You'd be surprised how far they go to really minimize "time spent on the job". We had to get special language put in our contract requiring our employer to make us eligible for FMLA because by their definition of "time at work", we did not meet the 1,250 hours that would otherwise require them to offer it.

My first 12 months as an airline pilot I grossed $22,000. Whether that is above or below minimum wage depends if you define my pay time as "flight time", "duty time", or "time away from base". It is for some of those and it isn't for others.

Airline pilots *ARE* hourly workers. If you know so much about how my contract is negotiated you should have taken a moment to actually read it.

I'll give you the comparison on time on job related duties though, we don't spend 40 hours at work a week. We tend to spend 48-60 hours "on duty" a week being paid a maximum of around 30 hours (pay time and duty time tends to be a 1:2 ratio) and may only be home 2 nights a week sometimes.

I don't need to negotiate by the hour pay, I already have it. I just don't get paid for all of the hours I am actually working.

Pilots are not salaried, we are hourly workers.

We are paid by the hour from the time all exterior doors are closed and the parking brake is released at our origin until the parking brake is set and a door opened at the destination.

My citation is the contract governing how I am paid. Pay time begins when all exterior doors are closed and the parking brake is released. Pay time ends when the first exterior door is opened (our contract says the it should only be the main cabin door, but in reality the clock stops as soon as the rampers pop the bag door).

And yes, pay is by the hour. The excuse of the airlines pushing for these pay rules is that our hourly rate is high enough that it covers all of that stuff too. They'd be happy to switch to pay by the duty day if we in turn halved our hourly rates. Just to put it in perspective, On a busy day I may be on duty 12-16 hours and only paid for 6-8 hours. The shortest possible duty day is a single flight day which will have a minimum of 1:00 of time I am "on duty" but not being paid, and that does not include getting through TSA which I am supposed to do before my duty day starts.

/. karma points are worth something?

How do I trade them in for valuable stuff?

No sympathy whatsoever.

As an airline pilot I do not get paid while I wait in line and am checked by the TSA. I do not get paid while I wait in line for customs. I do not get paid while I get the flight paperwork and verify it is safe and legal. I do not get paid while preparing and inspecting the airplane for flight. I do not get paid while I wait for everyone to get on the plane and coordinate with gate, ramp, fuel, maintenance and catering to ensure an on-time departure.

Young women are attracted to young men who take unnecessary risks in extreme displays of their adult skills. Today it's smoking the wheels of cars, not so long ago it was jumping out of trees onto wild buffalo. Every hero in every action movie does the same thing, no matter what is thrown at the hero he gets up and keeps going, no matter what the hero blows up or how many bullets he shoots no innocent bystander is ever hurt.

Young women are not attracted to 'idiots' that crash and burn, they are attracted to 'heros' who's skills and strength keep them alive and healthy despite the odds. It's not a conscious thing in either sex, "cheating death" is an integral part of the human ritual of finding a suitable mate, it's so deeply ingrained in humans that a males brain chemistry will reward "cheating death" with feelings of elation, pride, and self-satisfaction.

Looking back as an old man who had the luck to survive the motorbike ritual (among others), young men really do behave like peacocks, the things they unconsciously do to attract a mate are even more dangerous to the individual than that ridiculous tail is to the peacock. At the end of the day it does make our societies (if not our species) better suited to the civilizations we invented. We are continually evolving and are in a feedback loop with the environment we have created for ourselves, not unlike the termite and it's air-conditioned fungus farm.

For users new to the world of UNIX editors Emacs supports the simpler Vi emulation via

(setq global-map (make-sparse-keymap))

which faithfully emulates a novice user's experience of vi.

Who pissed in your cornflakes? The underlying reason it speeds up both games and rendering is identical, ie: swap space.

Yep, an SSD on my i5 makes WoT play at "highest detail" just as good as it does on my i7 using a conventional HDD, they both have the same video card and ram but without the SSD the i5 is practically unplayable (especially if you want all the eye-candy). It also loads the O/S and game faster than the i7. However durability is a bit of a concern, my first SSD shit itself without warning after 3 months, it was replaced under warranty and has been running for about a year now without problems. "Windoze" gets a lot of bad press but I have to say the is a remarkably simple and useful tool for determining the best way to spend your hardware upgrade money.

Quick, someone hand Tom a shotgun and a sturdy walking frame.

I hope they get the order right.

Torture AFTER killing is normally described as "mutilation", but it has an even poorer success rate than torture before killing.

I suppose it depends on what your success criterion is though. If Snowdon were to die under torture, being broadcast live on global TV, then there would probably be a desirable decrease in whistle-blowing. but the PR damage might be significant too.
What was that story I saw a few days ago about the US being unable to recruit enough pilots, because of the perceived dead-end nature of the job. Same for IT specialists.

A signed letter from a head of state/justice from a country prevents this from being used as a defence.

IF, and only if, the country in question has credibility to back up a letter like this. Which America certainly hasn't had since the Guantanamo Bay carpet-for-sweeping-under camp was established. Whether it had such credibility 2 decades ago is open to question. You'd probably have got that vote from me, but these days I'd laugh at such a promise. Including if I were on jury duty.