Where Open Source Works and where it doesn't
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This brings up an important point. There is plenty of incentive for someone to write a web server, a database manager, an OS kernel or thousands of other generic bits of software. There is almost NO incentive for someone to write a driver for an obsolete device. The former can be a source of consulting and employment. The latter can actually work against you.
I mean, if a hardware manufacturer finds out you like to write device drivers for obsolete hardware, they're not going to be pleased. All those people keeping their old printers will prevent the manufacturer from profiting by making new ones. And if you really get creative by making the hardware do all sorts of new tricks it never did before, they're probably going to look for some excuse to get rid of you.
They want to sell new product, not keep the old stuff going. I know it's wrong to say this, but that's how the world's economy is configured right now.
I agree. Most sewage that we process is "fresh" and we try to keep it that way. The smell is usually not too disgusting. It has a musty smell that is predominantly from the perfumes you encounter in soaps.
The last thing we need is for it to sit somewhere long enough for the anaerobic bacteria to take hold. We are expecting relatively oxygenated waste-water, so that with aeration it can be digested quickly with aerobic bacteria. If it goes septic with anaerobic bacteria, there isn't likely to be much of the bacteria we need to encourage for self-digestion of the sludge.
Oh, and one other thing: Anaerobic bacteria often creates methane. We'd rather such stuff happen in a controlled place, such as a sludge digester, instead of in the sewer mains. Flammable gas in the sewers is not particularly safe...
The hard part is getting him there exactly when we have the first few thunderstorms of the season. That's when most of the grease from the previous fall and winter gets scoured from the pipe walls.
--of course I have job sites on sewer pumping stations and waste-water treatment plants.
Not only does it smell bad where I work, but it can kill you if you're not careful. People dump all sorts of things down the drain that they shouldn't. I've heard stories of entire tanker loads of gasoline getting dumped, Ether, Perc, Jet fuel, and some mysterious stuff that glowed blue coming from what used to be called the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST).
During large thunderstorms, the sewer pipes often see huge flows that scour all the grease that people dump down the drain (DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!) in to large globs the size of beach balls. These tend to block flow at the waste-water stations and cause sewer backup until someone can get down there and pitch-fork it apart.
It depends on whether you're interested in a short or a long term investment, and whether you really like slinging code for a living. Some people might prefer a variety of jobs by being a consultant. If you really enjoy that sort of thing, you will find that a Masters degree will serve you well over the longer term. Even a PhD has potential.
Of course, you could always go to work today (assuming you'll find it) and get your degree later. Just don't wait until you're forty something, with a family to feed, or other things will take priority.
Another route is to get certifications. I used to scoff at such things, but as the work-force gets tighter and HR people have to sift through more and more resumes, the more letters you can add after your name, the better off you'll be. Note that this doesn't mean you actually know something. What it means is that you were exposed to the concepts. In fact that's what a formal education shows too. Never substitute education for ability or experience.
What I'm getting at is that you have entered a career where if you stop learning, you'll fall behind. A formal education is nice. But even if you choose not to go that route you can not continue without an ever present need for education.
Every major news organization I know of has deliberately spiked or even made up stories at some time in the past. That goes for all of them, including sacred cows such as the The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, and so on and so forth.
Many newspapers have spiked stories because it didn't live up to their political world view. The act of omission is as bad as the act of lying --which by the way, is nothing new to that bastion of Journalism, The New York Times.
If you think Fox is the only organization to have had dishonest journalists, you're very naive.
Love him or hate him, Rupert Murdoch is no fool. If anyone can make that concept work, he'd be one to do it.
And you're welcome to call it Faux News all you want to. Get off your high horse and realize that as much as you don't like this or that media outlet, they all have offices filled with people who spin stories one way or another.
Such products exist. The problem is that data often does need to go both ways.
For example, load shed, distribution system models, and demand forecasts often go to servers and clients outside the distribution control center.
These sorts of operations are near-real time processes.
Likewise the outputs include run times, certain transient events, and hourly/daily total meter data often go in the other direction.
As I said before, with careful consideration given to a DMZ between the office network and the control systems, with a sacrificial historian server, and with careful monitoring and alarming, it should be possible to safely set up a portal to the office network.
People have written books on this subject, and I expect to be doing so before long. It is not something I can fit in to a nice pithy message here.
I am a control systems engineer, a member of ISA-99, and a contributor to several other standards on industrial control system cyber security.
The parent post is what SHOULD be done in a recently installed system. I can tell you from experience of dealing with other infrastructure (not the electric grid) that it isn't always that way. There were many systems installed around Y2k that are still in service. And most of you will remember that back then very few people took security seriously. Back then it was all about compatibility. Security wasn't even an issue. The big issue was SHARING the data.
Control systems and SCADA have long working lives ranging from ten to twenty years. The reason for this is because the field I/O validation cost is significant. It dwarfs the cost of the software, the control center, and all that lovely flashy stuff you're so used to seeing. Updating a configuration is very expensive, not just in validation costs, but also training costs, for miscellaneous costs such as review of operating procedures, control system narratives, and so forth. This is why many are forced to keep their systems isolated in the hope that by doing so, things will somehow stay secure.
But these days, that's no easy feat. Nearly every company has a contingent of data surfing desk jockeys with enough authority and enough dream-weaving synergy talk to push for interconnections. That's when things get very ugly.
The problem isn't that they want the data. The problem is that they want the data IN REAL TIME. Most of the time these idiots say the term though they do not understand the implications or even what it means. And that's how the exploits get started.
There are solutions. There are relatively secure methods for moving data in and out of a SCADA system. But they need careful review by people who know both the industrial side of things (to identify what is at risk) and the IT side of things (to know what the potential vectors could be). And the number of people with that kind of expertise is extremely small. We're talking about hundreds or maybe a thousand such people world-wide.
There simply aren't enough people to train the trainers who will train the trainers. And so, we're stuck with the status quo until we can build a community of cross trained people who understand industrial processes, control systems, and IT large enough to handle this situation.
I know many of you probably think you have it bad in the office IT business. And it is. Just know that there is far more truth in the Homer Simpson character than you'd ever dream of...
When everyone else in the world seems to have turned upside down, maybe it's time to look at your own orientation.
Truthfully, until the internet came along, we used to get most of our daily news filtered through some reporter and editor. Today, we can read the federal register, congressional web sites, get blogs from people in the middle of a war zone, and so on.
This is just like all the problems we're having with the RIAA, MPAA and others. Distributors do not have a monopoly on the news any more and they're losing out to people who want to get their information, movies, music, entertainment or whatever from the source.
I won't argue whether "the media" is biased or not. It's rapidly becoming irrelevant. And now my very own Senator Ben Cardin wants to prop them up with my tax dollars.
I have a better idea: let them die a normal, free-market death.
...so the answer is to come up with some uber-toxic paint that reflects enough UV and IR to meet this specification?
What a lot of good that will do for the environment.
This reminds me of when these geniuses got rid of Tetra-Ethyl Lead (an air pollutant) and replaced it with MTBE (a water pollutant). Yeah, that helped. I don't know how much longer our environment can stand this "help."
The problem is that researchers are not sure exactly what is going on here. People are finding evidence that suggests excess high energy neutrons, but the results have been inconsistent. --At least until now.
So to devise a controlled experiment, we need a theory. As far as I know, there are no theories that explain exactly why this is happening. So we're dealing with pure experimentalism where people stumble around in the lab, looking for something that "works."
Remember the polywater debacle? This could be a lot of experimentalists chasing their tails.
People pray a lot. The question is what they actually do with their lives.
Many church regulars will tell you about people they know who attend every Sunday, yet who live some of the most amoral lives imaginable.
So prayer itself isn't a measure of religiousness. It may even be a measure of self delusion so that people can live with what they have done with their lives.
Too many people don't know why they live. They don't really believe in anything, so the thought of death scares them to no end. They seek prayer as an affirmation that they're basically good people, even if they don't feel like their time on Earth was a good thing.
I call that a guilty conscience, not a pious person.
Instead of showing us your excellently tuned cynicism, what would you do differently? Would you prefer that companies shrug their shoulders every time a laptop with your identification data goes missing? Would you not mind if the credit card processing companies didn't feel like paying for real security? Would you mind if some pimple-faced kid with a grudge against the world hacked in to the electric utility grid and shut down the lights in your city?
In short, the only other answers I've seen here are "do nothing." That's what "Do Nothing" gets you.
You say that Plumbers work in shit. Well, I went to a fancy pants college. I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. I design controls for Water and Waste-Water treatment plants.
Yes, I work on Shit too --on a much MUCH larger scale. It may be disgusting to you, but it's honest work, the pay is ok, and the job is nearly recession proof.
Oh, and by the way, I paid for my degree by going to school at night and working during the day. It took longer, and I didn't have much of a social life for several years (This is Slashdot, so I figure you all will understand). However, I passed my tests and I received my very own personal certificate that acknowledges the hazing by a bunch of professors and graduate students, most of whom wouldn't know what to do when faced with a real problem to solve in real time.
After you've been working for the first three to five years, nobody gives a damn which engineering school you came from. I've met lunatics from MIT, and very smart people who never got past community college. The school you came from is not a good predictor of performance. You either have full situational awareness of what you're doing, or you don't. And those who don't know, won't last long --even at a sewer plant.
The mistake you're making here is that YOU THINK the PED and the aircraft avionics are both working flawlessly. Without an extensive test bench, you don't know that. Your PED could have a manufacturing defect. It could have been dunked or dropped. It could be radiating anything. With anything that amplifies (and that includes digital logic) you can have parasitic oscillation and not know it.
I'll grant you that 99.9999% of the time, that situation probably isn't a big deal. But with hundreds of thousands of passengers every day, and thousands of flights, the probabilities will eventually catch up with you.
Put that near field next to a leaky antenna port or a coaxial cable that may be frayed, and you risk the sort of problem that we're discussing here.
Oh, and the 10000 foot rule is simple: there isn't anything you'd be likely to run in to right away if you got off course.
If you're seriously thinking about a powered parachute, you should know that they typically get a top speed of about 31 MPH and a stall speed of about 29 MPH. There is not a lot in between. You wouldn't want to fly something like this in anything more than a light breeze.
You ought to take a look at terrain and airspace. A quick reminder: you're not allowed to conduct operations under Part 103 over urban areas.
I would think long and hard before considering the use of any ultra-light aircraft for commuting. However, I have heard of some people who commute every day in small two seat aircraft. Air traffic control knows who they are and they usually have a squawk code and a friendly good morning waiting for them as soon as they're off the ground.
But at a distance of only seven miles, I don't understand why you aren't using a bicycle.
Have you ever looked at ALL the packaging that came with your electronics? Remember that little Part 15 statement? It comes from 47CFR15. Basically it says that your device may radiate RF and that if it does interfere with something that you MUST shut it off. That's the foundation for the previous law I cited.
You overlook the fact that there already are studies for RF radiation, and they show that the device does work within acceptable limits when it was manufactured. You do not know what condition it is in now. The flight crew has no way of knowing what condition it is in now. Someone could have spilled water on it and you might not notice any problems. Yet it could be making all sorts of RF noise.
I'll grant you that incidents like this are thankfully rare occurrences. But they are not unknown. Your suggestion is well founded in a perfect world, where everything works exactly as designed. However as an engineer with many years of experience, and as a pilot who flies IFR in my own airplane, I know that this can happen. Until aircraft navigation systems stop using radio signals, I doubt there will come a time when this can not happen.
Idiots with power, eh? You make sure you tell them that when you're in cuffs on the ground.
I could argue with you about the technical merit of what you're saying, but I'm not going to bother because I don't have to.
The law is clearly not on your side, nor are you likely to change it. The bottom line is that once you board a vessel, the Captain, or a surrogate working for the captain (the crew), has full authority to do whatever they feel is necessary for the safety of the voyage. That condition continues until you disembark.
It doesn't matter what you think or who you are. I'm a registered professional engineer and an instrument rated pilot. On the ground, my opinion is good enough for expert testimony on this subject before a court of law. In the air, I do as the captain says.
If the crew is looking for a potential source of interference to their gear and they discover you fondling your iPod, the crew has every right to restrain you using any means necessary. They will remove whatever batteries the toy has to remove any possibility that it is the cause of interference, and they'll be within their rights, no matter who you might be.
Oh, and one other thing: Admiralty law is very old and international in nature. No civilized country will deny a captain's rights to do whatever he or she feels is needed for the safety of flight.
Most active cell phones won't cause problems. Hell, I've accidentally left my cell phone on while flying IFR and I didn't notice a thing. The track on flightaware didn't show any problems either.
The problem is that we don't know for certain that the cell phone is working properly. This is why we have regulations such as 14CFR91.21 and policies that below 10,000 AGL, you may not operate any instruments.
A quick look at NASA's ASRS database shows 9 entries concerning potential interference from portable electronic devices. So this isn't just an academic concern. Several of these entries indicated that the reporters had seen these sorts of issues before, but that it hadn't been reported.
When the flight crew tells you to shut off your toys before landing, gentlemen (and ladies, if there are any here) SHUT IT OFF! The risk of a screw-up is not yours to take. You can scream and holler at the flight crew about the injustice of denying you ten more minutes on your crack-berry once you're safely in the terminal building. Until then, their word has the full force of Admiralty Law. Shut it off or they'll do it for you.
Where I work, jobs are dangerous, dirty, and sometimes even deadly. They don't pay much either.
I'm an engineer who often works in the field. I get close enough to those jobs that I don't complain too loudly about what I make. I am not financially wealthy, but I'm not hurting either.
Oh, and by the way, those workers are in a union. I guess it worked for them, huh?
And you know what pisses of those guys more than anything else? Some high paid IT manager who makes all sorts of promises he can't keep up with, who can't deliver on half of what he's tasked with, and who then has the audacity to complain that they're not paying him enough.
The solution is to do what you love. When you are good at what you do, people will seek you out.
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This brings up an important point. There is plenty of incentive for someone to write a web server, a database manager, an OS kernel or thousands of other generic bits of software. There is almost NO incentive for someone to write a driver for an obsolete device. The former can be a source of consulting and employment. The latter can actually work against you.
I mean, if a hardware manufacturer finds out you like to write device drivers for obsolete hardware, they're not going to be pleased. All those people keeping their old printers will prevent the manufacturer from profiting by making new ones. And if you really get creative by making the hardware do all sorts of new tricks it never did before, they're probably going to look for some excuse to get rid of you.
They want to sell new product, not keep the old stuff going. I know it's wrong to say this, but that's how the world's economy is configured right now.
I agree. Most sewage that we process is "fresh" and we try to keep it that way. The smell is usually not too disgusting. It has a musty smell that is predominantly from the perfumes you encounter in soaps.
The last thing we need is for it to sit somewhere long enough for the anaerobic bacteria to take hold. We are expecting relatively oxygenated waste-water, so that with aeration it can be digested quickly with aerobic bacteria. If it goes septic with anaerobic bacteria, there isn't likely to be much of the bacteria we need to encourage for self-digestion of the sludge.
Oh, and one other thing: Anaerobic bacteria often creates methane. We'd rather such stuff happen in a controlled place, such as a sludge digester, instead of in the sewer mains. Flammable gas in the sewers is not particularly safe...
Radioactive Gorillas? That's almost as good as Sharks with Frickin' lasers!
The hard part is getting him there exactly when we have the first few thunderstorms of the season. That's when most of the grease from the previous fall and winter gets scoured from the pipe walls.
--of course I have job sites on sewer pumping stations and waste-water treatment plants.
Not only does it smell bad where I work, but it can kill you if you're not careful. People dump all sorts of things down the drain that they shouldn't. I've heard stories of entire tanker loads of gasoline getting dumped, Ether, Perc, Jet fuel, and some mysterious stuff that glowed blue coming from what used to be called the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST).
During large thunderstorms, the sewer pipes often see huge flows that scour all the grease that people dump down the drain (DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!) in to large globs the size of beach balls. These tend to block flow at the waste-water stations and cause sewer backup until someone can get down there and pitch-fork it apart.
And Mike Rowe thinks HE does dirty jobs...
It depends on whether you're interested in a short or a long term investment, and whether you really like slinging code for a living. Some people might prefer a variety of jobs by being a consultant. If you really enjoy that sort of thing, you will find that a Masters degree will serve you well over the longer term. Even a PhD has potential.
Of course, you could always go to work today (assuming you'll find it) and get your degree later. Just don't wait until you're forty something, with a family to feed, or other things will take priority.
Another route is to get certifications. I used to scoff at such things, but as the work-force gets tighter and HR people have to sift through more and more resumes, the more letters you can add after your name, the better off you'll be. Note that this doesn't mean you actually know something. What it means is that you were exposed to the concepts. In fact that's what a formal education shows too. Never substitute education for ability or experience.
What I'm getting at is that you have entered a career where if you stop learning, you'll fall behind. A formal education is nice. But even if you choose not to go that route you can not continue without an ever present need for education.
Every major news organization I know of has deliberately spiked or even made up stories at some time in the past. That goes for all of them, including sacred cows such as the The Washington Post, CBS, NBC, and so on and so forth.
Many newspapers have spiked stories because it didn't live up to their political world view. The act of omission is as bad as the act of lying --which by the way, is nothing new to that bastion of Journalism, The New York Times.
If you think Fox is the only organization to have had dishonest journalists, you're very naive.
This is like setting limits on how strip searches should be conducted, or defining what limits one should use for "aggressive" interrogation.
The best approach is not to go there in the first place.
Love him or hate him, Rupert Murdoch is no fool. If anyone can make that concept work, he'd be one to do it.
And you're welcome to call it Faux News all you want to. Get off your high horse and realize that as much as you don't like this or that media outlet, they all have offices filled with people who spin stories one way or another.
They're called editors.
Such products exist. The problem is that data often does need to go both ways.
For example, load shed, distribution system models, and demand forecasts often go to servers and clients outside the distribution control center.
These sorts of operations are near-real time processes.
Likewise the outputs include run times, certain transient events, and hourly/daily total meter data often go in the other direction.
As I said before, with careful consideration given to a DMZ between the office network and the control systems, with a sacrificial historian server, and with careful monitoring and alarming, it should be possible to safely set up a portal to the office network.
People have written books on this subject, and I expect to be doing so before long. It is not something I can fit in to a nice pithy message here.
I am a control systems engineer, a member of ISA-99, and a contributor to several other standards on industrial control system cyber security.
The parent post is what SHOULD be done in a recently installed system. I can tell you from experience of dealing with other infrastructure (not the electric grid) that it isn't always that way. There were many systems installed around Y2k that are still in service. And most of you will remember that back then very few people took security seriously. Back then it was all about compatibility. Security wasn't even an issue. The big issue was SHARING the data.
Control systems and SCADA have long working lives ranging from ten to twenty years. The reason for this is because the field I/O validation cost is significant. It dwarfs the cost of the software, the control center, and all that lovely flashy stuff you're so used to seeing. Updating a configuration is very expensive, not just in validation costs, but also training costs, for miscellaneous costs such as review of operating procedures, control system narratives, and so forth. This is why many are forced to keep their systems isolated in the hope that by doing so, things will somehow stay secure.
But these days, that's no easy feat. Nearly every company has a contingent of data surfing desk jockeys with enough authority and enough dream-weaving synergy talk to push for interconnections. That's when things get very ugly.
The problem isn't that they want the data. The problem is that they want the data IN REAL TIME. Most of the time these idiots say the term though they do not understand the implications or even what it means. And that's how the exploits get started.
There are solutions. There are relatively secure methods for moving data in and out of a SCADA system. But they need careful review by people who know both the industrial side of things (to identify what is at risk) and the IT side of things (to know what the potential vectors could be). And the number of people with that kind of expertise is extremely small. We're talking about hundreds or maybe a thousand such people world-wide.
There simply aren't enough people to train the trainers who will train the trainers. And so, we're stuck with the status quo until we can build a community of cross trained people who understand industrial processes, control systems, and IT large enough to handle this situation.
I know many of you probably think you have it bad in the office IT business. And it is. Just know that there is far more truth in the Homer Simpson character than you'd ever dream of...
When everyone else in the world seems to have turned upside down, maybe it's time to look at your own orientation.
Truthfully, until the internet came along, we used to get most of our daily news filtered through some reporter and editor. Today, we can read the federal register, congressional web sites, get blogs from people in the middle of a war zone, and so on.
This is just like all the problems we're having with the RIAA, MPAA and others. Distributors do not have a monopoly on the news any more and they're losing out to people who want to get their information, movies, music, entertainment or whatever from the source.
I won't argue whether "the media" is biased or not. It's rapidly becoming irrelevant. And now my very own Senator Ben Cardin wants to prop them up with my tax dollars.
I have a better idea: let them die a normal, free-market death.
...so the answer is to come up with some uber-toxic paint that reflects enough UV and IR to meet this specification?
What a lot of good that will do for the environment.
This reminds me of when these geniuses got rid of Tetra-Ethyl Lead (an air pollutant) and replaced it with MTBE (a water pollutant). Yeah, that helped. I don't know how much longer our environment can stand this "help."
The problem is that researchers are not sure exactly what is going on here. People are finding evidence that suggests excess high energy neutrons, but the results have been inconsistent. --At least until now.
So to devise a controlled experiment, we need a theory. As far as I know, there are no theories that explain exactly why this is happening. So we're dealing with pure experimentalism where people stumble around in the lab, looking for something that "works."
Remember the polywater debacle? This could be a lot of experimentalists chasing their tails.
People pray a lot. The question is what they actually do with their lives.
Many church regulars will tell you about people they know who attend every Sunday, yet who live some of the most amoral lives imaginable.
So prayer itself isn't a measure of religiousness. It may even be a measure of self delusion so that people can live with what they have done with their lives.
Too many people don't know why they live. They don't really believe in anything, so the thought of death scares them to no end. They seek prayer as an affirmation that they're basically good people, even if they don't feel like their time on Earth was a good thing.
I call that a guilty conscience, not a pious person.
Instead of showing us your excellently tuned cynicism, what would you do differently? Would you prefer that companies shrug their shoulders every time a laptop with your identification data goes missing? Would you not mind if the credit card processing companies didn't feel like paying for real security? Would you mind if some pimple-faced kid with a grudge against the world hacked in to the electric utility grid and shut down the lights in your city?
In short, the only other answers I've seen here are "do nothing." That's what "Do Nothing" gets you.
So, what would you do differently?
Brainfsck?
That's one of those weird UFO cults that commit suicide upon the arrival of a comet.
You say that Plumbers work in shit. Well, I went to a fancy pants college. I graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. I design controls for Water and Waste-Water treatment plants.
Yes, I work on Shit too --on a much MUCH larger scale. It may be disgusting to you, but it's honest work, the pay is ok, and the job is nearly recession proof.
Oh, and by the way, I paid for my degree by going to school at night and working during the day. It took longer, and I didn't have much of a social life for several years (This is Slashdot, so I figure you all will understand). However, I passed my tests and I received my very own personal certificate that acknowledges the hazing by a bunch of professors and graduate students, most of whom wouldn't know what to do when faced with a real problem to solve in real time.
After you've been working for the first three to five years, nobody gives a damn which engineering school you came from. I've met lunatics from MIT, and very smart people who never got past community college. The school you came from is not a good predictor of performance. You either have full situational awareness of what you're doing, or you don't. And those who don't know, won't last long --even at a sewer plant.
The mistake you're making here is that YOU THINK the PED and the aircraft avionics are both working flawlessly. Without an extensive test bench, you don't know that. Your PED could have a manufacturing defect. It could have been dunked or dropped. It could be radiating anything. With anything that amplifies (and that includes digital logic) you can have parasitic oscillation and not know it.
I'll grant you that 99.9999% of the time, that situation probably isn't a big deal. But with hundreds of thousands of passengers every day, and thousands of flights, the probabilities will eventually catch up with you.
Put that near field next to a leaky antenna port or a coaxial cable that may be frayed, and you risk the sort of problem that we're discussing here.
Oh, and the 10000 foot rule is simple: there isn't anything you'd be likely to run in to right away if you got off course.
As you said, use your brains.
PP-ASEL-IA too.
If you're seriously thinking about a powered parachute, you should know that they typically get a top speed of about 31 MPH and a stall speed of about 29 MPH. There is not a lot in between. You wouldn't want to fly something like this in anything more than a light breeze.
You ought to take a look at terrain and airspace. A quick reminder: you're not allowed to conduct operations under Part 103 over urban areas.
I would think long and hard before considering the use of any ultra-light aircraft for commuting. However, I have heard of some people who commute every day in small two seat aircraft. Air traffic control knows who they are and they usually have a squawk code and a friendly good morning waiting for them as soon as they're off the ground.
But at a distance of only seven miles, I don't understand why you aren't using a bicycle.
Have you ever looked at ALL the packaging that came with your electronics? Remember that little Part 15 statement? It comes from 47CFR15. Basically it says that your device may radiate RF and that if it does interfere with something that you MUST shut it off. That's the foundation for the previous law I cited.
You overlook the fact that there already are studies for RF radiation, and they show that the device does work within acceptable limits when it was manufactured. You do not know what condition it is in now. The flight crew has no way of knowing what condition it is in now. Someone could have spilled water on it and you might not notice any problems. Yet it could be making all sorts of RF noise.
I'll grant you that incidents like this are thankfully rare occurrences. But they are not unknown. Your suggestion is well founded in a perfect world, where everything works exactly as designed. However as an engineer with many years of experience, and as a pilot who flies IFR in my own airplane, I know that this can happen. Until aircraft navigation systems stop using radio signals, I doubt there will come a time when this can not happen.
Idiots with power, eh? You make sure you tell them that when you're in cuffs on the ground.
I could argue with you about the technical merit of what you're saying, but I'm not going to bother because I don't have to.
The law is clearly not on your side, nor are you likely to change it. The bottom line is that once you board a vessel, the Captain, or a surrogate working for the captain (the crew), has full authority to do whatever they feel is necessary for the safety of the voyage. That condition continues until you disembark.
That's Admiralty law. Get over it.
It doesn't matter what you think or who you are. I'm a registered professional engineer and an instrument rated pilot. On the ground, my opinion is good enough for expert testimony on this subject before a court of law. In the air, I do as the captain says.
If the crew is looking for a potential source of interference to their gear and they discover you fondling your iPod, the crew has every right to restrain you using any means necessary. They will remove whatever batteries the toy has to remove any possibility that it is the cause of interference, and they'll be within their rights, no matter who you might be.
Oh, and one other thing: Admiralty law is very old and international in nature. No civilized country will deny a captain's rights to do whatever he or she feels is needed for the safety of flight.
Most active cell phones won't cause problems. Hell, I've accidentally left my cell phone on while flying IFR and I didn't notice a thing. The track on flightaware didn't show any problems either.
The problem is that we don't know for certain that the cell phone is working properly. This is why we have regulations such as 14CFR91.21 and policies that below 10,000 AGL, you may not operate any instruments.
A quick look at NASA's ASRS database shows 9 entries concerning potential interference from portable electronic devices. So this isn't just an academic concern. Several of these entries indicated that the reporters had seen these sorts of issues before, but that it hadn't been reported.
When the flight crew tells you to shut off your toys before landing, gentlemen (and ladies, if there are any here) SHUT IT OFF! The risk of a screw-up is not yours to take. You can scream and holler at the flight crew about the injustice of denying you ten more minutes on your crack-berry once you're safely in the terminal building. Until then, their word has the full force of Admiralty Law. Shut it off or they'll do it for you.
AMEN!
Where I work, jobs are dangerous, dirty, and sometimes even deadly. They don't pay much either.
I'm an engineer who often works in the field. I get close enough to those jobs that I don't complain too loudly about what I make. I am not financially wealthy, but I'm not hurting either.
Oh, and by the way, those workers are in a union. I guess it worked for them, huh?
And you know what pisses of those guys more than anything else? Some high paid IT manager who makes all sorts of promises he can't keep up with, who can't deliver on half of what he's tasked with, and who then has the audacity to complain that they're not paying him enough.
The solution is to do what you love. When you are good at what you do, people will seek you out.