No, they did not. But devices have evolved. Instead of relying on the flight attendant to identify every possible device which may contain a transmitter or rely on you knowing which transmitters are harmless (which the airliners themselves do not know) there is a blanket ban.
Anything else would never work today.

And sadly, very few passangers are able to understand these explanations.

Heck, I'm not so sure every flight attendant do. That's why they have rigorous procedures and are not to deviate.

Of course things could be explained, but also you should accept the fact that the procedures are made up of diverse experiences the industry has made of decades.

This is in contrast to the the security measures put in place by the TSA, which are irrational actions based on irrational happenings. The industry measures are a result of actual research caused by actual problems.

You have a few limited points.
* Photos: All electronic equipment must be switched off. I bet it's a digital camera?
* Music: Same goes. If you have the plugs in your ear you are most likely listening and you were not able to hear the attendants telling you ti switch it off.
* Blanket: If there is an emergency that blanket will cost lives. Try exiting a seat row in a hurry when the person next to the isle has a blanket. Same goes for any larger item of clothing and shoes. Shoes are to be on during takeoff/landing for the same reason.
These things have nothing to do with terrorist paranoia. You could argue how much a digicam or MP3 player interfere with the instruments, but instead of relying on you or the flights attendants to recognize what is dangerous and what is not, it is way safer to keep it all turned off.

I've worked with a wide range of airports and knows some of this from the inside. I also know enough to be confident that the security measures in place after 9/11 are not that hard to defeat.
I have also declined visiting the US because of the hostility you are faced with even when coming from an allied country, but that is unrelated to airport security.

Also, I did WLAN installations at a range of airports as a hired consultant.
They only checked my police record before issuing me with an access to *all* areas on *every* airport in the country. Not even security officers matched my clearance.

To make it even 'worse': I had clearance to bring any item or equipment past the security checkpoint, except explosives. I had knives and all sorts of sharp/blunt objects.

On one occasion I also brought my car and got clearance to bring it on the same side as the airplanes. The security officer who was to inspect my car rolled his eyes to see it filled with ~60 boxes (containing WLAN AP) and decided it was too much of an effort to check the vehicle so I could just pass.

No interview, deep background checks, nothing before I got clearance. I suspect the cleaning staff have similar clearance (except their equipment might already be inside).

I guess I was just one of many... It then bothers me endlessly to be stripped of my toothpaste when flying civil (my clearance ended this summer, a ear after I switched jobs...).

Yes, agreed!
If they confiscate my toothpaste because they suspect it contains explosives, why the hell am I allowed on the plane at all?
I most certainly would not feel more secure if the 9/11-terrorists were on my plane knowing that even though their guns were confiscated they still have the intent of bringing my fligh down.

When they take away my toothpaste I would expect a full SWAT-team to appear and beat me to a pulp before taking me away and possibly sending me to Guantanamo.

Make up your mind, am I a terrorist suspect or not?

If you were living in Norway the law mandates a minimum 1/5th payment per hour you are on call, and overtime once you are called out. The minimum overtime compensation required by law i 40%, and the minimum amount of time is 2 hours.
That is the bare minimum guaranteed by law in order for your employer to demand anything at all from you. And even then you cannot be oncall 24/7.

Some are on call without any basic compensation, but without obligations. And some, like me, have way better benefits than this.

Please elaborate.

I too agree that this is pointless for the end user in Linux, at least when it comes to free software. Only closed binary blobs will benefit, which IMHO is not something worth putting effort towards helping. They did their design choices and accepted the reality in doing so.

As for the end user, she should just use the package manager of her distro and find whatever she needs. Not worrying about neither compiling nor platforms.
For example, in Debian/Ubuntu you could more easilly package your installer to simply drop a file in /etc/apt/sources.d. Not only will the user be able to use the package manager to install your app like any other, she will also get security updates you publish.

Let the package system handle these things, they do it well and does not bloat your boat.

Kudos. /. shouls always use UTC. Always.

Sounds familiar. The cleaning crew of a supplier specielizing in cooling systems also did this. Loggin in to MSN and the like. The only problem was that the computer they used once had an open remote desktop session to a computer controlling the cooling in a large storage hall for fish. It was supposed to be 'secure'.
As the conversations on MSN was in Bulgarian and the companies invovled were Norwegian, it didn't take too much effort in locating the source (I just called everyone with access to the said computer and asked them to name all Bulgarian employees, and only one name came up...).

Here in Norway there is a similar service. The best part? It is actualy run by a government agency to aid consumers in the jungle of cellphone and broadband plans. (http://www.telepriser.no/ , in Norwegian only)

A device like this with Maemo has a shell, an ssh client and even an ssh server if you want. It does whatever you want it to granted is has the horsepower to do it.

Or what about encrypting the damn data and be done with it?

You haven't missed out on much.
I did try to go the N-route, until I discovered that different devices operate on differetn frequencies. Buying teo draft-N certified products I thought I had a good chance of them working together.
Turns out one was for 2.4GHz band and the other for the 5GHz band.

Both were certified and one of them metioned nothing of frequencies outside the box.

If the standard actually allows this, I don't know. Beware...

Actually, most launches happen outside NASA these days.
NASA is often involed, providing instruments or cooperating with other agencies, but that goes both ways.

Close, but no cigar.
As Terra is using a polar orbit it travels the equtor almost 30 times per day. But yes, most of the gaps are most likely over equator, as it a lot of it is just oceans and requires more manouvres by the S/C to cover out of nominal orbit.

Mine was utter crap. Not very precise, intermittent dropouts, need to re-pair often... That was almost 2 years ago, it might work better now.