You don't have to be "trained in visual speed observation" to tell someone is speeding when they are doing 90+ in a 65.

Judge/lawyer: How fast was he going?
You: F***ING!!!

The fact that they announced this means 1 of 2 things.
1. The SR-72 has been in service for quite a while already.
-or-
2. Lockheed Martin proposed this to the military a while ago and they turned it down.

You really think *this* government would actually tell us about the latest and greatest?

Mod points! My kingdom for some mod points! Mod parent up! +10 Insightful!

You are making a pretty big assumption there that what you are plugging in is actually a storage device. It could easily be a device which shows up as an HID device and plays back a macro. "Alt-F2, 'xterm', Enter, 'rm -rf /', Enter" would be pretty devastating on your secure Linux box which doesn't run anything from removable media.

Just because it looks like a thumb drive, doesn't mean it is one!

Voice recognition technology is still poor. When the TCAS system says "TCAS Alert! Traffic! Descend! Descend!" you need to be CERTAIN that the drone will analyze that correctly and actually descend, instead of responding "I think you said 'Check my balance'. Is that correct?"

Half-Life was meant to be a trilogy of songs... Sadly the 3rd will never be heard.

Yes and no...
> Is the water you drink clean?
In some places, the local government is in charge of the water supply. In others it's subsidized and regulated by them. Either way, the government is in the loop.

> Is your food supply safe?
While this is always provided by private industry in this country, it is rather heavily regulated by the government at all levels to ensure a safe food supply.

> Do the lights come on when you flip a switch?
Again, in some places, the local government is in charge of the electricity supply while in others it's subsidized and regulated by them. Either way, the government is in the loop.

> Can you travel through the air at nearly the speed of sound for a few hundred dollars?
While the actual air travel is provided by private industry, you can thank the government for not having to worry about crashing into other planes midair, parts falling off the planes, (Due to safety regulations) and safety from terrorists and other baddies on planes. (#3 is debatable, although they are *trying*...)

> When you turn on the radio in your car, do you hear voices/music coming out of the speakers?
This is another area where, although private industry provides the actual service, the government makes it possible. The FCC licenses frequencies to certain groups and ensures they don't interfere with each other. Think of the madness if anyone could broadcast anything they wanted on any frequency!

> Can you read this message?
> Are you speaking English?
Although there is private education in this country, there is also free public education. It's highly likely that a person picked at random went to public school and learned to read and write there.

The government may not be perfect - none is - but it is functioning on some level and you are getting services from it, whether you like it or not. Your job as a citizen is to try to fix the parts of it which are broken.

You must be new here.

I'm just an armchair-sim pilot, but IMHO the KSFO approach is SUPER easy compared to some other ones. There aren't really any turns for noise abatement or any other weird things like some approaches have. All planes are basically put into 2 single files lines south of SFO, turned towards the runway, (28L or R generally depending on if they are arriving from the East or West) and go. Contact SFO tower when they are over the San Mateo bridge, and that's it. Fly straight and on the correct glideslope, nothing out of the ordinary to worry about. Occasionally ATC will ask them to change runways, so they should have the charts for the alternate ready to go, as well as the autopilot ready to re-configure, but that probably only happens 10-20% of the time. (AFAIK it didn't happen for the Asiana flight, not sure about this one.)

Read the KSFO NOTAMs - the PAPI was operational at the time of the Asiana crash.

Google *IS* innovating the car - it just isn't out yet as it's still in their internal testing, but I've seen several cars driving around the area with funny sensors mounted on them. Maybe it's not *electric* innovation, but it is innovation.

Facebook Purity is a Greasemonkey script which will fix Facebook for you. Check it out.

Err.... where's the edit button?

I confused "Congress" with "Senate". Senators and Representatives are both in Congress. Congressman can refer to either.

You should be talking to your Representative, not your Congressman. The Representatives are the ones who are supposed to voice the will of the people - Congressmen voice the will of the state. That is why there are only 2 Congressmen per state, but multiple Representatives based on the population.

Representatives have your best interest in mind, Congressmen have your states. (Well, that's the theory at least.)