One quick way to get yourselves in trouble, or even hurt, is to pull off a prank that seemed harmless at first, but not for the victim. For example, this person decided to use Elmer’s glue to create a fake milk splash, and then proceeded to place it on a MacBook Pro.
Official Source: http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2013/11/14/there-are-pranksters-among-us-21-pics/
MIT researchers have unveiled inFORM, a mind-bending, shape-shifting 3D installation that allows users to virtually „interact with digital information by rendering it in three dimensions.“ The display itself is comprised of a grid of ‚pins,‘ or long square-topped rods, that can be quickly moved up and down to form 3D shapes.
inFORM – Interacting With a Dynamic Shape Display from Tangible Media Group on Vimeo.
Here’s a bit more information about the project from Laughing Squid: „A remote user�s hands can be rendered by the display, allowing the user to manipulate an physical object from a distance. The display can also be used to create 3D data visualizations and models. inFORM is a research project by the Tangible Media Group of the MIT Media Lab.“
Official Source: http://laughingsquid.com/inform-3d-display-can-form-moving-shapes-and-interact-with-physical-objects/
ASSASSIN’S CREED® IV BLACK FLAG™
PC-SYSTEMANFORDERUNGEN VERÖFFENLTICHT
Ubisoft gab die PC-Systemanforderungen von Assassin’s Creed® IV Black Flag™ bekannt:
Minimal-Voraussetzung:
Betriebssystem: Windows Vista SP2 oder Windows 7 SP1 oder Windows 8 (32bit und 64bit Version)
Prozessor: Intel Core2Quad Q8400 @ 2.6 GHz oder AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6 GHz
RAM: 2GB für Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
Grafikkarte: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 oder AMD Radeon HD 4870 (512MB VRAM mit Shader Model 4.0 oder höher)
DirectX: DirectX Juni 2010 Redistributable
Festplattenspeicher: 30 GB
Sound: DirectX kompatible Soundkarte mit den aktuellsten Treibern
Peripherie: Windows kompatible Tastatur und Maus benötigt, optional Controller
Empfohlene Konfiguration:
Betriebssystem: Windows Vista SP2 oder Windows 7 SP1 oder Windows 8 (32bit und 64bit Version)
Prozessor: Intel Core i5 2400S @ 2.5 GHz oder AMD Phenom II x4 940 @ 3.0 GHz oder besser
RAM: 4GB oder mehr
Grafikkarte: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 oder AMD Radeon HD 5850 (1024MB VRAM mit Shader Model 5.0) oder besser
Anmerkungen: Unterstütze Grafikkarten zum Zeitpunkt der Veröffentlichung: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 oder besser, und GeForce GTX 400, GTX 500, GTX 600 außerdem die GTX 700-Serie. AMD Radeon HD4870 oder besser, außerdem Radeon HD5000, HD6000 und die HD7000-Serie.
Notiz: Neueste getestete GeForce-Treiber: 327.23 für alle Serien. Neueste getestete Radeon-Treiber: 13.1 für Radeon HD4000, 13.4 für Radeon HD5000, HD6000 und die HD7000-Serie für Vista, außerdem 13.9 für Radeon HD5000, HD6000 und die HD7000-Serie für Win7 und Win8.
Laptop-Versionen dieser Grafikkarten können kompatibel sein, werden offiziell aber NICHT unterstützt.
Assassin’s Creed® IV Black Flag™ wird ab dem 21. November für Windows-PC im Handel erhältlich sein.
Weitere Informationen zu Assassin‘s Creed® finden Sie unter:
assassinscreed.com und facebook.com/assassinscreed.
Official Source: UBISOFT AT Press Release
Here is one of the first, if not the first, street-legal Batmobile that was built in the UK on custom chassis. This rear wheel drive vehicle comes complete with a fully-functional flamethrower, a hydraulic suspension and a Jaguar-sourced engine that enables it to hit 60mph in under 5-seconds.
Here’s what The Daily Mail has to say about the car: „It is a smooth-driving car, however there’s not a lot of all-round vision – it’s a bit like a fighter jet in that sense. But it also quite quick thanks to its lightweight fibreglass body, and should be capable of 0-60mph in less than five seconds. This vehicle is believed to be one of the best after-production, fully road-legal models ever made.“
Official Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2506234/Road-legal-Batmobile-working-flamethower-sale.html
There are lots of companies, including Google and Apple, that would like to replace your wallet with a digital version, but a startup has a somewhat less ambitious goal — replace your handful of credit cards with one super card.
Coin, a credit-card-like device, is set for a summer 2014 launch. As the video below explains, Coin swipes like an ordinary card. The difference is, the card holds up to eight credit cards, debit cards or gift cards. Coin provides a dongle device to users that connects to their phone and anapp that lets you download the card info.
The device will cost $100, but the company is charging $50 for early adopters that preorder now. Founded by former PayPal developer Kanishk Parashar, Coin uses a patent-pending magnetic strip. The reader device employs Bluetooth Low Energy and Coin’s battery lasts two years, according to the company.
With so much energy spent towards turning smartphones into digital wallets, Coin’s idea seems a bit like a throwback, or at least a stopgap solution until those initiatives go mainstream. (Coin’s debut coincided with the U.S. launch of Isis, a mobile wallet initiative backed by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.) Assuming the traditional wallet sticks around for a while, though, Coin might carve its own niche, especially if it can somehow incorporate drivers‘ licenses, tickets and library cards, among other stubbornly analog forms of ID.
Official Source: http://mashable.com/2013/11/14/coin-super-credit-card/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link
Trek Technology and IBM began selling the first USB flash drives commercially in 2000. Trek Technology sold a model under the brand name „ThumbDrive“, and IBM marketed the first such drives in North America with its product named the „DiskOnKey“, which was developed and manufactured by M-Systems. IBM’s USB flash drive became available on December 15, 2000, and had a storage capacity of 8 MB, more than five times the capacity of the then-common floppy disks.
The PlayStation 4 comes with a 500GB hard drive, and let’s be real—that’s not gonna be enough space for some of you. The good news is that you can upgrade it.P
Check out this video by gamespot, which walks you through what you need to do to swap in a new hard drive into your PS4. Thankfully, it’s nothing too complicated. And assuming you’re okay with the space the original hard drive affords you, installing a different hard drive might still be of interest: a SSD can allow you to load games a little faster. So, it’s definitely worth considering.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8_nt2Dwf78&feature=youtu.be
We are now less than 48 hours from the launch of the PlayStation 4, and excitement levels are quickly approaching fever pitch. But while it’s easy to get a little bit carried away amid the hype, we’re still learning of potentially significant tidbits pertaining Sony’s fourth-gen gaming machine. Since the preceding PlayStation 3 featured a Blu-ray player from the get-go, it was a given that the PS4 would also support Blu-ray playback, even before the announcement. But now, it has been revealed that there will be no 3D Blu-ray support, meaning those with 3D panels at home will need to find a separate, compliant player if they want to kick back and enjoy their favorite three-dimensional flicks.
This is, to the hardcore gamer, by the by, and with many prospective PS4 owners having preordered on the basis of the console’s game-playing credentials, it really isn’t that significant. However, with the Xbox One offering 3D Blu-ray support and Microsoft really seeming to push the wider entertainment appeal of its third-gen offering, this revelation may prompt some to reconsider the PlayStation 4.
What’s even more baffling is that, in actual fact, the PlayStation 3 does support 3D Blu-ray, but as has been spotted in the PS4 User Guide by the folks of The Sixth Axis, its forthcoming successor does not follow suit.
Support for traditional Blu-rays, as well as DVDs, is present from the first release date, and support for CD playback will arrive with a later software update. But with consumers moving away from CDs as a form of listening to music and onto digital services, the lack of initial support is unlikely to have any major effect, whereas the lack of 3D Blu-ray playback might.
With that said, it’s a fair point to make that 3D Blu-ray hasn’t really taken off in the way that Sony and others might have hoped, and as a major vendor of television sets, it is as well placed as any to gauge whether implementing this feature into the PlayStation 4 is a worthwhile venture.
Official Source: http://www.redmondpie.com/playstation-4-wont-support-3d-blu-ray-playback-according-to-official-user-guide/
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2013/11/13/online-user-guide-confirms-no-3d-blu-ray-support-for-ps4/
It has been reckoned for a while now that Apple is in the process of developing a so-called “iWatch” product to be worn on the wrist. The rumor itself is certainly believable, particularly with the release of Samsung’s Galaxy Gear back in September, but the reports surrounding the product itself have ranged from the plausible to the far-fetched. Today arrives perhaps the most outrageous claim that Apple will be creating two different specifications of the iWatch – a smaller model for women, and a larger version for the predominantly larger wrists of the male population.
Of course, as watch aficionados will be more than aware, real timepieces made for women do tend to be smaller, but for a smartwatch to follow suit would seem a bit of a step too far. But that’s the assessment of one industry analyst, who believes the iWatch will feature an OLED display in both 1.7-inch and 1.3-inch specifications – the latter tailored to women.
We do expect, what with Apple being Apple, that the iWatch will make something of a fashion statement, but for the company to go the whole hog and release the iWatch in differing sizes would make very little sense. It would also cause quite a bit of controversy. I mean, what would a smaller-wristed man or larger-wristed lady do when out shopping for the iWatch? Would the smaller-displaying model be inferior in any other way? How would Apple market such a product.
With the iPad mini having released last year, it would seem that the Tim Cook era of Apple is much more open to reason, but an OLED watch in two different sizes, for the two sexes? Personally, I cannot see this happening.
The analyst with the scoop on this one is David Hsieh, who’s the head of the the greater China market for DisplaySearch. Hsieh has a solid track record for making accurate predictions where the Cupertino outfit is concerned, and if he’s right on this one, it will also be the first time Apple has introduced OLED technology into its displays.
Many of its competitors in the smartphone and tablet industry use OLED displays, while the company has stuck religiously with LCD panels.
Ming-Chi Kuo, another well-connected analyst for CGI, believes the iWatch will launch in the second half of next year.
Official Source: http://www.redmondpie.com/apples-iwatch-to-ship-in-two-different-sizes-for-men-and-women-report/
Ubisoft veröffentliche heute ein kommentiertes Walkthrough-Video zu Child of Light™. Lead Programmer Brianna Code gibt einen Einblick in die Neuinterpretation klassischer Märchen, bei der Spieler ein episches Abenteuer in der magischen, gezeichneten Welt von Lemuria erleben. Es gilt Mysterien zu enthüllen, sich wie in klassischen japanischen Rollenspielen in rundenbasierten Kämpfen zu beweisen und ein magisches Königreich zu entdecken.
Das klassische Rollenspiel-Erlebnis wird 2014 als Digital-Titel für die aktuelle Konsolengeneration, für Next-Gen-Konsolen und für Windows PC erscheinen.
Child of Light™ wird von einem kleinen Team erfahrener Entwickler bei Ubisoft Montreal entwickelt. Das Spiel wird mit Ubisofts UbiArt Framework erstellt, eine vielseitige Engine, die es Programmierern und Künstlern erlaubt, ihre Konzeptzeichnungen direkt in die Spielwelt zu implementieren und sie dort lebendig werden zu lassen. Child of Light™ wird durch diesen Effekt zu einem interaktiven Gemälde, das Spieler betreten, um ein aufregendes Abenteuer zu erleben.
In Child of Light™ schlüpfen Spieler in die Rolle von Aurora, einem Mädchen, das aus seiner Heimat gerissen wurde. Um in ihre Heimat zurückkehren zu können, muss sie nun Sonne, Mond und die Sterne aus den Fängen der mysteriösen Königin der Nacht befreien. Unterstützung erfährt Aurora dabei vom kleinen Glühwurm Igniculus und von weiteren Verbündeten, die sie auf ihrer Reise trifft. In dieser modernen Version einer Geschichte über das Heranwachsen, wird sich Aurora ihren größten Ängsten stellen müssen, darunter Drachen und eine Vielzahl mystischer Kreaturen.
Official Source: UBISOFT AT Press Release
Ten million people affected. Half a million displaced. Ten thousand feared dead. As the numbers roll in it is becoming clear that typhoon Haiyan, which left a trail of destruction across the central Philippines on 8 November, is living up to its status as one of the fiercest storms ever recorded to hit land.
Now it is being followed by another flood – of information. Disaster relief teams are pouring into the Philippines from all over the world, trying to get aid to victims amid a jungle of severed roads, shattered buildings and downed power and telecommunications lines. But they have a new ally. For the first time, social media is being mined by an army of volunteers to provide aid workers with real-time maps of who needs help, and where.
The Philippines is no stranger to heavy weather. According to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels, Belgium, it is the third most disaster-hit country of the past decade – exceeded only by China and the US. Most of its disasters are storms or floods.
And it’s getting worse. „We have had an unusually large number of tropical cyclones this year,“ says Jun Yumul of the University of the Philippines in Quezon City. „The average is 19 or 20. This year 25 made landfall.“ What’s more, weather patterns are changing and sea levels are rising (see „Climate change worsened disaster„, below).
The Philippines has a huge national programme to cope with the risk of typhoons and flooding – with natural hazard maps distributed and explained. Despite this, people are facing conditions they never experienced before: designated shelters that were expected to withstand the storm collapsed as Haiyan hit. The projected death toll far surpasses the country’s previous deadliest storm – Thelma in 1991 – and previous strongest typhoon, Bopha, just last December.
Delivering aid in such circumstances is always hard. „We’re operating in a relative black hole of information,“ says Natasha Reyes, emergency coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in the Philippines. „No one knows what the situation is in more rural and remote places, and it’s going to be some time before we have a full picture.“
That might be changing. These days, a problem facing relief workers is too much information, in too many places and too many formats. The need for triage becomes enormous, says John Crowley of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. „A decade ago, disaster relief workers got a few emails a day over sporadic satellite phones,“ he says. „Now the flood of messages reaches one per second, 24/7.“ That’s thanks to emergency telecoms infrastructure, such as the inflatable broadband antennas being deployed in the Philippines by Luxembourg firm, Emergency.lu. Relief workers cannot possibly sift through it all.
Enter MicroMappers’s global network of volunteers. „I had an email last night [Monday] from a relief worker in the Philippines saying they didn’t know what was going on outside the cities,“ says Andrej Verity of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Verity sent a real-time map of where people were asking for help and where destruction was greatest, created using data from MicroMappers. „They were ecstatic,“ he says.
MicroMappers harnesses volunteers who sift through social media coming out of disaster zones. „Anyone can join,“ says Verity. A volunteer is given a few tweets, for instance, tags them according to whether they are requesting or offering help, notes whether the tweets have imagery, and rates the scale of destruction pictured.
Volunteers are also helping to keep maps up to date using OpenStreetMap, which allows expatriates and people in the vicinity to work in a Wikipedia-style collaboration. „As of Monday, we had 770,000 edits of maps of the affected area,“ says Verity. The volunteers fill in roads and details not available on published maps.
The next step will be to create open software that lets relief agencies exchange information and data. „A lot of data is generated about an affected area during a disaster, which just disappears afterwards,“ says Crowley. That includes where and how the destruction happened. Relief agencies cannot share this information as they use incompatible systems.
So UNOCHA is leading an effort to develop a Humanitarian Exchange Language, which will allow data to be shared. This would let groups coordinate their response, see the big picture, and later analyse what happened. Ultimately this trove of data could help efforts to prepare for the next storm, by showing which locations and buildings were most vulnerable. If we can share the data we get from responding to disasters now, it may help prevent disasters in the future, says CJ Hendrix of UNOCHA.
„Collecting and analysing information learned from this event can help build resilient communities,“ agrees Yumul. „But climate uncertainty is a reality, so what we learn from Haiyan may only serve as a guide.“
To participate in MicroMappers efforts, go to micromappers.com
Official Source: http://micromappers.com/
The holiday shopping season is right around the corner, and you know what that means: new gadgets galore. Before heading out to your favorite store (online or offline), here are a few fun and cool gadgets / accessories that you should keep an eye out for.
Check out below the Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition trailer.
According to the narrator, “The Injustice saga is finally complete,” as this Ultimate Edition comes with all DLC add-ons included.
Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition is scheduled to be released for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PS Vita and PC on November 12 in the US and November 29 in Europe. The game will arrive later to Playstation 4.
Official Source: http://www.vg247.com/2013/11/12/injustice-gods-among-us-ultimate-edition-trailer-shows-off-complete-version/
hinese Bitcoin exchange GBL has shut down, taking with it over 25 million yuan (£2.5m, $US4.1m) of investors’ money, in another warning to those who don’t look before they leap with the digital currency.
Users first suspected something was up on October 26th when they could no longer access the site of Global Bond Limited (GBL), according to Coindesk.
On closer inspection, the office address in Hong Kong was found to be empty, its QQ instant messaging contact unresponsive and customer-facing phone lines silent.
GBL only appeared on the Bitcoin scene back in June, after it claimed to have been granted a license by the Hong Kong government to operate a virtual currency exchange business.
However, while it had registered with the authorities, they apparently did not grant it a license to operate as a financial services company.
It was discovered that the firm was using its Hong Kong status merely to appear more legit to investors, and that in fact its servers were located Beijing.
This info was posted to the Bitcoin Forum as far back as May, when the firm seems to have been set up.
Depending on which reports you believe, the exchange managed to attract between 500-1000 investors, all keen to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon.
Only after the site closed at the end of last month did the majority suspect anything – apparently attracted to the platform by fee waivers and other financial inducements.
The demise of GBL will certainly do the reputation of Bitcoin no favours, especially since regulators across the globe seem uncertain how to respond to the digital currency.
However, potentially of more damage are reports like the one last week, which claimed the platform could be hijacked by “selfish” Bitcoin miners.
Official Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/bitcoin_gbl_hong_kong_collapse/
When we first saw open-world survival horror The Forest in May, it was only the player’s first few days on an island over-run by mutant cannibals. Today a new trailer returns to the island, after the player’s had time to build a home and craft weapons. Send in the mutants!
You see, the game begins with a plane crash on a mysterious island, which pleasingly simulates things like tides and plants dying. Players will need to eke out a living from the land, crafting, building, and avoiding those awful things lurking in the woods.
More importantly, this trailer suggests bird will settle on your outstretched finger.
An alpha version is due later this year on PC, with Oculus Rift support to put the scares right in your face. It’s made by Endlight Games, which was formerly SKS Games.
Official Source: http://www.shacknews.com/article/81978/the-forest-trailer-shows-sandbox-survival-horror
Valve’s Greg Coomer has revealed to IGN that only Valve will be manufacturing Steam Controllers due to the carefully tuned product they have.
The controller is going to be a Valve product, we’re going to manufacture it. We’re going to supply all the people who are making third party Steam Machines with controllers. It’s not really because we’re super anxious to get in the hardware business and we think it’s the best way to turn 90 degrees and start racing toward success in hardware and making money in that way. It’s really because we want the controllers to exist. We want them to have the attributes that we think are important, that allow people to play all the games on Steam, and we didn’t think that it was really going to be possible to outsource the design for manufacturing and the finishing of the controller in a way that would allow third parties to take from us an idea or a reference design and bring it to market soon enough. We just think that, for now, at least, we have to do that ourselves. So we’re going to be doing high volume production of the controller for ourselves.
Official Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/11/04/steam-controllers-will-only-be-made-by-valve
A ‚Vacuum Robot‘ that found his way alone , until he landed on the Oven!
Yeah right on the oven, until the whole robot melted down, and the citizens of the house had to be avacuated.
Here are some pictures of the melt down robot:
© FF Hinterstoder
The Citizens of the house left the robot on the workbench ‚powered on‘ and that’s how he made his way trough until he landed on the oven!
But no one was killed, only the Robot. A pure act of Robot killing.
Official Source: http://www.heute.at/news/oesterreich/ooe/art23653,954292
Logitech’s G700s Rechargeable Gaming Mouse is currently being offered for only $54.99 shipped, today only, originally priced at $99.99.
For gamers who know there is no such thing as „over-prepared“, the G700s is a must-have. Precise? Check. Customizable? 13 programmable buttons will perform complex macros at your command.
Notable features:
Official Source: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BFOEY3Y/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=tec02e-20
Stephen Elop, a candidate to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft Corp.’s chief executive officer, would consider breaking with decades of tradition by focusing the company’s strategy around making the popular Office software programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint available on a broad variety of smartphones and tablets, including those made by Apple Inc. and Google Inc., said three people with knowledge of his thinking.
Elop would probably move away from Microsoft’s strategy of using these programs to drive demand for its flagship Windows operating system on personal computers and mobile devices, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the 49-year-old executive hasn’t finalized or publicly discussed his analysis of the business. Most of Microsoft’s software has been tied to running on Windows.
Microsoft became the world’s largest software provider under Ballmer and co-founder Bill Gates by making Windows-based PCs running Office applications an industry standard. When the Redmond, Washington-based company failed to come up with hit Windows-based phones and tablets, that left it with little role in the mobile market. Its refusal to adapt Office for Apple and devices based on Google’s Android operating system hasn’t helped its software usage.
As he formulates some broad strategic outlines for Microsoft, Elop is drawing on his years as CEO of Nokia Oyj, where he showed he wasn’t wedded to homegrown software by canceling the company’s then-dominant Symbian phone software in 2010, said the people. He is also leaning on his previous experience as a Microsoft executive, where as head of the Office division he pushed the company to enhance and find new ways to sell the software, said the people.
Microsoft, which is shifting from software to focus on hardware and services, is searching for a new CEO after Ballmer said in August that he would retire within a year. Elop and Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally are among the external candidates in the interview process, as are three insiders — strategy chief Tony Bates, enterprise software chief Satya Nadella and chief operating officer Kevin Turner — people with knowledge of the process have said.
Elop is set to join Microsoft after agreeing to sell Nokia’s handset business to the software maker for $7.2 billion in September. He resigned as Nokia’s CEO when the sale was announced, and said he would become head of a new Microsoft devices unit responsible for hardware such as the Surface tablet and Xbox game console.
Elop’s assumption is that Microsoft could create more value by maximizing sales of Office rather than by using it to prop up sales of Windows-based devices, said two of the people with knowledge of his thinking. Market-research firm Gartner Inc. projects PC shipments will fall 11 percent this year.
Doug Dawson, a spokesman for Nokia, declined to comment or to grant an interview with Elop.
“We appreciate Bloomberg’s foray into fiction and look forward to future episodes,” said Frank Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft.
Microsoft’s Windows division reported that revenue rose 4.6 percent to $19.2 billion in the latest fiscal year, which ended June 30. The unit that includes Office and other corporate software products saw sales rise 2.5 percent to $24.7 billion. Microsoft scrapped that reporting structure for the current fiscal year and now reports earnings based on devices and software for consumers as well as enterprises.
Besides emphasizing Office, Elop would be prepared to sell or shut down major businesses to sharpen the company’s focus, the people said. He would consider ending Microsoft’s costly effort to take on Google with its Bing search engine, and would also consider selling healthy businesses such as the Xbox game console if he determined they weren’t critical to the company’s strategy, the people said.
Earlier this week, investors drove Microsoft shares to their highest price since mid-2000, after Nomura Holdings Inc. analyst Rick Sherlund said the sale of Bing and Xbox, along with other moves, could lift fiscal 2015 earnings by 40 percent.
“Microsoft is trying to do too much, and these assets add no clear value to the overall business,” wrote Sherlund, who added that he thought Mulally was most likely to get the nod to replace Ballmer.
During his earlier tenure as a senior Microsoft executive, Elop cut a deal to offer Office on Nokia’s Symbian phone software. In 2010, Microsoft added free, scaled-down versions of programs such as Word and PowerPoint that anyone could access via the Web — a controversial move given that Office is Microsoft’s largest and among its most profitable business.
He also oversaw the development of Office 365, a hosted version of the suite for customers who prefer to pay an annual subscription for Web access rather than buying the software outright.
At Nokia, Elop cut 40,000 jobs and reduced operating expenses by 50 percent. While Microsoft doesn’t face the same cost constraints, Elop would probably impose job cuts and belt-tightening to create smaller teams, said the people.
Elop’s Nokia efforts also point to his focus on what a customer can do with a product rather than on its underlying operating system, said the people with knowledge of Elop’s thinking. In 2011, Elop discontinued Symbian, which was pervasive, yet was fast losing share to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Instead, he forged a partnership with Microsoft to develop phones based on Windows Phone software as he said it offered the best chance for Nokia to make unique devices.
Another clue to Elop’s thinking comes from his handling of Nokia’s mapping and location-tracking software, which is considered a valuable asset, said the people. Rather than use the software to differentiate Nokia’s phones with features such as reliable turn-by-turn driving instructions, he made it into a standalone software business called Here. The product now powers the location services in some Amazon.com Inc. devices.
Official Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-08/microsoft-ceo-candidate-elop-said-to-mull-windows-shift.html
The Soviet Union built a reusable space craft named Buran more advanced (both in terms of reliability and payload capability) than the Space Shuttle. The craft was launched oncewithout any crew and the program was canceled at the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Buran Under Construction.
© capcomespace.net
On 12 May 2002, a hangar housing Buran collapsed during a massive storm in Kazakhstan, as a result of poor maintenance. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the craft.
Buran on it’s way to a museum in Germany.
Outside of Russia and the United States the shuttle at the TECHNIK MUSEUM SPEYER is the only one which can be visited in a museum and its one of the highlights of the museums big space flight exhibition. Thru stairs the visitors can take a look inside the spaceship.
Follow the tour.
Official Source: http://weirdrussia.com/2013/10/12/buran-a-soviet-space-shuttle/
You have to be a bit of a character to take on the lead role in Doctor Who. When Jon Pertwee took over, it was the series‘ first venture into colour. These new earthbound adventure brought massive popularity to the show and its star, turning in an impressively popular four year run. Known before the role as a comedian, Pertwee played the role straight proving himself to be a great choice for the Doctor. In his real life he was a gadget fan, as well as a sportsman and car enthusiast – all perfect traits for a time traveler. It was while at an appearance at an auto dealership that he met car customizer Peter Farries, which is where the story of Pertwee’s 1973 Whomobile began.
The vehicle was never called the „Whomobile“ in the show, though Pertwee does refer to it as such in his memoirs. It was actually designed under another name, „The Alien“. Pertwee and Farries sketched out the fantasy car. Other car customizers said it would take several moldings to create such an unusual shape in fiberglass, but Farries did it in only two. The completed car was 14 feet long, 7 feet across, with fins that reached 5 feet into the air. There are no doors, you have to hop in over the wing, and once inside the driver and uncomfortable passenger are faced with the blinky lights of a prop computer, and a real television with dual rear antennae. Here’s a great clip from children’s show Blue Peter (it’s great how the pair do sort of try to keep up the illusion of the car’s abilities being „real“) that offers what is probably the most detailed look at the car ever.
Once completed (at Pertwee’s cost) the star was able to persuade the producers of Doctor Who to include the vehicle in the series. The car first appeared not yet complete in the 10th season’s „Invasion of the Dinosaurs“. The front windscreen you see in the episode as well as in the Blue Peter segment (hosted by Peter Purves, a 1960’s Who companion) was from a boat, added to make the vehicle roadworthy. Its second and final appearance was in Pertwee’s swansong, „Planet of the Spiders“, where thought chromakey trickery the vehicle was shown to fly.
To this day some fans still think the Whomobile was a hovercraft. In fact the three wheeler struggled to be legally classified, until it was finally referred to as „an invalid tricycle“… that could go a hundred miles an hour!. Pertwee used the car for personal appearances even after his tenure as the Doctor was over. Eventually he gave it to a fan bereaved over the tragic death of his mother, with Pertwee simply „borrowing“ it back on occasion. Just a few years ago (and this makes me crazy…) the car went up for auction with little fanfare. It was misclassified as a boat (foreshadowed by that boat windscreen used in version 1 of the car?) and went for around £1200. Had I known about the sale, I’d have made my way to the UK to bring back the official Retro Thing company car.
Official Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acAS8ZrISoo
http://www.retrothing.com/2010/08/the-fate-of-the-whomobile.html
