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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Off topic but of significant hacker interest:

Also in 1985...the crash of a Delta Air Lines L-1011 in Dallas that killed 137.

There's always been a lot of speculation over how IBM gave up an entire industry (the personal computer) to a seemingly insignificant start-up (Microsoft). One theory is that may not have happened if Don Estridge hadn't been killed in that crash. More about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Don_Estridge

and here:

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/05/us/philip-estridge-dies-in...

Of particular note:

"His most revolutionary move was to make the computer's design specifications public, allowing thousands of young people to write programs for the machine."

We take it for granted now, but before Don Estridge and the IBM PC, "proprietary" was the rule and "open" was the exception. RIP

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Now I understood the policy not to book more than 4 employees on same plane. RIP

depending on the size of the company, it could be no more than 1.

i was in a car accident with my ENTIRE team one time. minor, but scary.

to quote ... shit happens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-N-Out_Burger#Second_generati...

Such an accident prompted changes in the time between large and small planes landing.

I'm a former Google employee, they had a similar policy. There were no more than x employees per team allowed on the same plane, above a certain seniority level, only one per plane.

The irony is that there's no such policy for buses, which in many ways are less safe than planes. One catastrophic bus crash on the way to Tahoe could conceivably wipe out most of search quality, or any other department.

Traveling by bus is surprisingly safe – measures in journeys and travel hours even safer than air travel:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm

Unless you take the notorious chinatown bus[0].

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_bus_lines#Safety

how many bus accidents in the US in the last 20 years did you hear of where every single person died?

"One theory is that may not have happened if Don Estridge hadn't been killed in that crash."

Fate seemed to be sealed (or on it's way) much earlier than that (based on my memory, and supported by an obvious link below.)

http://inventors.about.com/od/computersoftware/a/Putting-Mic...

"Bill Gates then talked IBM into letting Microsoft retain the rights, to market MS-DOS separate from the IBM PC project, Gates and Microsoft proceeded to make a fortune from the licensing of MS-DOS"

That was of course way before Estridge got killed.

And Compaq came out in 1982...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq

"In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer."

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