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More On Airplanes And Internet
fonixmunkee writes "as a sometimes-traveler for work, and a huge nerd, I am always excited about news like this. it appears that some airlines may start offering internet access next year when you need to get that internet fix at 35,000 feet. I was pleased when they started selling wireless internet in airports, so this is another welcomed suprise for techie travlers. apparently they want to use satellite to get high-speed connections to the planes in the air. pretty cool. " Too bad Northwest isn't going to have it for my DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU.
I haven't flown in a while, do they also offer power connections for your laptop?
Cuz a 12+ hour flight wouldn't be very much fun after your backup batteries die.
And remember, the foldable tray will stop your willie from overheating:)
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I've always wondered why airlines got the policy that using a portable cd player or radio in flight is dangerous while laptops aren't.
At least that's the situation on all domestic flights I've taken. I've got a suspicion that they want to compete with trains etc. for business customers and therefore don't give a damn about their own rules.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
It's safe to use laptops etc on a plane... ?
--- Stop the world! I want to get off!
If you commit a crime via the Internet at 30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, whose jurisdiction does it fall in?
A plug for a mate IPSky talks about the market and the issues and is a pretty good starting doc on this sort of stuff from a technical/management perspective. The interesting part of some of these elements is that it enables additional information to the pilots and potentially between planes. Getting the internet to the passengers is relatively simple, combining it with elements like TCAS to reduce the risk of collisions and also to enable less reliance on Air Traffic Controllers in areas where they have no Radar coverage.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Inflight internet access, especially at a flat rates, makes me wonder about the potential for using VoIP. If the latency introduced by the satellite connection doesn't completely negate its use, using VoIP software on a laptop connected to the airplane's Internet connection would offer considerably cheaper inflight calls.
Secondly, how long until we see groups of people smuggling on battery powered Linksys (et al) routers. $30 split a few ways is always cheaper...
we can use laptops, but not mobile phones, CD players, etc?
What gives?
Great idea, but bizarre....
They are talking $30 per leg.
I imagine that at those prices it will go the same way as inseat phones. One of the phone carriers is killing their $5 per minute service because there was on average 1.5 phone calls made per flight.
If you are carrying all that extra weight, you have to be able to get people to buy it or it is just going out backwards.
I wonder if streaming porn all the way to Vegas will take the fun out of it once you're there.
Like the English and The Kiwi's spell it :)
as one of that last stories points out, they where the first
Wardriving at 30,000 feet...?
Hmmm... maybe we'll start to see crackers taking flying lessons.
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
At least if the in flight movie is bad, I can download my own.
I work for a domestic carrier in the US, and one day while flying jumpseat to get to a conference we had one of the passengers sneak in a call on her cell phone, which somehow got into unsheilded wires and broadcast clear-as-day onto the aircraft's comm gear. It wasn't transmitting from us out to the world, mind you, but we could hear her conversation.
additionally, I've heard that the reason CDRoms and discman players and the like are banned is due to the frequency wandering those things emit when spinning up/down and the interruption it causes with precision approach gear. I dont know how true that is.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
it was confirmed today that the reason for New Zealander Richard Pearse's crash and failure to claim first flight was caused by his modem cable reaching its elastic limit.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
At least THAT's a place where the ping time won't be so low as on the ground
Now all three passengers behind my seat and my two neighbors will know the name of my wife and kids, what a great week-end I have had, how bad the food was, and how much money the deal closed.
Err, what if one of the three happened to be an executive from a competitor ? Think about it for a minute :)
And I think that most people will not want to watch pr0n on my screen throughout the flight either !
Sky's the Limit for Cisco Aironet Wireless LAN Technologies "Any traveler with a laptop computer or portable device equipped with a Wi-Fi compliant NIC card or enabled with Wi-Fi embedded inside will be able to log onto the wireless network. As part of the service, Lufthansa will also operate a 10 Mbps Ethernet wired network onboard for those passengers without wireless-capable computers. With 380 seats, a typical Lufthansa 747 has as many network connection sites as a mid-sized company. "
faster faster... 'til the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death...
There hardly is such a thing as a computer crime. A crime is a possibly illegal bad action by which you physically harm one or more human or animal individual, like killing, or raping. Stealing may be in some cases, for instance stealing my paycheck will get me starving, stealing from the wal mart is not.
What you meant is "if you commit a misdemeanor"
PS. The folding tray may stop your todger from doing a Hindenberg, but the little magnetic catch may zorsch your hard disc.
"That price sounds about right to Rob Vollmer, 32, a principal in Crosby-Vollmer International Communications, a Washington-based public-relations firm.
Vollmer, who has flown 140,000 miles this year, does so much work by e-mail that he sometimes feels compelled to surreptitiously check messages during flights with a wireless Palm device, though it's prohibited."
I believe the correct word here is illegal!!!
The clock has now started ticking Mr. Vollmer, expect the Feds to be banging on your door very soon!
...a beowulf squadron of those...
Years later, I was on a plane that still had the system installed (but turned off). The rumor around the office was that it cost $250K to remove the now-dead system from a plane, and the airlines weren't willing to foot the bill, so the dead system stayed in planes for years to come.
Well, sure. All that crap was installed and computed in the zero-fuel weight of the aircraft. In order to remove it, you'd need to pay the mechanics to yank the parts out, drain the fuel (ALL the fuel - in the tanks, the fuel lines, etc), re-weigh the aircraft, resubmit the paperwork to the FAA in order to get the work approved, and possibly repeat a step if the feds dont like something.
Never underestimate the red tape mess the FAA is capable of producing. Such a task could take an aircraft out of service for quite some time. Ask anyone in aviation; a plane that's not flying isn't making you money and could be costing you instead.
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
"...DTW -> NRT -> KUL -> PER for CALU"
WTF???
What about when your about to land? They just cut you off mid connection? About to send that document to the office, or in the middle of an important system/database callout fixing session and they just cut you loose! "Sorry about that Boss, I know we had 20,000 clients who couldn't connect for 4 hours, but Delta cut my service halfway through and I couldn't get back in til I got into the airport lounge, after customs, the gift shop, duty free, cavity search, etc!"
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
the problem, IMHO, is not with the equipment used - most of us are knowledgeable enough to know what we should and shouldn't operate in the air. But the same doesn't seem to apply to the cabin crew. On a recent BA flight to Paris, I was asked to turn off my MD player(note this - a player. Not any form of radio at all) because 'it could interfere with the flight instrumentation'. I politely explained what the mysterious object I was listening to was, but the cabin crew were adamant. How are they going to know the difference when it comes to people waving laptops and PDA's around? Some additional training for crew will be needed - cue an increase in flight fares to cover it?
"This is your life - and it's ending one minute at a time" - Narrator, Fight Club
Now I won't be able to escape from /. anywhere.
OK so now when I go to Japan on that god-awful 11 and a half hour flight I get to play go constantly on the kiseido internet go server ?
I would pay for that.
I'd have to be careful not to start a game that meant I'd still be playing when they switched the service off for landing though...
graspee
Has anyone ever thought of the security implications of allowing someone to have silent access to the rest of the world on an airplane? Let's set up the scenario: Some nutbag with a portable GPS device on his laptop is able to provide real-time coordinates to someone on the ground via AOL Instant messenger or some other chat program. With the elevated threat of surface to air shoulder-mounted rockets on the news lately, isn't this giving terrorists a new way to track planes? Call me paranoid, but as cool as it would be to be able to get an IRC fix at 40,000 feet, I just don't think its a very wise idea in these troubled times.
A little digging reveals that the frequencies that cell phones operate on aren't the same frequencies aircraft use for navigation/communication, and those $5/minute airphones are actually cellular telephones!
In fact, it turns out that the cell phone ban wasn't an FAA regulation until very recently - it was an FCC ban! The cell network isn't designed for rapidly-moving phones, nor is it designed for phones 30,000 feet up in the air. Instead, it's designed for stationary/slow-moving phones at or near ground level. An airborne cell phone can wreak havoc with the network; that's why the FCC banned them on airplanes. The ban has nothing to do with safety.
ZDNet article on the topic.
Not as simple as just the weight. Key words are "Weight and balance"
The C/G of the aircraft matter a whole lot. Removing 1000 lbs from the front affects it differently than the same 1000 lbs from the aft section.
Will Windows file sharing be blocked? If not, it would be lots of fun to see who is in your network neighborhood. Kind of like the old days with cable modems.
Could someone have a little pop-up window show up on passenger laptops that says "This plane has been boarded by alien space invaders. Stay calm. They mean us no harm"? Or maybe "I am Colonel Ogo Mumbasso from Nigeria. If you help me transfer money, I will arrange frequent flyer miles..."
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
...I'm usually on vacation. For my part, I LIKE being 'unwired' for that time. It's one of the few times that I can actually read, write, sleep, or just stare out the window and think without any fear of interruption or mental "clutter."
I have to wonder if this is going to have any impact on social skills, such as the art of good conversation, or meeting someone new? Is connectivity going to, eventually, become as ubiquitous as advertising, to the point where someone might panic if they can't get to their E-mail for a couple of hours?
If that does happen, is it necessarily a Good Thing?
All my hardware has an 'Off' switch. I'm not in the least afraid to use it! How many other people will be able to say the same ten years from now?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I am a Boeing employee who thought the whole idea was stupid when they first started Connexion. They deployed this whole ton of people for the project and ended up laying off 80% of them when they realized the airlines weren't interested - mainly because Boeing wants a huge cut of the profits. Last I heard, Boeing invested $400 million on this boondoggle. They were going to charge $30/hour for access and counted their profits by counting in-flight hours of planes in the US, ignoring the fact that most flight hours are commuter trips in the one-hour range where you can barely get your laptop out before the announcement that you have to turn it off comes on.
Procedure:
- Go outside on a cloudless day.
- Look around.
If you're within 10 miles of an airport (even a minor one), odds are, hey, there's a plane!GPS coords don't add much to information already so available all you have to do is literally open your eyes and it comes streaming in. From what I've seen on the news, most missles are fired at planes taking off or landing (usually taking off from what I've seen), in plain sight. You just can't hide a plane taking off, so please, on behalf of all us freedom-loving citizens, don't propose half-assed "solutions" to the non-problem; we've got government officials working on that full-time already and God-forbid one of them see this "non-problem" of yours and decide to try your non-solution.... more freedoms gone for no gain whatsoever, just to make someone look like they're "doing something".
Uh, won't they have to re-weigh the aircraft with the new equipment added for THIS service anyway?
come on fhqwhgads
The U.S. spent a million dollars developing a pen that could work in space. The Soviets used pencils.
And porn is available in dead tree format too!
--
But then again I thought VCR+ was a stupid idea and would die a quick death--so what do I know?