You just press a button to activate it.

Maybe you do, but for the majority of us, that button is bolted down and hidden behind 2mm sheet steel.

voice commands. - NO, a thousand times NO!

I do not want screaming kids in the back seat operating my car controls by (to, and for) accident.

Anyone who's ever operated a motor vehicle could have, did, and has been saying this for the past decade-plus since these things have proliferated.

Zillions of us have been saying it, but since we buy second hand cars because we don't want this crap, the manufacturers are not listening to us.

They are surprised that new car sales are collapsing just because no-one wants the junk they are selling.

The sales people said "people value newness in a new car". That is probably even true of the gullible people that car salesmen get to talk to.

The design team should, like everyone else, be told "Never trust a car salesman".
Not even as far as you can throw him.

How many of those ports were open?

Most of my sites have a Honey Trap - if you access it you get the output of a random number generator formatted as an x86 core dump. Any human would close the connection immediately. Robots would quite likely think they have a database of trove and fill their H/Ds with garbage.

However, having read yesterday's news, I intend to make my next one format the data as a database of logins.

You are encouraged to steal that idea and do it for me!

someone put a rootkit on a DVD or BluRay disk

More plausible than a lot of the speculation.

I say the Joker did it!

The whole of Slashdot is pretty pointless, even.

It is not like Boeing of the NTSB are going to come here to get the facts!

However, it occupies our minds when we have better things to do - which is important for nerds as a form of relaxation.

If you are not a nerd, you are probably on the wrong website. Try Twitter!

Although the fuel pumps are redundant - there are six - during take-off, all fuel is drawn from a single belly tank!!!

Fuel contamination is thus a very likely cause of loss of power in both engines.

Water in the fuel can come from condensation as (during a previous flight) the plane's tanks fill with air as fuel is burned, and this air will likely be very humid if the decent goes through clouds.

The water would sit in sumps in the tanks which should be drained. My guess is that rotation could have caused this water to get out of the sumps, and into the pump lines.

This type of pollution might have been entirely consumed quite quickly, and the engines begun to resume power causing a slight surge in the final seconds, which some observers claim to have noticed - including the sole survivor.

Alternatively, on refuelling, tankers could have been used which had a small amount of a different type of fuel (gasolene or kerosene) - which could have dissolved in jet fuel, and would have burned but producing significantly less power.

The fact that, on crashing, there was a huge fireball, needs to be investigated. If the engines had had a flameout, it is unlikely that jet fuel would have gone up like that - it is essentially Diesel, and you need a blowtorch (or engines still running) to light it. Fire would likely occur, but an instant fireball like we saw is less likely. If there was even a small amount of gasolene present, a fireball is certain.

Either way, the data recording black box will reveal all.

I assume the idea of feeding both engines from the same tank during take-off was the work of Baldrick.

Indeed: The FOSS community should be explaining that you get 10 times as much for 1/10 the price if you only donate 1/10 of what you give to Oracle to FOSS.

And Oracle should be charged for their business practices under RICO legislation.

No.

The decision makers experienced the benefits of bribery and corruption.

FOSS, being free, cannot afford to bribe anyone.

"And what Danish moron thinks the US is an adversary? That's just plain stupid."

OK, maybe the Danish morons don't think that, but the rest of the population of Europe sure do.

Have you heard Trump on TV?

"why would they use the industry-leading product?"

The answer is obvious: Insane amounts of paid advertising and shilling

I am surprised you needed to ask.

... The result would be a very nasty mess!

And no one left to clean up afterwards!

If that was true, they would wait for sentences to end before slapping your round the face with a wet fish - I mean showing an advert for something you would never buy in your life.

Creators could mark breakpoints where it be less intrusive - or go "whole 1950's American" and actually say "Now here is a word from our sponsor ...". And it only needs to be done once on upload.

It is not hard for AI to detect where to split the content so the interruption is slightly less intrusive.

Here in the UK, commercial TV is allowed to show 6 mins of advertising per hour - normally split into 4 off 1.5 min breaks, but sometimes 2 off 3 min breaks or one 6 min break.
On one occasion I saw the three min break at the end of one hour concatenated onto the start of the next hour's six minutes! I presume this was made illegal, since it has not been done again.

I can only assume is due to bribery and corruption is the reason why this does not apply to the internet here.

"I can't imagine modern Linux versions running KDE running on 10 year old hardware is going to be a great experience."

No need to imagine. You can probably get a 10 year old laptop for nothing if you try.

Personally, I use an Lenovo T43 with Ubuntu daily. I bought it new in 2006. I still have the original H/D with Win2k pro on it - I use it to drive an embroidery machine.

But for everyday use, I have Ubuntu+MATE on a 650GB SSD. Its fine.

I am not a gamer. I am a nerd. My idea of a relaxing evening is laying out a PCB with KiCAD or posting here on /.

With Lenovo T-series, you can undo one screw, pull out the H/D and push in another in seconds. I thoroughly recommand you keep backups and power down first.

My sister-in-law who is not very computer-literate (to put it politely) was unable to upgrade her Windows laptop - she found it too stressful - and has been a happy Ubuntu user for at least 5 years. I think she has a Dell.

The traditional description of this is "circling round the toilet".