On Thu, 21 Nov 2002, Barry Shein wrote:
The attack on the WTC not only took out the WTC, it essentially has taken out our airline industry.
It may be argued that airline industry has taken out itself by first not having elementary precautions (like closed cockpit doors and having pilots to carry guns, with adequate training) which are standard in less complacent parts of the world, and then by making life truly miserable for those who wish or have to travel, in a fit of post-disaster paranoia. It is not enemies who are savvy, it is managers who are stupid. Like, the "crash airplane into some high-value target" scenario was well-aired more than decade ago - and it is only due to total incompetence of airline security people that this was allowed to happen. I hope that US airlines go out of business and El Al moves in; isn't that what competition is supposed to be about? The same holds for the Internet (with special thanks to the toothless antimonopoly enforcement which allowed operating systems to become a monoculture). --vadim