June 2005

Snowboard maker found not-liable

June 2, 2005

In the first such case to go to trial a civil jury found that Swiss snowboard maker Nidecker was not liable for the 2002 death of 22-year-old Kate Svitek. Svitek's estate had asked the company be held liable because the snowboard's bindings were not release bindings. The company at one time had offered release bindings but stopped because of poor sales. No studies have been done to measure the impact of release bindings. Proponents of the status-quo suggest that the fixed bindings prevent additional injury from a situation where one foot releases and the other foot is still attached to the board.

Cashing out

June 2, 2005

It looks as though the decision about when to cash out my StorageTek stock has been made for me. As a veteran of StorageTek and Electronic Data Systems I'm not sure what to make of the deal. It seems to make a lot of sense in as the two companies have very integrated offerings in the open systems world. The two companies have significant campuses that sit across from each other along the Boulder Turnpike in Colorado. Both also have an existing relationship with Texas based EDS for some of their support and comarketing agreements.

For the past several years it has appeared that StorageTek was trying to slim down and make the company an attractive takeover target. Though results have appeared to be good it seems many of the gains came from down-sizing and cutbacks instead of organic growth. In a press release announcing Sun's reselling the StorageTek StreamLine SL8500 tape library last June Bob Koecheler, StorageTek's vice president for golbal partners and alliances said:

Bleeding Eyes

June 1, 2005

Be careful what you wish for.

I had my first flight here at Fort Campbell last night. I arrived at the hangar at 1400. We did some flight planning and studying until about 1600. The Instructor Pilot and I did a pre-flight from 1600 until 1700. We spent an additional hour planning the flight and discussing what we hoped to accomplished. I then flew from 1800 until 0200 with just a short break to re-fuel and have a snack.

Whew! I was exhausted. Having not flown, I devoted an extraordinary amount of mental focus to the flight and it wore me out. Fortunately, I flew pretty well. I flew day, night, and with night vision goggles. I performed emergency procedures, traffic patterns, and got a general orientation to the area. The Instructor Pilot was generally respectful and nice to me and taught me some good techniques.

I spoke with the lead IP after the flight. He said that they are determined to get me up to speed as quickly as possible. In his words, they are going to fly me "until my eyes bleed."

The moral? Be careful what you wish for.

Macosxhints.com sold to Mac Publishing, LLC

June 1, 2005

Rob Griffiths over at MacOSXHints.com has sold his site to MacWorld. The move includes Griffiths becoming a full-time editor for MacWorld who will continue to focus on the hints site, magazine columns and some article writing for Mac World. The move is clearly good for Griffiths and it appears from a detailed question and answer document on his site that things will stay pretty much the same for now.

The good news is that Griffiths has a long history with Mac World and ample opportunity to make judgments about how he fits with the culture there. We can hope that the rosy prognostications are accurate and that his site will continue as the high quality site for OS X information it has become.

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