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MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security
Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."
Its a real bummer that these TSA guys end up being no better than night club bouncers, but heck I suppose technology is not their forte, which is kind of ironic given they need to understand recognise what's going through the machine.
Anyhow, my question is if you miss a flight because of these TSA guys, does your airline put you on the next available flight at no extra cost?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Whilst this might be construed as a troll, and my moderation hit might reflect that, you have to think about the people who are hired as airport security. They are not the best or brightest, and seeing the amount of problems that are caused by simple misunderstandings, ignorance, etc. (although many of these problems are the administrations problems NOT the airport security people), this is just another drop in the bucket. Of course, there are exceptions and I have personally met very bright airport security people, but mostly in the international section of the airport.
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
One time, when flying from Melbourne to Brisbane, I had two cans of coke wrapped side by side in a tea-towel (to stop condensation from wetting other stuff) in my backpack. In front of the coke was my Nintendo DS's charger, wrapped up neatly. It did look pretty suspicious on the screen, I must admit, but they wouldn't let me go until they'd used what I guess was a portable mass spectrometer to check every inch of clothing and backpack for explosives residue.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
While waiting for a connecting flight several months ago, I heard about a guy getting delayed for about 15 minutes at an airport security checkpoint because of his laptop's "suspicious look" on the x-ray machine. It turned to be a Sony X505 laptop. For those not familiar with the X505, this review by Digital Trends mentioned in this /. article back in 2004 details the specs.
What was so suspicious about it? I was told that someone overheard a TSA agent mention that it looked transparent on the x-ray machine. It seems that this was the case with the AirBook.
Perhaps companies like Sony and Apple that develop such advanced portables should notify TSA officials so they could, inturn, teach the line agents to not become alarmed when encountering such a device passing through the x-ray machine? Since that would make too much sense, it probably won't happen. Go figure.
If you happen to own an AirBook or other sub-notebook, good luck!!
I too have been through countless security check points with enough electronics in my bags to make my back hurt. I have never had a problem with the people at security. However, I travel with a wife and colleagues who are not always so lucky. The difference? I am a white guy and they are not. Sad but true. Next time you are in line watch who is being searched or detained.
Yeah, but one of the things that baffled the TSA people was the absence of a platter-based hard drive. When's the last time you travelled around with a laptop that had an SSD? I'm sure "weird" is a very different looking thing for visible light and x-rays.
well.. see you came from an islamic country so they couldn't touch you cause they'd get sued for profiling... They aren't allowed to screen people coming from/going to islamic countries...
Seriously, every time I've flown with my family my 8 year old brother gets selected for the "secondary" inspection. It's pretty funny, last time he didn't even try to walk through, walked straight to the yellow feet... and they actually had him selected, they asked "how did you know?" He said 'you always pick me, I must look like a terrorist I guess..."
We were leaving from vacation in Florida a few years ago (post 9-11), and they stopped my sister at the screener because they didn't know what to make of here Disney pouch of squished pennies. You would think that of all the aireoports in the country, that at least the TSA's in FLORIDA would recognize them! go figure...
A former boss of mine owned a Mooney prop plane (a bit faster than the Cessna, I think about 170 knots) and I found the routine at private airports refreshingly easy - go to the plane, walk around it to make sure nothing's fallen off, run up the engine and take off. The checklist isn't that hard, and much of it can be done during the brief wait for a take off slot.
I loved the freedom associated with being able to take off and land at any time, at any airport. In this particular case, he could leave out of Van Nuys airport, about 15 minutes from his home, instead of LAX which would have taken a grinding hour and a half to get to.
I will admit that flying a private plane is disappointingly non-luxurious - his interior felt more like a Subaru than a Mercedes - but even though I was not very good at physically flying the plane I enjoyed changing the frequencies on the radios and navigation systems. (This was before GPS took off in a big way - we used the old beacon system.)
I would have surely preferred a jet but I liked flying private better than commercial. As I remember it cost him about $55 per flight hour to run, including overhauls, and he certainly believed it penciled out for him economically. He had to carry fairly heavy amounts of baggage for the trade shows we went to and that definitely helped.
D
Kind of makes the cost and time to get a pilots license that much more attractive.
I will SECOND that motion! It's a rare month that I don't fly, I often fly 3-4 times per month. I recently got my private pilot's license. (yay!)
Flying to Oakland, CA? Go on a commercial jet, and you experience:
1) 1.5 hour trip to the nearest "major" airport.
2) 1-2 hour long wait at the security line.
3) Rude staff.
4) Lousy amenities.
5) Destination airport virtually guaranteed to be 1-2 hours drive away from the actual destination.
6) Cramped seat.
Now, I'm flying more and more privately, I'm in negotiations to buy into a partnership. Here's what I see so far:
1) Local airport, 5 minute drive.
2) 10 minute wait checking the plane out before flight. Effectively no security check.
3) Friendly staff that make it a point to remember your name.
4) Gorgeous bathrooms, with plants, tile, and free hygiene kits. (shave, toothbrush, etc) Free coffee, dough nuts, etc. Often catered luncheons for free as well. Leather seats, free waiting rooms with DVD collection, free conference room!
5) Destination virtually guaranteed to be anywhere from 10 minutes drive to ACROSS THE STREET from a small, local airport.
6) Cramped seat. (Hey, some things never change!)
Seriously, the difference is NIGHT AND DAY. Commercial = cattle. Private = red carpet. And, for shorter flights, the price difference is less than you might think.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
After years of dicking about the cost I finally went for it four years ago. I've spent $80k in total, spent a few hundred hours fixing and modernising, I have something I can live and work on if I want to. I should have done it 10 years ago.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Devil's advocate: What attributes? Being brown?
This is what vigilantism looks like.
II. Rationality They won't do it again because taking a plane out of the sky really will make airport security like a military check point, thus also limiting the mobility of the enemy for the reward of taking 1 or 2 planes out of the sky with no hard land target in mind. Not going to happen.I'm not so sure. Your argument rests on the assumption that the terrorists make well-reasoned decisions to further their cause. They do have objectives -- "get out of the Middle East, U.S!" -- but in my opinion they are horribly misguided in their decisions: If they wanted to reduce the U.S. military presence there, they sure as hell haven't succeeded.
Some people say, "the terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams." I don't think so. Rather, the current situation is a dismal failure for all involved, terrorists included. It's a failure for the U.S., which is now engaged in a bloody, costly (we have spent more than we did in Vietnam), no-way-out quagmire of a war. It's a failure for the extremists who downed those planes, who rather than convincing the U.S. to pull out of the Middle East has provoked it to deploy even more troops there. It is a failure for "Iraqi" civilians (even if no "Iraqi" ethnic identity really exists), who might have been oppressed under Saddam but who at least had electricity and drinking water. It is a failure for nearly everyone. The only reason this mess continues is that we, the extremists, and everyone else, are stuck together in yet-another (the world has so many) collective action problem.
[The list of those who have benefited from this situation is short -- mainly politicians (in the US and in the Middle East) and government contractors (Haliburton/KBR, etc) happy to multiply the terror and exploit the situation (see the BBC's The Power of Nightmares -- video here). But these people didn't engineer the attacks; they're just opportunists.]
I got a little sidetracked, but the point is this: The terrorists did not plan a well-reasoned attack to achieve their objectives; by most rational metrics I can think of, they have failed. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past them to do something stupid again -- like stage an attack which will ultimately make their task more difficult. That's the part of your post I was disagreeing with -- that these terrorists make smart decisions. I suspect they don't -- not because they're populated by stupid people (terrorists tend to be well-educated. I'm most familiar not with Middle-Eastern terrorists, but with the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo that released Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway -- and that organization was full of Ph.D.s and physics students) but because their logical, analytical minds have been short-circuited by a seductive ideology.
In other words, we've got one group of people whose brains have been short-circuited by ideology and anger against another whose frontal lobes have been shut off by a hyperactive fear-and-stress center. I'm not counting on rationality from anyone.