor ended up with a broken cord. It got to the point that the cord partially melted at the stress point. I had hoped it would be a simple fix: pop the case open, shorten the cord an inch, put it back together. Unfortunately, the brick is glued together. Apparently the best way to open it up is to Dremel around the seam. Once the repair is complete, either re-case the circuit, or tape the case back together. This is not an acceptable repair. Fortunately, Apple recognizes the problem as a safety hazard and—in cases where the damage is from wear, not abuse—is replacing the power supplies even after the warranty runs out. I had to drive to the nearest Apple store (over an hour away) to have it replaced. For some reason they don’t allow the local Apple repair shop to swap them out. Now I have a new power supply, and can get back to work.

Related sites:

• Register Hardware: Apple power brick sparks lawsuit: MagSafe isn’t
• Apple: How to disconnect the MagSafe power adapter
• Apple: Troubleshooting MagSafe adapters

The four phase system is superior. The fourth phase gives drivers advance warning before the light turns. This lets everyone know when traffic is going to start moving. Drivers have time to shift into gear, and can start driving almost as soon as the light turns green. This helps eliminate the slinky effect we see at every light in the US. Here the typical situation is: the first driver is not paying attention, and takes a while to start, then the driver behind takes a while to start, and so on. If there is much traffic, these delays can make it so that only the first few cars make it through the intersection. When people are talking and texting on cell phones, it is even worse. In Sweden, everyone can see that the light is about to turn green, so they can be prepared to start before the light turns. Everyone can start at almost the same time, allowing more people through the light. This contributes to a smoother flow of traffic than we are used to in the US.

Smoother traffic flow means that the same speed limit (set by light timing) produces higher average speeds. Hard breaking and hard accelerating with traffic lights leads to lots of time spent stopped. The increased awareness provided by the fourth phase allows everyone in line at a light to start over a much shorter time, lowering the time spent stopped. By lowering the time spent stopped, the average speed of traffic increases. This means you can get where you are headed sooner. This system has the added benefit of saving fuel in two ways. The gas burned while a car is stopped is completely wasted because in isn’t helping you reach your destination. With smoother traffic, less time is spent stopped, so less gas is wasted. The second savings is partially because of driving style. In the US it is common for a light to turn green, and the first and third car to immediately start moving. The second driver isn’t paying attention, and takes a while to start. This causes the third driver to slam his brakes on. The second driver then starts moving, then the third can start again. Driver two’s inattention has cost him gas, but has cost driver three even more gas. The delay also slows all drivers behind, wasting more gas. By giving advance warning the light is about to turn, it is easier for traffic to start smoothly and keep flowing.

A four phase system should also improve safety. With traffic flowing faster and more smoothly, there are fewer chances for a driver to rear-end a car stopped at a green light. There are other potential ways for this to improve safety, but most require an improvement in driver attitudes in addition to better traffic engineering.

Since I began telling people about four phase traffic lights, I learned that there are a few in Maryland and southern Pennsylvania.

It would be really fun to prove that four phase traffic lights are superior, but time is limited, and I’m sure someone else has already done the work. Even without rigorous demonstrations, I’m sure that switching to four phase signals is a simple and inexpensive way to improve the flow of traffic, and will have a short payoff period.

One of the many modern ‘conveniences’ that actually take more time than they save is voicemail. Answering machines and voicemail are occasionally useful, but more often than not, someone just leaves a rambling message with details they end up repeating when you call them back. Fortunately, Caller ID has mostly eliminated the need for voicemail: if you need to leave a message, I probably need to return your call. Since visual voicemail hasn’t yet been universally adopted—and some people still leave voicemails—I sometimes have to check my voicemail account. This has allowed phone companies to waste tons of customer time by forcing us to listen to long instructions describing voicemail. There are no obvious ways to avoid this wasted time. Thanks to David Pogue, I learned the non-obvious way, “1 * #”. If you are leaving a voice mail, one of those will probably get you out of listening to the pointless 30 second message.

You can look in the voicemail help for your carrier to find the correct code for your own voicemail.

• T-Mobile: VoiceMail Shortcuts
• Verizon: Voice Mail Instructions; different instructions depending on your region
• AT&T: Voicemail Quickguide
• Sprint: gave up on search; different instructions by phone

Source: LIVEdigitally through Pogue’s Posts.

Further reading: For Pontiac, Quality Comes Too Late (NY Times)

I’m sick of the silly animated menus on movies. They were moderately interesting the first four times ten years ago. Then they became more and more annoying. I don’t want to put a DVD in, wait several minutes to get to the main menu, scroll to scene selection, watch an animation, select a scene, then start the movie. I want to put the disc in and have the movie start. If I want the menu, I’ll hit the menu button. If I want to watch trailers, I’ll select trailers. Direct access was supposed to be one of the benefits of DVD over tape. But since many DVD players don’t let you skip all the animations, you may as well be fast forwarding through trailers. Not that I want to go back to tape, but new technology should make life better, not just different.

The second problem is the CRAP included on DVD and Blu-ray. It is bad on DVD. The CRAP on Blu-ray it is so bad I refuse to ever buy a Blu-ray disc.

I may as well include a third problem: How do all rental DVDs end up scratched? Are people playing frisbee with them? Using them as coasters? I have never scratched a CD or DVD, yet most rental DVDs are scratched enough to loose whole scenes.

I hope whatever high-definiton format (HVD?) we end up with in a couple years fixes these problems. Maybe we’ll even get a decent frame rate, 24 or 30 frames per second flickers way too much…

Putting wires in a place that they will bend the same way many times is a problem. With car doors it isn’t too bad because the angle they bend through is fairly small. With a tailgate the angle is much larger, making the wires and hoses ore more likely to break. This would be a good place for a couple connectors and a short length of heavier cable. Since this problem isn’t likely to happen for the first owner of a car, the design probably won’t be changed.