85 Replies to ““Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.””

  1. Thanks Hans. One of my colleagues posited that, in some situations, there may in fact be a treatment for stupidity. It’s called “pain”.
    The real problems arise when the ones behaving stupidly, the programmers, aren’t the ones suffering the consequences of their folly.

  2. Colin,
    “Iranians are not Arabs” is like saying that Italians are not Greeks or Germans are no French. The difference is mostly language and that’s about it.
    They all talk like ducks and walk like ducks, some of them quack in a different tone. They are all ducks! A Muslim is a Muslim. Their religion overrides any cultural or genetic differences.
    Perhaps that is why Muslims are so often referred to as a race rather than a religious cult.

  3. Dr. D:
    Yep, I bet there is a lot of laughter among the Arab women after they see this report.
    Women can’t drive in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the arab world, but look at what this genius Arab flight crew achieved with the help of ADVANCED computers!
    Well this should bring some women’s equality in the transportation Kingdom!!
    I think the men will be less inclined to scold their wives for some blessed ‘fender bender’ in the parking lot! 🙂
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht
    Commander in Chief
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  4. Paulie, what you’re talking about is the reason cops are still issued revolvers in a lot of places instead of the more “modern” double-action pistols. Revolvers have no safety lever. No slide, no feeding action, no jams, no nothing. Grab handle pull trigger. No bang, keep pulling trigger. Cops aren’t hobby shooters at the range, they NEED the thing to go bang. Simple is good.
    Ever try to take a picture with your fancy-schmancy automatic focus, automatic exposure, automatic flash camera and it won’t click for you? Just sits there and thrashes settings for a while before its good and ready to take the damn picture, by which time the moment has passed?
    Imagine that happening to a bazillion ton aircraft full of people. The moment which is passing is takeoff.
    That’s why Airbus pilots have to be qualified out the wazoo, more than half their job is knowing what the computer is going to do to you under what conditions. Putting an unqualified pilot in one of those things is insanity. Not just the pilot is a moron in this incident, his management is too.
    An aircraft designer who thinks he can -predict- everything that could possibly go wrong, that guy shouldn’t be designing passenger aircraft. Unfortunately he is. For Airbus.
    I fly Boeing when possible. They ain’t perfect, but they ain’t an Airbus.

  6. “Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.”
    Finally? Do you mean your source for this story – Jack Wheeler’s site, finally heard about this story?
    Gee. I dunno about you Kate, but I try to get my info from as knowledgeable a source as possible – like say, these guys who had the same pic and were talking about it last November.
    But hey, thanks anyways. It’s an interesting story and obviously a very expensive lesson for some.

  7. By the way, did you see in the endless news coverage about the recent Boeing 747 crash in Brussels? No? I guess there must be a Belgian media conspiracy too!

  8. Ummm. Either there’s something wrong with the assertion that “the photos are starting to leak out” or I am a much more privileged person than I thought.
    I saw these photos back in December. They were forwarded to me by an engineer friend (who has nothing to do with then aviation industry).
    I still have the two photos depicted on this site as well as several more that came attached in the same email. It was a chain email with a subject line that said something like “Ooops.”
    It certainly wasn’t making the rounds being presented as something secret that had been “leaked.”
    Someone let me know if I’m really in possession of something newsworthy. But, I tend to doubt it. This whole “leak” thing seems to me to be added into the story for dramatic effect.
    Really, the story is old and the photos have been blitzing around for a while.

  9. John V
    It is exactly that attitude that will result in failure to deal with the Islamic world. Persians look down on Arabs intensely, just as the Turks do, in fact the Turks have a saying: “Better to kick a Arab than a dog” Likely as a result of ruling them for so long.
    Islam is in a middle of a nasty civil war which has 2 distinct sides and several shades of grey, on each side is a sets of radicals that hate the other sides radical even more than the West. Iran wants to have nukes not so much for Israel but to enforce it’s will and power onto the Sunni Arab world. I suspect despite the rhetoric the Iranians would rather shake hands with the Israelis than a Saudi Prince.
    If the West wants to win against the nutbars, then we need to understand the fracture lines and pressure points of the Islamic and Muslim world. There is something like 1.3 billion Muslims, we don’t want to be at war with all of them and don’t need to be. To give an example that I am familiar with, Malaysia is a Muslim country with a certain amount of radicalism, but it is fairly new only since the 60’s, the Malay Muslims are generally a laid back people and require constant stoking and attention to maintain any radicalism, cut off the radicals and the rest of the populations goes back to their relaxed ways.
    The US Army has learned this lesson far quicker than the administration running it, that’s why they are succeeding on the ground, they learn who is who and why what takes place. This gives them locally produced solutions that dampens opposition and allows connections. Counter insurgency requires a mix of soft and hard, knowing when to use either or both is were the skill is.

  10. bryceman – see my post above. I Googled this thing last night on the airliners.net site — and it popped up instantly.
    Methinks Kate needs to work on her fact-checking a wee bit. While I respect the work Kate does here, linking to an old story re-written by some gomer who adds their own ‘conspiracy’ twist isn’t anything I’d be wanting to affix my name to, IMO, of course.

  11. Linking to stupid, racist nonsense like this does more to undermine the credibility of this blog than a thousand lefties typing on a thousand keyboards could do in a thousand years.
    I enjoy SDA and apprecaite the time that Kate devotes to this blog, but rubbish like this feeds the perception that conservative bloggers are a bunch of paranoid nutters.
    There are enough real stories about the problems with radical Islam – why resort to this crap?

  12. – why resort to this crap?
    The story was funny. Get a sense of humour.
    We laugh at the darwin award winners, too.

  13. “rubbish like this feeds the perception that conservative bloggers are a bunch of paranoid nutters.”
    It’s not just a perception. ‘The Phantom,’ one of SDA’s more prolific and loyal commenters, still actually believes a media conspiracy is afoot.
    “why resort to this crap?”
    Maybe because Kate really, really dislikes Muslims?

  14. Warwick – What exactly is funny about the following?
    “Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs. Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.”
    Its not the story, its the xenophobic spin.

  15. Define Xenophobic.
    Leftards find no issue in insulting, banning, scrapping, denigrating and bashing Christians every chance they get. In California, Christian religious symbols and teaching are banned in government owned places but schools have “lets be a Muslim for a day” classes where they have to learn about the Koran and wear Muslim garb and no one in the retard left seems to have a problem with it (as they wouldn’t – they’re the one who instituted the damn things.)
    Isn’t it bigoted to treat one group differently than another? If you start with the treatment of Christians by the lunatic left I’d say we treat Muslims a lot better. After all, we haven’t banned them.
    And since when is religion off-limits for ridicule?
    And, before you go all nutter about me being some Christian fundamentalist, I’m a libertarian atheist who hasn’t been in a church since I was a small child (excepting weddings and funerals.) It’s not that I’m a big fan of the Pats (Robertson, Buchanan, etc.) but that I find the idea that the leftards defend the indefensible while holding a completely hypocritical double standard when it comes to their own heritage and background. You have to be a special kind of self-loathing to want to replace western, Judaeo-Christian society (whether secular or not) and replace it with a sharia-driven Muslim caliphate – which is what a lot of leftards are headed towards. Just look at Rowan Williams and the Prince of Wales.
    As for the media withholding information in regards to the actions of Muslims, the media are on record as doing so. There is no secret agenda, their agenda is very public. This story is not a case of it but it exists in fact. This story, regardless, is damn funny. Just like the darwin awards.

  16. I think what often gets lost in stories like this is that the crew of a Etihad Airlines aircraft isn’t necessarily Arabic nor Muslim. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the crew was made up of mostly European or North American pilots. There was a time when the CF was losing F-18 pilots to Cathay Pacific at an alarming rate. International airline business has globalized like many industries in the world. I’ve flown on Arabic aircraft where the crew were all Dutch.
    What I find disappointing is the reaction to this story which had been extensively covered when it first occured. To simply make it news-worthy again to embelish the story to slag Muslims or Arabs should be beneath the standard of this site. Honestly, I think we should take the lead from CBC and CTV and show waaaaay more coverage of Maxime Bernier’s cleveage! over.

  17. Having just eaten, I have absolutely no desire to look at Maxime Bernier’s cleavage. Now his ex girl friend on the other hand . . .

  18. Linking to stupid, racist nonsense like this does more to undermine the credibility of this blog…
    Somehow I doubt Kate cares what you find credible.

  19. Maxime Bernier has an ex-girlfriend? Funny, both CBC’s and CTV’s coverage led me to believe he was see about town with a pair of breasts. I’ve put my vote in for the next GG.

  20. Apart from all the racist blather, I find it interesting how the Europeans have come to build and aircraft is based around the concept of a system that overrides a falable individual while American aircraft are designed for the individual to override the falable system. Kind of like the socialist Europe vs the free market America.

  21. It’s the biggest airplane currently, right? They want the biggest bang out of it and are practicing for it’s future use…

  23. It’s not just a perception. ‘The Phantom,’ one of SDA’s more prolific and loyal commenters, still actually believes a media conspiracy is afoot.
    Heh.

  24. “the rabid, self-indulgent commentary flowing from yet another of Kate’s uninformed, misleading, and prejudicial posts.”
    bingo.
    kate is the biggest TROLL on the Canadian portion of the internet by far. she’s got about half of her 15 minutes of fame remaining.

  25. Imagine that, she trolls her own bought and paid for site. And forces you to come and read. Leftists are so silly.

  26. “she trolls her own bought and paid for site. And forces you to come and read. Leftists are so silly.”
    so true eh? a troll is a troll is a troll.
    notice also the right wing simplistic mentality at work here. any snipes at right wing trolling puts one in the ‘leftist moonbat silly etc etc’ category.
    I only have to read the post enough to spot the trolling. dont use circular logic here righty.

  27. QE said: “It’s not just a perception. ‘The Phantom,’ one of SDA’s more prolific and loyal commenters, still actually believes a media conspiracy is afoot.”
    Yeah, because a media conspiracy could NEVER happen, right? Two words, QE: Monica Lewinsky. Oh, or two more: gun control. Or global warming, or OMG RECESSION!, or…
    Hey, I could be wrong. Maybe they did cover it in loving detail. Kate linked to one web site, maybe that guy’s an idiot. I don’t have the time or inclination to wade through a bunch of French web sites to find out.
    But you know, I remember a few years ago a little GulfStream business jet ran off the runway into a building someplace in the USA. CNN ran wall to wall with helicopter coverage ALL DAY LONG. We watched the firemen arrive, we watched them poke that fire suppression spike into the plane, we watched them pull it out, we watched every damn thing for hours. All the networks did, you couldn’t avoid seeing it for days.
    That’s what the media loves to do, the OJ slow-chase of the day. They do it every time there’s anything even faintly interesting to see. Like a big frickin’ Airbus piled into a wall.
    I don’t recall seeing any of that in November. Or since. Maybe I missed it, maybe I didn’t. Time will tell.
    I’ll say one thing though, QE and Samuel both, your “contributions” to the conversation have been considerably less than enlightening. The usual thing with the likes of you, plenty of mockery and damn-all else.
    Go upstairs and tell your mother to slap you.

  28. Ol Hoss writes “Somehow I doubt Kate cares what you find credible.”
    Funny, I can’t see anywhere in either of my posts that I refer to my personal opinion of the blog. Nor did I realize that Kate had designed this site as a mere echo chamber.
    I’ll give her more credit than you apparently do and assume that at least one of the reasons why she blogs is that she hopes to inform and influence a broader readership than those who would find themselves in lockstep with her every thought. Kate’s growing profile makes her credibility important. Its unfortunate that you can’t see why.
    Conservative thought and discussion has been marginalized in this country for a long time. On a whole host issues (the Charter, government’s role in society, immigration, etc.) the Left has virtually owned the public discourse for the past four decades. High profile, conservative bloggers such as Kate are providing a venue for alternative view-points to finally seep back into the mainstream. Posting articles that are so clearly malicious gives the MSM media (and really the general public) the chance to dismiss Kate, and by extension the conservative blogosphere, are racist wing-nuts.
    Do we like the status quo in Canada, or do we want to influence public policy & discourse to better reflect conservative view-points? The later will only come by reaching the ears of average Canadians who, by and large, would recoil at articles such as the above.

  29. Warwick:
    “Define Xenophobic”
    Fear or hatred of the different.
    “Leftards find no issue in insulting, banning, scrapping, denigrating and bashing Christians every chance they get.”
    So the solution is to bash Muslims? Don’t use the vile behaviour of the Left to justify poor behaviour by the right.
    “no one in the retard left seems to have a problem with it”
    That’s a ridiculous generalization. There are many people on the left (Hitchens being the most obvious example) who are repulsed by the types of examples you cited. I can certainly agree, though, that there is a horrible double standard in conventional left-wing thinking when it comes to “domestic” (Christianity & Judaism) religion versus “others”.
    “And since when is religion off-limits for ridicule?”
    I never said that it was. But what did religion or ethnicity (he made a point of noting that they were Arab Muslims) have to do with the flight crew’s stupidity?
    “You have to be a special kind of self-loathing to want to replace western, Judaeo-Christian society (whether secular or not) and replace it with a sharia-driven Muslim caliphate – which is what a lot of leftards are headed towards. Just look at Rowan Williams and the Prince of Wales.”
    I agree, but I just don’t see how it is relevant to this particular discussion. Did the flight crew crash the plane because they had stopped to pray? Did a whiff of bacon or rye from nearby Air Canada jet overcome them? Did they accidentally see a flight attendant’s ankle? No? Then how is their faith and ethnicity at all relevant here?
    “This story is not a case of it but it exists in fact. This story, regardless, is damn funny. Just like the darwin awards.”
    Re-read the article. A funny story has been spun to a) denigrate Muslims & Arabs and b) propagate a conspiracy theory of Muslim control over our media. To wit:
    Enter the Arab flight crew
    Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew
    Moslem Arabs
    The article is also full of un-sourced and/or unvalidated opinions masquerading as “facts”:
    Not having read the run-up manuals
    The ADAT crew had no idea
    Not one … was smart enough
    there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere
    coverage of the story was deemed insulting

  30. Thank you Jim, this is the perfect example of how to strongly disagree without being strongly disagreeable. You are a scholar and a gentleman, sir.

  31. I thought it was the media blackout, the desire to not offend. First time I’ve heard of this. Did CBC or CTV take on this story?

  32. Funny, I can’t see anywhere in either of my posts that I refer to my personal opinion of the blog.
    Then goes on to give a personal opinion.
    Posting articles that are so clearly malicious…
    When in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

  33. Hey Gellen, this is for you (I am not the original writer):
    Girlfriend 2.0 – 4.0 Upgrade.
    I’m currently running the latest version of GirlFriend and I have been having some problems lately. I have been running the same version of DrinkingBuddies 1.0 forever as my primary application, and all the Girlfriend releases I have tried have always conflicted with it. I hear that Drinking Buddies runs fine as long as Girlfriend is ran in background mode and the sound is turned off.
    Unfortunately, I can’t find the switch to turn the sound off. Therefore, I have to run both of them separately. Girlfriend also seems to have a problem coexisting with my Golf program, often trying to abort Golf with some form of timing incompatibilities.
    I probably should have stayed with Girlfriend 1.0, but I thought I might see better performance from GirlFriend 2.0. After months of conflicts and other problems, I consulted a friend who has had experience with Girlfriend 2.0. He said I probably didn’t have enough cache to run Girlfriend 2.0 and eventually it would require a Token Ring to run properly. He was right, as soon as I purged my cache, and realized that no one in their right mind is installing new token rings, Girlfriend 2.0 uninstalled itself.
    Shortly after that, I installed Girlfriend 3.0 beta. Unfortunately, there was a bug in the program and the first time I used it, it gave me a virus. I had to clean out my whole system and shut down for a while. I very cautiously upgraded to Girlfriend 4.0. This time I used SCSI probe first and also installed a virus protection program. It worked okay for a while until I discovered that GirlFriend 1.0 was still in my system. I tried running Girlfriend 1.0 again with Girlfriend 4.0 still installed, but Girlfriend 4.0 has a feature I didn’t know about that automatically senses the presence of any other version of Girlfriend and communicates with it in some way. This results in the immediate removal of both versions.
    The version I have now works pretty well, but there are still some problems. Like all versions of GirlFriend, it is written in some obscure language I can’t understand, much less reprogram. Frankly, I think there is too much attention paid to the look and feel rather than the desired functionality.
    Also, to get the best connections with your hardware, you usually have to use gold-plated contacts and I have never liked how GirlFriend is “object-oriented.”
    A year ago a friend of mine upgraded his version of Girlfriend to GirlFriendPlus 1.0, which is a Terminate and Stay Resident version of GirlFriend. He discovered that GirlFriendPlus 1.0 expires within a year if you don’t upgrade to Fiance 1.0. So he did, but soon after that, he had to upgrade to Wife 1.0, which he describes as a huge resource hog. It has taken up all his space: He can’t load anything else. One of the primary reasons he decided to go with Wife 1.0 was because it supposedly came bundled with a feature called FreeSex Plus.
    Well, it turns out the resource requirements of Wife 1.0 sometimes prohibits access to FreeSexPlus, particularly the new Plug-ins he wanted to try. On top of that, Wife 1.0 must be running on a well warmed-up system before he can do anything. Although he did not ask for it, Wife 1.0 came with MotherInLaw which has an automatic pop-up feature he can’t turn off. I told him to trying installing Mistress 1.0, but he said he heard if you try to run it without first uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before uninstalling itself. Then Mistress 1.0 won’t install because of insufficient resources.
    P.S. Watch out for the K-I-D-S virus because they have an insatiable appetite for memory and CPU time over and above everything else above.

  35. Oh, for f*** sakes. Sometimes a link and a funny photo is just a link and a funny photo. Get over yourselves.

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