It seems the meteorite "theory" is picking up, even on Slashdot... And it is going even statistical:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/06/04/did-a-meteor-bring-down-air-france-447/

IMHO, it is picking on the wrong way.

First, not all Earth's surface is equally probable on meteority strikes. Earth is moving on Space in a determined direction, and carries a specific positon in time. Now, space objects in the Solar System are not equally distributed all over it. Under this, as far as I can record, it seems that the Equator is one of the less probable zones for meteorite strike.

Under the weather conditions, we know were ocurring at the flight path, the flash being a "meteor stike" is even less plausible. Much more plausible is a massive bolt striking the plane. They also flash brightly and an example from a plane in Japan, seen on several sites, even shows the camera going blind.

Yes, this does not "explain" the "vertical fall" seen after the flash. Is it so? If the flash did blow up the fuel, then that would be the most probable thing to be seen.

Yes, many people claim that lightning cannot do such damage to airplanes. But no one denies, that a catasthrophic set of events could lead to something unexpected. Now such things do happen and when they happen, things go wrong in every possible way, specially, it occurs if models consider every catasthropic event as an individual parameter, but ignore their simultaneous ocurrence. In my life as an expert (nothing related to airplanes), I have seen some 4 such events. I even confess here that I was responsible for the consequences of one of them - I considered that events A and B would never occur together in any possible and plausible form. They ocurred. No matter that there were things that denied their simultaneous ocurrence, I never thought that one day I would have to deal with an hybrid environment were both basic events would be possible.

In your world of "opportunity for everyone" maybe. In the real world shit happens in such way that it may be practically impossible to get a solution. If the whole economy goes through the tubes, how can you guarantee yourself survival? If you didn't have had this chance, you are pretty lucky, I had to pass by the downfall of USSR. It was a TREMENDOUS experience. And not the first and last one. I just refer it because it was a situation where, chances to find work were pretty grim.

Now, guys like the one I described, don't have the experience of running through wars and major crisis. They are good guys, who hope to have a life without serious bumps. This bump going now is pretty bad for such people and don't tell me a anything about opportunities. You didn't even think on what market, country, region or field I or this guy are in. So, drop a bit your shell, be it "conservative" or "liberal", and think for a little that the world is not everywhere the same.

And one note: You claim sysadmins have no excuse for considerable savings. That's consumerism, pal. That's management going nuts, not knowing what they are spending on. Not personally nor at company level. If you don't know how to manage your OWN money, how will you manage the company's money?

I don't get just a salary, I manage budgets and personnel. If I would hear someone claiming such thing as you did here, I wouldn't even take the effort to see his CV. And don't tell me about that "IT ain't cheap". Yes I know it is not cheap. But it shall be rational. Specially, when you have companies burning millions of dollars of debt and you are one of the guys tasked to kick off these companies out of the hole they are in. So when I say - I will not look at such CV, I am pretty sure of what I am talking about.

Unfortunately, I know the reality. Yes, you are among the majority.

You know how many sysadmin CVs I refused to look at? It is not "opportunities". It's a very grim picture that makes me feel horrible.

Microsoft - Windows is the "gloat of the bloat and bloat of the gloat"

User - What is this moat of the goat or...

Microsoft - It is a complex of programs to feel a unique experience on digital information.

User - Can I put something into your?..

Microsoft - No way. Verbotten! It's pure proprietary, closed source, use it or drop it.

Now laws are being broken here. And it's not a question wether this works on PCs or not. It is clear black on white.

Now if...

Microsoft - Windows is an Operating System!

User - Can I put my program?

Microsoft - Eh, uh... No. Use ours or drop dead.

That IS a violation of law. More it is an antitrust violation because in the OS market you have a privileged position and you are misleading everyone AND using that "mislead" to kick out the alternatives.

The antitrust law goes as far as you claim your rights in a specific market. Does DoJ drops the rope on Sony for the software they have on the playstations? And is MS breaking any laws for blocking every other system on their Xboxes? Is anyone going after them for that?

MS claims that Windows has a certain universality under a very specific thing - the Operating System. Read carefully what I wrote. I know I'm pretty freak in english but the text is quite understandable.

Yes, MS is a legal construct. But, while they have to follow the law, they have inherent rights - they are copyright holders. I am not saying that "today" they may scrap Windows or change the EULA. If they did this, probably they would have some pretty bad time with DoJ. However, they can change it "tomorrow". And they can change it ways that no antitrust will go after them. IMHO, if they stop claiming the OS definition for Windows, it will be pretty hard to get them.

But while they claim Windows is an OS or carries certain properties that they really don't make available, they will have to spend a lot of time in the courts. Because, that is where the law is being broken.

Impossible. How do you figure out the budget if people talk only abstractively?

I had a few bad episodes during my lifetime with such abstractions. It doesn't work, what it doesn't work? Eeeeee it doesn't work. Ok, now what do you think or how do you think it should work. Well the computer shall "give me"/"think about"/"show me"...

And you realize that they don't even know how to use a computer.

Now think. Abstractions+"No real tasks"+"Calculate the Budget".

Under this crisis, it will take an Eternity to calculate a budget...

I just remembered an episode that occurred not so long ago.

This comes from third persons but I know the guy who was trying to get the job. An average sysadmin but systematic and hardworking.

When he was about to be layed off, people tried to find him a job on a business partner. The partner was having some pretty bad time with its networks. They are highly critical and shall run non-stop (something related to medicine btw). Now, lately, for several times the servers went down. There was even a hangup that lasted nearly half a day, a catasthrophe in their way of working. Things were so bad that, for some time, it was the company where this guy was working that was supporting their servers.

They naturally "offered" to their partner this guy. The partner refused. The guy went to the street. The problems kept creeping on.

Now, on that company, they were keeping four jerks. They didn't create these servers, they didn't support them and they even didn't know what was running there. Their job? "System Administrator".

I ain't talking about a little company. And this case is not the craziest I have been told of. But that what is happening. Good and average specialists are being sent to the streets while companies burn down departments or keep God knows who doing administration.

So, during this crisis, high-tech geeky homeless and unemployed is pretty natural to occur. More, with management going nuts in some companies, there is a good chance that some of the top experts find themselves on the street.

Why? Because someone offers you a job with absolutely no sense?

I am a infosec expert. So threat shall be something that you can measure. Objectively or subjectively, it doesn't matter. You either consider than under the threat of a breakin - "someone may steal information" or "we can loose a value of 100 million dollars". There is nothing weird on this, right?

Tell me, if someone comes to you and speaks about "threats", just the word "threats". And he keeps on and on with "threats", adding "hackers" or "spies" for a bit of salt. Will you take that job he is offering you? More, if you, as a professional, try to figure out what kind of threats and risks may exist, and this guy can only answer something about the fears going on inside the company? Fears, not dollars, or data inside some server.

Oh, you may think that he didn't want to give some confidential info. The BAD part of the story is that I once worked for them. And every time I tried to push the talk into what I knew they had, the guy was going somewhere else.

Yes, it is schizo season. I had three such proposals. The other two less crazy but also demanded a diagnosis.

Hmmm and you probably know what is being homeless.

I have been homeless btw. Many years ago in a pretty harsh time.

Frankly, you may consider me an idiot. It's your pure and absolute right. But wishing me to be homeless.

Hope you don't become anonymous if you get some pretty bad time on your life. I know many anonymous. Too much of them. Lived two years under war. It's enough to see thousands of anonymous.

And for the guy who "insightfulled" this. Your insight doesn't go much farther than the corner of your house. Go and see the world. Not everyone has a house to sleep in.

Yes, right now it is real hard to find a job. And not just because there are no jobs. Things are even more harsh than just "a job".

When I went down through the tube, I had several proposals being offered. Yes, I don't have too much trouble to find a job, besides, I only once, in my whole life, was searching for a job only on myself.

But what I found this time was... Dali's Universe? Things were so surrealistic that I even closed my communication with very closed friends. Because it was nearly impossible to make a rational, weightened comment on what was coming in. It was something. I cannot even name it "crazy".

For example, someone offers you a new job. Ok, let's see what we need to do. Nothing? Stop, pal, you are offering me a job. What tasks are to be done there? Some wicked picture on security "the aliens are coming!" in the middle of the myst?! Hey, call Spielberg, not me.

Yes I could accept such a job. And playing Spielberg for a while may be funny. But sincerly, I am of the kind of "task or no task". Usually we all fall in abstractions, second thoughts and sillynesses every time you come into a new job. But this time, several proposals and all them... I don't know. Maybe aliens are really coming in?

Well, I had some money on my backpocket. Made my calculations. Hmmm I can live for some time on myself only. Cool, all comms over and out, turn off all systems and deserve the holidays you didn't have for five years. Byeeee.

This crisis is funny. Really. Because, on one side, it is not so bad as it could be. On the other side, people fried their nerves so well, that it is impossible to have something workable out of the barbecue of their thinking.

Anyway, there are lots of people who are not so lucky as me. Sincerly, I have several cases of friends and ex-subordinates who are passing some pretty bad time now. Anyway, their stories are even more horrid than my. They were searching for a job, so they meet more whackos than me.

I'm self-unemployed after a real hard season of playing Blade Runner for a year. I don't have too much money to spend but...

I have a 24 hour permanent link to Internet
I can load tens of Gigabytes per month.
Have several different channels to reach Internet, from wherever I am, in several possible means.
And have a miriad of places to go for info and communication.
At home I have also three different ways to reach Internet from several systems around the house. I can freely move with a Internet link

And all this usually costs me some. Let's see... Some 40 dollars per month? Uh!

And to think I paid a 100 dollars for some piece of junky channel just four years ago. Hey and I could load only 2 Gigs! I was robbed!

It's a great world.

Ok, let's put one thing straight:

Microsoft has the full right to do what it wants with Windows.

If the wants to forbid anyone else to bundle, it can do it. If it wants to scrap it into the trashcan, be it.

What Microsoft has no right to do is to claim what Windows is not. They claim it is an Operating System. Cool, I have my little-pretty program here, I want to run it on Windows. No way? Then don't tell me you are selling an operating system. Call it whatever you want - a all-bundled system, an application complex, the bloat of the gloat or the gloat of the bloat...

But "Operating System" is something with a clear definition, with a definite purposefulness and for which Microsoft has no patents, trademarks or special privileges. Stop using it, stop using the OS definitions to describe Windows and be happy. Like Sony and other companies.

However Microsoft does no do it. Why?

Because it is afraid of loosing potential market?

It fears that someone may come with some new bright idea and they will not be able to surrepteously bundle it?

Because this may create independent systems upon which Microsoft will not have a hand on?

Because it will be much harder to asfixiate a concurrent?

And for how long such opportunism will continue? Until all creativism is crushed and the land barren?

"Fascists were not doing anything wrong in the 30's and they are not doing anything wrong now. Yes Fascism sucks and is completely totalitarian, but their aim for the good will of the Nation, without needless democracy is _NOT_ evil or even slightly unpleasant."

Sorry, pal, but I've been so messed on politics that your argumentation just flashed like a mirror on my memories. I pushed up, a little bit, the arguments, but sincerly, it is almost the same wordings.

Have you forget the findings made by DoJ in the 90's?

> "I don't see noise directed against Apple or Linux or BSD, likely because they are {not monopolies | high enough in market share | something else that I can't grok}."

Why you want to see them? Apple is really a monopolistic granitic stubborn deadhead, but which has enough links to Open Source and independent developers to be out of oversight.

Linux? There are no problems here... Where you see a problem? There are tons of projects of every size, form, taste and possible genetic mutation. Even the word "pet" is hard to be used here. Yes, "Welcome to the Jungle". I'm quite happy on it, btw. 11 years on the row.

BSD? There are NO problems there. Absolutely NOT a SINGLE problem. They are not the Jungle. They are The Primordial Matter.

All problems are with one company that clearly and undoubtfully tried to kick every one out of its Empire. And I am not making up things. There are the DoJ and Eurocommission investigations for everyone to see.

Besides, problem is not pet projects. It's hypocrisy to compare OSes to Congressional Pork. Pork is bad because it's budget, real taxpayer money being eaten. However, an OS is something that is supposed to support a miryad of different programs, not matter their purpose, intention and necessity.

If it an OS does not do such a thing, then it is not an OS. It's a gamepad like Gamboy or Playstation. If Microsoft wants to produce gamepads, it shall stop claiming Windows is an Operating System.

Sorry but reminding of Milton Friedman on these days, it would be the same as advocating for Monarchy right after the American Revolution...

Yes, you may bash me that I am remarking that freedoms may be not so free. And you may keep yourself on Milton Friedman, while the Economy slumps under his theories.

But I do prefer a chance to have some other new and real freedoms tomorrow. And not being fed by the abstract, scholastic and spooky "Free to Choose" under the absolute totalitarian rule of Microsoft. Even if that means some lack of universal pluralism today.