Computers and other news.

Earlier this week, I heard that the International Space Station’s computers crashed. ‘It was the Americans fault’, according to the Russians:

Russian specialists believe that the new solar panel installed by the Atlantis astronauts during their spacewalk could be the origin (of the breakdown).

Apparently (just today), the Russians were able to reboot the computers^{1, 2}. If you had a bad computer day, think about it if you were in charge of a multi-billion dollars space station! (Related: Space Station Computers)

So, the budget made it through it, despite the premier’s last minute efforts to get Conservative MPs to vote against the amendments to the Atlantic Accords. The other day, I was listening to a CBC interview with NL’s premier Danny Williams (who apparently doesn’t get along with the federal Tories as reported earlier) and he literally ‘cut into’ Peter MacKay (A Tory MP for NS). Too bad the CBC doesn’t keep recordings online.

Via Nu.nl (Dutch language alert!), I read that Amsterdam Airport was selected best European airport of the year. This is huge! Wait. It isn’t: Even the ACI’s website doesn’t mention this achievement. Their site,though, has an interesting news item (dated 03/12/07), which mentions Halifax airport as the best airport with fewer than 5 million passengers. Other contestants were Ottawa, Porto (Portugal), Malta (Malta) and Sandefjord (Norway). As for Amsterdam Airport (or Schiphol) being best European airport: if I think back at the number of times I flew in (and out) to/from that airport I must confess that I never had any problems there (as opposed to the many problems I had at that other big European airport which I shall not name here).

¹ Uh, what now, partially restored?
² Nope: they still appear to have problems (warning: that’s a non-static link)