11 months ago I finished my Commercial Pilots License - I haven't been able to find any work at all since completing it. That was the last time I touched a plane.

The same problem exists. People are expected to splash $100k AUD on their license, then work for ~$25k a year. Not to mention get themselves to jobs on their own dime etc... I hear the same lines "There is a massive pilots shortage!!" - which is absolute bullshit. We just have to take other jobs to pay off the loans etc we took for our training.

It just about gutted my career - but this is the world we live in. Now I'm only casually employed - and making about the same amount as I would as a pilot - while working only a handful of hours.

No, No they don't. If you look at the packet-per-second performance you get when you put even some basic rules in there, you'll be surprised. Some systems have their PPS rate halved by this...

iptables -N eth0-in
iptables -N eth0-out
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -j eth0-in
iptables -A FORWARD -o eth0 -j eth0-out

Then create all the rules you need in the specified chain.

The way to get the most performance out of iptables is to make each chain as small as possible. This can quite easily be split up into logical lists for what you actually do - ie:

iptables -N 10.1.1.1
iptables -N 10.1.1.2
iptables -N 10.1.1.3
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -d 10.1.1.1 -j 10.1.1.1
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -d 10.1.1.2 -j 10.1.1.2
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -d 10.1.1.3 -j 10.1.1.3

This way, you can easily branch out and skip a fuckton of rules that will never apply to the packet that is being processed. Usually, you can bring each chain to less than 6 rules. Less rules == less overhead == more performance.

The best advice I have ever been given in flying is this: Unload yourself.

What does this mean? Ok, power on, take off roll, reach takeoff safety speed (usually 1.5x stall), rotate, airborne, set your climb attitude. Next thing, trim. With a bit of practice, about 20 seconds after liftoff, you will be trimmed for the climb - this means you can take your hands off the controls and you'll continue to climb at your (usually) 500ft/min. Your speed will be stable, your climb rate will be stable, and you'll keep climbing until you either get disturbed by a gust of wind etc or you change the controls.

Take this time now that you can fly with hands off to glance at your engine instruments - that the RPM is what you expect it to be, oil temps and pressure is ok, airspeed is what you expect, then check your performance again (attitude, power etc). This can all be done within 45 seconds after liftoff. Now you do what any VFR pilot does best - look outside. As you're not struggling to keep the aircraft under control, you can observe what is going on outside. Looking for traffic, obstacles, making sure what you see outside matches the instruments (ie you're climbing, going fast enough etc).

Coming up to your assigned / desired altitude, use the yolk to bring the nose down, power to cruise, trim, trim, trim. Usually up to about 1/2 - 3/4 of a turn on the trim wheel and you're almost able to fly hands off again in seconds.

A good exercise here - trim for the climb, then don't touch the yolk again until you're on final to land. Use the trim for your attitude and rudder for turning. Do the entire circuit using only trim, rudder and throttle. As you would have been taught, the secondary action of yaw is roll - so you'll find you actually start to bank while only using the rudder. It gets tricky - and you'll be all over the place while first trying this - but it is great for learning the relationship as to what you're doing affecting the aircraft.

Anyhow - this isn't flight training 101 on slashdot, but learning to fly has been a highlight of my life - and I'm always happy to share things with people. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss more random things ;)

Heh - the 'bright light' called a landing light in a C172 is almost as bright as a single car headlight (if you're lucky, like the high beam). It does sweet fuck all to illuminate the runway. If you're waiting to see the runway via the landing light before you flare, you're going to have a bad time - and probably crater. Larger aircraft have much brighter lights, but the effect is still the same.

Night landings are hard. There are no floodlit runways that I know of in existence. The only form of reference you have is the shape of the lights. There are very few clues of your height or speed by looking outside at night. Night flying kills many - as it is VERY easy to fly straight into the ground because you can't see it - this danger is magnified even more when you are on approach to an airfield - especially if it is one with a 'black hole effect'.

During my night flying assessment, I was required to land at an airport 'void of artificial lighting' - ie only runway lights. As you fly towards the airport, imagine a completely black area with two rows of lights. That is all you have. If you're lucky and there is a full moon, you may be able to make out the ground. I'd say it is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

I'm a commercial pilot (who is currently unemployed) - however operating the radio is part of my pre-flight briefing with anyone in the right seat in any G/A aircraft. In this briefing, I also go through what I'll do if we have a radio failure or comms problems - as part of this includes them using the radio (if required). Most people are very attentive - and its with this exact reason in mind - if anything incapacitates me, the least I can do for passenger safety is to get them to talk to someone who can help.

If the person in the right seat is a bit of a fan about flying, I'll teach them a bit about basic flight controls during the flight as well. Most people see if as a bit of fun and enjoy it - but there is a serious reason behind the scenes... The best way to be prepared in aviation is to think ahead.

For less experienced pilots, this is why we always aim to trim an aircraft for the correct attitude and performance as early as possible. The last thing you want to do is to leave the aircraft incorrectly trimmed and have something happen to you. When you step up to jet aircraft, the most important control in the aircraft is the trim. Use it well and often.

Only in training? I'd say about 1 in 20 landings is still a fuckup compared to what we aim for... Once you get a few thousand hours experience, you'll probably still fuck up 1 in 50... True, the degree of fuckup is greatly reduced - but professional pilots with thousands of hours still bounce 737's etc.

Wow - you showed more compassion than me ;)

Make one even better change. Allow comment moderation above +5 -- but only for this article...

Sadly, there is no way to impress upon the Dice morons how much people agree beyond +5 at these comments....

I agree 100% here. It's just sad that you can't moderate comments above 5 for others to realise how many people actually agree here. I think you'd find it'd be in the thousands....

Oh god. I really thought "It couldn't be that bad" - and then looked at the page linked above.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

I've been around here a long time, and this has got to be one of the most braindead ideas I have ever seen on this site. You may as well convert slashdot to run on phpBB instead. At least then its still about the community and not the (limited) articles...

It doesn't - but it does make me want to stab someone in the face for turning neat and functional into flashy and useless....

Maybe someone got fired from the Gnome 3 team and picked up a gig at slashdot hq.....

This. So many times this.

The crux of it is multiple fold:
1) Rupert Murdoch owns the biggest cable network in Australia (Foxtel). The current governments NBN plan will give up to 100Mbit (maybe even 1GBit) to just about every home in a town above 1000 homes - Australia wide. As the US has seen with streaming services, in this environment, cable tv would be obliterated. Its just a sad fact that the same guy owns most of the media - therefore he uses his influence to protect his media assets.

2) Gina gets a load of immigrant workers. The current government is looking to restrict imported workers to a lower amount that is currently happening. This means that Gina will have to pay fair wages to more of her staff. This is of course being protested by her interests in any way possible.

3) Tony Abbott is great at grinding axes, but very poor (being kind) at content. He has spearheaded the biggest sledging campaign in Australian political history. This is the guy that outright lies (which the media doesn't expose - see point #1) to the public to destabilise the current government as much as possible.

4) Tony Abbott (with the media in tow) has made a massive issue about asylum seekers arriving in Australia via boats. Forget that fact that he calls them illegal immigrants (which they aren't) and that they are the source of Australias problems (which they aren't) and he promises that he will stop the boats (which he can't) to increase our nations security. His plans have been scoffed at by the brass in the navy as unworkable - but these details get overlooked by the media (see point #1).

In a nutshell, its a sad day for me to call myself an Australian - and its a sad day for politics in Australia that people sink so low as to put themselves before their country - but that is exactly what is happening at this point in time.

There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things. Their core market is information. Gathering information. Processing information. Sorting and utilising information.

Once you're good at this, it isn't hard to expand into various uses for that information.

Well, the performance difference didn't seem to be huge - in fact, some stats were slower.... I don't buy for a second that it was for performance reasons.

Philosophy - maybe - however Oracle contribute quite a bit to OSS - more than a lot of companies - See: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/linux/technical-contributions-1689636.html

In a nutshell, they are working on NFS over IPv6, data integrity checks for ext3, they maintain libstdc++, they worked hard on BTRFS, If anything, they have helped open source much more than most other companies.

Again, I don't see the philosophical reasons other than 'because we can'.