Two from Slashdot
One of my favorite sources for Geek and Tech news is
Slashdot -- it's like the Drudge Report for tech heads...
Two stories caught my eye today:
#1) --
Sony Admits MP3 Error
bq. "In a rare show admission of taking a wrong turn, Sony's officials have
admitted that their stance on MP3 players was wrong." While this was pretty obvious to anyone who has ever shopped for a portable MP3 player, it is nice to see Sony admit their shortcoming.
The article links to this news item from Australia's
news.com.au:
bq. SONY missed out on potential sales from MP3 players and other gadgets because it was overly proprietary about music and entertainment content, the head of the company's video-game unit said.
bq. Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, said he and other Sony employees had been frustrated for years with management's reluctance to introduce products like Apple's iPod, mainly because the Sony had music and movie units that were worried about content rights.
Sony's follow-ups to the walkman did not play MP3 files -- MP3 is the worlds most used format for music data. Sony's sales were really really low. DOH!
The free market speaks!
Item number two is a sad one:
#2) --
The Forgotten Huygens Experiment
bq. An experiment onboard the Huygens probe
didn't run as planned because someone forgot to turn it on. The team lead for the experiment has put eighteen years of his life into the project, just to watch it not happen after a seven year ride to its destination on Titan.
This article links to the story in
Yahoo/AP
bq.
Professor's Saturn Experiment Forgotten
David Atkinson spent 18 years designing an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn. Now some pieces of it are lost in space. Someone forgot to turn on the instrument Atkinson needed to measure the winds on Saturn's largest moon.
bq. "The story is actually fairly gruesome," the University of Idaho scientist said in an e-mail from Germany, the headquarters of the European Space Agency. "It was human error — the command to turn the instrument on was forgotten."
Dr. Atkinson's comment:
bq. "In total, the core of our team has invested something like 80 man years on this experiment, 18 of which are mine," Atkinson wrote. "I think right now the key lesson is this — if you're looking for a job with instant and guaranteed success, this isn't it."
That's gotta suck...
Posted by DaveH at January 21, 2005 9:53 PM