sagredo - Slashdot User

Comment Concorde "Profitability" (Score 0) 403

by sagredo on Thursday July 26, 2012 @10:54PM (#40786647) Attached to: Flight 4590 Didn't Kill the Concorde; Costs Did

Concorde's "profitability" depended on British Airlines and Air France basically getting the aircraft for free, but that didn't help the carriers, because the Concorde passengers were drawn almost entirely from previous subsonic First-Class passengers. First-Class passengers on regular transatlantic flights were (and still are) enormously profitable, but barely break-even on Concorde. So every Concorde flight lost the carriers (and their competitors) a lot of money. ("Concorde Supersonic Transport: Issues of National Policy" Submission of Senator Birch Bayh to Secretary of Transportation Coleman. Congressional Record, January 21, 1976, pp. S217-S219.)

Killer Convicted, Using Dog DNA Database 97

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 18, 2010 @03:04PM from the what-about-concealed-dog-licenses? dept.

lee1 writes "It turns out that the UK has a DNA database — for dogs. And this database was recently used to apprehend a South London gang member who used his dog to catch a 16-year-old rival and hold him while he stabbed him to death. The dog was also accidentally stabbed, and left blood at the scene. The creation of human DNA databases has led to widespread debates on privacy; but what about the collation of DNA from dogs or other animals?"

Bill To Ban All Salt In Restaurant Cooking 794

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 11, 2010 @03:22PM from the too-stupid-to-live-as-long-as-possible dept.

lord_rotorooter writes "Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced a bill that would ruin restaurant food and baked goods as we know them. The measure (if passed) would ban the use of all forms of salt in the preparation and cooking of food for all restaurants or bakeries. While the use of too much salt can contribute to health problems, the complete banning of salt would have negative impacts on food chemistry. Not only does salt enhance flavor, it controls bacteria, slows yeast activity and strengthens dough by tightening gluten. Salt also inhibits the growth of microbes that spoil cheese."

Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 15, 2010 @07:18AM from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.

Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."

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