Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!mtuxo!mtgzz!drutx!druhi!mab From: mab@druhi.ATT.COM (Alan Bland) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Risk of A1000 in public (cross-posted from comp.risks) Message-ID: <3639@druhi.ATT.COM> Date: 6 Oct 88 15:37:03 GMT Distribution: comp Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO Lines: 37 This appeared on comp.risks and might be of interest to Amiga owners. Perhaps Australian Airlines would be interested in replacing their A1000 with an A500 or A2000? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 30 Sep 88 12:08:23 est From: Dave Horsfall Subject: The Perils of PCs in Public From the "Rumour Central" column in PC Week, Sep 15: ``... On Thursday August 25, I was attempting to make a connection at Adelaide airport when a blackout occurred. Emergency lighting only, no PA system, no Arrivals and Departure screens, no seat allocation computer, and so on. When normality was finally restored, what should appear on the Australian Airlines monitor but a cute little picture of a hand holding a 3.5in disk with the familiar label 'Amiga KickStart'! Nobody did KickStart the thing for the next half-hour before I boarded the plane. For all I know, the passengers are still seeing this ghostly hand instead of Arrivals and Departures. It seems that Australian Airlines' mainframe is not up to the job of displaying a list of Arrivals and Departures details in pretty colours.'' Although the intent of the article was about how PCs are being used in places where one expects to find a mainframe, I couldn't help but be amused by the RISKs present - no backup supply for the display computer, no auto-boot sequence, the possible harm to public relations when no-one realised the Amiga needed to be booted, etc. Dave Horsfall (VK2KFU), Alcatel-STC Australia, dave@stcns3.stc.oz dave%stcns3.stc.OZ.AU@uunet.UU.NET, ...munnari!stcns3.stc.OZ.AU!dave PCs haven't changed computing history - merely repeated it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Alan Bland AT&T Bell Laboratories - Denver att!druhi!mab