I was going to say "Even Windows is smart enough". Looking at the Windows 7 Firewall profile, even under "Public Network" profile (Coffee Shop, Airport, or directly connected to internet), SMB is allowed for the local subnet, which would limit attack surface on the Internet, at a Wifi hotspot could be deadly. Which I guess is why some hotspots disallow local traffic between peers.

I was surprised to find that the pressure is sea level, given that an airline flight has a pressurized equivalent of 8000 ft. I guess when the outside of the vehicle is a vacuum, the incremental pressure isn't that much.

Isn't the orbital period 90 minutes, and thus the "space day" 90 minutes, and not actually that long?

So you have a 150 month payback? 12.5 years? In that period there is undoubtly going to be maintenance costs: replacing the battery bank for sure, and potentially unexpected failure of PV panels, or charging / inverting equipment. Further the longer you go past the 12.5 year break even point, the higher the chance of component failure.

Tape backups have been an enterprise only product for years. And they are backing up enterprise (server-grade) hard drives that cost substantially more than consumer SATA drives.

Growing up in Middle school I remember creating a QBASIC program that was a full screen BSOD with a fake virus warning. I put it on a floppy (used an AOL floppy naturally) and loaded it in the autoexec.bat of various Win9x machines on display at Radio Shack, and Best Buy. This fake BSOD would pop up before Windows actually loaded. It was hilarious to watch the paid employees, at least 10+ years older than me, struggle with basic computer troubleshooting while we ate our ice cream at the food court across the way.

In High school I remember we could just disconnect the Ethernet, hit "Cancel" on the login prompt for Windows 98, and it would log in anyways, then plug in the cable to restore Internet access.

In university they had a pay credit system on the printers. I remember realizing that I could print to file (.PRN), then use netcat to send the file to the IP of the printer and bypass the print credit system. I created a BAT file to automate this (so I could select what printer in what computer lab). Once word of this got around, I started sending threatening messages to the LCD display on the printer "Print Theft detected, IT notified" to try and scare people off.

As a grown adult, when IT erroneously locks out users, on several occasions, I've pulled the Ethernet cord, logged in using the last known credentials for the user, then plugged in the Ethernet to restore Email, Internet, and local access.

I always thought it made sense from the perspective of "What if the one pilot in the cockpit suddenly keels over", or if there's some type of emergency, even a flight attendant in one of the seats can help manage the workload until the other pilot can return.

On Air France 447 the computer detected anomalies in the instruments, disabled Auto pilot, moved from more restrictive normal law to less restrictive alternate law, and got out of the way.

The guys in the seats, not the plane, started hauling back on the stick, approaching, then entering a stall. If the plane were in Normal law it would have prevented them from entering a stall. Instead the plane stood out of the way, warned them (by means of a stall horn) that the plane was going to stall, then allowed them to continue to increase their angle of attack beyond that of a stall.

For several minutes the plane stood out of the way as they descended 38,000 ft, hauling back on the the stick, in a stall. If the pilots pushed the stick forward the angle of attack would have decreased, and the plane would have exited the stall.

It sounds like you have issue with the Stall horn mechanism, not the actual FEP.

In the initial incident, the plane disconnected Auto pilot, auto thrust, and went from Normal law to Alternate law. So the plane actually disabled some of the "nanny un-overridable" systems. Stall protection was disabled, so the plane let them stall it, because they were commanding it to stall.

When the stall warning sounded, what did they do? Haul back on the stick, the exact opposite of what they should do.

Even with a broken air speed indicator, they should say "Gee, we have a nose high attitude, 100% throttle, a whining stall horn, and the clock is counting down from 38,000 ft, maybe we should stop hauling back on the stick and push it forward like we're supposed to"

Look at self driving cars. Currently most cars have nothing in them that can detect an obstruction in front of them. That's cause they're not set up to autodrive, just like airplanes aren't set up to autofly*.

* I'm discounting Autopilot as that's like cruise control. Primitive automation under the supervision of a human.

If it were onboard autopilot, it could also be programmed with emergency procedures. For example, when the plane detected insufficient cabin pressure (and deployed the masks), after not detecting pilot input, it could start decent to 10,000 ft, hopefully avoiding any serious injuries for hypoxia. Then continuing to lack input the plane could make an emergency landing before fuel exhaustion.

If it were remote, telemetry should be going back to the operator to indicate cabin pressure problems, and checklist should say to descend the aircraft, minimizing potential injuries.

I'm amazed at how cheap places can be with monitors. In my opinion, anyone doing any technical based work on a computer should have 2x 23" Full HD monitors (or better). Even 27" monitors can be had for less than $200. I struggled with my boss getting a second monitor, and mini-displayport adapter to hook it up to my laptop. Not even a workstation replacement laptop, just a thinkpad T440. He doesn't understand why I need one when he doesn't use a second monitor.

I work in engineering, not programming or IT, but to be able to have a CAD screen open on one screen, and reference material (PDF or web) open in the other, or having reference material and a spreadsheet open is great. Even our planners stopped using scrap paper once they had two screens because they could have both applications they needed up at once.

I've never seen anyone with two screens regret getting them.

.CHM help files are HTML based and won't render without MSHTML.DLL.

UDF is supported, and is an ISO standard format.

I also got an HP stream, was hesitant with it being an Atom and 1GB RAM, but performance seems pretty good. Sticking with tablet like workflows: Video player, web browser, it's not so bad. I hate to say it but Metro IE doesn't seem that bad either. Chrome can run in New UI mode (which requires taking over default browser) is a close second. On screen keyboard will popup up when required (even in desktop mode), gestures work well for eg: zoom. Downside is forward back, etc buttons are way too small, even in Metro mode. Firefox sucks on Tablets.

You can break into desktop if you want for EG: MS Office, Putty, FileZilla, but the desktop is real small to navigate with your finger. Dollar store capacitive stylus makes it more bearable. Likewise Bluetooth Keyboard / mouse are options. Obviously you aren't going to be loading heavy duty applications on it.

The cameras are complete pieces of crap, but for an Atom Z3735G, 1GB RAM, 32GB eMMC tablet it's drastically cheaper than a lot of others, and performance is surprisingly good. A lot better than an Atom N280 1.5GB RAM Netbook I have running 8.1.