grr. anti-unix fud in newspaper...

[Dan Kegel]

This morning in the LA Times, the business section
had a big article on Airbus' woes, and blamed it
on the CAD software:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-airbus9oct09,1,4119560.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true
"In designing the plane, German engineers in Hamburg
 used older versions of design software based on the
 Unix operating system while their counterparts in
 Toulouse ran a newer Windows software."
This drive-by blaming of the operating system (which
might be read by some as "unix is so crappy it can't
run the latest cad software")  I found less misleading
details online at
 http://aecnews.com/articles/2035.aspx
which said Airbus foolishly used Catia v4 in some locations
and Catia v5 at others even though their file formats
are incompatible, and didn't invest in conversion software.
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/applications/plm/catiav5/sysreq/
shows that Catia v5 is available for Unix as well as Windows.
So the whole unix vs. windows thing in the LA Times is a canard.
The reporter who wrote the story often reports on aerospace
stories, but lacks enough software knowledge to be able
to filter out inaccurate info from his sources.  C'est la vie.
- Dan