(not an armchair pilot here either - commercial multi engine rated).

Autoland does just fine with windy conditions. IIRC (and this may have changed) the 777 is/was certified for a higher crosswind component with autoland enabled than under manual control.

> Punch a few half-inch holes in the skin and the pumps will just compensate by increasing the flow a bit

Not necessarily true. Put a hole in the pressure vessel in the wrong place and that escaping air will do a lot of damage. Some good examples of what explosive decompression can do out there (JAL comes to mind, Aloha too if memory serves).

JG

I just got back from the US (British citizen) and a couple of years ago I went to Israel to visit my then-girlfriend (now wife).

TSA wasn't as bad as I thought and even though we both requested not to go through the scanner the staff were polite and professional (this was at El Paso, and later at Orlando-MCO). I've had more, erm , invasive patdowns before and they explain everything. However, it seems to me that they give the same level of scrutiny to everyone.

Flying to and from Israel (on El Al certainly) there's a level of profiling. They come through the check-in line "chatting" to people, looking for holes in their story and subconscious giveaways that they're lying. Me, I lived in Saudi Arabia for years and had Egyptian stamps in my passport, so I was deemed in need of a few extra searches, but nothing out of the ordinary. My wife, on the other hand, an Israeli national, gets basically no questions when travelling back. Again they were very professional, even friendly.

So, I'd say the US system is pretty thorough with everyone, whereas Israeli security find out early on if you're a person of interest and if you are, they take a bit more time to "chat" to you.

JG

I'm sure I'd use my fair share of foul language if some stranger started following me at night. Might even throw a punch if I was really worried they were up to something.

Causation doesn't equal correlation. Also the key word is "can."

Yeah, this. Maybe I'm lucky to work somewhere that management is sympathetic to personal crises. But sacking a guy who just got divorced? Not cool. How would you feel if the situation were reversed? Would you "roll with it?"

JG

This. A thousand times.

Asshat. This isn't for medical science or anything as noble - it's "hey look what happens when we do this" and fundamentally no different to shooting things for fun. It's irrelevant that the roaches "feel no pain" - it's unethical, full stop.

This. We're hiring a 1st line support tech / "IT assistant" in a 2 man IT team, and although it's a gigantic pain to go throughthe 30-40 CVs per day, it's good that I am doing it because I know what to look for. So many of them have almost no real world experience yet have CCNA, MCITP etc which to most HR folks looks very good.

JG

I thought of this a few days ago, basically we can all help out friends/relatives (and strangers) by setting up DNS servers, VPN servers etc. Helps if you have a static IP but there's ways around everything. I blogged about it at the time (shameless link: http://blogwithoutportfolio.dyndns.org/blog/?p=21) but forgot to add anything about Tor.

It's a sad day when we have to help people in the US get around web censorship. I really really hope this mess doesn't get passed.

All the best for the future, Taco. Thanks for a great legacy.
John

"Brought there by our coloured cousins."

Asshole. You had a point right up to that last sentence. Go crawl back under the rock from which you came.

Amen to that. I don't have experience with AD integration but even with an all-Mac network we still have all sorts of problems with Mac OS X Server (AFP processes maxing out to 1000's of % of CPU usage, Apple's own apps being very IO heavy, etc). In my experience Apple don't care about the enterprise market, and for all the hype, Mac OS X server can't do (well) most of the things Apple say it can. I've used OS X Server and Xserve since 2003, and for anything more than a small install I don't recommend it.

As the parent said as well, the lack of redundant PSUs (and a power cable that will just fall out!) on the Mini and Apple's policy on virtualisation just make it more clear that it is indeed collateral income for them.

Most of us haven't been British subjects since 1983 when the British Nationality Act (1981) came into force. Even then it was something of an anachronistic term.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_British_nationality_law#British_Nationality_Act_1981