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Boeing to Have Net Access on Airliners in 2002
wowbagger writes: "According to Yahoo,
Boeing is going to have Internet access on airliners in 2002. The stated cost will be about $20/hour, and it will be strictly BYOC - it sounds like they'll be loaning you a wireless card. I wonder how this will stack up with the FAA regs against using "anything that sends or receives a signal", how many clueless users will not be able to configure their systems to use the card, and how many 1337 h@><0r doods will be 0w3n1ng other passenger's machines. Think I'll review my iptables setup before I fly..."
Yeah, and then take the laptop and a webcam with you to broadcast to the world in glorious technicolour and stereo sound your application for entry into the Mile High Club :-)
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
Your GPS doesn't altitude from pressure. The reason your altitude was wrong was that you didn't have a good 3D sat. fix.
To get a 3D fix, you need at least 4 sats. (think of it as an algebra problem: you have 4 unknowns (x,y,z, and time) so you need 4 equations (4 birds) to solve for it. If the GPS receiver only gets 3 birds, it fakes it by assuming you are on the Earth's surface, and using that as the 4th equation.
Since you were in a big metal can with only a small hole next to you, you probably only got 3 birds.
However, you were in violation of airline regs using a GPS receiver on an aircraft (unless you had permission from the captain). You just didn't get caught.
The problem is that almost all modern radio receivers, be they GPS, cell phone, or cheap transistor radio watch, are a superheterodyne design: the incoming signal is mixed with a second signal to create a third signal at a fixed frequency. That second signal, called the local oscillator or LO, radiates from the receiver and can interfere with other signals. That's how the police "radar detector detectors" work: they listen for the LO of your radar detector.
You can demonstrate this by taking 2 old AM radios, and placing them next to one another. Tune one radio to 600 kHz, then tune the other to about 1055 kHz. Move the tuning around, and you should hear the first radio start to squawk. That's the second radio's LO being received by the first radio.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Re: Crashing
From: Bertie the Bunyip
> This DC-9 is pitching around and around and headed
>for the ground.
>Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
Your use of the obsolete designator "DC-9" for the MD-80 aircraft indicates you know nothing about aviation. And motion around the axis of thrust isn't "pitching". It's called "roll".
You deserve to die.
Intentional radiators on planes (carried by passengers at least) are not presently permitted and so the whole issue is moot until there is a change in these regulations.
The reason that the Bluetooth and 802.11 crowd keeps working on this is that there is some hope for movement by the FAA/CAA/Other regulatory bodies. The arguments are pretty simple..
1) 2.4GHz is already polluted by wideband radiation in planes, since they use microwave ovens to heat the food. So there can be some level of confidence that you 802.11 tranciever isn't going to bring the plane down.
2) Electrical interference is a function of both the strength of the interferer and the succeptability of the interferree. Plane equipment is supposed to be built to stringent succeptability requirements. When someone says you phone/pda/toothbrush will interfere with the plane, ask why the equiment on the plane is operating outside the succeptability requirements mandated for planes. The responsibility to make interference not be a problem has be foisted on the passengers. This is a bad thing. Passengers forget to turn phones off all the time. It should be the job of the plane manufacturers to make planes safe in the presence of passengers.
3) There is lots of lobbying going on.
However being charged money to get on the net is not really a necessity is it? One person sets his laptop up as a gateway/NAT router and everyone else sets up as an ad-hoc 802.11 network. That would save people a bit of cash.
If all you wanted to do was play quake with your peers, you wouldn't need net access at all. 802.11 can work peer to peer. You don't need an AP just to communicate between a group of machines.
So lobby lobby your MP/Senator/FAA rep/garage mechanic/EU minister to change the rules. It will improve the quality of your traveling life.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Actually, being online in an airplane would allow you to communicate with people during a plane crash, something passengers normally can't do.
Imagine being in IRC and explaining to your friends that these are your last moments. Kinda freaky. You could start spouting your passwords, or leave a love note. Think of the things people wished they could say on the way down.
I actually first thought of this with cellphone text messaging, but the problem is you don't have signal (at least with ground-tower based service) until you are near ground. So if you were quick, you could fire off a "So long..." to one of your buddies just before impact.
With the 'net though, you could discuss the entire situation much sooner. Write entire emails.
Geez, maybe I should stop now. I have a 10 hour plane flight tomorrow after all...
I've left my tech support period behind me, luckily. But for the new people this might well be a nice alternative than sitting in a cubicle all day.
Oh no, now we shall need a utility to set the clock every time we change time zones.
Philip
Signatures are broken
lets say i h4X0r some site while flying in international waters.
what laws will govern what i do?