Windows Vista

Released to consumers today. Official web page.

Great Example of Northwest Snow Failure

Want to see how people in the Northwest really fail when it comes to snow? Watch this video of car after car sliding into each other. You won't believe this. Cars slide all the way down roads, hitting every parked car along the way. Piles form at the bottom of hills.

Taken in Portland, Oregon:

• Video Version 1
  (Youtube Mirror in case that doesn't work)
• Video Version 2

The second video starts the same, but at the end shows the aftermath of cars hitting a fire truck.

To be fair, the roads were iced over and probably on a minor slope. That's the only way a car could slide sideways that slow for that long (as seen in the vid). However, that does not excuse the terrible performance of the drivers, hitting the brakes and gas at all the wrong times.

Also, Portland should have had the forsight to at least salt and sand the roads. Sadly, they probably don't even have such equipment and supplies, and even if they did, I doubt they'd know what to do with it. Putting salt and sand on the roads is a concept barely understood by natives of the Northwest.

Keep in mind, this isn't all that far from Seattle, and roughly the same kind of thing happens here when it snows.

Witness Seattle and Washington Failure

It's snowing in the Seattle metro area, and you know what that means - society ceases to function, cars get abandoned on the highway, 10 minute commutes take 3 hours, all business and schools close, and failure spreads with every snow flake. In general, the state just breaks itself from the inside out. All of this because of a couple inches (yes inches) of snow.

We all know what happened in the last "state of emergency," power took a week to fully restore and idiots killed themselves by running generators inside their homes, producing "what was 'quite possibly' the worst storm-related carbon-monoxide poisoning disaster in the United States, according to an official at one Seattle hospital" (MSNBC). In all seriousness, condolences to those families, but please people don't be that stupid, read these safety tips.

Washington, please don't fail in another snow or wind storm. It's starting to drive me crazy.

Hundred Greatest Theorems

This is pretty nifty. A list of the 100 greatest theorems ever.