I can't find the original roadfly post, but according to the repost to a quote in public folder at work:

"Just got back from my dealer (Seattle BMW) - anyway, this customer comes in - looks at this '03 SMG - wants a test drive - my salesguy goes with - they go on a regular test route in Seattle with a few twists in the road - anyway, the salesman says this dude goes into a tight corner at over 40, then brakes, tries to correct, DSC cuts in, then they hit wet leaves - driver loses control completely - car goes down a 30 ft decline and rolls. Both, the driver and salesguy came out fine - note the roll bars ejected from the rear headrests..."
[pic 1][pic 2][pic 3]

And then some observations:

• The roll over protection bars are well above the level of the passenger’s head.
• The roll over protection bars feel flimsy to the touch and rattle left to right and fwd to back.
• However, the car rolled over on to them and rested there, so looks are likely deceiving in this case
• The roll over protection bars punched through the soft top, which was of course destroyed in the roll over
• The A pillars are completely intact, straight, and rigid
• Windshield glass was not released in to the cabin
• Side windows were fragmented and the pieces had randomly fallen away. Jean-Marie says the side windows are designed to do this for rescue
• The bumpers appear to be made of a carbon-fiber-esque material
• There was significant damage to the right rear panel. Very odd that side airbags did not deploy even though the impact was rear of the door.
• Some cars’ side airbags deploy automatically in a roll over, not the case here.
• Despite significant impact in the right rear, there was no cockpit intrusion
• Passenger compartment was maintained extremely well
• Jean-Marie says that the seat belt pre-tensioners were activated and were holding the passengers upside down in the car after the car came to a rest

10:04:13 PM    comment []

Since Doug mentioned me doing lots of GUI stuff, I thought I'd mention an interesting UI design book - About Face. It's worth a read, although I think that Cooper goes a little bit far in saying that the "File" menu should be nuked. There are some things that don't always follow a rational model, but get ingrained into the system so deeply that you shouldn't try to change them. I agree with probably 80% of the book though - self describing UI, error messages with intelligible text (and solutions), etc... basically stuff that MS typically does poorly... although hopefully we are starting to show signs of improving.

The question for Doug is - are you going to JavaOne this year?

9:44:59 AM    comment []