Hi,
All this discussion of what the Airbus FMCs do is interesting, but irrelevant - when humans are confronted by a computer that is either not working, or working in a regime they are not intimately familiar with, they freeze - they go into brain lock. This happens with all kinds of systems, from text editors to banking systems, and I'm sure it happens with aircraft FMCs. If you are going to design airplanes that fly on the edge of control with the help of computers to constantly trim them, then you'd better make sure that the airplane still manually flies like an airplane at the drop of a hat, one that a pilot can control *instinctively*, despite his brain lock! This is a criticism neither of pilots, nor of computer systems - it's the truth of human/computer interaction. It will never matter how well designed are Airbus' or Boeing's FMCs - if they are not purposely designed to make the airplane act like an airplane under pilot input, then they are not only wrong-headed, they are dangerous!
I agree .. that make sens