Soviet lifting equipment

Great description of a Soviet era lift in Nine Layers of Sky:

The elevator cranked upwards, as if it was being winched by hand. There were more numbers indicated on the door panel than there were floors. Elena wondered what would happen if she pressed number 20. Go right out through the roof, probably.

I wonder if there was a five year plan for elevator button panels. Probably. I also wonder if the productivity of the escalator button panel factor was measured by weight of output produced, not number of units. Almost certainly. Bizarrely, the Soviet manufacturing system used to measure the productivity of everything, including chandelier and aeroplane factories, by weight regardless of whether it made sense...

All too easy

I love the way OS X just works. It took me little more than a couple of clicks (and most of those were to get out of the configuration widget on my phone) to set up iSync to copy my calendar and address book to my cell. I can't even begin to imagine the horror involved in getting either Windows or Linux to do the same thing.