What is the difference between active and passive sidestick? What is difference between "active" and "passive" sidestick?

Which aircraft have active sidestick?
For references, I've used United States Patent Application 20080156939; BAE Systems Develops Civil Aircraft Active Control Stick; Active and passive side stick controllers in manual aircraft control; &amp; the Side-stick wiki entry. The wiki is a general side-stick discussion listing (some) aircraft that have side-stick fly-by-wire (FBW) technology, but does not go into active vs. passive.

Generally speaking, if you have used a joystick on your PC to fly Microsoft's Flight Simulator, such as Microsoft's Force-Feedback Sidewinder Pro, you've used an active side-stick.

According to the Patent Application cited above, the patent is for an Active Side-Stick technology described as "pilot flight control stick haptic feedback mechanism provides variable force feedback to the pilot flight control stick." One of the 'issues' with the current passive side-stick technology (approved for use) used on aircraft such as Airbus' A380 is that there is no tactile feedback when using the side-sticks, such as a pilot would feel using an old-style column or yoke. In a Cessna 172, for instance, when you pull/push/turn the yoke, there is actual tactile feel, if you pull back strongly in-flight, you'll 'feel' the forces exerted against the airflow. Passive side-sticks have none of this 'feel'.

Active SS technology attempts to replicate the forces on the joystick.

Active SS technology is currently used on most miltary aircraft using side-sticks, but does not appear to have yet made its way into civilian airliners.

(If I've gotten stuff wrong, I'll remove/fix this answer, as I am not an airline pilot and have never had the opportunity to fly military hardware.)