In his case nothing, their recourse is to collect the fare difference.
They didn't lose the "fare difference". They got paid what they asked for for the services rendered, and they saved the cost of having to provide the last leg. Plus they could sell the seat to someone else, if they had standbys for that flight.
That's not the point. He violated the contract.
Of COURSE the fact that there were no damages to the airline is the point. What are you suing for when you came out ahead on the deal? What are you trying to recover when there are no damages?
You can argue that the airline was not harmed, but in their viewpoint he violated the contract and thus owes them money.
Sigh. Just violating a contract doesn't create damages. When the "damaged party" actually makes money off the breach, they have nothing to sue for.
As for putting another passenger in that seat, the counter is they do not know it is available until a few hours or possibly less before the flight, and thus tah chance of a revenue generating pax is slim.
Passengers on the standby list are on standby for any late openings, even if they occur just a few minutes prior to departure. "A few hours" is plenty of time to get a standby in that seat.
If the standby list is empty, then yes, the seat will be empty. They've still lost nothing when that happens. They were already paid for that seat. They save the cost of the fuel they didn't burn carrying him. They saved the cost of the fuel to carry his baggage. They saved the cost of any complimentary food or beverages he would have consumed. It's a win for both parties.
There's nothing to sue over.
Try this experiment: call up a caterer and sign a contract for him to cater a party for you. Pay the guy. Just for fun, let's say he's giving you a big discount because he likes you. Then call him up the day before the party (or even an hour before) and cancel. Tell me, specifically, how the caterer has suffered any losses. He's already been paid for the service he doesn't have to provide. He can tell the people he was going to use they can stay home and he saves on their wages. He doesn't have to drive to the party, he saves on gas. He throws the food in the garbage, or donates it to a homeless shelter for a tax writeoff. He's not out the cost of the food, he's already been paid for it. It's not really his food anymore anyway.
Suing just for fun is an abuse of the legal system. Suing to recover damages when there are none is an abuse of the legal system.
I suppose that if they could count the number of people jumping off early
They can.
....otherwise you'd never see an empty seat.
You will see empty seats if there aren't enough people to fill the plane. But if someone skips their flight, they can trivially count the number on board and which seats are empty and fill them from the standby list, if there are any. That's how they sell the seat to someone else. If there's nobody on the standby list to sell it to, then it goes empty, but they've already been paid once for the seat, so they lose nothing when it is empty.
We're talking about wide-scale disasters like forest fires where the current population is running for their lives.
And trying to call other people using fewer towers while doing this "running". You don't think it is reality that there will be damage to towers and less service? You don't think it is reality that people who are trying to evacuate are also trying to call other people to arrange transport, find them so they can make sure they get out too, and calling people outside the area to let them know what is going on?
Don't know about your planet, but humans on Earth do that kind of stuff, even during a disaster. Especially during a disaster.
Why would Verizon need to talk to me directly?
Who said they did?
If they were actually having bandwidth issues, don't you think they would have gone to the news with that for their defense?
"Go[ing] to the news" works great -- after everything is over. Simply cutting load is what happens when it needs to happen. There is an existing program which handles this shedding of load, which would be prohibited by the Texas law. The program is federal law, this is state law. Guess which one will take precedence? Guess which one makes the other moot and invalid?
Finally, and this is the single most important point that you seem to be going out of your way to ignore, is that Verizon tried to charge them more money for the privilege of not getting throttled.
And if you go past your limit, you do. During a disaster, it can happen even if you haven't gone past your limit. This proposed law is patently absurd because it will only force the problem to be worse, not better. And it flies in the face of existing national, federal programs that deal with first responder access to data.
So maybe you should spend less time accusing other people of being stupid
Apparently you'd rather play victim instead of understanding the difference between calling ideas stupid and calling people stupid. We're talking about an idea of a law being stupid. I could have called the author stupid but did not. He's probably not stupid, just ignorant. And his ignorance means he wrote a stupid law. And that law happens to be the subject of this discussion, not some specific action by Verizon in the past. We're looking at a bigger picture here. Can you keep up?
So yes, i checked bags abroad, got my bags when arrived in my country, and could just stay there without using the final flight i booked.
I think the point is pretty clear. If you are going to skip a flight, you won't do it with checked bags for that flight. When you checked in for your final flight you checked bags. If you were skipping that flight, you wouldn't have been stupid enough to have checked your bags for it, would you? So then, you wouldn't have any checked bags on the flight you were skipping, now would you?
The contract of carriage prohibits hidden cities and lets the airline cancel a return, for example.
The leg the guy skipped was the final leg of his return trip. What will they cancel?
But yes, airlines will cancel the remainder of your flight if you miss even one leg AND THEY KNOW WHY. I was ten minutes late getting to the airport due to weather conditions for a three-leg flight across country. I talked at length to the gate agent FOR THE AIRLINE. She was on the computer and found a different flight from a partner airline that got me to the second airport on my trip where I could catch the second leg. She pointed me down the counter to the other airline. In fact, as I recall, she accompanied me to explain the problem to the other agent.
Long short: I got the flight, caught up with the rest of my reservation. I spent a week as planned, and then tried to check in for my return. "What return?" They had cancelled my return because I missed the first leg (not the last leg) of my outbound flight.
To their credit, the agent on the phone realized how stupid this situation was and got me back on my original flights home. But it still happened.
What that means is not to do this kind of skipping with anything but the last leg of your trip. Which is what the guy being sued did. He let them put another pax in his empty seat, at full price, and now they're suing because they were somehow damaged.
So they spend time and money looking for the passenger who has departed the airport.
They spend money on things that cost them nothing, and they spend time that they would normally wait (before closing the door at the assigned time) waiting.
Airlines don't hold up a full airplane for a missing passenger anymore. Back in the Good Old Days they might have, but now that every delayed departure is counted against their "on time" score and can cost them a departure reservation, they don't.
He entered into a contract with an airline which he broke, part of the contract was that the airline picks up all the costs involved with his transportation.
They certainly did not. That's just ridiculous. HE paid for his tickets, the airline didn't "pick up" anything. Every cost was passed on to him.
These costs now include fees from an airport where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, possibly even fees from a country where the passenger was not scheduled to depart
Which the PASSENGER paid when he bought the ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin. And by the way, Frankfurt and Berlin are in the same country, so pretending that the airline "picked up" a country departure fee that they weren't expecting is just ridiculous.
If ANYTHING, the airline paid the fees for his arrival in Oslo, which the PASSENGER paid them for.
costs and delays associated with trying to find their wayward passenger as they had an obligation to carry them to their final ticketed destination
The PA system in Frankfurt is free of charge (at least on a per-announcement basis), so having to make a couple of PA announcements telling "Mr. Johnson, your flight is ready to depart, please come to gate 34 immediately" costs them nothing. The person doing the announcement is paid to be there already, he costs nothing extra.
If Mr. Johnson (or whatever his name is) didn't show up at the gate by the time the door is scheduled to close, the door closes.
He had a contract with the airline, he was obligated to travel to his final ticketed destination as part of that contract. So he broke his contract.
Yep. Now show the actual damages to the airline from him breaking that contract. He paid the money they charged him, they provided the service he needed. They lost nothing by him skipping the last leg. They "picked up" nothing.
Now look up pricing of Brussels - NYC - Brussels and then NYC - Brussels - NYC.
Obviously on the same flights.
Obviously NOT the same flights. You can't fly from B to N to B on the same flights you fly N to B to N. ONE LEG might overlap and be the same flight, like both N to B legs. But the other two legs must be different flights -- one occurs before the N to B, one occurs after.
You might have meant "the same airplane", and yes, if it is a bouncy-bouncy flight that goes from B to N to B to N to B... over and over, it is probably the same airplane.
They might have the same flight NUMBERS, but then in one case you'll be flying on one number twice and one once. The opposite will have two flights on the second number and one on the first, so still, not the same flights.
They probably cannot be at the same time of day, either. Unless that airline flies B to N with one airplane while another is running N to B, you will be flying at different times of day.
But given that they cannot be the same flights, then there is no reason to expect the tickets to cost identically the same, given that one flight may have all the cheap seats sold already and the others don't.
So you'll have all your bags and could walk right outside instead of going to the other gate.
Which means your bag came out of the checked system and you didn't put it back in. That's what point A is referring to. Someone who skips the last leg of a flight won't be doing it when they have checked bags on that flight.
Is it really? Tell us how many times that's occurred.
Most people don't know it is happening, so not being able to say "37 times out of 100 flights" doesn't prove you right. It happens enough, however, to prove you wrong. I've been on flights that have been delayed because someone who had checked a bag didn't get on board.
It's not like they have to search through all the bags. They scan each bag as it goes up the belt and they know where in the compartment it got loaded. They also know how many bags they have to find. It's not rocket science, it's called "logistics".
You meet up with your bags at the destination even though they went on a different plane.
The difference is whether your failure to be on the airplane was YOUR fault or the fault of the airline. If it is YOUR fault, your bags get pulled. If it is THEIR fault, they might not pull them.
The difference is that if it is THEIR fault then it isn't something you planned, and so there is minimal chance you are trying to get a bomb-laden bag on a flight you aren't on yourself. If YOU caused the problem, then they assume YOU had a reason to have an unaccompanied bag on that flight, and they pull it to be safe.
But, of course, only someone stupid would skip the last leg of a flight while having checked bags. They know the bags will go somewhere they aren't, and they'll have to expend time and effort to get them back. You realize, don't you, that the airline isn't going to pay for dealing with a "lost bag" when the bag went exactly where it was supposed to go at exactly the expected time?
Yes, but the airlines hate that they don't know you're getting of and are then unable to resell your empty seat.
Most connecting flights require EVERYONE to get off and go get on a different aircraft. That's the point of the hub system. Take everyone to a central location and then they self-sort into gates taking them someplace else. They know you got off because EVERYONE gets off. They know you didn't get on the connecting flight because they know who gets on their flights.
The ONLY time they won't know YOU got off is when the flight is actually continuing and continuing passengers don't have to get off. But then, they may not know YOU got off, but when they count the pax they'll figure out SOMEONE got off, and they'll see which seat is empty. And then they'll load a standby pax into it.
Even when you are continuing on the same hardware, they make you get off. I've flown return trips where I was riding back on the exact same airplane, and every time I've had to get off and then get back on.
The airlines aren't stupid. They know how to put people in seats. They have computers to help them.
The airlines are simply whining because they can't now double charge by getting someone else into the empty seats.
Of course they can. The can pull from the standby list (if there is one; if there isn't the flight probably wasn't full to begin with) and charge THOSE people for getting from A to B.
...just to blow it on fuel they didn't need for the flight.
If they buy fuel they didn't need for the flight because they based the fuel load on projected burn, then a lighter plane will burn less (which you have just admitted -- they didn't need the fuel). Where you are being ignorant is in the assumption that "fuel they didn't need for the flight" magically disappears at the end of each flight and is thus wasted.
Airplanes have gas tanks, and any fuel they don't burn during the flight remains in the tanks and means they have to buy less for the next flight.
Now, the ONLY cost that having fuel they didn't need for this flight is the cost of carrying it from A to B. That cost is less than the price of the fuel, and less than the money they got for the empty seat. They essentially save the cost of having to have bought that fuel (because they don't have to buy any to replace it).
I think law makers need to sit down with telcoms and the two need to work out why and when throttling is appropriate.
They already have, at the national level. This is not a state-level regulatory function AT ALL. Not only is the proposed Texas law stupid on its face, it is trying to regulate a national process.
A lot of the "data connections" for fire responders are personally-owned devices, since a lot of the response (outside urban areas) is by volunteer firemen.
It is truly depressing that we're on slashdot, yet apparently not a single person commenting on this story understands that INTERNET IS AN UNLIMITED RESOURCE.
That has got to be the absolute stupidest thing I've seen on/. in a long time. The issue is not "INTERNET" (all caps?), it is wireless connectivity, and anyone who has been at a large public event before wireless providers started putting in COWs (cellular on wheels) knows that wireless is NOT an unlimited resource.
The only restriction is the total bandwidth available at a given time, and at no point has Verizon complained that this is an issue.
Really? It is so well known a problem that providers do bring in COWs when events are pre-planned, and AT&T (as the provider for FirstNet) has plans in place to drop COWs and even airborne cellular systems into disaster areas to deal with the demands of just the first responders.
No, I guess Verizon hasn't discussed any of this with YOU, so that means they've never even thought about it.
The proposed law is the second stupidest thing I've seen in a long time, because it would prohibit FirstNet. The argument that it would not be degrading anyone's service is the third stupidest thing, since preventing someone from accessing the wireless network altogether is pretty much "degrading service" at 100%.
The idea of "government plans" that get priority is hardly new. It's called "FirstNet" and it exists today. There's also a government "plan" that gives priority over long distance services once a connection to the local network has been made.
Horrible and stupid idea
1) How are 'government' plans identified?
Trivially? It's a flag in the database.
2) What if a government-plan device is doing non-essential traffic
Impossible to determine; therefore assume it is not.
3) What about many other groups and private citizens who are doing 'emergency' work, like calling in a heart attack or fire but are not on the government plans?
What happens to all the people who are trying to deal with known, existing emergency issues when Bob calls Uncle Billy to tell him "he's ok, the disaster hasn't hurt him, and by the way what about those Boston Celtics -- aren't they doing great?" The resource is limited in times of emergency, it is better to allocate known responders the capacity so the known responders can deal with known emergencies. Lots better than winding up with an unusable system for everyone.
4) What is to prevent government from downgrading or blocking all non-government plan devices to quell, interfere, or isolate the public or protesters or anybody the government doesn't like?
They can't block all "non-government plan devices", only the ones operating on Band 14.
You are comparing internet packets with emergency services.
No, I am not. I am comparing internet with internet. The PURPOSE of the prioritization is to provide INTERNET to emergency service providers -- which is still prioritization. It's pointing out that the statement about the greatest good to the consumer and provider is very very subjective, and your concept of what should be allowed can be very different from what others believe.
If you upgrade to 1gbps and we run the same routes to the same content, then yes, my 100mpbs slows down.
Not necessarily. It might, if the network is not sufficient to handle 1Gbps. That problem will also slow you down if there are 11 people just like you all trying to get to the same source over the limited route.
It won't slow you down if the route that is traversed has enough for both.
Since the slowdown has nothing to do with prioritization, it is not a NN issue.
You can bet they don't define it as "the greatest overall good for consumers and providers".
Of course they will. It's just that your idea of what you think is "the greatest good" may not be the best, right, or even a good definition.
Here's an example. Have you heard of FirstNet? It's a modified LTE network (which is supposed to be implemented in a new RF band -- 14 -- but AT&T is layering on existing systems) that allows access control before the LTE sign-on. That means that a heavily congested system will not even let your phone connect. You don't even consume the normal connection handshaking, much less get ISP service. It prioritizes first responder use. Prioritization. And ultimate throttling -- you get nothing, they get it all.
So, for example, a bomb goes off at a large sporting event. All the civilians pull out their phones to call home and tell Mom they're ok. In the meantime, first responders want to coordinate the response, and deal with data regarding the event. In the past, the cell system would clog up with people calling home. FirstNet is supposed to mean that first responders get the system and you get nothing.
Someone decided that was in "the public good", even if it isn't "the greatest overall good for consumers."
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works.
Uhhh, what?
If I upgrade from a 100Mbps service to a gigabit, does that mean your 100Mbps service slows down? No.
But "prioritization" is not a case of faster or slower. It's a case of whose packets get routed first. If the network has enough capacity then it doesn't matter if my packets get priority over yours, they're both getting through without delay.
Or, in other words, QoS has been part of the Internet forever.
So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Uhhh, no. Throttling is applying an artificial limitation on bandwidth. You can get 100Mbps on your line all day even if I get priority on the backbone. The "throttling" is part of your service level. Or do you expect that NN means that you get gigabit throughput to your home because one part of the network somewhere is gigabit? You do realize that the data source that can pump out data at a gigabit rate is throttled by the network when it gets to your 100Mbps connection, right?
It's merely a system in which certain services will not be counted against your monthly data allowance
What's more important to know is that it does NOT restrict the rights of anyone to use whatever data source they wish, despite the oft-repeated claim in the paper. You are free to stream non-zero-rated data all you want. You get the same amount of non-zero-rated data for the same price whether you use any zero-rated data or none.
This policing is showing a remarkable misunderstanding of depression and mental illness.
But it shows a remarkable understanding of how they'll look to a jury when the parents sue. Big bad company hurt innocent kid, did nothing to prevent it from happening to another kid.
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In his case nothing, their recourse is to collect the fare difference.
They didn't lose the "fare difference". They got paid what they asked for for the services rendered, and they saved the cost of having to provide the last leg. Plus they could sell the seat to someone else, if they had standbys for that flight.
That's not the point. He violated the contract.
Of COURSE the fact that there were no damages to the airline is the point. What are you suing for when you came out ahead on the deal? What are you trying to recover when there are no damages?
You can argue that the airline was not harmed, but in their viewpoint he violated the contract and thus owes them money.
Sigh. Just violating a contract doesn't create damages. When the "damaged party" actually makes money off the breach, they have nothing to sue for.
As for putting another passenger in that seat, the counter is they do not know it is available until a few hours or possibly less before the flight, and thus tah chance of a revenue generating pax is slim.
Passengers on the standby list are on standby for any late openings, even if they occur just a few minutes prior to departure. "A few hours" is plenty of time to get a standby in that seat.
If the standby list is empty, then yes, the seat will be empty. They've still lost nothing when that happens. They were already paid for that seat. They save the cost of the fuel they didn't burn carrying him. They saved the cost of the fuel to carry his baggage. They saved the cost of any complimentary food or beverages he would have consumed. It's a win for both parties.
There's nothing to sue over.
Try this experiment: call up a caterer and sign a contract for him to cater a party for you. Pay the guy. Just for fun, let's say he's giving you a big discount because he likes you. Then call him up the day before the party (or even an hour before) and cancel. Tell me, specifically, how the caterer has suffered any losses. He's already been paid for the service he doesn't have to provide. He can tell the people he was going to use they can stay home and he saves on their wages. He doesn't have to drive to the party, he saves on gas. He throws the food in the garbage, or donates it to a homeless shelter for a tax writeoff. He's not out the cost of the food, he's already been paid for it. It's not really his food anymore anyway.
Suing just for fun is an abuse of the legal system. Suing to recover damages when there are none is an abuse of the legal system.
I suppose that if they could count the number of people jumping off early
They can.
....otherwise you'd never see an empty seat.
You will see empty seats if there aren't enough people to fill the plane. But if someone skips their flight, they can trivially count the number on board and which seats are empty and fill them from the standby list, if there are any. That's how they sell the seat to someone else. If there's nobody on the standby list to sell it to, then it goes empty, but they've already been paid once for the seat, so they lose nothing when it is empty.
We're talking about wide-scale disasters like forest fires where the current population is running for their lives.
And trying to call other people using fewer towers while doing this "running". You don't think it is reality that there will be damage to towers and less service? You don't think it is reality that people who are trying to evacuate are also trying to call other people to arrange transport, find them so they can make sure they get out too, and calling people outside the area to let them know what is going on?
Don't know about your planet, but humans on Earth do that kind of stuff, even during a disaster. Especially during a disaster.
Why would Verizon need to talk to me directly?
Who said they did?
If they were actually having bandwidth issues, don't you think they would have gone to the news with that for their defense?
"Go[ing] to the news" works great -- after everything is over. Simply cutting load is what happens when it needs to happen. There is an existing program which handles this shedding of load, which would be prohibited by the Texas law. The program is federal law, this is state law. Guess which one will take precedence? Guess which one makes the other moot and invalid?
Finally, and this is the single most important point that you seem to be going out of your way to ignore, is that Verizon tried to charge them more money for the privilege of not getting throttled.
And if you go past your limit, you do. During a disaster, it can happen even if you haven't gone past your limit. This proposed law is patently absurd because it will only force the problem to be worse, not better. And it flies in the face of existing national, federal programs that deal with first responder access to data.
So maybe you should spend less time accusing other people of being stupid
Apparently you'd rather play victim instead of understanding the difference between calling ideas stupid and calling people stupid. We're talking about an idea of a law being stupid. I could have called the author stupid but did not. He's probably not stupid, just ignorant. And his ignorance means he wrote a stupid law. And that law happens to be the subject of this discussion, not some specific action by Verizon in the past. We're looking at a bigger picture here. Can you keep up?
So yes, i checked bags abroad, got my bags when arrived in my country, and could just stay there without using the final flight i booked.
I think the point is pretty clear. If you are going to skip a flight, you won't do it with checked bags for that flight. When you checked in for your final flight you checked bags. If you were skipping that flight, you wouldn't have been stupid enough to have checked your bags for it, would you? So then, you wouldn't have any checked bags on the flight you were skipping, now would you?
The contract of carriage prohibits hidden cities and lets the airline cancel a return, for example.
The leg the guy skipped was the final leg of his return trip. What will they cancel?
But yes, airlines will cancel the remainder of your flight if you miss even one leg AND THEY KNOW WHY. I was ten minutes late getting to the airport due to weather conditions for a three-leg flight across country. I talked at length to the gate agent FOR THE AIRLINE. She was on the computer and found a different flight from a partner airline that got me to the second airport on my trip where I could catch the second leg. She pointed me down the counter to the other airline. In fact, as I recall, she accompanied me to explain the problem to the other agent.
Long short: I got the flight, caught up with the rest of my reservation. I spent a week as planned, and then tried to check in for my return. "What return?" They had cancelled my return because I missed the first leg (not the last leg) of my outbound flight.
To their credit, the agent on the phone realized how stupid this situation was and got me back on my original flights home. But it still happened.
What that means is not to do this kind of skipping with anything but the last leg of your trip. Which is what the guy being sued did. He let them put another pax in his empty seat, at full price, and now they're suing because they were somehow damaged.
So they spend time and money looking for the passenger who has departed the airport.
They spend money on things that cost them nothing, and they spend time that they would normally wait (before closing the door at the assigned time) waiting.
Airlines don't hold up a full airplane for a missing passenger anymore. Back in the Good Old Days they might have, but now that every delayed departure is counted against their "on time" score and can cost them a departure reservation, they don't.
He entered into a contract with an airline which he broke, part of the contract was that the airline picks up all the costs involved with his transportation.
They certainly did not. That's just ridiculous. HE paid for his tickets, the airline didn't "pick up" anything. Every cost was passed on to him.
These costs now include fees from an airport where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, possibly even fees from a country where the passenger was not scheduled to depart
Which the PASSENGER paid when he bought the ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin. And by the way, Frankfurt and Berlin are in the same country, so pretending that the airline "picked up" a country departure fee that they weren't expecting is just ridiculous.
If ANYTHING, the airline paid the fees for his arrival in Oslo, which the PASSENGER paid them for.
costs and delays associated with trying to find their wayward passenger as they had an obligation to carry them to their final ticketed destination
The PA system in Frankfurt is free of charge (at least on a per-announcement basis), so having to make a couple of PA announcements telling "Mr. Johnson, your flight is ready to depart, please come to gate 34 immediately" costs them nothing. The person doing the announcement is paid to be there already, he costs nothing extra.
If Mr. Johnson (or whatever his name is) didn't show up at the gate by the time the door is scheduled to close, the door closes.
He had a contract with the airline, he was obligated to travel to his final ticketed destination as part of that contract. So he broke his contract.
Yep. Now show the actual damages to the airline from him breaking that contract. He paid the money they charged him, they provided the service he needed. They lost nothing by him skipping the last leg. They "picked up" nothing.
Now look up pricing of Brussels - NYC - Brussels and then NYC - Brussels - NYC. Obviously on the same flights.
Obviously NOT the same flights. You can't fly from B to N to B on the same flights you fly N to B to N. ONE LEG might overlap and be the same flight, like both N to B legs. But the other two legs must be different flights -- one occurs before the N to B, one occurs after.
You might have meant "the same airplane", and yes, if it is a bouncy-bouncy flight that goes from B to N to B to N to B ... over and over, it is probably the same airplane.
They might have the same flight NUMBERS, but then in one case you'll be flying on one number twice and one once. The opposite will have two flights on the second number and one on the first, so still, not the same flights.
They probably cannot be at the same time of day, either. Unless that airline flies B to N with one airplane while another is running N to B, you will be flying at different times of day.
But given that they cannot be the same flights, then there is no reason to expect the tickets to cost identically the same, given that one flight may have all the cheap seats sold already and the others don't.
So you'll have all your bags and could walk right outside instead of going to the other gate.
Which means your bag came out of the checked system and you didn't put it back in. That's what point A is referring to. Someone who skips the last leg of a flight won't be doing it when they have checked bags on that flight.
Is it really? Tell us how many times that's occurred.
Most people don't know it is happening, so not being able to say "37 times out of 100 flights" doesn't prove you right. It happens enough, however, to prove you wrong. I've been on flights that have been delayed because someone who had checked a bag didn't get on board.
It's not like they have to search through all the bags. They scan each bag as it goes up the belt and they know where in the compartment it got loaded. They also know how many bags they have to find. It's not rocket science, it's called "logistics".
You meet up with your bags at the destination even though they went on a different plane.
The difference is whether your failure to be on the airplane was YOUR fault or the fault of the airline. If it is YOUR fault, your bags get pulled. If it is THEIR fault, they might not pull them.
The difference is that if it is THEIR fault then it isn't something you planned, and so there is minimal chance you are trying to get a bomb-laden bag on a flight you aren't on yourself. If YOU caused the problem, then they assume YOU had a reason to have an unaccompanied bag on that flight, and they pull it to be safe.
But, of course, only someone stupid would skip the last leg of a flight while having checked bags. They know the bags will go somewhere they aren't, and they'll have to expend time and effort to get them back. You realize, don't you, that the airline isn't going to pay for dealing with a "lost bag" when the bag went exactly where it was supposed to go at exactly the expected time?
Yes, but the airlines hate that they don't know you're getting of and are then unable to resell your empty seat.
Most connecting flights require EVERYONE to get off and go get on a different aircraft. That's the point of the hub system. Take everyone to a central location and then they self-sort into gates taking them someplace else. They know you got off because EVERYONE gets off. They know you didn't get on the connecting flight because they know who gets on their flights.
The ONLY time they won't know YOU got off is when the flight is actually continuing and continuing passengers don't have to get off. But then, they may not know YOU got off, but when they count the pax they'll figure out SOMEONE got off, and they'll see which seat is empty. And then they'll load a standby pax into it.
Even when you are continuing on the same hardware, they make you get off. I've flown return trips where I was riding back on the exact same airplane, and every time I've had to get off and then get back on.
The airlines aren't stupid. They know how to put people in seats. They have computers to help them.
The airlines are simply whining because they can't now double charge by getting someone else into the empty seats.
Of course they can. The can pull from the standby list (if there is one; if there isn't the flight probably wasn't full to begin with) and charge THOSE people for getting from A to B.
...just to blow it on fuel they didn't need for the flight.
If they buy fuel they didn't need for the flight because they based the fuel load on projected burn, then a lighter plane will burn less (which you have just admitted -- they didn't need the fuel). Where you are being ignorant is in the assumption that "fuel they didn't need for the flight" magically disappears at the end of each flight and is thus wasted.
Airplanes have gas tanks, and any fuel they don't burn during the flight remains in the tanks and means they have to buy less for the next flight.
Now, the ONLY cost that having fuel they didn't need for this flight is the cost of carrying it from A to B. That cost is less than the price of the fuel, and less than the money they got for the empty seat. They essentially save the cost of having to have bought that fuel (because they don't have to buy any to replace it).
I think law makers need to sit down with telcoms and the two need to work out why and when throttling is appropriate.
They already have, at the national level. This is not a state-level regulatory function AT ALL. Not only is the proposed Texas law stupid on its face, it is trying to regulate a national process.
(i.e. the data connections in firetrucks, etc.)
A lot of the "data connections" for fire responders are personally-owned devices, since a lot of the response (outside urban areas) is by volunteer firemen.
It seems emergencies are exactly the sort of thing FirstNet is designed for!
FTFY.
It is truly depressing that we're on slashdot, yet apparently not a single person commenting on this story understands that INTERNET IS AN UNLIMITED RESOURCE.
That has got to be the absolute stupidest thing I've seen on /. in a long time. The issue is not "INTERNET" (all caps?), it is wireless connectivity, and anyone who has been at a large public event before wireless providers started putting in COWs (cellular on wheels) knows that wireless is NOT an unlimited resource.
The only restriction is the total bandwidth available at a given time, and at no point has Verizon complained that this is an issue.
Really? It is so well known a problem that providers do bring in COWs when events are pre-planned, and AT&T (as the provider for FirstNet) has plans in place to drop COWs and even airborne cellular systems into disaster areas to deal with the demands of just the first responders.
No, I guess Verizon hasn't discussed any of this with YOU, so that means they've never even thought about it.
The proposed law is the second stupidest thing I've seen in a long time, because it would prohibit FirstNet. The argument that it would not be degrading anyone's service is the third stupidest thing, since preventing someone from accessing the wireless network altogether is pretty much "degrading service" at 100%.
Horrible and stupid idea 1) How are 'government' plans identified?
Trivially? It's a flag in the database.
2) What if a government-plan device is doing non-essential traffic
Impossible to determine; therefore assume it is not.
3) What about many other groups and private citizens who are doing 'emergency' work, like calling in a heart attack or fire but are not on the government plans?
What happens to all the people who are trying to deal with known, existing emergency issues when Bob calls Uncle Billy to tell him "he's ok, the disaster hasn't hurt him, and by the way what about those Boston Celtics -- aren't they doing great?" The resource is limited in times of emergency, it is better to allocate known responders the capacity so the known responders can deal with known emergencies. Lots better than winding up with an unusable system for everyone.
4) What is to prevent government from downgrading or blocking all non-government plan devices to quell, interfere, or isolate the public or protesters or anybody the government doesn't like?
They can't block all "non-government plan devices", only the ones operating on Band 14.
I can hear Q's narration in my head: "Now pay attention, 007.
I think Q always called him "Picard". 7 (of nine) and Q never met, AFAIK.
You are comparing internet packets with emergency services.
No, I am not. I am comparing internet with internet. The PURPOSE of the prioritization is to provide INTERNET to emergency service providers -- which is still prioritization. It's pointing out that the statement about the greatest good to the consumer and provider is very very subjective, and your concept of what should be allowed can be very different from what others believe.
If you upgrade to 1gbps and we run the same routes to the same content, then yes, my 100mpbs slows down.
Not necessarily. It might, if the network is not sufficient to handle 1Gbps. That problem will also slow you down if there are 11 people just like you all trying to get to the same source over the limited route.
It won't slow you down if the route that is traversed has enough for both.
Since the slowdown has nothing to do with prioritization, it is not a NN issue.
You can bet they don't define it as "the greatest overall good for consumers and providers".
Of course they will. It's just that your idea of what you think is "the greatest good" may not be the best, right, or even a good definition.
Here's an example. Have you heard of FirstNet? It's a modified LTE network (which is supposed to be implemented in a new RF band -- 14 -- but AT&T is layering on existing systems) that allows access control before the LTE sign-on. That means that a heavily congested system will not even let your phone connect. You don't even consume the normal connection handshaking, much less get ISP service. It prioritizes first responder use. Prioritization. And ultimate throttling -- you get nothing, they get it all.
So, for example, a bomb goes off at a large sporting event. All the civilians pull out their phones to call home and tell Mom they're ok. In the meantime, first responders want to coordinate the response, and deal with data regarding the event. In the past, the cell system would clog up with people calling home. FirstNet is supposed to mean that first responders get the system and you get nothing.
Someone decided that was in "the public good", even if it isn't "the greatest overall good for consumers."
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works.
Uhhh, what?
If I upgrade from a 100Mbps service to a gigabit, does that mean your 100Mbps service slows down? No.
But "prioritization" is not a case of faster or slower. It's a case of whose packets get routed first. If the network has enough capacity then it doesn't matter if my packets get priority over yours, they're both getting through without delay.
Or, in other words, QoS has been part of the Internet forever.
So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Uhhh, no. Throttling is applying an artificial limitation on bandwidth. You can get 100Mbps on your line all day even if I get priority on the backbone. The "throttling" is part of your service level. Or do you expect that NN means that you get gigabit throughput to your home because one part of the network somewhere is gigabit? You do realize that the data source that can pump out data at a gigabit rate is throttled by the network when it gets to your 100Mbps connection, right?
It's merely a system in which certain services will not be counted against your monthly data allowance
What's more important to know is that it does NOT restrict the rights of anyone to use whatever data source they wish, despite the oft-repeated claim in the paper. You are free to stream non-zero-rated data all you want. You get the same amount of non-zero-rated data for the same price whether you use any zero-rated data or none.
This policing is showing a remarkable misunderstanding of depression and mental illness.
But it shows a remarkable understanding of how they'll look to a jury when the parents sue. Big bad company hurt innocent kid, did nothing to prevent it from happening to another kid.