Because Boeing doesn't use carbon fiber on their airframes, right? (Hint, that Southwest Airlines 737 that just had its top peeled off didn't develop those cracks in carbon fiber.) Because Boeing doesn't use fly-by-wire systems, right? (Hint: only difference between Boeing and Airbus since the 1990s has been that Boeing kept a yoke in the cockpit and Airbus went with a sidestick, but it's all connected to wires these days, and can you provide even one example of an accident of either Boeing or Airbus that was directly tied to the fly-by-wire system failing on the airplane? Right, I thought not.) Because Boeing aircraft are never powered by Rolls Royce engines, right? (Hint: the A380 incident didn't have anything at all to do with Airbus, it was a problem with the engine that was manufactured by Rolls Royce.) There are so many fools who think they know what they're talking about. When I read this comment I pictured Cliff Claven from Cheers.

Sigh. You really ought to RTFA, otherwise you just come across as a dumbshit. This story has nothing to do with preventing you from doing what you want with your i-Device. It has everything to do with an enterprise-provided and -owned device reporting itself to the enterprise-owner that you as the non-owner-user have jailbroken your i-Device, thus causing a security hole the size of the one in your backside in the enterprise's system. And yes, Virginia, the enterprise that owns said device does have the right to know if you're being said dumbshit and jailbreaking a device that you don't even own.

That's absurd. You paid for your access to the internet, not access to that particular site's content. Do you seriously think any website out there gets any of your internet access fee money? Just as with free television content on the big network channels, someone somewhere has to pay for all that content you're watching. Your choice is simple: either pay the site directly via credit-card access to their content, or put up with the ads that are financially supporting your ability to view that site without any additional payment on your part.

Because "act" should be plural in that sentence. "Slideware perhaps helps inept speakerS get their actS together." Asshole.

Right, because that's what Mr. AC was trying to convey...

Down here on Earth, welcome to the reality of life outside the 5th grade classroom.

Really? You "could care less"? So... that means that you actually do care, right? I mean, since you just said it is possible for you to care less than you do. I'm just sayin'... Just for your edification, the proper way to say what you are trying to say is, "I could not care less." And with regard to the subject at hand in this thread, the idea that someone's poor English skills could have any bearing whatsoever on his or her skills at mathematics is just laughable and shows how little anyone presuming such preposterously arrogant nonsense actually knows about mathematics or the history of the brilliant minds in non-English-speaking cultures who have contributed to it. In other words, total bullshit.

The 737 is delivered from Boeing fully capable of autoland. All modern airplanes these days have at least 2 completely separate autopilots (the 757, 767, and 747-400 have 3 autopilots). However, AA orders their 737s with HUDs (Head Up Display) which are certified by the FAA for the pilot to hand-fly a Cat IIIb approach (700 feet forward visibility, no ceiling). The cost of the HUD quickly pays for itself since the airline does not have to maintain the airplane's autoland certification because the pilots are doing the approaches, not the airplane.

A "coupled" approach simply means that both autopilots are active at the same time, which is normally the case during an autoland; no transport jet's autopilot is certified for a single-autopilot autoland. Coupling the autopilots allows for cross-checking and either fail-passive or fail-operational autoflight. Typically, a two-autopilot airplane like the 737 is certified as fail-passive: a failure of the one autopilot will render the airplane unable to complete the autoland but will not dramatically affect the attitude of the airplane as the pilot takes over. A three-autopilot airplane has both fail-passive and fail-operational characteristics: fail-operational means one autopilot can drop out and the remaining two can still perform the autoland; a second failure is fail-passive and the pilot has to do something.

Fly-by-wire is not a requirement for autoland. Transport-category aircraft have been doing autolands since the 1960s.

There are almost no commercial aircraft flying around these days that don't have autoland capabilities. The last of the older generation jet aircraft such as the DC-9 and the 727 are mostly out of major airline passenger service. Any commercial transport jet made after around 1980 has autoland capability by default.

You're talking about two totally different things. An overall truthful reporting of general events in a war theater is fine and necessary. Revealing operational strategies and troop movements, etc., is what espionage is all about. Two completely different sorts of information. One is necessary for everyone to know, the other is absolutely necessary to keep secret so your fucking troops don't get killed every time they head out to engage the enemy. Are you seriously arguing that revealing operational plans and strategies for your enemy to read is necessary? Believe me, I want YOU running the opposing side in our next conflict, you'll make things so easy for everyone on our side by telling us what you're going to do and how you're going to go about it, the war will be over in about 2 hours. Get your head out of your ass and figure out what you're talking about before spewing nonsense like this.

This business of "illegality" is just a semantic term slung around by people who don't know what they're talking about. By whose legal authority is the Afghanistan war "illegal"? The only legality governing the actions of the military of a sovereign nation is that own nation's laws. By that measure, there is nothing illegal about the occupation of Afghanistan. Those fucking stone-age barbarians in the Taliban decided to support and give aid to a terrorist organization that conducted a blatant attack on the United States. The United States is well within its own legal authority as defined by its Constitution to declare and wage war on such a nation in that situation.

Hogwash. My daughter has diabetes. I have no proof that a cure will one day be found, but I hope for it, and I am reasonably sure that sometime during her lifetime, such a gift from the medical community will be found. Therefore I have faith that a cure for diabetes is going to happen sometime in the next 20 years or so; my faith is the "substance of what I hope for," and it is the evidence that I believe in something that has not yet occurred, something I cannot prove will happen, something that "is not seen." And this faith of mine is indeed based on the evidence of medical advances and reasonable deductions based on past performance of the medical community and the state of current research. And yet it must be defined as faith, since no one can possibly prove that a cure for diabetes will in fact ever happen. So stuff that in your pipe and smoke it. Still want to call it hogwash?

Cursive writing does not "make up the essential underpinnings of literacy..." Cursive is simply a way of writing a block of text quickly with minimal pen lifts. It's completely irrelevant today.

It's always fun on slashdot to see the IANAL-but-I-KNOW-I'm-right crowd come out of the woodwork on articles like this. No, he's not a moron - you are. BM is held on property that is leased for the event. That makes it private, you can't get in without a ticket, which does indeed hold you under a binding contract while you are on that property. The only way you could get around this legally would be to find a location that is not on the leased property from which you could view BM, and then take pictures there. Now, go back under your rock.

One thing research into scientific subjects doesn't often take into account is that the average person on the street just doesn't care about evolution or global warming. Evolutionary biologists and many others in the scientific community get all worked up about evolution like it's some fundamentally important idea that is so amazingly important that if only everyone believed in it, our lives would be so much better, and the fact that only a third of Americans do buy off on it is somehow devastatingly depressing. The truth of the matter is that scientific research into evolution is meaningless to the average person because it's not going to put food on the table or change lives for the better in any way. It's kind of like research into dinosaurs: fascinating subject, ultimately a useless waste of time from any practical standpoint. Evolution, creationism, or being sneezed out of Douglas Adam's mind, it doesn't change the fact that we're here now, and food needs to be put on the table and the mortgage needs to be paid. Scientists really live in their own weird little world wherein stuff like dinosaur poop research funding and evolution actually matter. Back here on Planet Earth, however, the average person really doesn't much care.

when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.

This is just about the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time. If one were to poll the public on this subject, I'm quite sure a substantial number of people wouldn't have ever heard of the SciFi channel to begin with, let alone have a clue that there's some obscure show called BSG on there or be able to remotely describe what the show is about. Nor would they give a flying rat's ass. The Sopranos, now that's a show that had a measurable impact on TV. Regardless of the quality of the show, BSG is going to fade right back into the obscurity from whence it came, with only mom's-basement-dwelling geeks remembering the first thing about it.

It's amazingly stupid to think that anyone perusing /. on a regular basis (read: basement computer nerds who haven't been blown in years) would actually have something on their hard drive that would truly be worth even doing anything more than a static pattern wipe. "But, but, the NSA can read my drive!!" Right. Because you really are SO IMPORTANT that the government is going to care enough to try to recover your drive. These paranoid security related threads always are good for a laugh.