Sit inside an airline cockpit once in a while, the majority of planes cannot do what a G1000 can.

Charts absolutely are used. On an approach, both pilots will have the approach plate (paper or otherwise) open and able to reference during the procedure.

The FMS, btw, is not why a B747 can execute a cat III landing. The aspects to that include crew certification (have to do a bunch of stuff in a sim to get certified), crew training (special procedures between the pilot flying and pilot not flying to setup the avionics, monitor the avionics and make the land/go around call), aircraft certification (there are extra sensors and instruments on the airplane with painted critical areas around them that must be free of dents and irregularities on preflight; the flight computers do more sensitive inter-comparisons between all of the instruments, the localizer is tracked with more sensitivity, radar altitude is used rather than pressure altitude), and airport certification (specific lighting systems must be installed and used, and the localizer and glideslope must be usable to the surface).

There is a lot more that goes into being able to fly and actually flying a cat III (my plane could only do cat II, but the concepts are the same) than just programming an approach into the FMS and engaging the autopilot.

The checklists shouldn't be going anywhere. Disclaimer: I dont fly for AA, but I did fly for another airline. The pilots carry docs and the plane carries docs. The plane should have at least 2 checklists and a quick reference handbook, in printed form, in the cockpit. The checklists cover all normal procedures for all phases of flight. The QRH has all of the abnormal checklists. The absolutely vital emergency procedures are printed also in the QRH but the primary source is the pilots memory (things that need to be accomplished ASAP before there is time to consult the book).

What the electronic flight bag (EFB) is going to replace is the junk the pilots carry. My flight bag had 2 2" binders full of nothing but approach plates, a 1" binder with our hub airport approach plates in it, a 1" foldout thing with all of the enroute maps, a 1" binder with the company flight ops (essentially 14 CFR 121 plus whatever opspecs the airline has approval for), a 2" binder with procedures and checklists (serves as backup for the checklists and QRH that the airplane carries), a 2" binder with our collective bargaining agreement in it. Not carried was another 2" binder that were all of the details of the aircraft systems, it was not required to be carries and there just wasnt room for it. The EFB replaces all of that into a tablet form factor.

On a typical flight the only things in that bag that get touched are the high enroute chart I need, the airport diagram and company page for the departure airport and the approach plate, airport diagram and company page for the arrival airport. The checklist used is the laminated one that belongs to the airplane. If there is an abnormal, the QRH belonging to the airplane is consulted (in conjunction with other docs on the airplane: the MEL book and the logbook).

False.

No one who understand what science is believes in evolution. Science is not a system of beliefs, it is a system of evidence based reasoning. It is not proper to say "I believe in evolution", but rather "the theory of evolution is the hypothesis best supported by the evidence". In science, nothing can be fact, or definitively proven. We rather conduct experiments to reduce uncertainty in a theory, or to disprove a theory. So, evolution is not scientific, nor is it religious. Evolution and creationism are ideas; two competing hypotheses describing a process. Evolution is supported by the scientific process, while creationism is not supported by scientific evidence. Creationism however is supported by a faith based belief system, and people such as yourself (im assuming) who only know belief systems in turn think that scientists believe in evolution. Perhaps it is not your fault that you are unfamiliar with evidence based reasoning, what skepticism really means, and the scientific method, but that is all the more reason for you to support better science education in our nation's schools.

If most people don't compile the kernel then I doubt they have the problems you claim. I can't speak for rpm based distros (and perhaps this is why I doubt you, who knows) but I've never had this issue with a debian based distro or gentoo. In debian (i'm a bit out of date here) there was a package you could install (and apt-get update kept it updated) that you would just have to rebuild when you built/installed a new kernel. With gentoo I have a package installed that manages my external modules so I just need to do a 'module-rebuild' and it updates everything to the kernel linked in /usr/src/linux. Perhaps there are more issues for people using distro-built packages, but I can't speak for them either (the only distro-built kernels I've ever used are the ones bundled in installers to get enough of a system installed to build my own kernel). I do recall having some issues 10 or so years ago, but since then, and especially recently, I have had no problems.

The biggest inconvenience I can see is when your binary driver gets upgraded/rebuilt while using X, as then apps trying to use GLX fail with a kernel driver version mismatch, but a quick logout / stop xdm, rmmod nvidia, modprobe nvidia, start xdm, login, fixes that (or just reboot if that is too hard).

Didn't know that. The newest car I've owned is a '97 and barely speaks OBD II.

Go to an O'reilleys auto part store, they'll pull your engine codes for free for you. Some small oil change places will do it also in my experience. Fuses? Just look at them, or buy a cheap tester to probe them.

If you are compiling the kernel and whatever modules you compiled, how hard is it to compile one more module external to the kernel sources?

Chances are if you are using a distro that provides per-built generic kernels for you to use, they also provide a package for the nvidia driver package that takes care of things for you. If you are building the kernel yourself, it really is no pain to use tools like 'cd' and 'make' to build the nvidia driver.

The spin does cause the Earth to be shaped like an oblate spheroid as you mention but it does alter the gravity you experience as well. The local balance of forces if you are at rest relative to the Earth involves gravitational force and an apparent force (centrifugal) caused by centripetal acceleration. This alters your effective gravity that you experience ever so slightly (ie g_eff = g_newtonian + f_cent, where f is a specific force [units ms-2 or N/kg]) .

The degree to which we've had a warm dry winter and a hot spring is only represented by 2 years in the last 140 or so. While this pattern may be more common, it usually isn't this amplified. If this year plays out like the two analogs we should have a milder may. In any case I'd look for the trough in the Midwest to end up as a cutoff low over the east and bring a little relief.

I take it then that you haven't been in many airplanes. Good luck.

Tenerife was caused by an infallible Captain and his FO that was afraid to speak up and tell him he was wrong. CRM has come a long way since then.

Interference on 121.5 wont affect much. 95% of the traffic on that freq is people telling other people they are accidentally transmitting on guard.

The real issue is 108-112 MHz is the frequency band localizers broadcast on (the lateral part of instrument landing systems, the vertical is up somewhere in the 300's MHz), and 112-118 MHz is VOR navigation. Most people these day are flying GPS and not VOR, but they will be on the localizer when landing in low visibility. Not too many airlines can use RNAV afaik. If an oscillator is adding 10.7 Mhz, then anyone listening to an FM station around 97-102 MHz would put them in the right range for interfering with the localizer signal.

The old NorthWest DC-9's still flew VOR to VOR on steam guages last time I rode up front in one, which was before the Delta merger.

If you are unlucky enough to be on a flight that ends up in an accident during takeoff or landing (if it happens, its probably going to be one of those two), do you really want be trying to get to an exit with everyone between you and that door trying to put a laptop away? People have a hard enough time just leaving their bags on the plane in these situations, it'll only be worse if they have stuff they are trying to stuff back into a bag before leaving a burning aircraft.

True, its quite the exception to be involved in an accident like that, but remember that possibility is the only reason you have flight attendants; their primary role isnt to get you a coke and some peanuts.

And to add a personal anecdote, I was both a First Officer and a Captain for an airline flying EMB-145 regional jets, and if I had a passenger (or my crew) that left a TDMA or GSM phone turned on, I could always hear the distinctive noise they make in my headset, even with a TSO-approved headset. Nothing more than a distraction, though. The real reason I tuned my phone off is so the battery didnt drain looking for a cell tower en route.

Solid angles! Your understanding is correct, but the OP has it right also (for a ballpark estimate). He is using an averaged irradiance at the Earth's surface [ W m-2 ] that takes into account the effect of projecting the cross sectional area onto a rotating sphere (and is also averaged daily and seasonally to correct for night and the tilt of the earth).