Why is the QUEEN so special that she can give people special titles?

Simple, she's better than you are. What have you done for the world, or the UK?

It "fell apart" because a wing was severely damaged. The same thing happens in any high-performance aircraft when you lose aerodynamic stability, either from structural failure, control system malfunction, or pilot error. It isn't a failure of structural engineering.

I think the idea is that in a more survivable accident, an improved seat and restraint system, and better procedures, could make the difference between life and death. Look at the improvements that have been made in race cars over the years, like head restraint systems. Race car drivers are much more likely to survive a crash than in the old days. The same is true for high-performance military aircraft. You learn what you can from the fatalities, and try to fix the problems exposed by the accident investigation.

That's what many people said about scrap metal and oil exports to Japan before December 7th, 1941.

Federal prison? The federal government does investigate and prosecute people who violate export control laws. Try buying some surplus aircraft parts and shipping them to Iran.

The scary thing isn't the impact site, or the earthquakes, or the monster tidal waves. It's when the ejecta starts reentering the atmosphere and surface temperatures reach 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.

They'll just bring along a tanker of barbecue sauce.

Maybe because they felt no obligation to be compatible with a device that was used by relatively few people. I think they made the right choice. A telephone is not a desk calculator.

Leap years are a separate issue. They keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. Leap seconds keep our clocks in sync with the apparent positions of the Sun and stars.

NTP isn't good enough for many systems. Where I work, millisecond level accuracy and resolution is the bare minimum. Some applications require microsecond level accuracy and resolution. That's why we have dedicated timing systems and timing distribution systems. NTP is used on systems, like general purpose PCs, that don't have a requirement for accurate time.

The length of the second doesn't change. An extra second is added. I work with precision timing systems where this is an issue.

The sequence is:

23:59:59 UTC
23:59:60 UTC
00:00:00 UTC
00:00:01 UTC

That means that the valid range for seconds is 0..60 and it is possible to have 61 seconds in a minute. You need to know this if you are using a programming language with range checks.

GPS uses its own time scale that isn't affected by leap seconds.

From what I've read, the FCC is forcing the cable companies to "eat their own dog food" by mandating the use of CableCard in new set-top boxes purchased by the cable companies. With that mandate, the cable companies might finally start fixing their screwed-up internal processes for supporting CableCard devices.

Hear, hear. Most of the spam that I get these days is in the Cyrillic alphabet, so don't tell me that it's Americans targeting Americans via foreign servers. Before that, it was mostly Chinese. If it's in an alphabet that I can't read, just dump it in the bit bucket and don't bother telling me about it.

You're ignoring the flood of "Brenda is having a baby shower on Tuesday" and "Melvin Kowznofski has been promoted to 3rd Assistant V.P. in charge of Belgian Markets".