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Air Italy stops flying and goes into liquidation - CNN[^]
Letting customers book tickets and then ceasing operations sounds ridiculous.
And on the larger view, I guess a huge shift is happening in the Airlines industry and most of them are not adapting to it faster. I'm not sure what that is shift is all about though. May be a lot of "startup airlines" providing the service dirt-cheap?
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Quote: ...and goes into liquidation
of course they won't let you down mid air!
It says right there - "goes into liquidation" - they're letting people down into the sea or a nearby lake.
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Nand32 wrote: huge shift is happening in the Airlines industry
Not just in the Airlines industry, but also in the Aircraft Manufacturers industry, as we can see from the current scenario at Boeing.
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Nand32 wrote: Letting customers book tickets and then ceasing operations sounds ridiculous.
That's how it goes.
You don't go about telling everyone you're going bankrupt so don't buy from us.
If Italy has the same social system as the Netherlands, (then ex-)employees will be paid by the government so they don't lose salary.
Unfortunately, creditors have priority over customers, so rich investors get (some of) their money back, while customers are left out in the cold.
The real tragedy is that the people who are responsible probably get a million € "golden handshake" while they've already been making millions with mismanaging the company.
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Except that if you read the article, it says people with tickets between now and the 25th will be flying on planes operated by someone else; people after that point are getting refunds. So customers actually are getting treated better than normal; which is weird enough that I'm assuming Italian law is to blame. 
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Nand32 wrote: Letting customers book tickets and then ceasing operations sounds ridiculous.
That seems to be the way big companies still operate. Thomas Cook (holiday company in UK) did exactly the same last year. They were taking holiday and flight bookings up to the day before they announced they were bust, with debts of almost £1,000,000,000 (yes, nearly a billion owing).
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Richard MacCutchan wrote: they were bust, with debts of almost £1,000,000,000 (yes, nearly a billion owing)
A lot of companies are zombies that are relying on historically low interest rates (thanks to central wbankers) to keep rolling over their debt. The next downturn and credit crunch are going to make 2007/2008 look like a picnic.
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Nand32 wrote: Letting customers book tickets and then ceasing operations sounds ridiculous.
<Fat F***er mode>
Of course it does, to you, because you just don't understand how things work!
If we told everyone that we were putting the company into liquidation, then everyone would have known, and we couldn't have made ourselves a quick couple of million each, through speculation!
Even worse, people would have had time to scrutinise the salary increases and bonuses we gave ourselves, a few months ago!
Doing that would have been ridiculous!
</Fat F***er mode>
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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It's an opportunity to steal from the public without repercussion, a corporation is morally required to take that opportunity. As are you, unless you're some kind of communist.
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harold aptroot wrote: a corporation is morally required to take that opportunity
That's the insane truth of free markets: the system that always favors the rich over the poor. In theory our goverments could regulate it, but in truth the governments of the world are the sock puppets of the industry.
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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South African Airways will likely follow soon. But... the government just keeps on throwing money away bailing them out.
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There's a small airstrip about a block from where I live. We watch small planes all day.
Can anyone say, "Uber-Air"?
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Cp-Coder wrote: Truck rolls over on highway in New Hampshire, dumping kegs and cases of beer[^]
Somehow it took me back page one of 'A Tale of Two Cities'.
Well, Bernie's up there, so it kind of fits!
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The other vehicle was carrying crates of tofu, but nobody gave a sh1t.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Cp-Coder wrote: Somehow it took me back page one of 'A Tale of Two Cities'.
 for mentioning the book I (imho) believe is one of the greatest novels in English.
I've enjoyed the 3-hour Audible dramatization narrated by Robert Lindsay, Alison Steadman, Jonathan Coy, Andrew Scott, Paul Ready, Karl Johnsonby.
The best full text audio I've found is narrated by Buck Schirner (Brilliance Audio's Classic Collection, Audible).
cheers, Bill
«One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.» Salvador Dali
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Thanks! 
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And if you've got a match, you can turn it into a cloud.
The old ways are the best, but the new ways have buzzwords. You have to fight idiots on their ground -- you don't want them coming near yours.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Happy birthday to your better half, BusterBoy! ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif) Made that omlette yet? 
/ravi
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I could swear I just read that a few months ago. Time flies.
Happy Birthday!
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The moment of truth came... without any smoke, but also without properly executing the program.
The oscar showed a nice steady heartbeat and timing signals on the bus, all at the right frequencies. the state codes showed that the processor was alternately fetching instructions and executing them, as it should. There was also activity on the data bus, as well as on the address bus. perfect, but why does the LED that is hooked up to the processor's single I/O line (very much like a microcontroller) not light up at all?
After some time of measuring and searching I thought that I found it. The lower address lines were connected in reverse order. Easy to fix.
So I switch on the power, the power LED lights up, and the second one stays dark. I was already reaching for the power switch when it starts to blink merrily. Exactly what the program in the EEPROM should do. I guess, I should look for a smaller capacitor for that power-on reset.
Here it is with both LEDs on at the moment the picture was taken.[^] It's a little hard to see on the picture because of the bright lamp.
Now come a few modifications before I can safely have a board made:
- Replace red LEDs (and all future displays) with blue ones. It's a High Elf, not a Dark Elf.
- Add a MAX232 level shifter and we have it talking to a PC in no time over the serial port and terminal emulation. Without a UART! The same signal that now blinks the LED can be used to emulate a serial port. Of course I will need a slightly different program in the EEPROM, but I already have that ready.
- Add another 8 bit register, this time set up as an output port. Then I have 24 address lines and can expand the (banked) memory up to 16 megabytes. More than enough for a little 8 bit processor.
- Throw out the EEPROM and replace it with a pin compatible RAM. Now the Zwölf would not have anything to execute at startup. But that already worked on the old Elf. The processor has a 'load' mode, that can be entered after a reset and allows to load bytes into memory via DMA. The old Elf simply used it's hex keyboard and 7 segment displays as DMA devices in load mode. Today I would simply let a PIC microcontroller control the processor's mode and copy the BIOS or whatever I want it to boot from a tiny serial EPROM into memory via DMA, reset again and then switch the processor into run mode. Maybe I should still keep the door open for traditional hex keyboards and seven segment displays. Blue displays, of course.
And then I can make the (first) board to get everything off the breadboard. And make room for all the fun stuff that will go to the second board.
One last thing: I found an easy way to get up to 8 processors on that bus without stepping on each other's toes. Zwölf II might actually be a multiprocessor system.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Cool beans, looks like you got Zwölf running like a singer sewing machine!
Monday starts Diarrhea awareness week, runs until Friday!
JaxCoder.com
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