I would suggest the very notion of "washing out" as a trainee pilot these days doesn't really apply to a vast number of the pilots working towards a professional airline career.

The "washout" approach was founded in military pilot training, where you either meet the standards or you were out. After all if you have a large pool of interested candidates you don't need to waste the time on someone without the aptitude for the job. (Air traffic control training follows a similar regimen - unless things have changed 50% of air traffic trainees wash out, especially at the busier facilities.)

However these days a vast number of pilots aiming for the profession are coming out of aviation colleges, which they pay for themselves. The aviation colleges aren't interested or otherwise inclined to wash anyone out of their programs. And the airlines, who are desperate for pilots, are more interested in flight hours than anything else.

I don't see pilots (or air traffic trainees) washing themselves out under any circumstance, regardless.

I don't believe the FAA can regulate radio frequency use directly - that's the FCC's job.

However under FAA Part 77 they could determine that 5G was an "obstruction to air navigation".

...standards used to determine obstructions to air navigation that may affect the safe and efficient use of navigable airspace and the operation of planned or existing air navigation and communication facilities. Such facilities include air navigation aids, communication equipment, airports, ...

So the FAA could issue a "Notice of Presumed Hazard" as they did to deny the operation of a new FM radio station at Pacific Junction, Iowa because it would interfere with aviation navigational radio aids in the Omaha, Nebraska area. In that case the FCC revoked the FM frequency they had allocated and sold; not the FAA.

So theoretically the FAA could object if anyone tried to install a 5G tower/antenna close to an airport if it was a hazard to aviation.

However I very much doubt the FAA will do that - they'll issue notices and Airworthiness Directives and leave it to the operators to deal with. So the FAA might be concerned, but not to the point of actually doing much about it.

It's (probably) not up-front money. But if the FAA Administrator appointee and other higher-up FAA lackeys obfuscate and ignore problems to put themselves into favor with the aviation industry when they leave the FAA they can use it to leverage lucrative positions in the private sector.

Which savvy users could easily block by not installing certain updates. But the Windows 7 telemetry updates were obviously foreboding of what was to come.

There are several anonymous whistleblower-type safety reporting systems including websites within the FAA. For some employees there is the "Aviation Safety Reporting System". Plus there is the "FAA Hotline Reporting System". Finally (at least for now) any government employee is entitled to whistleblower protections, including anonymity.

The problem is that the reports from those programs are largely ignored making them obviously ineffective.

In addition in accidents the NTSB often suggests procedural and technical changes to the FAA, which are also ignored.

If anything the FAA has proven over time that the only thing that really motivates them to make meaningful changes are fatalities, and even that is often not enough unless the body count gets high enough.

So the FAA doesn't get a pass because Boeing has problems - the FAA is supposed to oversee the aircraft manufacturers. Period.

Another example of why the FAA is called the "Graveyard Agency" - they tend to ignore safety concerns until there are fatalities.

This continues to be a problem letting the FAA act as both safety oversight as well as encourage aviation activity and development. The entire aviation industry is big business, so in the latter case the higher-ups in the FAA often turn a blind eye to safety violations from the airlines and the aircraft manufacturers, not to mention its own development of air traffic systems and its contractors (the problems with the air traffic ERAM system are well-documented).

From a safety perspective the solution is simple - separate safety oversight functions from the FAA and create a separate entity that doesn't have the blatant conflict of interest that currently exists within the FAA.

But then it's obvious that's never going to happen so unfortunately these sorts of affairs are going to continue to occur and people are going to continue to die.

You're kidding, right?...

As far as I know all restaurants have this gadget called a menu. Most often that menu device has prices listed on it. If there isn't a price then you can simply ask what the price for the food and drink items are and they'll tell you. And if you don't like the prices then you're free to leave or not order certain items you think are not priced reasonably.

So in this scenario the unhappy customer either: a) ordered the drink knowing the cost in advance, or b) ordered the drink without knowing the price. I fail to see how this was "overcharging". The restaurant sets the prices - if you don't like it you don't have to buy.

I thereby don't see how after the fact he has a "valid point" in his complaint in either case - the key word being "valid". It would seem that the customer was trying to make a point - but the only point that he makes to me is that he was either trying to create a confrontation, or that he's simply an idiot.

Either way, it's not a reasonable or sane way to object to what you may feel are unreasonable prices; nor is writing a bad review after the fact.

It's true that if bad reviews force a business to shut down it was probably not a great business, this discounts the effect of fake reviews on a business. In the short term a small business can be devastated by an onslaught of bad reviews even if they're not true.

Ever heard of fake reviews, kid? Your generation writes plenty of them and thus clearly has the time to do so.

Are you really suggesting there are no such thing as fake reviews?! Wow - that is a level of either cluelessness or naivety that I would like to believe doesn't exist...

Yelp doesn't vet its reviews - anyone can write a fake crappy review about a business, and if people like you believe them then it can negatively affect a business.

Yeah, but then neither does Google, or Amazon for that matter.

As a small business owner I believe all of the online review systems suck; weaponizing the reviewers against small businesses without any real oversight or fairness. The problem with all the online review systems is that the business owner has to verify they're real - whereas the reviewers do not. This means anyone can post anonymous and unverifiable reviews that aren't vetted by any fair methods. We've had disgruntled ex-employees slag on our business via the numerous online review sites, and despite it being a violation on all of them it's almost impossible to get those reviews removed. We've also had negative reviews from people we've never done business with. I've also read numerous other reviews that are clear violations of the review policies of the sites and reported them, but they remain, including those from Google "Local Guides", who you might presume were held to a higher standard. They advise business owners to reply to all reviews, but how does one reply to a review from someone who you've never done business with? Because of the ease with which one can create fake or misleading negative reviews that also means it's easy enough to create fake positive reviews. And that means that the reviews are essentially meaningless and unreliable (but then the astute ones already knew that). Amazon can't even deal with the problem of fake reviews (and begs the question of do they even want to?). Yelp has a long history of extorting small businesses, but all the online review systems are broken, and it's all too easy for people to use them as weapons against small businesses.

Um, if this post was intended as sarcasm ignore the following...

If not, all I can say is, wow, where to begin? I'm surprised you haven't been flamed for this, as it reeks of both self-importance and naivete.

If this were true, I'm also betting you often hear the HR person cheerfully tell you in response, "As you've declined I'll say good day" and show you the door.

Companies are free to set conditions of employment as long as they don't violate laws. Background checks and drug tests are common as conditions for employment. Decline and you're not getting hired.

Thereby I doubt you'd ever get work for a major company.

If you were considered as valuable an employee as say, a CEO, it's possible they may waive those requirements. But I'm betting you're not...

In other words, best of luck with your self-employment.

I've also perused the Namecheap TOS regarding domains, and I don't see anything in there about passing the domain on 12 days prior to expiration as this guy claims...

This is one of the great myths the FAA has done nothing to correct, since they love the idea that people think we're going to start using a space-based system to replace radar - it's cool and modern.

ADS-B, the position reporting system that you're referring to that will supplement and eventually replace radar, does use GPS satellites to determine the aircraft's position. However, in the Continental US, that position information is sent via old-fashioned radios to land-based receivers.

Those terrestrial receivers have the same distance and line of sight limitations that radar does. If you look at FAA ADS-B coverage maps for the U.S., although they're better than radar coverage, they have similar limitations (i.e. dead spots) at lower altitudes where terrain blocks the radio signals.

http://ipadpilotnews.com/2012/08/understanding-ads-b-traffic/

So although ADS-B uses GPS satellites, it still requires land-based receivers to get position information from the aircraft. ADS-B will only have global coverage if the radio receivers that pick up the aircraft ADS-B signals have widespread global coverage. And installing and maintaining all those receivers costs someone money...

The real reason the FAA likes ADS-B is because they get to save the cost of running and maintaining their aging radar sites; not because ADS-B is so much better. ADS-B really just transfers much of the cost of getting aircraft positional information to the aircraft owners.