The next generation iPhone 4G Prototype has apparently been “found” on the floor, in the bathroom of a bar in California, USA.
Gizmodo.com have announced that the phone in indeed believed to be iPhone 4G Prototype, the fourth generation iPhone. Watch the video below which is from the Gizmodo website outlining the iPhone 4G Prototype find which has blown the lid on the new new iPhone …
Although disguised as the iPhone 3GS by peeling off the fake casing it revealed the new-look iPhone 4G model. The new phone apparently has a host of different features, according to the Gizmodo.com website, including a front-facing camera for video chatting, has a physically larger battery, uses a Micro-sim, a larger lens on the rear camera (which should improve picture quality) and a camera flash. One notable difference is that the back is perfectly flat as opposed to the curved back on the current iPhone.
Gizmodo.com say there was almost no possibility the phone is a fake. Apple have also rumoured to have said that the phone was not lost but stolen – they want the prototype back. This sort of thing happens quite a lot, from government laptops being left on trains to notes and designs being left in public areas. People who have these new designs and secret documents seem to be quite careless when it comes to keping those items safe and confidential.
The new iPhone 4G is Due for release in June. Vodafone and O2 in Ireland both have the iPhone 3GS on sale , starting at €199 for bill pay. Might the price of the 3GS drop after the release of the new iPhone 4G? Is it worth buying an iPhone 3G or 3GS now? Would you wait and see? is the iPhone found in the USA a fake? … We just have to wait and see !
Airports, including Heathrow, Belfast, and the main airports in Scotland and Norway are facing massive disruption for the next 24-48 hours as ash from Iceland’s volcanic eruption moves towards UK airspace. Transatlantic flights through UK airspace are also badly affected.
Following advice from the UK Met Office, the National Air Traffic Service introduced these restrictions to UK airspace as a result of volcanic ash drifting across the United Kingdom from Icelands recent volcanic activity.
The European air safety body, Eurocontrol, said the cloud of ash had reached 55,000ft and was expected to move through northern UK & Scotland by 1300BST today.
The Jakarta Effect
The restrictions were necessary because volcanic ash can damage aircraft engines and other instruments.
On June 24th, 1982 a British Airways 747, Speedbird 9, was on its way over Jakarta in Indonesia when Capt. Eric Moody made the following address to the 247 passengers on board;
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are all doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
After unknowingly flying through a plume of volcanic ash, all four engines shut down one by one.
Another side effect of flying through the ash for BA Speedbird 9 was that the windscreen of the aircraft was effectively sandblasted and they could only see through a small unaffected strip at the bottom of the window. It also blocked the pitot tubes which resulted in a 50 knot difference on the left and right airspeed indicators.
As they decended below FL29 (29,000 feet), they started trying to restart the engines, as per their training and their understanding of the 4 Rolls Royce engines standard operating procedures; Not expecting that the engines would restart. They continued to decend through 14,000 feet and ast they did they were able to get engine #4 restarted. followed by engine #3. About 2 minutes into the sequence, engines #1 and #2 came back on-ilne.
Jakarta ATC cleared them for a visual landing, as there was no way the flight could continue to its destination. They landed safely only using instruments and the 2-inch strip of clear glass to land the jumbo.
There was a nearly identical incident on 15th December 1989 when KLM Flight 867, a B747-400 travelling between Amsterdam to Anchorage, Alaska, flew throught a plume of volcanic ash from the erupting Mount Redoubt, again. causing all four engines to fail.
The effect of volcanic ash contaminating an engine is called “The Jakarta Effect” after the problems BA Flight 9 / Speedbird 9 had over Jakarta back in 1982.
Below is a video from Air Crash Investigation which shows the problems of BA Flight 9 in 1982.
So if you can’t travel today then there is an actual reason and its down to “The Jakarta Effect”.
This is amazing Lorry Shunt Video footage of a lorry shunting a car down the A1 Motorway in the UK. The car joined the motorway but clipped the truck which flipped the car sideways in front of the truck. The driver of the truck did not see or feel anything but continued driving at over 100kph down the motorway. The Lorry Shunt Video footage was filmed by a passenger in car traveling down the motorway. So far this video has been seen by over 600,000 people on YouTube. Have a look, its amazing and I’m sure was frightening for the driver of the Clio.
The Renault Clio became trapped in front of the trucks bumper on the A1 near Wetherby, West Yorkshire in the UK. There were sparks flying off the car yet the driver of the truck continued down the busy motorway for over a mile. Thankfully the driver was uninjured.
The M9 Motorway opened today from Danesfort to Waterford and on my journey from Thomastown to Waterford City I saved 12 minutes on the journey which will save me 2 hours a week going to work.
The road was a longer route than the normal N9 via Mullinvat but doing 120kph and also not having to put up with trucks, tractors and 60kph Sunday Drivers was a blessing.
RTE Covered the opening today : http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0322/m9.html
The next section from Danesfort to Co. Carlow will open later in the year to complete the motorway, bypassing Thomastown, Gowran, Dungarvan, Paulstown and Leighlinbridge.
The M9 Waterford to Danesfort motorway will open at 11am tomorrow morning (Monday 21st March) but will be overshadowed by protests against the limiting of the service of the search and rescue helicopter based in Waterford to operating in daylight hours. It is hoped that traffic will be flowing by 2pm, and the M9 will bypass Mullinavat, Ballyhale, Stoneyford and Knocktopher – taking up to 25 minutes off the average journey from Kilkenny.
The protests mentioned above relate to the helicopter which is based at Waterford Airport and provides search & rescue cover to the Irish Sea and Atlantic Coasts around Waterford, Wexford and beyond. If somebody is in difficulty at 9:30pm just off Tramore Bay, they will have to wait 40 minutes for a helicopter to come from Shannon instead of waiting 2 minutes for one from Waterford Airport.
It will be interesting to see what Noel Dempsey has to say on the visit the South East – the area where the essential helicopter service is based. Some text from the facebook groups page says that the Irish Government saved a measly €1m euro by not having a 24 hour service – so lives lost are basically ok as long as we can have savings and two days after making this decision they spent the equivalent money traveling around the world in the Government Jet for St.Patricks Day and filling their stomachs.
There is an on-line petition which you can sign to Save the South-Easts 24hr Search & Rescue Helicopter Cover : http://www.petitiononline.com/sar01/
It is good to see our motorway link coming to the south-east at last but it is the government giving with one hand and taking away with the other. There are plenty of other things they could save money on … but a life saving service should not be one of them.
The IFAB and FIFA, Football’s rule-makers, have voted against goal line technology being used in soccer and effectively ended any chances of goal-line video replays coming into the game of soccer. This comes only hours before the Portsmouth v Birmingham FA Cup game, where Birmingham scored a perfectly valid headed goal from a corner. The ball was over the line but David James’s hand scooped it out of the net before the linesman saw it. Goal Line Technology would have proved that this was a goal but the decision from the International Football Association Board (IFAB) meeting in Zurich voted against continuing any further experiments with goal-line technology although the English FA and Scottish FA both voted in favour of the technology being used. FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said, “‘The door is closed. The decision was not to go ahead with technology at all.” The IFAB will decide in May whether to pursue the system of having an extra two officials behind each goal-line. It seems FIFA are extremely backward – just as the game needs to move with the times, any efforts to do so are rejected by an organisation who seem not to care about fairness, i.e. a ball that crosses the line is a goal, but only if the officials see it … and … a ball the touches the hand of a player is a free kick and possibly a card, but only if the officials see it (and if the player is not French as FIFA is mainly made up of French personnel). If you think Goal Line Technology is just for “is the ball over the line” type arguements, have a look at the video below, where the ball actually goes into the goal and the ref still did not see it!! The video is of Clive Allen hitting the stachion back in 1980, and Freddie Sears’ non-goal against Bristol City thirty years later.
