Mokka mit Schlag

How many more stories like this one are we going to have to hear before Congress does something? The fundamental problem is that it is cheaper and simpler for the airlines to keep passengers crammed in deep vein thrombosis-inducing seats for ten hours on the slim hope that they might be able to take off than to allow them to get off the plane. Never mind what the passengers want.

Here’s a modest proposal: any plane that spends two hours on the ground after passengers have boarded must return to the terminal and disembark. No exceptions. No leeway for “We’re now tenth in line” or “We think the weather’s clearing up now. Just a few more minutes.” If the plane isn’t taxiing down the runway, it goes back to the terminal. If the gates are full, then pull up the stairs and let the passengers walk. This would give passengers who want to leave or make other arrangements the opportunity. Other passengers could at least walk around, use a full-sized toilet, get something to eat or drink, and so forth.

Frankly I’m hesitant to suggest additional regulations for such a marginal industry that’s usually about one broken propeller away from bankruptcy, but sometimes the egregious nature of an industry’s own incompetence and customer hostility demands action, even if it pushes a marginal company or two over the edge.
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I just did a quick check with LogValidator on the pages at this site for Refactoring HTML. Besides telling you where the markup is screwed up, LogValidator also figures out which pages are the most popular. The results were not what I would have guessed. After throwing away index pages, favicon.ico’s, Atom feeds and the like it turns out the most popular story of the last year is:
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Joanna Rutkowska rips through Windows Vista “security”. I wonder what she’d do to Mac OS X or Linux?

Amazon’s taking pre-orders for the final volume in Harry Potter septology. (Is that even a word?). It’s $18.89 + shipping. If I were Amazon I’d raise the price a few bucks and offer “free” overnight shipping. For myself, I’ll probably wait till a friend finishes it, and borrow their copy like I have for the last couple of volumes. Probably won’t take any longer than shipping anyway. :-)

Oh, and if you think Dumbledore’s really dead, can I talk to you about this bridge I have for sale down at the end of Adams Street? Cheap.

What misanthropist thought it would be a good idea to put 44th Road, 44th Drive, and 44th Avenue in the same borough? And not only that, but put them one block away from each other running parallel? It’s amazing anyone ever gets their mail in this borough.

Some weirdness at Amazon this morning. The search boxes appear to have vanished from the top of the page and the sidebars. One is still hiding way down at the bottom of the page. This is a very bad change since site-specific search is one of the primary ways users navigate Amazon. I’m not sure if this is a temporary glitch or a rare example of bad Amazon design. Usually Amazon is one of the more usable and intelligently designed sites, so this comes as a bit of a shock.
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