Oops
Even dressing as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers didn't help.
Microsoft Windows glider crashes
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 to …
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Am I the only person
who misread that as "mighty morphine-powered rangers" ?
I thought they were the teletubies...
Since a phoenix is a legendary bird, known for its self-immolation, I'd say Crash and Burn was an appropriate outcome.
someone forgot to brief the team
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.!!!
Attempt to "cheat" ?
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!
Cheating...
I say it is options B and C, but not A.
B - Cheating
C - It didn't work.
Ouch
When are people going to learn that building something up with loud music and dancing around only makes you look like more of a fool when you FAIL.
They should have just used the Vista logon sound, stood still for 60 seconds and then crashed :)
Meh
Would have been funnier had it gone off the pier at Worthing in the 2010 Worthing Birdman competition.
Fantastic
Really fantastic, that thing went down like a sack of shit. Rather funny after all the lycra clad dancing and the bizarre soundtrack.
So much for the phoenix.
Just like Windows
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.
It worked just fine
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.
Just like windows indeed
I'd agree that they did a very Microsoft thing here. They produced an ugly, unrefined product that crashed shortly after launch. Yep, that's MS...
Had it been apple...
We could assume they were flying it wrong.
Since it was windows, it must have been the BSOD (Bull Sh+t Obsolete Design)
the craft was disgusted with the pre-lunch dance
any way, the *smart* guys fell of the ledge as well as the craft.... no wander they work for Microsoft.
MS and testing?
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!
epic fail
hahaha, just wasted 2 minutes of my life watching M$ bigging up their glider only to watch it fail spectaculary. they should have put a pc below with vista on it.
There is the Microsoft way to Fly...
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.
Apple designed plane...
The ground approached the plane from the wrong direction.
Well
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?
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 :)
Ahem
Would not a linux plane comes in pieces with an PDF assembly manual?
PDF?
Why would it have a PDF manual? Surely it simply would come with plain text files called "README", "INSTALL" and "LICENSE"...
PDF? hardly!
Everything you need to know is in the man page.
Sometimes...
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.
Should have done it...
the usual Microsoft way - copy something that works (OK the MS product still won't be any good until version 3).
That has got to be...
...one of the absolute worst attempts at music I have ever heard.
Take a horrifically bad dance number, and mix it with the WINDOWS XP STARTUP SOUND??
Jesus Horatio Christ, my ears!
Cringe-inducing Microsofties
..are cringe-inducing, again. Seriously, ban these wazzocks from trying to be "whacky", it's just creepy, even when the fail is as monumental as this.
Spin
Since when did Microsoft take a team of smart guys and girls and build things from scratch. They bought or copied most things that they sell, starting with MS-DOS through Windows and all the more recent specialist company purchases.
They often do that
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.
“I'll that one a chance”
Someone was heard saying “I'll that one a chance” and then disaster.
And let a new meme start. - Windows Phone 7? “I'll that one a chance”.
"Where do you want to go today?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_do_you_want_to_go_today
Windows poor uptimes
Presumably the BSD teams are still up.
one by Apple...
...would have just worked... and would have felt much snappier too. but that's because it would have been magical and revolutionary :-)
MS KB article says....
The failure is due to the ramp not being supported by MS, therefore the crash is the ramp manufacturers fault.
This is going to require some serious patches to get up and running again.
This is going to require some serious patches to get up and running again.
While you wait, here's some spam to read
hang on
A 30-foot high deck, and it only flew 0.62m? You mean it's still up there?
That's one system hang that would have gor MS noticed
Windows PC
It could only have been funnier if the next person with little applause had walked to the end and just chucked a PC over the edge :)
Microsoft should have learned by now
Xbox RROD, Zune, Kin One and Kin Two...
They don't do hardware well. And apparently, Operating System design by committee doesn't work so well either.
I'm going to go out on a limb here...
...and suggest that maybe these folks aren't official MS bods, and that they are, in fact, taking the piss?
Standard Operating Procedure
"This is kind of like the most Microsoft thing we could do."
What, fail completely after a bunch of hype? Yes, yes it was.
Fault Easily Diagnosed
It's obvious,
Unexpected Microsoft crash,
It must be a driver error.
Jobs
Had it been an Apple plane comically underperforming, Jobs would've blamed Adobe.
I'm hoping
...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).
Embarrassing
That was the most embarrassing Microsoft promotional stunt since the release video for Microsoft Songsmith.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/songsmith/
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