I am a pilot.

You're wrong.

Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.

The 1960s called, wanting their commercial flight ops back. Planes haven't had flight engineers in decades (unless the plane itself is that old). Likewise commercial jets have had autoland for decades. It's standard procedure for airports which often have low visibility (like Heathrow). Heck, the autoland is so good that -- again, decades ago -- they introduced a bit of dither into the system to avoid excessive runway wear from heavies (747 etc) always landing on the exact same spot.

I work with a man from Egypt, a Christian with family over there. I asked him what he thought about all this and his eyes lit up, "my family is finally free."

Great! So they can now start suppressing gays, abortion, science, etc just like they do here in the US!

Trading one form of hatred for another isn't progress.

The reality is that Chavez did more for social conditions in his country than any other president in living memory.

Yeah, except for those rampant human rights abuses. "Social conditions" includes things like free speech, whether you feel you can get justice, feel safe. Even if what you claimed were true - that his people were better off with him than without him - the ends do not justify the means.

Whether US government officials (not "USA"; don't confuse a country's government or leadership with its people) found him a threat and a risk (not "hated him viciously") is irrelevant to Chavez's power-grubbing, human-rights-abusing, autocratic ruling. That you use the word "vicious" to describe the US government's attitude towards him, instead of how he treated his own people, shows that you have a serious perspective problem.

What is this article on about? Who the fuck is SpiderOak, Silent Circle? GPG, pgp, gnuPG are standards of encryption, not some un evaluated service, or new software.
And there are *literally* people taking to the street:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57592368-83/san-francisco-protests-the-nsa-spying-program-in-july-4th-march/
http://rt.com/usa/nsa-protests-july-4-700/
http://mashable.com/2013/07/02/restore-the-fourth/

And these are just the top 3 google news articles. I agree that the software solutions are terrible, and hard to use. And I agree that the news media are doing a good job of shifting the focus to: "Edward Snowden for leaking some of the country's most sensitive intelligence secrets". Which is agonizing to watch, but not half as agonizing as stupid articles like this couched in the voice of the people, but in actually spinning the story away from the truth.

People are angry, there are secure solutions, it has to be open source and on your own computer under your direct control to be secure. Open source software development is notorious for flubbing the user experience, but that is the bad news. We do care about privacy and personal security, we can fix the software to be easier to use, and we are actually fighting for our rights. So STFU with your crap message about our doomed future, and stupid populace. Of course it's not easy, but people like Snowden keep coming along and reminding us to be more vigilant.

The tail broke off, not the wings. And the aircraft didn't "cartwheel". There are many good pictures of the wreckage. The wreckage is sitting on the ground alongside the runway, right side up, wings intact, on its belly. The tail assembly is completely detached from the plane. Much fire damage to the top of the fuselage, which is puzzling.

There are pictures of the passengers evacuating, including, inevitably, one of the passengers who just evacuated taking pictures of the plane.

Too early to discuss causes. Reports indicate the plane landed short in an nose-up attitude, but it's too early to say why.

They're no longer really part of the first world.

Sigh. Yet another person who doesn't understand what "third world", "first world", etc mean.

"Worlds" rank countries whether they're with us (NATO/democratic: 1st) vs them (non-democratic/communists, 2nd) vs undeveloped economy (3rd), no, actually.

The Xbox One recognizes your face. It knows if you're watching. They're in a position to insist that you watch the ads. Leave during an ad, and everything pauses until you get back to finish watching the ad.

"It sees you when you're sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows if you've been bad or good."

San Francisco has 8,000 homeless people. Those could help.

When TV first started becoming popular, the actors felt that they were being /invited/ into other peoples homes, and to act rudely would bring about mobs and pitchforks. Actual pitchforks!

Cable TV was initially sold as "Television with a monthly fee, so you won't need to ever see another commercial again". Notice the amount of ads on cable TV these days?
I don't believe for a second those greedy bastards won't rush as fast as possible to ads with over-charging you at the same time.

(Insert Futurama - Lightspeed Briefs spot here)

There's an anime version of Welcome to the N.H.K. The first episode describes someone becoming hikikomori. Then it gets worse. It's so painful that when it ran on Japanese TV, a public service announcement of a help line for hikikomori ran with each episode.

I'd thought of doing that as part of one of my browser add-ons, but it has problems. The general idea is that you send your cookies to a central site which sends them out to others to confuse tracking. As the article says, "The Vortex system will build a database of cookies gathered by players." So you've traded multiple limited data collection systems for one central one. There are a number of obvious ways that can backfire.

Just turn off third party cookies. Or run Abine's Do Not Track Me.

True. A big problem with what passes for 3D movies rely on hitting you in the face with 3D effects. All "3D" movies seem to have to have a roller coaster scene or equivalent. It's not cool any more, just annoying.

Cameron did a nice job with "Avatar". He figured out how to use 3D with restraint. At no point in Avatar is anything placed in front of the screen plane. In everything in Disney Crap 3D, the 3D is in your face.

There are things that can still be done. Cameron wants higher frame rates, for those big slow pans over high-detail backgrounds he likes don't have any visible strobing effects. He also points out that going to 4K resolution is meaningless after the first few rows in the theater, where nobody sits anyway.