KeystoneRegional

They're looking into DMU's or Diesel Multiple Units for scoot service, but really the truth is that the DE/DM30's suck, the LIRR should've gone with GE Genesis as Dual Mode Locomotives and PL42AC's Diesel Electric Locomotives instead. If you want to read all about that DMU topic, look at this article below: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/04/30/lirr-evaluates-use-of-dmus-for-low-ridership-branch-lines/

Well, the truth is that the railroad tests are much stricter and harder than the subway, you have to know a lot of specifics and details to enter into the Railroads, it's like studying for a qualification to Stuyvesant High School instead of your local high school [in my case, perhaps Forest Hills High or Jamaica High because my BOE district line is awkward]. That is why Railroad T/O's are called Train Engineers or Engineers because they know how to operate on a moving train and in a train yard. They might not know as much as the guy who builds and maintains the engine, however they know a hell of a lot more than any of us. This is not just the USA, it's also in Canada and Europe, in fact in Asia, the Train Engineer is one of the most highly respected [and maybe coveted] job in the entire job industry, so it's premium and it takes a lot of time and energy to study for this job.

I prefer AT&T, mostly because it's coverage is consistent, Verizon is only good in the Cities and select Suburbs, I have numerous people asking me to borrow them my phone to use for a few mins in the Suburbs because they don't have Verizon reception, or because there are more "dead spots" in the suburbs on Big Red than Ma Bell.

From my years after years of riding ()' /> Long Island Bus, I can tell you I've NEVER seen such a horrible bus system as what it is like today. Every single ride from 1996 all the way to 2006 [10 years, and every Saturday until 2002, every other Saturday until 2006], the ride was flawless, the N93 Hub Shuttle even runs consistently, the annoucements was 98% of the time working flawlewssly, their annoucements are even better than NYCT/MTA Bus and NYC Subway! From my sporadic revisits in 2008 thru 2010, I can tell their service is as good as before, but some bad apples from the NYC Side of the border has been intruding in, however after rumors of LI Bus being privatized came afloat I went back into obeserving in depth of the service and many route. From my review in Q1 and Q2 of 2011, LI Bus has been operation on par with their levels in the 2008-2010 "low level" review. However, Q3 is the Quarter that seen the decline in service levels and reliability, Q4 continues the ongoing decline trend in service levels and reliability, however there is no noticable dramatic drop in July thru November. However, right after the Thanksgiving holiday, the dramatic drop has happened, December 2011 is the month that seen the worst service in LI Bus history under my observations and December-31st-2011 closes my books on LI Bus Observations. I cite staff leaving and some underfunding as reasons why the service level tumbled. (NOTE: Observations include obeservation data from other transit fans and members on NYC Transit Forums, I give them credit for sharing information on the state of ()' /> LI Bus.) But, that didn't stop me, I continued obeserving the newly formed NICE Bus operated by Veolia Transdev under Nassau Co. However, service has not been reliable and really bus breakdowns are happening more than what my December 2011 data shows. Also, from what speculation and comments from Bus Operators and Operations Dispatchers and Supervisors and such, I heard talks about Bus Maintenance staff, staff from other Veolia Operations and such filling in the Bus Operators position, also I heard them using third party maintainers and towing companies to fix the buses. The non NICE, but Veolia Transdev maintenance and service reliability record are also in question since Veolia operations in Monmouth County, NJ and Las Vegas, NV has been poor. Even overseas in Australia, their record are not good. However I suggest Nassau Co. boost the funding to NICE Bus and then I'll reevaluate and make a final say, however currently, Nassau County and NICE Bus share the blame, and I would not blame the ()' /> on anything what-so-ever.

This Radio Station: Virgin Radio France [though I forgot most of my French]. http://www.virginradio.fr/

Random US Country Music Station. GPS: Jiangsu Province, China.

Well, like I said, compared to the M-7/M-7A's... Standalone, it's pretty big!

Traffic caused by poorly designed road systems.

LOL, but if you look at it, NYC/Nassau has better road systems than London right?

PCWorld - "After a day of Google I/O announcements, I finally got my hands on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running the Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) operating system. I found that there are a few things that Google has done right with this update---and a few issues that still need work. What It Did Right Jelly Bean is fast, slick, and feels like what Ice Cream Sandwich should have been when it first launched six months ago. This performance boost is due to Project Butter, a processing framework designed to improve responsiveness, smooth out animations and reduce latency. I compared the Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean to my own personal Galaxy Nexus (running Ice Cream Sandwich) and noticed the difference almost immediately. There is basically zero lag when opening applications, and scrolling between different home screens is amazingly smooth. The phone's user interface looks basically the same, but there have been little animations thrown in that give it a more polished look. Animations In Jelly Bean, every time you open an app, you get one of these brief animations that quickly zoom in on the app you just tapped. Is it superfluous? Sure. But it's the little details like this that make Jelly Bean more pleasant to use. There are a few other minor user interface tweaks, such as bigger, easier-to-tap icons. Notifications in Jelly Bean The notification tray got a minor facelift, but the important change is in the notifications. You can expand certain notifications by using various two-finger gestures, allowing you to see more information at a glance. Not all applications support this feature when I tried it out, but all of the pre-installed Google apps work. In fact, while writing this story, I received a Calendar alert telling me that I was going to be late to an event. When I went to the notification bar to see what the alert was concerning, I was able to see the name of the event (part of it anyway), the time and location, as well as a brief note describing the event. Below that was a button that allowed me to "snooze" the alert, which I did without ever having to leave the notification pane. It's a smarter way of making notifications less intrusive, and I hope that third-party developers take advantage of this new feature. Camera App Camera App The Camera app also gained a few new tricks, with new animations that occur every time you take a picture. Once you’ve taken a few shots, you can swipe the camera screen away to bring up your camera roll and view the images you have in your Gallery. This is much better than what we had in Ice Cream Sandwich, where you had to exit the Camera app to see photos you had previously taken. Mobile Search Google went all out when it came to mobile search on Jelly Bean. Google Now You can access the new Google Now page at any time by swiping upwards on the Home icon in the navigation bar. Initially your Google Now page will be very plain, showing you places nearby that you might be interested in visiting as well as the local weather (which it gets by using your phone's GPS). \ The more searches you do on your phone, the more Google Now will meet your needs. To test this out, I searched for several things related to baseball and a sports section appeared on my Google Now page. If you don't like a section, you can turn it off from the settings menu. It's a very visual way of displaying basic information and it worked well--but I feel like it could do more with the information, and I hope Google Now continues to expand. Voice Search Jelly Bean Search Card Voice Search has a much cleaner interface. You can now do voice input when you don't have a connection, and asking basic questions like "What's the capitol of Spain?" will bring up a card with an answer to your query. If you aren't satisfied with your answer or if you want to know more, you can swipe away to the card to get to the familiar Google Search results screen. I tried asking a few questions and, after Google finally began to recognize my voice, I was able to get answers to almost everything I asked. What It Did Wrong While many things in Jelly Bean look and work well, I encountered a few quirks. I noticed a strange ghosting, particularly while scrolling, that wasn't present in Ice Cream Sandwich. My guess is that this is the result of several new API's in Jelly Bean that are meant to smooth out text and graphics (to make them use less memory), but it's something that's noticeable when scrolling through webpages and other text-heavy content. Another problem I found is one that's plagued Android for some time now: Fragmentation. With so few devices currently on Ice Cream Sandwich--and with many more phones currently waiting for their update--it seems likely that most phones out today (aside from the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S) will get the Jelly Bean update. Jelly Bean may have solve a lot of performance issues in Android, but fragmentation will continue to be a problem. It seems unlikely that many developers will take advantage of any of Jelly Bean's new features, especially when most of their users will still be running Android Gingerbread or below." Source Link: http://www.pcworld.c...test_drive.html

What I saw: Tons of N20/21 Bunching, always two or three at a time!

Top 5: George Washington - First President / Help America become Independent. Thomas Jefferson - The Declaration of Independence, Louisiana Purchase and the Exploration of the West. Abraham Lincoln - Ended Slavery / One of the major persons that lead to America's current "ethnicity melting pot" status. Dwight Eisenhower - For establishing the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Ronald Reagan - For getting the American Economy back on track.

Good solution! Rotten Mangano and Smelly Schmitt will surely be embarrassed on it and know that Nassau is officially equivalent to third world.

It's going to be a small minor batch, it's not going to be as extensive as the M7A order, the LIRR order is smaller than the M7 order but larger than the M9A one. But both M9/9A orders will be noticeable in a larger scale if there is a design change.

I think what this means is that the service changes are going to be executed on the 24th, however the announcements will be made on the 20th or 21st.

I am in talks with their reps on whether to convert mine the official one or the one they made [but is an inactive one] the official one, still awaiting response since it there is currently a 2 week gap in communications, I am still hopeful that communications would improve no matter what option we finalize on.

So far what I know from NICE Directly [Planned for June-24th-2012] [***NOT FINAL DECISION/SUBJECT TO CHANGE***]: -The n27 will run to Roosevelt Field Mall during Weekday Off-Peak Hours instead of ending short at Roslyn LIRR. -More n23 will run to Mineola during evenings and nights. -More n27 will run to Hempstead during evenings and nights. -One additional n21 trip will run. -Better connection pattern on the n24/n78/n79 service. Source: Email from NICE Execs.

The update will also be on the NICE Bus UnOfficial Facebook Page after the graphics get posted, thanks again Amtrak7 for the graphic: https://www.facebook.com/NICEBUS

I think we should all stop speculating and wait until how things pan out in the next 2 years, it only will cause more confusion to the foamers who want the latest in news and updates [no offense]. For now, we know the R-179's will have a like look as the R-143/R-160's, the interior is not shown yet, nor is a mock-up available, but sources [rumors] say that the R-179's will be a R-143/R-160 mutt, however we still should wait and see. Either ways, good news that Bombardier and North County still retains the contract and bid, this is awesome! Can't wait!

Mother nature [feat. birds] - Forest Hills, Queens, NY.

The format seemed to have cropped out the Source Link, so here ya go: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/05/29/latest-iphone-5-component-leaks-show-taller-screen-metal-back-smaller-dock-connector/ As for made in USA, it definitely sounds awesome, hopefully America can produce enough phones for the world market in the distance future (being as generous as possible) lol.

I guess it is going to be released in a few weeks, but really I think it's more of a restoration of some of the cuts that really screwed up ridership.

Forbes - " Pictures released today by 9to5Mac9to5Mac says, “From a production standpoint, it appears that the metal antenna band is molded into the metal backplates. We assume this is Apple’s way of creating a unibody enclosure for mobile devices. Apple introduced unibody notebooks in late 2008, and the purpose of the unibody is to allow Apple to produce thinner and lighter, yet stronger, devices. Now that most of the phone’s external elements are one piece, Apple is likely able to squeeze more into the iPhone internally. Apple needs all the space they can get with their plans of producing LTE smartphones with proper battery life.” What’s interesting to me is how little of a departure this is from the current iPhone 4 design. Could this be a plant from Apple to get us off course? Or is the larger screen enough of a departure and the rest will be small bits like moving the position of the front-facing camera and the smaller dock connector? Will Tim Cook tease us any more in his All Things D keynote? More to come…" Source: 9 to 5 Mac via Forbes. show two versions of a metal case for the new iPhone, one in black and one in white. They later released a shot of the matching face plate that does indeed show a screen aperture that matches the current width but is taller, seemingly to accommodate a 4″ display.