Then there's the somewhat intricate (for minds like yours) "I could care less", meaning that although it is possible that I could care less for this thing, it would require more effort than I'm willing to put forth, so I'm happy to stick with the current amount of caring I have for this thing.
Welcome to fifth grade English.
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.
Some people might misunderstand that sentence and interpret that to mean that any autopilot-equipped aircraft is capable of doing this. That is not the case.
First, the avionics aboard many planes in service are not configured from the manufacturer for autoland (e.g. every 737 that American Airlines flies). These can only do "coupled" approaches.
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.
Second, many smaller planes and older planes are not fully fly-by-wire, so they would require a serious retrofit to make them capable of full autoland.
Fly-by-wire is not a requirement for autoland. Transport-category aircraft have been doing autolands since the 1960s.
If you limit yourself only to fully fly-by-wire planes and limit yourself to major airports, that statement is true. However, the autopilot system in a sizable percentage of aircraft in the air today are NOT capable of autonomous landing.
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.
"True faith is based on evidence, not opposed to evidence...
Incorrect. Hebrews 11.1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Therefore faith is complete hogwash.
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?
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.