Oops
Even dressing as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers didn't help.
Those of you who've been following our Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) programme are invited to spare a thought today for Microsoft's Phoenix glider, which failed to demonstrate the Right Stuff over the weekend at Red Bull's Flugtag competition in Long Beach, California. Flugtag "challenges teams of everyday people …
by stating 10ft vertical steel rods have no lift capabilities whatsoever.
typical MS, missing the actual problem.
"He said: "The wings appeared sound, but perhaps the balance was off."
No it was that f*cking great hunk of metal below the wing that caused the problem.!!!
I dont think the rods were supposed to fly. Id guess the glider was supposed to come off the launch tower (10ft rods) at the end of the pier, thereby starting higher and haiving better chance of going the distance. This is either:
Clever ?
Cheating ?
Non of the above as it diddnt work!
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Just like Windows - mashed together with no thought over the design of the thing! Just looking at it - you can tell that it will get no where. It is too tall with a pathetically short wing span!
And the stupid dancing at the beginning? All show, no functionality (again like Windows).
Pathetic.
Launched then crashed.
Works like Windows
It will be the fault of Red Bull not upgrading the launching platform or an unspecified deity for using the wrong sort of wind or some unauthorised attatchment that unstabilised it.
Whatever the problem it wont be anything to do with the glider.
or lack of?
Aerodynamics is not difficult and even a high camber wing like that would still need a decent airflow. Perhaps instead of hiring dancers, they should have hired some athletes to do the launch. Glitz vs functionality - very MS :-)
IMHO Steve jobs would have said it was the wrong sort of wind!
And of course it would look like a Monolithic Tower with Wings and crashes on first boot. But an Apple Designed plane would be the epitome of DIY Flight. With Majestically Swooped Wings and a one piece white body. When it did crash we'd be told we were looking at it wrong.
I know the RedBull thing is only a joke but... watch the last few seconds of that video - the "wing" wasn't even attached properly from what I can make out - it falls off as soon as they move onto the slope.
Typical Microsoft quality... ;-) Although the Linux one would probably end up with 37 different implementations of wings, all glued together, and to move it would require several thousands of volunteers to make sure that the wheels (all different shapes and sizes, of course) all turned at the same time.
A Linux plane would come with loads of _options_ on what to put on it. It's up to you what you put. If you put different size wheels, it's your problem. But you can always take them off and install new ones, until you get a working thing. After you've fitted everything, that plane will fly by itself, without anyone pushing it. And will stay in the air until you unplug the IR blaster from the USB port :)
Sometimes there's just not enough WTF? in the world....
Lycra-clad Power Ranger dancers. Check.
Gobsmackingly bad attempt to MS-ify an aging club tune. Check.
'Flying' machine which appeared to be missing any obvious lift vs mass advantage. Check.
People surprised when it plummeted. Check.
Normal product development cycle for MS:
Version 1 - Build completely from scratch without knowledge or training. Usually makes a completely useless product.
Version 2 - Buy up a competitor with a working product which needs a relatively small amount of investment to turn it into a brilliant product as it's not really complete or stable. Replace all of competitor's logos on the product with MS equivalents and ship with some weird installation requirements that are irrelevant to the product (e.g. require installation of IE in order to run a route mapping program).
Version 3 - Re-write V2 from the ground up in order to produce a more MS-like experience for the end user. Remove any particularly useful or popular features, reproduce the bugs from V2 and introduce a couple of new ones that cripple vital features in subtle ways.
Version 3.1 - Fix any bugs that are driving customers to competitor's products. Create "Pro" version that includes all of the useful and popular functions that were removed at V3, but charge 5-10 times as much.
So....
Expect next year's glider to be purchased from someone who's glider worked this year, expect 2012's glider to have no wings and 2013's to work but also come with a version that has engines.
Also expect MS to loudly talk up how much innovation they have brought to the glider market.
Bitter? Me? No, of course not. Well, not much.
...that it's understood and we're all just sticking the boot into Microsoft anyway, but just in case, it's worth pointing out that Flugtag is a big joke. You're not really supposed to build something that might actually fly (that would result in a very boring succession of typical actually-working-glider designs). You're meant to build something that looks utterly magnificent and then crashes almost immediately. That's the *point*. (Which of course makes Microsoft the ideal candidate - ooh lookit that, I got the boot in anyway).
In the off chance that Microsoft "patches" this glider thing up and offers to take paying passengers, I am sure they will have to sign an EULA which limits Microsoft's liability to the (possible) refund of the ticket price. But then, if the passengers all perish, it would be kind of hard for them to "collect" their ticket refunds...Ballmer would be dancing with glee, and loving his job as usual.
I guess is what a BSOD looks like when translated into physical reality, yet another Microsoft-related "crash". Hopefully this video will go viral as a prophecy of the fall of the glitch-riddled Microsoft empire.
Steve would have started by saying that the glider was revolutionary, would change everything and that he personally invented all forms of flight.
He then would have claimed that the pilot was holding it wrong.
He would then have claimed that a surprising software error made the planes altitude look like it was 0 when in fact it was 500ft
He would then have held a press conference to say that there was no 'CrashGate' and that every aircraft ever built also crashed on take off and some even before.
Finally as a goodwill gesture he would give everyone who bought a glider a free Apple parachute and then had the designer killed (possibly).
I see the anti-M$ brigade completely missed the point - Flugtag isn't about flying, it's about having a laugh at the most rediculous designs and warm-up routines. After all, if they'd wanted it to fly, they'd just have put a couple of small wings on a chair, put it on the end of the ramp, then given Ballmer some bad news....
I wonder if someone explained to them the most basic fundamentals of flight here on our little blue planet.
Unless you're using rocketry, levitation or or swami-powered magic carpet jiggery pokery then you need something called LIFT. That's aerodynamic lift; not 10 people shuffling it to the end of a ramp then giving it a push. Nothing I saw on that structure would generate anything like the lift needed for even a brief flight.
Stuff like this is why I had to stop watching Scrapheap Challenge. My nerves just couldn't take it. Somehow the guys who needed the most power always got the least and just when things were getting good a weld would fail. I knew it would when I saw them designing it but still I kept watching.
I'm sure MS would have done some research and field testing on this product before 'The Day'.
I mean, I can't imagine a prestigious company like MS releasing a faulty untested product to the world with such a glitzy and loud fanfare, only to watch it fail at its first public showing.
Says a lot for the "team of smart guys and girls" employed by MS (Sorry, I know that's unfair on the "team of smart guys and girls").
Perhaps they should have named it Icarus, then they could have blamed the failure on (the) Sun.
Reminds me of a 1994 article in IBM system user "If operating systems were airlines"
DOS Air
All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it till it gets into the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again.
Windows Air
The terminal is very neat & clean, the attendants are all very attractive, the pilots very capable.
The fleet of Lear jets the company operates is immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds and, at 20,000 feet, it explodes without warning.