Jinn of Quality and Risk

Segway announced today that consumers can now purchase a Segway Human Transporter exclusively at Amazon. First come, first served, delivery starting March 2003. Five thousand US dollars. Amazon has a contest: place your deposit today and you can enter the Segway HT Early Delivery Contest. Thirty lucky winners can get their Segway HTs by December 24, visit the factory, and meet the team... 

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and several other firms paid $1.6 m each for failing to keep e-mails as was required by regulation. In contrast, Merrill Lynch was hit with a $100 m settlement to atone for wrongdoing evidenced in e-mails that it kept. [WSJ via John Robb's Radio Weblog] 

In the late 13th century, the Habsburg emperors wanted to subjugate the mountaineous "forest states" located in today's central Switzerland, and thereby control transalpine trade. In 1291, the people of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden pledged mutual aid and support. The pledge was mainly directed against the yoke of the Habsburg and is considered to mark the beginning of Swiss confederacy.

By 1307, a new Austrian bailiff, Gessler, raised a pole in the central square of Altdorf, the main town in Uri. All were to bow in respect when passing the square. Wilhelm Tell was a well-known local marksman (aka William Tell, aka Guillaume Tell). He walked with his young son past the hat, without bowing, which deeply offended Gessler. Gessler had his soldiers seize Tell, and ordered him to shoot an apple off his son's head with his crossbow; if he failed or refused, both would die. Tell put one arrow in his quiver and another in his crossbow, took aim, and shot, hitting the apple without hurting his son. Asked by the tyrant what the second arrow was for, Tell replied that, had the first arrow missed the apple, the second would not have missed Gessler. Condemned to prison, Tell escapes during the boat journey thanks to a violent storm, then ambushes and kills Gessler. Thus came to be an inspiring, founding story of the Swiss people's enduring freedom from foreign oppression...

The most famous versions of Tell's story is a play by Schiller, which inspired an opera by Rossini. The horn-sounding of Swiss mountain buses comes from that opera's overture. The Wilhelm Tell opera overture also became the theme for The Lone Ranger, a popular TV series about a mysterious masked man who fought bad guys in the American West. See Legend of Wilhelm Tell * Hero of Switzerland for extra information about Tell's story.