Everyone has so far said that the searches are reasonable, given the circumstances. Maybe they are, on paper. But out of the following, who would you trust:
1. An educated scientist who has been working for your company for years.
2. Some young security guard on minimum wage recently recruited through an agency to support your improved security.
To increase the level of security you need to increase security staff. But you are at risk of introducing an "undesirable" element - be it criminal or just sadistically minded.
More effective would be a security review of all employees, with background checks (if not already performed). Once done your greatest risks are third party (incl. new staff + security), and the "turning bad" of existing employees. Draconic security measures do not give a satisfactory return on the former, and have a detrimental (morale sapping, hate inducing) effect on the latter.
And, if you don't increase the staff, but increase their workload, then you are skimping on security elsewhere. Even if you are not deliberately reducing security elsewhere, over time "security fatigue" sets in due to overwork.
At the international airport I use, security fatigue set in on the third week after 9/11. Immediately after the bombing security was incredibly high, which continued for two weeks. On the third week security was non-existent: staff were no longer paying attention. My bag went through the scanner, but no-one looked at it, and my associate got through security without a valid ticket (accidentally). By the fourth week the airport had returned to more sustainable levels of security.
Why bother? If you generate electricity from propane to drive an electric engine, why don't you just pump the propane directly into a normal engine?
Over in the UK, we've absorbed a lot of US culture - we like our cars, even if they are not as big as in the US. But we are slowly catching on to the greenies in Europe and have introduced LPG (Congratulations Gordon Finlay, you're top of the search list, and informative - welcome to the Slashdot effect). You take any modern gasoline car, add a gas tank and some piping to the engine, and you can switch the car back and forth between LPG and gasoline at will. If your local gas station has LPG you can stick to LPG for all local trips, and only use gas when you run out.
This propane electricity generator could be a useful replacement for the battery in a fully LPG car - the spark is created by LPG in order to ignite the LPG in the engine. The perfect balance of Yin and, well, some more Yin I suppose.
Rather than a replacement for passwords, I consider this a complementary technology - you should always have the option of typing in the password, but use your thumbprint as a shortcut.
I would like to see a password manager that was enabled by your thumbprint. It would enter your passwords into your email application, encrypted files, favourite web pages etc. You only need to memorise one password, that you use if your thumb is gunked up.
I thought "rump dialling" was caused because they have the keypad lock on. The lock disables all they keys apart from "9-1-1". If there was no such thing as a keypad lock, they would just phone some random number. You would think a handy feature like, when keypad lock is on, the number is cleared whenever anything other than "9-1-1" is pressed.
As mentioned by a previous poster, mobile phones connect to a cell to carry a call, which can be used to give the emergency services an indication of where they are. But this could be a complementary technology. If each phone mast/receiver is a cell - they need more in the city because of obstructions and the number of users. So the smaller cells in the city can accurately position you, just where GPS is least effective.
As the PlayStation 2 is backwardly compatible, you could try the official NetYaroze development kit for PS1 - this will create fast, efficient code. Unfortunately, with the release of PS2 Sony have stopped making them, but you can probably get a second hand kit from ebay or somewhere. You develop Yaroze programs in C on your PC - you can then burn them onto a CD. There is also a lot of interest groups and free code out there (NetYaroze license means you can never charge for your software). For the PS2 to play these CDs you will have to have it "chipped" which will invalidate your warranty (not something I recommend, but very popular I believe 8-).
Alternatively you can try YaBasic, Sony's "replacement" for Yaroze, which should come on the CD with your PS2. You can save YaBasic programs to memory card (so, small apps), and they will be slower (interpreted). YaBasic is a little simplistic - you will struggle to create anything impressive without extra tools (and a USB keyboard is essential). Like most people, I glanced at it once, then got onto playing DVDs and games, but I am sure others could support you here. PS2 magazine in the UK are currently running a series of YaBasic tutorials that can get you started though. I'll try and dig out some URLs for you.
With the emerging HD/modem for PS2, I believe Sony are releasing a Web Browser CD - which hopefully means a Java Virtual machine. You could investigate this option as it also opens up the wider Internet PC/Digital TV alternatives.
The next thing up is to get a PS2 professional developers' kit which you could only justify if you were seriously thinking of making a business out of this project, and could get financial support to see it through. It is a nice idea, so I wish you luck.
Good idea. But rather than a code, why not put air traffic control in charge of the door altogether?
Put an emergency alarm on every plane inside and outside the cockpit door. If the alarm on the pilot side goes off, the door could be remotely deadbolted, or if from the other side it could be unlocked. This will allow the pilot to leave the cockpit (say for a toilet break, or swap with a relief pilot) but stops them being coerced from opening the door upon hijack.
Of course, both sides will claim the other is the hijacker, but that is up to air traffic control to decide.
I would rather have my face scanned at the airport than get on a plane with hijackers, doomed to be killed during flight.
They are only potential hijackers, until they take over the plane. Face recognition can only be used to detect wanted criminals and people with suspected links to certain groups (which requires more extensive monitoring of the populace).
Using face recognition to trigger an extensive search is one thing, but detaining the person is another:
Would you use it to detain a known terrorist, wanted internationally for the death of 1000s of people, even if they are carrying no weapons onto the plane?
How about just a wanted criminal? or a terrorist who has finished their jail sentence? Or anyone with a strong link to a terrorist organisation, or even a suspected one? Do you detain people who have outstanding warrents in the current state, or speeding tickets?
If you just use face recognition to prioritise searches, people rely more on the machines than they should. Good security personnel identify potentials based on how they act on the day. It is based on reading body language, clothing, and expression. In the last 2 years I have flown over 150 times, and have been stopped only once. Every week I passed through security, but on this one occasion my flight was delayed by two hours. Clearly on this occasion I passed through security "too casually", even though I was not aware that I was acting in any way different. When people rely on machines they become lax in using their own judgement, which is far superior.
Once this is implemented it will not be used to stop terrorists, it will be used to monitor and police everyone. Once this is implemented in airports, it becomes a matter of time before it is implemented at every school, state border, liquor store, and above the front door of every safe-minded American citizen.
"Helmets must be removed before entering."
"Masks cannot be worn at any time."
"All Elvis impersonators will be arrested."
The comments about preventing the passengers from rushing the cockpit is silly.
For starters, how is anyone going to know?
Possibly nobody, though it should be obvious if the plane doesn't attempt safe cruising altitude.You need a regular passenger/cabin crew to notice the problem and a spare pilot on-board. Unlikely. However, I don't want to spend the last 15 minutes of my life banging on a metal door with a replacement pilot besides me.
A sealed door becomes the only weapon the terrorist needs, nothing needs to be smuggled in, but it guarantees safe continued control of the aircraft, you just have to figure how to get on the cockpit side. Otherwise, you need a group of terrorists with weapons in order to take and maintain control of the whole airplane. And we have good security measures that (when used) are designed to prevent this. Personally I prefer the odds of 300 passengers against 6 terrorists rather than a surprise attack by 1 pilot against 2 other cockpit crew.
Yes, you can't prevent a suicidal pilot, who heads straight for the ground. But a terrorist has a target, and reaching that target will take time. But by introducing a locked door, nobody can act on any suspicious activity.
What worries me is that the pilot will be unable to get help for any other emergency in the cockpit. It is not a case of the problems it prevents, but of the everyday problems it can introduce - The cure is worse than the disease.
These people have forever changed the way we deal with hijackers
True.
It is natural to propose new security measures to try to stop a repeat of this tragedy. But we must guard against introducing something just because it will give us a sense of confidence that something has been seen to be done. People will become upset when their false sense of security is revealed for what it really is, and they may prevent real security measures being put into place (look at e-books & DMCA, introducing something flawed can actually prevent further progress).
Sealing off the pilots is not an answer. You would have to:
To prevent it being forced open, the seal must be substantial, possibly armoured.
To prevent coercion, the seal cannot be opened by anyone (pilot included) until after the flight.
Once introduced, this prevents the passengers direct access to the controls in the cockpit.
But
To be effective it must be introduced into every large plane in the world, not just gradually, but now. Security during installation would have to be high (you wouldn't want a terrorist organisation installing false walls for you). Re-certification may be necessary (look at Concorde for how long the whole process can take). And lets not neglect the problem that there just isn't enough room in an aircraft to add a seal. For the mid-size McDonnell Douglas and Boeing craft, the entrance is directly behind the cockpit. Now, assuming you cannot make the cockpit smaller, you must make the entrance corridor narrower. You could possibly trim an inch off for a reasonable partition wall. But you take the risk that standard equipment such as wheelchairs, food trolleys, and that field trip for overeaters anonymous may no longer be able to fit through the remaining gap.
And then there's the blatant flaw
What if the hijacker starts off in the cockpit?
Last weeks hijackers trained as pilots and had experience in a flight simulator for a commercial plane. So what is to prevent them taking the next step to becoming a commercial pilot? I heard a rumour (must check), that on one of the planes the hijacker was actually the scheduled pilot. In this case, the seal will simply prevent the passengers from overpowering the hijacker.
And I'm not even touching on the everyday risks that introducing such a seal would bring, if the pilots became sick or there was a fire in the cockpit, for example (oops, extinguisher ran out, go and get a spare from the... oh). Mechanisms for taking control away from the pilot are no better. Any remote control or computer override are dangerous in any case, and would just become the favoured target instead.
Simply put, we cannot prevent all possibility of some nut getting control of a large aircraft and deliberately crashing it. Therefore we must focus on being able to identify a risk situation and also on timely response to prevent a catastrophe.
I suggest that Air traffic control processes should be improved to be able to recognise when a plane has deviated from it's flight plan immediately, and that fighters must be positioned to intercept any plane before it reaches a significant target. Flight routes may have to be adjusted to avoid overflying unneccesary cities, and military aircraft may have to be carefully located to be able to respond in time, but these are eminently do-able. Airports very near cities may require response aircraft on-site (now there is a good application for remotely controlled aircraft - high-G and ready to scramble at a moments notice).
On another note Another example of false security. I fly internationally twice a week. When I tried to fly out on Sunday, when I checked-in I was required to hand over my hand luggage. I was, of course, allowed to take any valuable or delicate items with me. They let me tip the whole contents of my hand luggage into their provided plastic carrier bag, without supervision. I then went through security and boarded the plane as normal. So there I was with all my valuables sloshing around in a carrier bag "for the sake of security", only to sit next to someone with all their luggage with them. The difference? They had checked in by telephone so avoided the jobsworth I dealt with (ignoring the fact that said same jobsworth was also processing boarding cards as I entered plane - so would have clearly seen the luggage as it was brought on). Any extra feeling of security evaporated immediately, and I was left thinking "Is this the amount of effort the've put into all their security measures?".
And that, in my opinion, is at heart the problem with ill-thought security measures. If you must introduce something, think it through, make sure it really does work, and apply it consistently. Otherwise, it is worse than if you had introduced nothing at all...
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone has so far said that the searches are reasonable, given the circumstances. Maybe they are, on paper. But out of the following, who would you trust:
1. An educated scientist who has been working for your company for years.
2. Some young security guard on minimum wage recently recruited through an agency to support your improved security.
To increase the level of security you need to increase security staff. But you are at risk of introducing an "undesirable" element - be it criminal or just sadistically minded.
More effective would be a security review of all employees, with background checks (if not already performed). Once done your greatest risks are third party (incl. new staff + security), and the "turning bad" of existing employees. Draconic security measures do not give a satisfactory return on the former, and have a detrimental (morale sapping, hate inducing) effect on the latter.
And, if you don't increase the staff, but increase their workload, then you are skimping on security elsewhere. Even if you are not deliberately reducing security elsewhere, over time "security fatigue" sets in due to overwork.
At the international airport I use, security fatigue set in on the third week after 9/11. Immediately after the bombing security was incredibly high, which continued for two weeks. On the third week security was non-existent: staff were no longer paying attention. My bag went through the scanner, but no-one looked at it, and my associate got through security without a valid ticket (accidentally). By the fourth week the airport had returned to more sustainable levels of security.
Oh, absolutely. Although a lot more of his life is filled up with his extending managerie (Watch out for that axe Eugene!).
Check him out on The Grunting Ox.
Why bother? If you generate electricity from propane to drive an electric engine, why don't you just pump the propane directly into a normal engine?
Over in the UK, we've absorbed a lot of US culture - we like our cars, even if they are not as big as in the US. But we are slowly catching on to the greenies in Europe and have introduced LPG (Congratulations Gordon Finlay, you're top of the search list, and informative - welcome to the Slashdot effect). You take any modern gasoline car, add a gas tank and some piping to the engine, and you can switch the car back and forth between LPG and gasoline at will. If your local gas station has LPG you can stick to LPG for all local trips, and only use gas when you run out.
This propane electricity generator could be a useful replacement for the battery in a fully LPG car - the spark is created by LPG in order to ignite the LPG in the engine. The perfect balance of Yin and, well, some more Yin I suppose.
Rather than a replacement for passwords, I consider this a complementary technology - you should always have the option of typing in the password, but use your thumbprint as a shortcut.
I would like to see a password manager that was enabled by your thumbprint. It would enter your passwords into your email application, encrypted files, favourite web pages etc. You only need to memorise one password, that you use if your thumb is gunked up.
I thought "rump dialling" was caused because they have the keypad lock on. The lock disables all they keys apart from "9-1-1". If there was no such thing as a keypad lock, they would just phone some random number. You would think a handy feature like, when keypad lock is on, the number is cleared whenever anything other than "9-1-1" is pressed.
As mentioned by a previous poster, mobile phones connect to a cell to carry a call, which can be used to give the emergency services an indication of where they are. But this could be a complementary technology. If each phone mast/receiver is a cell - they need more in the city because of obstructions and the number of users. So the smaller cells in the city can accurately position you, just where GPS is least effective.
My two penneth.
Linux for PS2
t ml
h tm l?file=pr041201
http://www.ps2linux.com/eng.html
On The Register - Note you can no longer notify sony of interest in a US version of PS2 Linux 8(
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/50/20653.h
YABasic on the PS2
http://www.yabasic.co.uk/
YABasic emulator for the PC:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32yabasic/
Internet Browser Press release
http://www.planetweb.com/news/releases/release.
As the PlayStation 2 is backwardly compatible, you could try the official NetYaroze development kit for PS1 - this will create fast, efficient code. Unfortunately, with the release of PS2 Sony have stopped making them, but you can probably get a second hand kit from ebay or somewhere. You develop Yaroze programs in C on your PC - you can then burn them onto a CD. There is also a lot of interest groups and free code out there (NetYaroze license means you can never charge for your software). For the PS2 to play these CDs you will have to have it "chipped" which will invalidate your warranty (not something I recommend, but very popular I believe 8-).
Alternatively you can try YaBasic, Sony's "replacement" for Yaroze, which should come on the CD with your PS2. You can save YaBasic programs to memory card (so, small apps), and they will be slower (interpreted). YaBasic is a little simplistic - you will struggle to create anything impressive without extra tools (and a USB keyboard is essential). Like most people, I glanced at it once, then got onto playing DVDs and games, but I am sure others could support you here. PS2 magazine in the UK are currently running a series of YaBasic tutorials that can get you started though. I'll try and dig out some URLs for you.
With the emerging HD/modem for PS2, I believe Sony are releasing a Web Browser CD - which hopefully means a Java Virtual machine. You could investigate this option as it also opens up the wider Internet PC/Digital TV alternatives.
The next thing up is to get a PS2 professional developers' kit which you could only justify if you were seriously thinking of making a business out of this project, and could get financial support to see it through. It is a nice idea, so I wish you luck.
Good idea. But rather than a code, why not put air traffic control in charge of the door altogether?
Put an emergency alarm on every plane inside and outside the cockpit door. If the alarm on the pilot side goes off, the door could be remotely deadbolted, or if from the other side it could be unlocked. This will allow the pilot to leave the cockpit (say for a toilet break, or swap with a relief pilot) but stops them being coerced from opening the door upon hijack.
Of course, both sides will claim the other is the hijacker, but that is up to air traffic control to decide.
I would rather have my face scanned at the airport than get on a plane with hijackers, doomed to be killed during flight.
They are only potential hijackers, until they take over the plane. Face recognition can only be used to detect wanted criminals and people with suspected links to certain groups (which requires more extensive monitoring of the populace).
Using face recognition to trigger an extensive search is one thing, but detaining the person is another:
Would you use it to detain a known terrorist, wanted internationally for the death of 1000s of people, even if they are carrying no weapons onto the plane?
How about just a wanted criminal? or a terrorist who has finished their jail sentence? Or anyone with a strong link to a terrorist organisation, or even a suspected one? Do you detain people who have outstanding warrents in the current state, or speeding tickets?
If you just use face recognition to prioritise searches, people rely more on the machines than they should. Good security personnel identify potentials based on how they act on the day. It is based on reading body language, clothing, and expression. In the last 2 years I have flown over 150 times, and have been stopped only once. Every week I passed through security, but on this one occasion my flight was delayed by two hours. Clearly on this occasion I passed through security "too casually", even though I was not aware that I was acting in any way different. When people rely on machines they become lax in using their own judgement, which is far superior.
Once this is implemented it will not be used to stop terrorists, it will be used to monitor and police everyone. Once this is implemented in airports, it becomes a matter of time before it is implemented at every school, state border, liquor store, and above the front door of every safe-minded American citizen.
"Helmets must be removed before entering."
"Masks cannot be worn at any time."
"All Elvis impersonators will be arrested."
Possibly nobody, though it should be obvious if the plane doesn't attempt safe cruising altitude.You need a regular passenger/cabin crew to notice the problem and a spare pilot on-board. Unlikely. However, I don't want to spend the last 15 minutes of my life banging on a metal door with a replacement pilot besides me.
A sealed door becomes the only weapon the terrorist needs, nothing needs to be smuggled in, but it guarantees safe continued control of the aircraft, you just have to figure how to get on the cockpit side. Otherwise, you need a group of terrorists with weapons in order to take and maintain control of the whole airplane. And we have good security measures that (when used) are designed to prevent this. Personally I prefer the odds of 300 passengers against 6 terrorists rather than a surprise attack by 1 pilot against 2 other cockpit crew.
Yes, you can't prevent a suicidal pilot, who heads straight for the ground. But a terrorist has a target, and reaching that target will take time. But by introducing a locked door, nobody can act on any suspicious activity.
What worries me is that the pilot will be unable to get help for any other emergency in the cockpit. It is not a case of the problems it prevents, but of the everyday problems it can introduce - The cure is worse than the disease.
True.
It is natural to propose new security measures to try to stop a repeat of this tragedy. But we must guard against introducing something just because it will give us a sense of confidence that something has been seen to be done. People will become upset when their false sense of security is revealed for what it really is, and they may prevent real security measures being put into place (look at e-books & DMCA, introducing something flawed can actually prevent further progress).
Sealing off the pilots is not an answer. You would have to:
To prevent it being forced open, the seal must be substantial, possibly armoured.
To prevent coercion, the seal cannot be opened by anyone (pilot included) until after the flight.
Once introduced, this prevents the passengers direct access to the controls in the cockpit.
But
To be effective it must be introduced into every large plane in the world, not just gradually, but now. Security during installation would have to be high (you wouldn't want a terrorist organisation installing false walls for you). Re-certification may be necessary (look at Concorde for how long the whole process can take). And lets not neglect the problem that there just isn't enough room in an aircraft to add a seal. For the mid-size McDonnell Douglas and Boeing craft, the entrance is directly behind the cockpit. Now, assuming you cannot make the cockpit smaller, you must make the entrance corridor narrower. You could possibly trim an inch off for a reasonable partition wall. But you take the risk that standard equipment such as wheelchairs, food trolleys, and that field trip for overeaters anonymous may no longer be able to fit through the remaining gap.
And then there's the blatant flaw
What if the hijacker starts off in the cockpit?
Last weeks hijackers trained as pilots and had experience in a flight simulator for a commercial plane. So what is to prevent them taking the next step to becoming a commercial pilot? I heard a rumour (must check), that on one of the planes the hijacker was actually the scheduled pilot. In this case, the seal will simply prevent the passengers from overpowering the hijacker.
And I'm not even touching on the everyday risks that introducing such a seal would bring, if the pilots became sick or there was a fire in the cockpit, for example (oops, extinguisher ran out, go and get a spare from the... oh). Mechanisms for taking control away from the pilot are no better. Any remote control or computer override are dangerous in any case, and would just become the favoured target instead.
Simply put, we cannot prevent all possibility of some nut getting control of a large aircraft and deliberately crashing it. Therefore we must focus on being able to identify a risk situation and also on timely response to prevent a catastrophe.
I suggest that Air traffic control processes should be improved to be able to recognise when a plane has deviated from it's flight plan immediately, and that fighters must be positioned to intercept any plane before it reaches a significant target. Flight routes may have to be adjusted to avoid overflying unneccesary cities, and military aircraft may have to be carefully located to be able to respond in time, but these are eminently do-able. Airports very near cities may require response aircraft on-site (now there is a good application for remotely controlled aircraft - high-G and ready to scramble at a moments notice).
On another note
Another example of false security. I fly internationally twice a week. When I tried to fly out on Sunday, when I checked-in I was required to hand over my hand luggage. I was, of course, allowed to take any valuable or delicate items with me. They let me tip the whole contents of my hand luggage into their provided plastic carrier bag, without supervision. I then went through security and boarded the plane as normal. So there I was with all my valuables sloshing around in a carrier bag "for the sake of security", only to sit next to someone with all their luggage with them. The difference? They had checked in by telephone so avoided the jobsworth I dealt with (ignoring the fact that said same jobsworth was also processing boarding cards as I entered plane - so would have clearly seen the luggage as it was brought on). Any extra feeling of security evaporated immediately, and I was left thinking "Is this the amount of effort the've put into all their security measures?".
And that, in my opinion, is at heart the problem with ill-thought security measures. If you must introduce something, think it through, make sure it really does work, and apply it consistently. Otherwise, it is worse than if you had introduced nothing at all...