Slashdot Mirror
Wireless Internet Launched on Lufthansa FRA - IAD
JpMaxMan writes "On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, DC, Lufthansa AG began on Wednesday a three-month trial for a new
onboard wireless broadband service
that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 10,000 meters in the sky."
does this mean i can finally join the solo mile high club?
The RIAA and MPAA, building upon their already close relationship with law enforcement agencies, are lobbying to give armed air marshalls the power to shoot on sight anyone caught engaging in "terrorist activities" such as file sharing and unauthorised humming.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Ticket: $200
Cab to the airport: $12
Drinks at then lounge: $30
Watching porn @ 600mph feet all wasted: $PRICELESS
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
Now we will see bums in their lear jets
warflying in close formation to the airliners
just to get the free internet access.
As a pilot, and an American, I just have to ask one question:
What the hell is a meter?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Eventually someone will take their webserver along on the plane and then posts a Slashdot article about it. What happens when we slashdot an airplane?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Researchers have already bombarded commercial jets with all types of RF of many frequencies and varying power and found no flight threatening effects. This is due to heavely sheilded cables. The electronic device usage fear stems from cellular phone companies advising airlines not to use the phones in flight as they would have difficulting tracking the signal and the signal would reach many towers simultaneously. For the most part, RF is a non-issue. But still comply to keep the paranoid at bay.
Private aircraft on the other hand is more effected by RF than their commercial counter parts. Cell phones and ham radios have been known to crash private aircraft.
A recent story. A local car stereo business installed a TV and sound system in a private aircraft. The FAA was on that like stink on a hog. The equipment was not certified and threw out quite a mess of RF. Not to mention non of the cables were sheilded. Both the pilot and the company who installed the equipment were fined.
I recently received the device that creates the high voltage needed to strobe the lights on an aircraft along with its timer circuit. The device oscilated 24v at high frequency through a transformer and was rectified into two capacitors at 600v. this was creating noise in the radio and the part was promptly removed.
My father is a mechanic and supervisor for a private aircraft repair business. Thats how I get my info on the personal airecraft. I saw the commercial aircraft RF bombardement on Disconvery i beleive.
-Foxxz
Beginning in 2004, the service will cost between 30 (US$32) and 35 per flight. Not bad compared to for example what T-mobile charges at the airports.
This finally proves the assertion that the reason for the ban on in-flight electronics was to protect Airfone and in-flight movies from competition and had nothing to do with RF interference. Now that the airlines found a way to extract revenue from this, suddenly spread-spectrum RF signals are perfectly safe.
Turn off your cellphone please. And put away that gameboy.
It's hard to feel sorry for the struggling airlines when lie as much as they do.
You, as well as most of the public, knows nothing about airplane systems or operations. Electronic devices are *MOST LIKELY* not going to cause the airplane to crash. What they may do is interfere with various navigation systems causing the airplane to go off course. This increases the time of the flight, which increases the cost, which increases the ticket price.
Going off course also creates a safety hazard, in that the airplane may drift into the path of another one. HOWEVER, it is still unlikely that a crash will result as there is both a controller watching the airplanes on a radar (usually), and TCAS on the airplane (often airplaneS) in question which will alert crews to the danger. But you probably don't want to be a passanger when TCAS suddenly commands a descent.
So you're probably not going to crash an airplane with your electronic device, you'll just piss a lot of people off, and the pilot could quite easily have you arrested, as it is a federal offense.
Riiight, so we're told that environmental radiation on these flights is high enough to be an "occupational hazard" but rather heavily regulated devices in my pocket are going to be a problem for the plane's (hopefully) hardend systems?
Bullshit.
Yeah, I gues I could some items like cell phones/radios maybe eletric motors & other such devices that are very rf "leaky" but there's no way in hell I'm buying that story for, say, a cd player.
I suppose there could be other reasons like "our insurance carrier will kill us if we don't take reasonable precautions to ensure that you at least pretend to pay attention to the (generally usesless - I mean wtf cares what you do if your plane smokes some field at 700km/hr?) safety notices, so please kindly turn the walkman"off". yeah I suppose I could buy that, but that's not what they tell you - they say some babble (and it's never really the same on each flight) about "being found to interfere with electrical systems" or "navigation systions" or "the plane's systems" and never once say anything meaningfull or cite a regulation, or give contact info for those with inquiries or complaints.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"