[via Wikipedia]

Impressive.

Capt. Christopher Stricklin ejects from the USAF Thunderbirds number six aircraft less than a second before it impacted the ground at an air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, Sept. 14 2003. Stricklin, who was not injured, ejected after both guiding the jet away from the crowd of more than 60,000 people and ensuring he couldn’t save the aircraft.

The first ejector seats were developed during the war by Heinkel. Early models were powered by compressed air and the first aircraft to be fitted with such a system was the Heinkel He 280 prototype jet fighter in 1941. One of the He 280 test pilots, Helmut Schenk, became the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejector seat on January 13, 1942 after his control surfaces iced up and became inoperable. By December 2003, Martin-Baker ejector seats had saved 7028 lives. The total figure for all types of seat is unknown but must be considerably higher.

[via Tom Peters]

Food for thoughts from Tom Peters. It is about what he calls “the irreducibles”, i.e. what is close to certainty for our future.

“So what’s ‘for sure’? Anything?”

Frankly, I said, “No.” And there’s a part of me that believes that. The world is too fluid for certainties.

Then, while walking and thinking today (no Walkman), it occurred that “people matter most” is pretty damn close to a “certainty.”

So, some of the irreducibles from Tom (I definitely like this guy :-):

1. Excellence.Always.
2. Passion. Energy. Hustle. Enthusiasm. Exuberance. (Move mountains. No alt.)
3. You must care.
4. Emotion.
5. Experiment. Now.
6. Failure. Normal.
7. Most failures, most success. (Fail. Forward. Fast.)
8. Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.
9. Wow. (Okay in biz.)
10. Leaders create space for growth.
11. Student. Forever.
12. Respect
13. Internet.All.
14. Commitment, by invitation only.
15. Creativity, by invitation only.
16. Negotiation. Make all winners. (Save face.)
17. Network.
18. Honest feedback.
19. Collaborate.
20. Never rest.
21. People. First. Last. Always.
22. It. Is. Always. The. People.

[via BetaNews]

Microsoft revealed Tuesday afternoon what many had expected for months — consumer availability of Windows Vista has been delayed until 2007.

While businesses would be able to get their hands on the finished product in November, consumers would not find the operating system on new machines until January. The delay also throws a wrench into the holiday marketing plans of many PC manufacturers this season.

UPDATE: good point from Robert Scoble, totally agree with him:

That all said. I’ve learned that dates in the software industry are likely to slip and I’m glad that our management is still paying more attention to product quality and customer and partner feedback than trying to meet some date. Yes, it’s painful. Yes, it’s embarrassing. But we have been through product slips before (before I was a Microsoft employee I was a beta tester on Windows 2000 which slipped years after the first test CDs arrived) and I’d rather have a slipped date than a cruddy product.

Wow, impressive Top10 of the best bands worldwide…concerning the money generated in 2005. Some of them are far better than some SME. It would be interesting to know how many FTEs they are employing.

1. Rolling Stones: €141 million
2. U2: €125 million
3. Kenny Chesney: €110 million
4. Green Day: €83 million
5. The Eagles: €70 million
6. Paul McCartney: €69 million
7. Céline Dion: €68 million
8. 50 cent: €66 million
9. Dave Matthews Band: €62 million
10. Elton John: €55 million

[via TechCrunch]

Wow, crazy move for Amazon. On the other hand, they *have* a great infrastructure. Full description here.

Amazon S3 – Simple Storage Service

Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Pricing

* Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee, and no start-up cost.
* $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used.
* $0.20 per GB of data transferred.

Knowledge@Wharton published an extensive article about the new position of Adobe within the Software-Industry, specially after the acquisition of Macromedia.

having completed its acquisition of Macromedia on December 3, 2005, Adobe is the fifth largest software company in the world.

Adobe currently controls two of the dominant formats for electronic content — the Adobe Acrobat PDF format for electronic documents and the Flash SWF format for interactive web content.[…]

Adobe’s vision is grand. CEO Bruce Chizen hopes that Adobe will provide the interface for any device with a screen — “from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.” Such ambitions put Adobe squarely in the sights of Microsoft, which currently dominates desktop software development.

And Microsoft is moving quickly to counter Adobe’s moves. It has announced a number of products poised to compete directly with Adobe’s core products. Microsoft’s strategy includes, among other initiatives, positioning elements of the forthcoming Windows Presentation Foundation to compete with Adobe’s Acrobat and Flash applications, and potentially undercutting Adobe’s profitable Acrobat product line by including PDF creation in the next version of Microsoft Office. […]

We won’t do a browser. But we do think that there are applications that need to run on the [user’s desktop] client [software] that need to work in both a connected and a non-connected fashion, that require the richness of Flash, the reliability, the relative security, the layout capabilities of PDF — but also need to consume HTML. Imagine a ubiquitous client that allows you to do all three of those — and then a series of programming tools, like [Adobe’s] Flex, making it easy for anyone to develop applications for this ubiquitous client. […]

Our intent is not to be in the services business as a business objective unto its own. We are in the services business. I think we have more than 100 people out in the field today who do services. […] Plus, we want those services people to be able to train third-parties, like Accenture, like IBM Global Services, like the Indian professional services companies Tata and Infosys, and so on. So, it’s not our intent to be in the services business per se, but we know, as an enterprise software company, it’s necessary for us to be in the services business. […]

We used Macromedia as an opportunity to reorganize the company. At that point we wanted to put the right people in the right job. Also, there are a number of Adobe executives who have been here a while, who made a lot of money, and saw it as an opportunity to do something else with their life on the personal side. […]

We will do more software as services. With Breeze’s real-time collaboration we already do hosting. We will continue with CreatePDF Online. And you will see us begin to experiment with other services, either directly or through aggregators like SalesForce.com. There are probably things we could add to their AppExchange that could be of interest to others. […]

If we execute appropriately we will be the engagement platform, or the layer, on top of anything that has an LCD display, any computing device — everything from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.

Our software [will be] delivered as a service, either charging the consumer directly, the network provider directly or using an advertising model.

I believe Adobe’s focus will continue to be on those applications that help people and organizations in areas where the presentation of the information makes a difference.

My blog and website are hosted by ovh since Mai 2004, quite a long time ago! The service is ok, I have a so-called “300gp” package (shared hosting) for about 65 euros / year.

The different limits are ok for me, specially the 30GB bandwidth per month (I am using now about 50% of this), excepted for the webspace which is limited to 300MB (net, i.e. without integrating the FTP space and/or the logs, etc.). I was reaching the limit here… I had a good surprise last week because ovh announced that they are upgrading the webspace to 3GB, without changing the price.

Cool! More service for the same price.

[via Scott Adams]

Q. What is the most surprising or unexpected thing you have found out about becoming a celebrity?

A. When I make mistakes, people often blame themselves. I could drop an anvil on a stranger’s foot and he’d apologize for being in the way. The weird part is that he’d mean it.

Q. Have you ever been asked to sign a hot woman’s breasts or draw Dilbert on them?

A. Not yet. But if I draw Dogbert, I know where his nose will be.

Q. How often do people recognize you in public?

A. Locally, it happens all the time, especially in my own restaurants. When I travel I’m rarely recognized. On the road, the only people who recognize me are people who have seen my speeches or attended book signings. But there are a lot of them.

I was once on a flight where the people on both sides of me were reading my book, The Dilbert Principle. My picture is right on the back cover. The guy on my left asked me if I’d ever read it. I said, “Yes, several times.” (I finally told him who I was just to see the look on his face. Priceless.)

So, after 6 days, we got our phone line back this morning, as planned. Wow, it was strange to be at home without any connection, which is completely different as being offline during holidays :-)

Now, a lot of interesting stuff to read and study!

Hi all

I am really sorry, we had so much snow on last Sunday and Monday that our telephone line broke…. That means, no telephone anymore at home, which is definitely not a problem, but also no DSL and Internet, which is definitely an issue!!

I have to wait till Friday that France Telecom is coming by us to repair the broken line. 6 days, that is again a cool service….

Anyway, I can imagine that they have a *lot* of other cases, and that some of them are prio.1 in comparison to our case.

Till Friday, no post :-)

Take care, Didier