The german Transrapid had a fatal design flaw which caused an accident (23 dead) in 2006 on the test track near Lathen, North Germany:
"On September 22, 2006 a Transrapid train collided with a maintenance vehicle at 170 km/h on the test track in Lathen. The maintenance vehicle destroyed the first section of the train, and came to rest on its roof. This was the first major accident involving a Transrapid train. The news media reported 23 fatalities and several severely injured [...] The accident is reported to have been caused by a combination of human error and a technical flaw in the system supervision." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid#September_2006_accident
The mentioned maintenance vehicle which had its own independent drive to move along the track (a reasonable thing, I guess, probably using a diesel engine and tires) was not participating in the Transrapid's overall communications structure. I.e., this vehicle was not "booked into" the communications system in any way. As far as I know, this was not due to any coincidence or failure, but by concept. The Transrapid system had no precautions of blocking a train _automatically_ from entering a section of the line when there's service work being done.
re "It's time for manufacturers to tell Microsoft...":
Exactly.
For the first time, a manufacturer like Asus could have managed to achieve a position where they can say "You want us to put Windows on all EeePCs exclusively? Well, let us have your offer and we'll talk about it. Or maybe you want the Windows version of the EeePC to be substantially less than the Linux version instead? Alright, that would be... let's see... all the XP licences for free, plus some cash as a subsidy per unit... How much could that be?"
Presumably, something like this happened for the Australian market, i.e., Microsoft and Asus might indeed have some kind of agreement down under. A handful of other markets might even follow, like Germany and Japan.
But, most probably, there will be no such agreement in (say) Thailand or France or in most of the remaining 170+ countries of the world...
... which, considering its LAN deficiencies (among others), is crap - even by MS standards.
Let's wait and see what the terms for an equally severely crippled MS Office "Home edition" will be - text files limited to 500 chars? Or will this be called just "MS Works 2009"?
Unless they cancel the Standardization of OOXML immediately and furthermore establish a reasonable code of conduct for itself and for all the national bodies that are entitled to vote.
In addition to targeting OOXML, we ought to start targeting the ISO as a whole.
This organization, theoretically being in charge for the Standardization of a thousand matters, has knowingly let its own standards drop to an abysmal low level.
It is time now to question the qualification of the ISO as such severely and, possibly, get rid of it, replacing it by an impartial and responsible institution.
... dont't worry, Apple, it's just developers, having been interested in the iPhone as a target platform for a short period of time (what was it like - three days?), until they read the fine print in the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines.
Apple still is a proprietary software company. Google isn't (and never has been).
The comparison between the upcoming iPhone SDK and Google's Android (which is a platform, to begin with) makes it also clear what the main perspectives of closed-style vs. open-style developer relationships (imho, a special kind of business models) are for the foreseeable future.
An SDK - that is restricted in many ways, - that interested developers will possibly have to apply for (not the big sw honchos, of course), - by means of which one will write apps that will have to make it (or not) to a single POS (by being certified, maybe even a paid certification),
such an SDK will certainly not attract too many developers in the long run.
Referring to small developers: Where in Apple's realm is the equivalent to Google's "Summer of Code"?
On the other hand, in Europe the iPhone rather seems to be missing every forecast sales target.
In Germany, T-mobile on average sells just a fraction more than one iPhone per retail shop per day (there are around 700 T-mobile shops in Germany, total sales figures are between 700 and 1000 iPhones a day, which even includes sales of T-mobile's online shop).
In Great Britain, Apple doesn't allow its partners O2 and Carphone Warehouse to publish their iPhone sales figures at all.
In France, Orange sold 70,000 iPhones in the 33 days between Nov. 29 to Dec. 31, not too bad a start. But in the following 31 days of January, Orange FR's iPhone sales were down to 20,000 iPhones.
I remember it took me some time to find out the "press mouse button when restarting" catch as well as (years later) the "insert paperclip into corner of slot as there is no pinhole" one...
After 21 years of working with Mac hardware and software, I am not a big defender of Apple's ways and means anymore (can you spell MacBook Air - you know, the maxi-PDA presented to a hopefully underwhelmed world earlier this week?).
A significant part of Apple's earlier great user interface achievements established by the likes of Jef Raskin, Bruce Tognazzini and others has been washed down the river in the last few years in favour of mere "style" and "prettiness". Interior decorations.
There is no eject button and no pinhole to force the ejection of the disc Correct, there isn't a separate pinhole for doing this.
In most Mac slot-in-drives I know, you can take the usual straightened paperclip and insert it into the right corner (*) of the slot anyway and try to touch a little lever and so on, further procedure like with all other opticals.
Walter.
(*) In Macs used by Her Majesty the Queen's subjects this might be the _left_ corner instead, but as an inhabitant of continental Europe, what do I know?
At one point I found my self holding the Mac in both hands and shaking it back and forwards to see if that would dislodge it. You didn't first try to reboot your Mac Mini with the mouse button pressed down?
Obviously, you didn't. But maybe the next time...;-)
... the guys who've promised german language support for iListen nearly ten years ago. They just didn't deliver (as far as I know, as I quit paying attention to them some years ago).
A usable solution in the field of speech recognition would still be a very important feature (something like a "killer feature") for any desktop OS, be it Mac OS, Windows, or Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
... wasn't exactly known for being pro-military...
In general (no pun intended here), military doesn't attract the brightest of a nation for a carreer.
In Belgium, it is legally more or less the same as in France, no tying two products or a product and a service together being allowed.
I am not sure about the Netherlands here.
As far as I know, there's currently no such legislation in Germany.
The german Transrapid had a fatal design flaw which caused an accident (23 dead) in 2006 on the test track near Lathen, North Germany:
"On September 22, 2006 a Transrapid train collided with a maintenance vehicle at 170 km/h on the test track in Lathen. The maintenance vehicle destroyed the first section of the train, and came to rest on its roof. This was the first major accident involving a Transrapid train. The news media reported 23 fatalities and several severely injured [...]
The accident is reported to have been caused by a combination of human error and a technical flaw in the system supervision."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid#September_2006_accident
The mentioned maintenance vehicle which had its own independent drive to move along the track (a reasonable thing, I guess, probably using a diesel engine and tires) was not participating in the Transrapid's overall communications structure. I.e., this vehicle was not "booked into" the communications system in any way. As far as I know, this was not due to any coincidence or failure, but by concept. The Transrapid system had no precautions of blocking a train _automatically_ from entering a section of the line when there's service work being done.
Can you believe it?
... all the territory here is well burnt, the OLPC project destroyed, and then let's move on to the next mean thing."
We won't see any updates ever to this XP for OLPC, I presume.
Fortunately (for MS), there seems to be a deal between MS and Asus.
Unfortunately (for MS), this deal is referring to Australia only.
There are still 189+ countries left...
Next stop, Mongolia?
re "It's time for manufacturers to tell Microsoft...":
;-)
Exactly.
For the first time, a manufacturer like Asus could have managed to achieve a position where they can say "You want us to put Windows on all EeePCs exclusively? Well, let us have your offer and we'll talk about it. Or maybe you want the Windows version of the EeePC to be substantially less than the Linux version instead? Alright, that would be... let's see... all the XP licences for free, plus some cash as a subsidy per unit... How much could that be?"
Presumably, something like this happened for the Australian market, i.e., Microsoft and Asus might indeed have some kind of agreement down under.
A handful of other markets might even follow, like Germany and Japan.
But, most probably, there will be no such agreement in (say) Thailand or France or in most of the remaining 170+ countries of the world...
Too bad for Microsoft, isn't it?
har, har.
... which, considering its LAN deficiencies (among others), is crap - even by MS standards.
Let's wait and see what the terms for an equally severely crippled MS Office "Home edition" will be - text files limited to 500 chars? Or will this be called just "MS Works 2009"?
Using this technology, books could get an "expiry date"...
Great thing, although not at all for book buyers.
Why should anybody want to do this?
Strange idea, very strange.
... and anybody else shouldn't, either.
Unless they cancel the Standardization of OOXML immediately and furthermore establish a reasonable code of conduct for itself and for all the national bodies that are entitled to vote.
In the contrary. It's no longer about just OOXML.
In addition to targeting OOXML, we ought to start targeting the ISO as a whole.
This organization, theoretically being in charge for the Standardization of a thousand matters, has knowingly let its own standards drop to an abysmal low level.
It is time now to question the qualification of the ISO as such severely and, possibly, get rid of it, replacing it by an impartial and responsible institution.
... dont't worry, Apple, it's just developers, having been interested in the iPhone as a target platform for a short period of time (what was it like - three days?), until they read the fine print in the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines.
They are now moving to
http://code.google.com/android/
or to
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
You don't really need them, do you?
... somewhere visibly on one of the main Ubuntu pages.
These images (for Mac PPC, Playstation PS3 and IBM POWER hardware) are kept current by the community, and they are right here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/7.10/release/
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/ports/releases/7.10/release/
And no, linking there shouldn't be an issue for a "brainstorm" submission.
Apple still is a proprietary software company. Google isn't (and never has been).
The comparison between the upcoming iPhone SDK and Google's Android (which is a platform, to begin with) makes it also clear what the main perspectives of closed-style vs. open-style developer relationships (imho, a special kind of business models) are for the foreseeable future.
An SDK
- that is restricted in many ways,
- that interested developers will possibly have to apply for (not the big sw honchos, of course),
- by means of which one will write apps that will have to make it (or not) to a single POS (by being certified, maybe even a paid certification),
such an SDK will certainly not attract too many developers in the long run.
Referring to small developers: Where in Apple's realm is the equivalent to Google's "Summer of Code"?
There's a huge moon out there, full of Hydrocarbones (oil, natural gas, whatever).
Drill it, spoil it, kill it.
And then, on to the next great thing, maybe wasting a whole planet, like Neptune?
"The problem with the Thinkpad is that it doesn't taper at the edges. Apple really created an illusion of thin when they adopted this design..."
;-)
As a posting elsewhere on slashdot some days ago put it,
"If the Macbook Air were so thin one could slice tomatoes with it, I wouldn't buy it."
On the other hand, in Europe the iPhone rather seems to be missing every forecast sales target.
In Germany, T-mobile on average sells just a fraction more than one iPhone per retail shop per day (there are around 700 T-mobile shops in Germany, total sales figures are between 700 and 1000 iPhones a day, which even includes sales of T-mobile's online shop).
In Great Britain, Apple doesn't allow its partners O2 and Carphone Warehouse to publish their iPhone sales figures at all.
In France, Orange sold 70,000 iPhones in the 33 days between Nov. 29 to Dec. 31, not too bad a start. But in the following 31 days of January, Orange FR's iPhone sales were down to 20,000 iPhones.
The solution is simple enough -- spoofing the User Agent that Firefox reports.
There's even a simpler solution - get rid of Hotmail. Now.
How can a company that can afford to pony up $44.6 bn possibly be described as being "on the ropes"?!
;-)
In terms of money, it couldn't, no, not Microsoft.
In terms of technology, it can, especially Microsoft.
In the past Microsoft has bought all the technology money can buy, but for the future, that's not enough.
suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, like starting with new code
;-)
In my view, Microsoft has missed this boat some years ago.
Dave Cutler probably has retired, and so did other senior engineers capable to do this.
To paraphrase an Indian Chief's saying, "... then you'll eventually notice that marketing people and lawyers can't write a single line of code."
Well, I couldn't agree more.
I remember it took me some time to find out the "press mouse button when restarting" catch as well as (years later) the "insert paperclip into corner of slot as there is no pinhole" one...
After 21 years of working with Mac hardware and software, I am not a big defender of Apple's ways and means anymore (can you spell MacBook Air - you know, the maxi-PDA presented to a hopefully underwhelmed world earlier this week?).
A significant part of Apple's earlier great user interface achievements established by the likes of Jef Raskin, Bruce Tognazzini and others has been washed down the river in the last few years in favour of mere "style" and "prettiness". Interior decorations.
Best regards,
Walter.
In most Mac slot-in-drives I know, you can take the usual straightened paperclip and insert it into the right corner (*) of the slot anyway and try to touch a little lever and so on, further procedure like with all other opticals.
Walter.
(*) In Macs used by Her Majesty the Queen's subjects this might be the _left_ corner instead, but as an inhabitant of continental Europe, what do I know?
Obviously, you didn't. But maybe the next time...
Best regards.
Walter.
... the guys who've promised german language support for iListen nearly ten years ago.
They just didn't deliver (as far as I know, as I quit paying attention to them some years ago).
A usable solution in the field of speech recognition would still be a very important feature (something like a "killer feature") for any desktop OS, be it Mac OS, Windows, or Linux.
... are the nearest best thing to stream ads to, beside trash bins.
Btw, nice to see Microsoft finally has found its proper level of competence.
Walter.