Maybe not in the back, but there definitely is in business and first class. I have used the connection for email and it worked quite nicely and have even browsed/. from 33K feet. The company took the cost without issue as it means some late breaking information could be sent to me in flight.
For flights shorter than about 4-5hrs, I can't see it being useful but on intercontinental flights it is a true godsend.
I guess he is a GA pilot. Somewhat different circumstances, you are in a slower plane, you fly lower and there isn't so much fuselage around you, especially in the cockpit.
Inside a typical commercial jet, you fly at about 30K feet, the RF has to find its way out through the portholes so the mobile's transmitter automatically ramps up to maximum. You have line of sight to the ground stations but at full cruising altitude, they have antennas tweaked to send out mostly sideways.
It will work, but not very well and you will cause system problems on the ground.
With the quantities in ounces any bomb would have to be very carefully placed to be effective. A misfire would probably just kill the bomber (and probably cause some damage to the plumbing).
Pan Am 103 probably wouldn't have crashed under a number of alternate scenarios. Ordinarily, you may have had a bang, lost some of controls (the standby should have taken over and a hole would have appeared in the side. If the pilots had then dropped rapidly to a safe altitude, there may not have been any fatalities.
The bomb was placed up against the forward bulkhead and the luggage container effectively gave extra tamping. There are luggage container now with pressure burst plates but I haven't seen them being used yet. The end result was when the luggage container burst, the bulkhead was blown out and the nose section was effectively split from the rest of the plane.
The example of the TATP bomb we have seen deployed, i.e., by the shoe-bomber was just a few ounces. You would have to be very unlucky for such an explosive to cause more than a couple of fatalities. A plane doesn't suddenly burst when there is a hole in the fuselage.
No-one with the slightest clue about how to code would use floating point maths in any kind of financial program.
Not quite correct. You calculate real money using big integers as you suggest. Some systems use variably scaled integers to get over the problem of representing different currencies.
On the other hand, when you start working on derived data such as pricing models or risk then you end up using floats.
An interesting point that one. The UK and the US have civil servants - who are becoming responsible for more and more invasive procedures all the time. The Germans have Beamten.
A Beamter is literally "an office holder", which implies some unelected PITA. The amazing thing is that when you complain about going to one office and then giving similar information to another, they politely apologise and point out that the constitution forbids government agencies from sharing information except under very strictly defined rules.
You can find a copy of the specs on the ICAO website.
It doesn't give away a lot, it doesn't have to. A passport must be inspectable by anyone so the spec on how to read it must be pretty much public. There is an (optional) electronic signature mechanism, but this predicates an international public key infrastructure. The bank where I work has enough problems getting one of those together, let alone an international organisation. PKI is very hard. Google for references on this.
Key compromise means that all issues documents are then compromised. Can you imagine a country recalling all its passports?
It solves a problem doesn't it? I know plenty of people who are off net due to having the misfortune of living in a valley without a nearby base station. Phone are designed to be omnidirectional, but if you don't need it, why not!
Tucking a phone antenna into the body of a phone is very popular these days, but it isn't much good for signal. Someone like a backpacker who needs omidirectional can easily take a car antenna with them.
Note that many underground railways in Germany seem to be equipped with some sort of repeater now so there you even get a signal underground.
Can testify to seeing some CDC 300MB washing machines doing a walk during the Friday afternoon disk backup and defrag. If they weren't perfectly level, repeated head movement was enough to move the disk a few inches in an hour. If the mass storage controller cables were too tight, then you may have major problems.
I thought that sector interleave came quite early, that is that you alternated sectors on the disk so by the time you finished processing one sector, the next addressable sector would be near the head. This technqiue was brought back in the early days of floppys too.
For this kind of optimisation to work well, you had to dedicate disk packs to applications when multiprogramming even to bits of applications such as the input files.
Yes, there are suppose to be airgaps everywhere around classified systems. On the other hand, wasn't there an incident where a DoD Tiger team used the Internet to access systems on a carrier and through it were able to access a navigation system on an aircraft? Luckily it was a DoD Tiger Team so in the end they didn't attempt to do anything.
Airgaps are very good security when they are followed religiously. In practice, this is rare because of the requirements for support.
If you are in the US or UK, the identification procedures for new clients (KYC) are supposed to be quite painful. To establish a strawman identity for opening an account is possible but it definitely isn't easy. Most of the western world has similar information collection obligations, even traditional banking secrecy countries. So, for example, if I fished some details from your account and wired yor money to Switzerland, a complaint of wire fraud via the FBI to the Swiss Cantonale authorities will allow the bank to release account beneficiary data.
As far as the rest of the world, well if they aren't tracking who the account beneficiaries are, well your US bank is not supposed to wire money to them.
A loong time ago (early nineties) a bit of Alcatel was producing a GPS navigation system for civilian aircraft that was switchable between GLONASS and NAVSTAR. In those days there was a lot of uncertainty both about selective availability as well as public access being disabled at short notice.
You don't have to buy the whole thirty bucks. You can also buy about 3 hours for $10. That fits in nicely with the life of my laptop battery so no issues there.
Travel on long distance rail in Germany:
WiFi: Check
Power at Seat: Check
Travel on long distance rail in UK:
WiFi: Check
Power at Seat: Check
Some railways even give you WiFi with the price of a 1st Class ticket.
Even without the WiFi, if I'm travelling during the day, I would always try to do some work, but with the WiFi there is nothing like sending a few emails from 33K to remind the client that you are working so they don't query the bill (yes, many don't like the idea of paying for travelling time).
Getting in the VPN tends to be rather more painful. I prefer just to work via a webmailer (over https, it is secure enough).
I have a fairly crappy connection somewhere over the Iran between Frankfurt and Chennai. Every so often it stalls. But, WTF, I'm on the air and I can connect to the Internet. Isn't that a really good thing? Hey I can even tell people how late the flight is running (about 90 minutes).
As for power, I have 220v by the seat. Batteries aren't really a problem here. It isn't that expensive. The only issue is that we need some competition to keep Boeing honest. Perhaps AIrbus can do something if they can get their wiring sorted.
Oh and that isn't any BS, I'm in seat 3H and the Wifi signal is great.
Swift messages may be transferred by any financial institution not just banks. They are nowadays in an XML format and they include identifying information for the source and beneficiary of any transfer. Howver only a few Swift messages relate to transfers. Any institution on being approached via a regulator is obliged to cooperate and provide full identification of account holders.
International transactions are no longer bound by Swiss secrecy. The source and beneficiary of a payment must be disclosed. However there may not be full data there from the Swiss side. This only requires application at Cantonal level to unlock.
Disclaimer, I have lived in Germany and still visit on almost a weekly basis.
At least in most bits, ADSL is still working. Fibre does go as far as the local exchange even if it doesn't go direct to individuals. Terminating fibre is expensive. Unless you are a company who is going to pay for a direct coupling, why should they deliver you fibre to your doorstep?
Wimax, last I heard was still 'being standardised' whilst the experiments are interesting, in the end, they are just that. Remember that WiMax like any wireless system is still bounded by the number of subscribers in the area.
When I'm in Germany, I stay in a small town in the Taunus. ADSL is fully rolled out (speeds up to 6Mb/s) and the local cable man (iesy) is pushing broadband. Indeed they do seem to be able to offer it in most bits of the Rhein-Main area.
Lastly, having been screwed over for about 15 years of Solidaritaetszuschlag, why should the rest of Germany subsidize even more infrastructure reform?
ISDN is available throughout the former DDR. This means a true 64K with the possibility of bundling 2 channels. ADSL at 2MB+ is available in towns (at least according to the German ISPs that I know), but perhaps not in all villages and there is also the possiblity of internet via your cable tv supplier. Cable TV is fairly ubiqitous in Germany with penetration down to the smaller villages. Many are providing broadband too.
Its a last mile issue. WiFi in a high density area may have a range less than 50 metres if you are lucky. Someone is still going to have to wire up a *lot* of 802.11b/g routers and the users pay for the infrastructure.
Telephony means there is copper going into your house which other stuff can ride on. It doesn't need to be a telephone line. It can even be cable tv.
If you want true wireless, then you have the option of 3G (works in most city centres), but the pricing there is more in the direction of business users.
The guys who wrote the book han an innovative agreement that once out of print, they could publish it online for free. You will find the xomplete 3.5MB pdf here. You will also, surprise, surprise, find a link from the site of a well known computer company.
It depends. If you establish a process, this is less visible than a single event, especially if significant amounts of cash or securities are involved. I don't think its a secret, but the surveillance systems look for anomalous behaviour.
At the same time a client is profiled. If you have a certain kind of business then you have a risk category assigned and you have certain kinds of transactions that are considered normal. Resources are limited so only a percentage of transactions are scrutinised by a human.
In the case of the original poster, establish an offshore telco capacity reselling operation and there would be no issue with regular payments.
Washing cash is hard, but once in the banking system, life becomes a little easier. The challenge is just to show that you are not linked to the money and it shouldn't be taxable.
First you set up an offshore legal entity. It should raise the invoices and receive the payments. There should be no visible link between the entity and you and the entity should not be registered/domiciled in a country of increased risk for money laundering.
Forget Swiss accounts, they are passe and the numbered accounts (anonymous) are no more. Useful for avoiding a bit of income tax but that is about it. Even then, if you are high-profile (i.e., involved in illegal activities), the Swiss won't want your money.
Even a lesser known friend, Austria is trying to phase out the bearer savings-accounts, i.e., he who has the savings-book has account access, without giving a name.
Lichtenstein is slightly more positive but even there beneficiaries aren't totally anonymous. The Caribbean is definitely out because even if you find a neutral risk country there, the transactions are watched closely because of drugs. Forget shell-banks, they aren't considered acceptable at all.
Although the money involved with financing 9/11 was minuscule, this has been used as an excuse to force through anti-money-laundering legislation so large cash transactions and international payments are monitored closely. If you are in the US or the UK, it is quite hard now but not totally impossible. The easiest is to live outside either country if you want to enjoy your criminal gains.
Note anyone taking the above seriously must remember that you can launder money and get away with it, but you may find the places that will take you are not the places you want to live!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
So, it wasn't interactive enough for Deathmatch. It works perfectly fine for email though, even browsing websites seemed to go ok.
For flights shorter than about 4-5hrs, I can't see it being useful but on intercontinental flights it is a true godsend.
Inside a typical commercial jet, you fly at about 30K feet, the RF has to find its way out through the portholes so the mobile's transmitter automatically ramps up to maximum. You have line of sight to the ground stations but at full cruising altitude, they have antennas tweaked to send out mostly sideways.
It will work, but not very well and you will cause system problems on the ground.
With the quantities in ounces any bomb would have to be very carefully placed to be effective. A misfire would probably just kill the bomber (and probably cause some damage to the plumbing).
The bomb was placed up against the forward bulkhead and the luggage container effectively gave extra tamping. There are luggage container now with pressure burst plates but I haven't seen them being used yet. The end result was when the luggage container burst, the bulkhead was blown out and the nose section was effectively split from the rest of the plane.
The example of the TATP bomb we have seen deployed, i.e., by the shoe-bomber was just a few ounces. You would have to be very unlucky for such an explosive to cause more than a couple of fatalities. A plane doesn't suddenly burst when there is a hole in the fuselage.
Not quite correct. You calculate real money using big integers as you suggest. Some systems use variably scaled integers to get over the problem of representing different currencies.
On the other hand, when you start working on derived data such as pricing models or risk then you end up using floats.
A Beamter is literally "an office holder", which implies some unelected PITA. The amazing thing is that when you complain about going to one office and then giving similar information to another, they politely apologise and point out that the constitution forbids government agencies from sharing information except under very strictly defined rules.
It doesn't give away a lot, it doesn't have to. A passport must be inspectable by anyone so the spec on how to read it must be pretty much public. There is an (optional) electronic signature mechanism, but this predicates an international public key infrastructure. The bank where I work has enough problems getting one of those together, let alone an international organisation. PKI is very hard. Google for references on this.
Key compromise means that all issues documents are then compromised. Can you imagine a country recalling all its passports?
Tucking a phone antenna into the body of a phone is very popular these days, but it isn't much good for signal. Someone like a backpacker who needs omidirectional can easily take a car antenna with them.
Note that many underground railways in Germany seem to be equipped with some sort of repeater now so there you even get a signal underground.
Can testify to seeing some CDC 300MB washing machines doing a walk during the Friday afternoon disk backup and defrag. If they weren't perfectly level, repeated head movement was enough to move the disk a few inches in an hour. If the mass storage controller cables were too tight, then you may have major problems.
For this kind of optimisation to work well, you had to dedicate disk packs to applications when multiprogramming even to bits of applications such as the input files.
Airgaps are very good security when they are followed religiously. In practice, this is rare because of the requirements for support.
As far as the rest of the world, well if they aren't tracking who the account beneficiaries are, well your US bank is not supposed to wire money to them.
A loong time ago (early nineties) a bit of Alcatel was producing a GPS navigation system for civilian aircraft that was switchable between GLONASS and NAVSTAR. In those days there was a lot of uncertainty both about selective availability as well as public access being disabled at short notice.
Travel on long distance rail in Germany:
- WiFi: Check
- Power at Seat: Check
Travel on long distance rail in UK:- WiFi: Check
- Power at Seat: Check
Some railways even give you WiFi with the price of a 1st Class ticket.Getting in the VPN tends to be rather more painful. I prefer just to work via a webmailer (over https, it is secure enough).
As for power, I have 220v by the seat. Batteries aren't really a problem here. It isn't that expensive. The only issue is that we need some competition to keep Boeing honest. Perhaps AIrbus can do something if they can get their wiring sorted.
Oh and that isn't any BS, I'm in seat 3H and the Wifi signal is great.
Disclaimer: I work in banking for a living.
International transactions are no longer bound by Swiss secrecy. The source and beneficiary of a payment must be disclosed. However there may not be full data there from the Swiss side. This only requires application at Cantonal level to unlock.
At least in most bits, ADSL is still working. Fibre does go as far as the local exchange even if it doesn't go direct to individuals. Terminating fibre is expensive. Unless you are a company who is going to pay for a direct coupling, why should they deliver you fibre to your doorstep?
Wimax, last I heard was still 'being standardised' whilst the experiments are interesting, in the end, they are just that. Remember that WiMax like any wireless system is still bounded by the number of subscribers in the area.
When I'm in Germany, I stay in a small town in the Taunus. ADSL is fully rolled out (speeds up to 6Mb/s) and the local cable man (iesy) is pushing broadband. Indeed they do seem to be able to offer it in most bits of the Rhein-Main area. Lastly, having been screwed over for about 15 years of Solidaritaetszuschlag, why should the rest of Germany subsidize even more infrastructure reform?
ISDN is available throughout the former DDR. This means a true 64K with the possibility of bundling 2 channels. ADSL at 2MB+ is available in towns (at least according to the German ISPs that I know), but perhaps not in all villages and there is also the possiblity of internet via your cable tv supplier. Cable TV is fairly ubiqitous in Germany with penetration down to the smaller villages. Many are providing broadband too.
Telephony means there is copper going into your house which other stuff can ride on. It doesn't need to be a telephone line. It can even be cable tv.
If you want true wireless, then you have the option of 3G (works in most city centres), but the pricing there is more in the direction of business users.
The guys who wrote the book han an innovative agreement that once out of print, they could publish it online for free. You will find the xomplete 3.5MB pdf here. You will also, surprise, surprise, find a link from the site of a well known computer company.
At the same time a client is profiled. If you have a certain kind of business then you have a risk category assigned and you have certain kinds of transactions that are considered normal. Resources are limited so only a percentage of transactions are scrutinised by a human.
In the case of the original poster, establish an offshore telco capacity reselling operation and there would be no issue with regular payments.
First you set up an offshore legal entity. It should raise the invoices and receive the payments. There should be no visible link between the entity and you and the entity should not be registered/domiciled in a country of increased risk for money laundering.
Forget Swiss accounts, they are passe and the numbered accounts (anonymous) are no more. Useful for avoiding a bit of income tax but that is about it. Even then, if you are high-profile (i.e., involved in illegal activities), the Swiss won't want your money.
Even a lesser known friend, Austria is trying to phase out the bearer savings-accounts, i.e., he who has the savings-book has account access, without giving a name.
Lichtenstein is slightly more positive but even there beneficiaries aren't totally anonymous. The Caribbean is definitely out because even if you find a neutral risk country there, the transactions are watched closely because of drugs. Forget shell-banks, they aren't considered acceptable at all.
Although the money involved with financing 9/11 was minuscule, this has been used as an excuse to force through anti-money-laundering legislation so large cash transactions and international payments are monitored closely. If you are in the US or the UK, it is quite hard now but not totally impossible. The easiest is to live outside either country if you want to enjoy your criminal gains.
Note anyone taking the above seriously must remember that you can launder money and get away with it, but you may find the places that will take you are not the places you want to live!!!!