The base assumption that everyone could be Tiger Woods if only their dads were golf instructors is such a load of twaddle.
And yet it explains the phenomena of Drew Barrymore, Tori Spelling, Miley Cyrus, Emelio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and a host of other "famous" actors whose names you know only because their parents were famous actors or producers. I would have included Jamie Lee Curtis in that list, but her performance in A Fish Called Wanda was pretty good so maybe she has some innate skill.
In today's world where we're not restricted by geographical boundaries and genes are free-flowing around the world,
That's a very privileged and first-worldish view of the planet. Most of the planet still has huge restrictions on the free-flow of genes, and much of it is based on the economics of travel.
The OP blatantly said that it was false that Snowden was in Russia because of the US.
No, he said it was false that he's in Russia ONLY because of the US. If you leave out critical words you change the meaning of sentences. The OP, in fact, emphasized the problem with the word "only", so it was pretty hard to miss it. Congratulations, you did.
He was temporarily stuck at the airport because the US revoked his passport, that is true. But he is still in Russia and there has been plenty of time for Russia to issue him a Russian passport to allow him to continue his travels. The reason he is not where he wanted to go is not because of the US at this point, it is because of Russia.
Your problem is like the guy who refuses to drive to work today because three years ago he had a flat tire. If only his tire wasn't flat, he'd be able to use his car now.
COULD Russia issue him a passport? I find that perhaps possible but very unlikely,
Well, you see, it is impossible to have a discussion when one side refuses to admit that Russia does what Putin wants.
but that's sort of irrelevant to how and why he got stuck there
The statement was about why he IS there, a current tense verb. He IS there not through the sole act of the US, Russia is playing a leading part in not letting him leave.
which you agree was the US's doing.
And "was" is a past tense verb. "Is" and "was" are not the same. One of these things is not like the other.
So yes, the State Dept revoking Snowden's passport is exactly why he was living in the Moscow airport for a short time
The OP wasn't talking about the short term. He was talking about what is happening now. And he's right. If Putin wanted Snowden to have a Russian passport, he'd have one. It isn't ONLY because the US revoked Snowden's passport that he's stuck, the fact that Russia hasn't issued him one is also a factor.
But if you think countries go around issuing their national passports to just anybody...I'm not sure we can have rational discussion.
If you think that the political football named "Ed Snowden" is "just anybody" and don't think that he'd have a Russian passport about two minutes after Putin said "jump" to his minions, then I'm sure we cannot have a rational discussion.
You read that whole thing about what Russia is doing to control the Internet and you convert that into an anti-US rant?
I'm surprised you didn't point out the positive side of the whole affair, which is that Russia has a legislative system which isn't in the pockets of the evil capitalist corporations since these laws were implemented without any input from the ISPs.
Then just drive,.We haven't gotten to cars that refuse human commands,
You didn't even bother to read the sentence I was replying to and quoted in my reply, did you? There is no "just drive" when:
I expect autonomous cars to pull over and refuse to continue the moment they become impaired.
Which part of "refuse to continue" leaves the possibility of continuing the trip open to the human occupants?
You are assuming the least logical option
I replied to someone who told us what he expected his autonomous vehicle to do. Christ almighty, people don't RTFA, they don't read the summary, and they don't even read what they are replying to anymore. It isn't my assumption, it is what the OP wanted.
Why do you feel the need to lecture me in such a condescending way when I am the one pointing out that "refuse to continue" is the wrong way to deal with things? Yeah, I know that. That's why I gave the examples showing why it wasn't the right way to do things.
Humans are dumb. In almost all cases, braking in a straight line is better than any evasive maneuvers.
And it is this attitude that will prevent a human override when the better maneuver is to simply change lanes or move to the shoulder and the programmer of your autonomous vehicle decides that hitting the truck ahead of you is "almost" better.
Even as dumb as they are, they are more adaptable to unforeseen or unusual circumstance than any computer. To prevent them from being able to use that ability when the computer cannot is criminal negligence.
Yeah, humans make mistakes. But to then claim that a computer programmed by humans will be exempt from these mistakes is just wacky.
No it hasn't. A machine that will perform a given task correctly 9999/10000 times is 100x more reliable than a human that will only perform that same task correctly 9900/10000 times.
A machine that has failed is 0% reliable. That autonomous vehicle without a functioning GPS receiver is 0% able to do the job of an autonomous vehicle, where a human could still operate it without the same GPS. Once the failure has occurred, you've left the world of probabilities and entered the realm of this machine, right now.
A rare combination of factors that make the machine fail
A system that has failed no longer has "a rare combination", it has a 100% failure. Standing next to your failed autonomous vehicle as it sits disabled by the side of the road and scratching your head as you say "this is rare" is a useless exercise. As for your failure rate numbers, thinking that a highly complex interconnected system of sensors and computers will be so highly reliable is what results in automated trains that drive into stations and aircraft that impact the seawall at the near (or far) end of runways. There is a reason that something as relatively simple as an aircraft 3 axis autopilot has about a dozen ways of being disabled by the pilot, and it isn't because of its high level of reliability.
As for the straw-man argument about the stroke victim, consider this alternate scenario: You've got a passenger in the back seat of your conventional, manual-controlled car and you're heading to the hospital. You have a seizure and lose vision in both eyes.
So you're countering a perfectly reasonable and potentially (needlessly) fatal autonomous vehicle situation with a similar non-autonomous version and arguing that the autonomous failure is better? Really?
Would I, the passenger in the back seat, prefer to be perfectly safe with the car pulled over, or would I prefer that you kept going despite failed sensors
The difference being that a human in a failed autonomous vehicle is still able to drive the vehicle were it not for the artificially created "cannot proceed" programming in the vehicle's computer. In my example, there is a perfectly functional control system that is not allowed to control the vehicle, while in yours there are no functioning control systems at all. You are arguing that both situations are the same, and they are not. In one, the passenger can be taken to the hospital if only the human could be allowed to control the vehicle, in the other he cannot. In an autonomous vehicle with a human override the innocent passenger can survive; in an autonomous vehicle without such an override he will not. And the reason he will not is because the programmer never considered, or was unable to program for, an unlikely but hardly impossible or unforeseeable potential situation. (People who live in rural areas are well aware of the lack of immediate professional emergency services; people who live in cities think "call 911" is the answer to every emergency.)
The plane did leave without him. He left on a later flight.
Oh, and his luggage would be flying off without him.
Current flight regulations require the removal of any baggage of a passenger who has left a flight or does not show up. If your bags are delayed then they will be carried on a later flight, but that assumes you did not cause the delay and you were on the original flight. This is to prevent someone from getting a bomb onto a plane in a checked bag and then not being a suicide bomber.
If he was pulled from the flight, so were his bags. He might not get access to them, but they weren't going without him.
So can we all agree that it's wrong, dangerous, and ill-advised to criticize anyone by name on the Internet?
We might be able to agree that there is criticism, and then there is intimidation and harassment, and without having the exact tweet text we don't know which one happened. If you are seeking agreement that a tweet could never be intimidating or harassing, well, that's not going to happen.
We've got one side of the story. Of course this fellow has no reason to lie about any of the incident, none at all. It's not like it would be good for his own image to leave out important details or anything.
I'm a frequent business traveller. It's interesting to note how fewer and fewer airline staff wear name tags, or if they do they just say "Flight Attendant."
I've seen a direct correlation between this "can't tell you my name for security reasons" and "attendant is an asshole who abuses passengers and causes physical confrontations". That is, one flight with three attendants, two of whom were physically confrontational (one was the head attendant). I couldn't even get the third one to tell me his name so I could at least say "Bob wasn't involved" when I reported the problem to corporate.
I would have made a 2nd tweet that Southwest threatened police intervention due to the 1st tweet then asked for the city police (not the airport police)
According to the summary, this was at Denver. DEN is so far outside the city of Denver that it shouldn't be called Denver Airport anymore. And if it happens to be in a city boundary, the city will be so small that it will have nothing to do with the airport.
My last trip from EU to Mexico was with United. They advertise "free check-in bag with frequent fly crap" as a feature while every other airline i fly with its just free.
My experience is just opposite. Flew United to someplace, two checked bags, free. Flew out and the first leg was on US Air (at the time a Star Alliance partner). One free, was charged for the second one, even though I booked the entire trip through United and was flying as a United Premier member.
But don't let entertainment system charges deter you from United anymore. Their newest aircraft have NO entertainment system at all. The flight attendants actually have to do the old-style passenger briefing song and dance because there is no video screen to watch. They are apparently coming up with a WiFi based entertainment system which is in beta now, which is not the onboard WiFi that gets you to arbitrary sites on the interwebs.
You were.
"... you wonder why you're so fat..." is a personal insult based on nothing more than your desire to insult someone else for responding to one of your comments.
I was just making a conclusion based on your statement.
I said nothing about me in my statement. There was no basis for any conclusion. Nor did I say anything about you, so you don't even have the excuse that you felt insulted so you needed to insult in return.
But again, we were originally talking about "needs".
No, you were talking about "wants". Quote: "Why would we want door to door delivery of burritos?" That's the comment I responded to. "We" (plural pronoun referring to people in general) want door to door delivery of burritos because we (plural pronoun referring to people in general) want the convenience. That you could find some way to turn this into a personal insult is, well, fascinating but a complete waste of my time.
Where you sit on a plane has just about 0 effect on your arrival time at your final destination.
It is an interesting phenomenon that passenger flow through an airport often has spikes of congestion that are due to sudden appearance of 120 or so people all arriving on the same airplane.
When you can get off first, you can get to the baggage claim (if necessary) in front of a whole gaggle of others, so even if your bags don't come out first you are still at the front of group so you don't have to force your way up. If you are in the right front group getting off, your bags may also have a priority tag so they may come off first. There have been times when I've gotten my bag and been out the door before the last people off the plane have made it to claim.
If you need a shuttle to parking, getting off first means you may be first in line at the shuttle, thus avoiding a half-hour wait for the next one. Been there, done that.
If you get off first, you can often get to the front of the line at customs or immigration and not have to stand at the end of a plane-full line.
If you are delayed in customs lines, you can miss your connections and you can be delayed by a day or more in getting to your final destination. I was delayed by lines returning from an overseas flight and did, indeed, wind up missing not one but two rebooked connections, which left me sleeping overnight in SFO instead of in my own bed at home. Had I not gotten the airline to change my routing so I would go to SFO on the last flight of the day and then pick up the first flight the next morning from there, I would have been sleeping in IAD and getting home on a "direct" flight even later the next day.
And on the other hand, I've made a connection by just a minute when I was amongst the first off the incoming flight, which kept me from having to spend the night in an airport.
That's one of the problems with families boarding first - if they have separated seat assignments, the solution is best sorted out after others have boarded.
No, on a flight with assigned seats, it is best solved before the first person gets on the flight. The first place to solve this problem is either the travel agent or person buying the tickets should get seat assignments together when there are still seats together available.
Barring that, the gate agent should be doing the negotiating with other passengers to get the family together. This happens all the time. They find the right number of seats and then call the pax in those seats up and ask them to change.
The LAST place you want to try changing things around is after everyone has gotten on and stored their bags overhead and put incidentals in the seat back pocket.
I'm sorry you let your personal animosity get in the way of getting the point of what I wrote. You didn't even understand that I was talking about other people, not you and not me.
You asked why people would want to-the-door delivery of burritos when there is a food truck down the block, and I told you. Lashing out at the messenger doesn't change the message and doesn't merit your personal insults.
What are you smoking? Have you never been late for a connecting flight?
The plane actually WILL take of without you.
Unless you are an airline employee deadheading.
Two days ago, I'm sitting on a flight and it's time to depart. The doors are closed, the jetway is pulled back. The pilot comes on the speaker telling us that we are, indeed, ready to go, but there now is a deadheading pilot at the gate who must get to SFO and so we're bringing back the jetway and opening the door for him...
Stopover in SFO, the flight leaving my gate before mine, the agents are actually threatening to close the doors and keep a family from boarding because the mother is in a wheelchair and hasn't made it from her connecting flight to the gate yet. They know she's coming, the family is standing there going "she's on her way", but the agents are ready to close the flight.
If a $30-$50 checked bag fee would alleviate your anxiety about staking your inviolable claim to the overhear rack, why don't you spend it?
If the airline assumed responsibility for the thousand or so dollars worth of electronics I carry, and would guarantee a full replacement for any lost prescription medication, and there was a chance in hell that the fragile stuff I carry on would survive the gorilla treatment the baggage handlers apply to every checked bag, I would check every bag instead of having any carry-on. I already check everything I can because I simply don't want to have to lug it around the airport.
Otherwise, I'm not spending $50 so I can spend another $1000 to get a new laptop and more for a tablet and then spend the time reloading all the software and data... and then try to find a replacement for the stolen $500 radio.
In truth, it is so easy to get around the extra bag fee that it isn't even an issue of the $50. It's all about the liability and threat of damage. All you have to do is carry the bag to the gate and then wait for the ubiquitous announcement about "this is a full flight and anyone who wants to check a bag through to their destination..." and that's for free.
except there are the lovely post-9/11 laws about "not following the orders of flight crew"
The federal aviation regulations (FAR) concerning instructions from flight crew were in the books long before 9/11 and have nothing to do with that event. Some of the instructions have changed (don't loiter near the heads, e.g.) but the authority has been there for decades.
Why would we want door to door delivery of burritos? There's a food truck down the block.
Because it is all the way down the block. The same reason that people order stuff from Amazon that they could get by walking down the block to the store. And ask the people who want Amazon delivery of food because going to the local grocery store is too hard.
I can imagine a country that has a poor system of roads and less commercial infrastructure might need a cheaper delivery system just for critical items, and it won't just be that they're lazy folk who want what they want when they want it without any effort.
America should at the forefront of this level of innovation. Instead the FAA sticks its head in the sand while the rest of the world goes forward at an incredible pace.
Yes, because the US is such a poor backwater with no roads or any other method of distributing life-saving drugs to its residents that such a drone system is required just to save lives. Cities like Seattle just don't have an existing distribution system for medicines and don't have pharmacies all around the place. And the US has no existing private and commercial aviation just like Bhutan doesn't, so there can be no issues of mixing human traffic with automated.
I'm sorry that you can't get your Amazon deliveries as fast as you want them. It is a real hardship to have to wait a day or two for UPS or USPS to deliver your new gadgets to your front door.
It is depressing to hear people who have so much complaining because they can't have everything that poor countries have, too.
By the way, the FAA is working on integrating UAS into the national airspace, so your claim that they are "sticking their head in the sand" is false.
Your riding lawnmower has one because there were sufficient numbers of people who were getting off an operating riding lawnmower to do something like move a hose or other impediment, and the legal department said "we need to avoid liability".
Until the advent of more automated vehicles there weren't a lot of people departing the driver's seat while their cars were in gear and the engine was running. Yes, it happened, but everyone knew that the person who did that was an idiot. "What did you expect, your car to drive itself?"
Now imagine the utopian future with more autonomous features in the vehicles. It isn't so idiotic to fail to understand that the car you are currently driving can't deal with your absence if the car you normally drive can. And imagine the conflicting messages that the manufacturers of the future will be sending if they have to install driver sensors in their new-fangled autonomous vehicles because too many drivers are getting out and the car just drives away without them. They'll be selling completely autonomous vehicles that must have a driver in the driver's seat!
Slashdot Mirror
The base assumption that everyone could be Tiger Woods if only their dads were golf instructors is such a load of twaddle.
And yet it explains the phenomena of Drew Barrymore, Tori Spelling, Miley Cyrus, Emelio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and a host of other "famous" actors whose names you know only because their parents were famous actors or producers. I would have included Jamie Lee Curtis in that list, but her performance in A Fish Called Wanda was pretty good so maybe she has some innate skill.
In today's world where we're not restricted by geographical boundaries and genes are free-flowing around the world,
That's a very privileged and first-worldish view of the planet. Most of the planet still has huge restrictions on the free-flow of genes, and much of it is based on the economics of travel.
The OP blatantly said that it was false that Snowden was in Russia because of the US.
No, he said it was false that he's in Russia ONLY because of the US. If you leave out critical words you change the meaning of sentences. The OP, in fact, emphasized the problem with the word "only", so it was pretty hard to miss it. Congratulations, you did.
He was temporarily stuck at the airport because the US revoked his passport, that is true. But he is still in Russia and there has been plenty of time for Russia to issue him a Russian passport to allow him to continue his travels. The reason he is not where he wanted to go is not because of the US at this point, it is because of Russia.
Your problem is like the guy who refuses to drive to work today because three years ago he had a flat tire. If only his tire wasn't flat, he'd be able to use his car now.
COULD Russia issue him a passport? I find that perhaps possible but very unlikely,
Well, you see, it is impossible to have a discussion when one side refuses to admit that Russia does what Putin wants.
but that's sort of irrelevant to how and why he got stuck there
The statement was about why he IS there, a current tense verb. He IS there not through the sole act of the US, Russia is playing a leading part in not letting him leave.
which you agree was the US's doing.
And "was" is a past tense verb. "Is" and "was" are not the same. One of these things is not like the other.
So yes, the State Dept revoking Snowden's passport is exactly why he was living in the Moscow airport for a short time
The OP wasn't talking about the short term. He was talking about what is happening now. And he's right. If Putin wanted Snowden to have a Russian passport, he'd have one. It isn't ONLY because the US revoked Snowden's passport that he's stuck, the fact that Russia hasn't issued him one is also a factor.
But if you think countries go around issuing their national passports to just anybody...I'm not sure we can have rational discussion.
If you think that the political football named "Ed Snowden" is "just anybody" and don't think that he'd have a Russian passport about two minutes after Putin said "jump" to his minions, then I'm sure we cannot have a rational discussion.
Compared to say, American or European boats that are predominantly aluminum
So then we're creating a problem of Alzheimer's in the plankton.
Perhaps that explains his devotion to the Chum Bucket and his continued attempts to get the crabby patty recipe?
Uh, I'm pretty sure the article also addresses something the US is doing,
As large a corporation as it is, Oracle is not the US government.
and I directly condemned Putin.
A postscript is not directly anything. It is an afterthought.
Stop writing false motivations onto me.
I said nothing about your motivations, only your actions.
I'm surprised you didn't point out the positive side of the whole affair, which is that Russia has a legislative system which isn't in the pockets of the evil capitalist corporations since these laws were implemented without any input from the ISPs.
Then just drive,.We haven't gotten to cars that refuse human commands,
You didn't even bother to read the sentence I was replying to and quoted in my reply, did you? There is no "just drive" when:
Which part of "refuse to continue" leaves the possibility of continuing the trip open to the human occupants?
You are assuming the least logical option
I replied to someone who told us what he expected his autonomous vehicle to do. Christ almighty, people don't RTFA, they don't read the summary, and they don't even read what they are replying to anymore. It isn't my assumption, it is what the OP wanted.
Why do you feel the need to lecture me in such a condescending way when I am the one pointing out that "refuse to continue" is the wrong way to deal with things? Yeah, I know that. That's why I gave the examples showing why it wasn't the right way to do things.
Humans are dumb. In almost all cases, braking in a straight line is better than any evasive maneuvers.
And it is this attitude that will prevent a human override when the better maneuver is to simply change lanes or move to the shoulder and the programmer of your autonomous vehicle decides that hitting the truck ahead of you is "almost" better.
Even as dumb as they are, they are more adaptable to unforeseen or unusual circumstance than any computer. To prevent them from being able to use that ability when the computer cannot is criminal negligence.
Yeah, humans make mistakes. But to then claim that a computer programmed by humans will be exempt from these mistakes is just wacky.
No it hasn't. A machine that will perform a given task correctly 9999/10000 times is 100x more reliable than a human that will only perform that same task correctly 9900/10000 times.
A machine that has failed is 0% reliable. That autonomous vehicle without a functioning GPS receiver is 0% able to do the job of an autonomous vehicle, where a human could still operate it without the same GPS. Once the failure has occurred, you've left the world of probabilities and entered the realm of this machine, right now.
A rare combination of factors that make the machine fail
A system that has failed no longer has "a rare combination", it has a 100% failure. Standing next to your failed autonomous vehicle as it sits disabled by the side of the road and scratching your head as you say "this is rare" is a useless exercise. As for your failure rate numbers, thinking that a highly complex interconnected system of sensors and computers will be so highly reliable is what results in automated trains that drive into stations and aircraft that impact the seawall at the near (or far) end of runways. There is a reason that something as relatively simple as an aircraft 3 axis autopilot has about a dozen ways of being disabled by the pilot, and it isn't because of its high level of reliability.
As for the straw-man argument about the stroke victim, consider this alternate scenario: You've got a passenger in the back seat of your conventional, manual-controlled car and you're heading to the hospital. You have a seizure and lose vision in both eyes.
So you're countering a perfectly reasonable and potentially (needlessly) fatal autonomous vehicle situation with a similar non-autonomous version and arguing that the autonomous failure is better? Really?
Would I, the passenger in the back seat, prefer to be perfectly safe with the car pulled over, or would I prefer that you kept going despite failed sensors
The difference being that a human in a failed autonomous vehicle is still able to drive the vehicle were it not for the artificially created "cannot proceed" programming in the vehicle's computer. In my example, there is a perfectly functional control system that is not allowed to control the vehicle, while in yours there are no functioning control systems at all. You are arguing that both situations are the same, and they are not. In one, the passenger can be taken to the hospital if only the human could be allowed to control the vehicle, in the other he cannot. In an autonomous vehicle with a human override the innocent passenger can survive; in an autonomous vehicle without such an override he will not. And the reason he will not is because the programmer never considered, or was unable to program for, an unlikely but hardly impossible or unforeseeable potential situation. (People who live in rural areas are well aware of the lack of immediate professional emergency services; people who live in cities think "call 911" is the answer to every emergency.)
and by then the plane could have already left.
The plane did leave without him. He left on a later flight.
Oh, and his luggage would be flying off without him.
Current flight regulations require the removal of any baggage of a passenger who has left a flight or does not show up. If your bags are delayed then they will be carried on a later flight, but that assumes you did not cause the delay and you were on the original flight. This is to prevent someone from getting a bomb onto a plane in a checked bag and then not being a suicide bomber.
If he was pulled from the flight, so were his bags. He might not get access to them, but they weren't going without him.
So can we all agree that it's wrong, dangerous, and ill-advised to criticize anyone by name on the Internet?
We might be able to agree that there is criticism, and then there is intimidation and harassment, and without having the exact tweet text we don't know which one happened. If you are seeking agreement that a tweet could never be intimidating or harassing, well, that's not going to happen.
We've got one side of the story. Of course this fellow has no reason to lie about any of the incident, none at all. It's not like it would be good for his own image to leave out important details or anything.
If it's fair to wire tap a customers communications,
I'm fascinated by the interpretation that reading a publicly posted tweet is now "wiretapping".
What I've yet to hear explained is how Southwest was able to connect someone's twitter name with their real name so quickly.
I'm a frequent business traveller. It's interesting to note how fewer and fewer airline staff wear name tags, or if they do they just say "Flight Attendant."
I've seen a direct correlation between this "can't tell you my name for security reasons" and "attendant is an asshole who abuses passengers and causes physical confrontations". That is, one flight with three attendants, two of whom were physically confrontational (one was the head attendant). I couldn't even get the third one to tell me his name so I could at least say "Bob wasn't involved" when I reported the problem to corporate.
I would have made a 2nd tweet that Southwest threatened police intervention due to the 1st tweet then asked for the city police (not the airport police)
According to the summary, this was at Denver. DEN is so far outside the city of Denver that it shouldn't be called Denver Airport anymore. And if it happens to be in a city boundary, the city will be so small that it will have nothing to do with the airport.
My last trip from EU to Mexico was with United. They advertise "free check-in bag with frequent fly crap" as a feature while every other airline i fly with its just free.
My experience is just opposite. Flew United to someplace, two checked bags, free. Flew out and the first leg was on US Air (at the time a Star Alliance partner). One free, was charged for the second one, even though I booked the entire trip through United and was flying as a United Premier member.
But don't let entertainment system charges deter you from United anymore. Their newest aircraft have NO entertainment system at all. The flight attendants actually have to do the old-style passenger briefing song and dance because there is no video screen to watch. They are apparently coming up with a WiFi based entertainment system which is in beta now, which is not the onboard WiFi that gets you to arbitrary sites on the interwebs.
Who was lashing out?
You were. "... you wonder why you're so fat ..." is a personal insult based on nothing more than your desire to insult someone else for responding to one of your comments.
I was just making a conclusion based on your statement.
I said nothing about me in my statement. There was no basis for any conclusion. Nor did I say anything about you, so you don't even have the excuse that you felt insulted so you needed to insult in return.
But again, we were originally talking about "needs".
No, you were talking about "wants". Quote: "Why would we want door to door delivery of burritos?" That's the comment I responded to. "We" (plural pronoun referring to people in general) want door to door delivery of burritos because we (plural pronoun referring to people in general) want the convenience. That you could find some way to turn this into a personal insult is, well, fascinating but a complete waste of my time.
Where you sit on a plane has just about 0 effect on your arrival time at your final destination.
It is an interesting phenomenon that passenger flow through an airport often has spikes of congestion that are due to sudden appearance of 120 or so people all arriving on the same airplane.
When you can get off first, you can get to the baggage claim (if necessary) in front of a whole gaggle of others, so even if your bags don't come out first you are still at the front of group so you don't have to force your way up. If you are in the right front group getting off, your bags may also have a priority tag so they may come off first. There have been times when I've gotten my bag and been out the door before the last people off the plane have made it to claim.
If you need a shuttle to parking, getting off first means you may be first in line at the shuttle, thus avoiding a half-hour wait for the next one. Been there, done that.
If you get off first, you can often get to the front of the line at customs or immigration and not have to stand at the end of a plane-full line.
If you are delayed in customs lines, you can miss your connections and you can be delayed by a day or more in getting to your final destination. I was delayed by lines returning from an overseas flight and did, indeed, wind up missing not one but two rebooked connections, which left me sleeping overnight in SFO instead of in my own bed at home. Had I not gotten the airline to change my routing so I would go to SFO on the last flight of the day and then pick up the first flight the next morning from there, I would have been sleeping in IAD and getting home on a "direct" flight even later the next day.
And on the other hand, I've made a connection by just a minute when I was amongst the first off the incoming flight, which kept me from having to spend the night in an airport.
That's one of the problems with families boarding first - if they have separated seat assignments, the solution is best sorted out after others have boarded.
No, on a flight with assigned seats, it is best solved before the first person gets on the flight. The first place to solve this problem is either the travel agent or person buying the tickets should get seat assignments together when there are still seats together available.
Barring that, the gate agent should be doing the negotiating with other passengers to get the family together. This happens all the time. They find the right number of seats and then call the pax in those seats up and ask them to change.
The LAST place you want to try changing things around is after everyone has gotten on and stored their bags overhead and put incidentals in the seat back pocket.
Geesh, and you wonder why you're so fat ...
I'm sorry you let your personal animosity get in the way of getting the point of what I wrote. You didn't even understand that I was talking about other people, not you and not me.
You asked why people would want to-the-door delivery of burritos when there is a food truck down the block, and I told you. Lashing out at the messenger doesn't change the message and doesn't merit your personal insults.
What are you smoking? Have you never been late for a connecting flight? The plane actually WILL take of without you.
Unless you are an airline employee deadheading.
Two days ago, I'm sitting on a flight and it's time to depart. The doors are closed, the jetway is pulled back. The pilot comes on the speaker telling us that we are, indeed, ready to go, but there now is a deadheading pilot at the gate who must get to SFO and so we're bringing back the jetway and opening the door for him...
Stopover in SFO, the flight leaving my gate before mine, the agents are actually threatening to close the doors and keep a family from boarding because the mother is in a wheelchair and hasn't made it from her connecting flight to the gate yet. They know she's coming, the family is standing there going "she's on her way", but the agents are ready to close the flight.
If a $30-$50 checked bag fee would alleviate your anxiety about staking your inviolable claim to the overhear rack, why don't you spend it?
If the airline assumed responsibility for the thousand or so dollars worth of electronics I carry, and would guarantee a full replacement for any lost prescription medication, and there was a chance in hell that the fragile stuff I carry on would survive the gorilla treatment the baggage handlers apply to every checked bag, I would check every bag instead of having any carry-on. I already check everything I can because I simply don't want to have to lug it around the airport.
Otherwise, I'm not spending $50 so I can spend another $1000 to get a new laptop and more for a tablet and then spend the time reloading all the software and data ... and then try to find a replacement for the stolen $500 radio.
In truth, it is so easy to get around the extra bag fee that it isn't even an issue of the $50. It's all about the liability and threat of damage. All you have to do is carry the bag to the gate and then wait for the ubiquitous announcement about "this is a full flight and anyone who wants to check a bag through to their destination..." and that's for free.
except there are the lovely post-9/11 laws about "not following the orders of flight crew"
The federal aviation regulations (FAR) concerning instructions from flight crew were in the books long before 9/11 and have nothing to do with that event. Some of the instructions have changed (don't loiter near the heads, e.g.) but the authority has been there for decades.
Why would we want door to door delivery of burritos? There's a food truck down the block.
Because it is all the way down the block. The same reason that people order stuff from Amazon that they could get by walking down the block to the store. And ask the people who want Amazon delivery of food because going to the local grocery store is too hard.
I can imagine a country that has a poor system of roads and less commercial infrastructure might need a cheaper delivery system just for critical items, and it won't just be that they're lazy folk who want what they want when they want it without any effort.
America should at the forefront of this level of innovation. Instead the FAA sticks its head in the sand while the rest of the world goes forward at an incredible pace.
Yes, because the US is such a poor backwater with no roads or any other method of distributing life-saving drugs to its residents that such a drone system is required just to save lives. Cities like Seattle just don't have an existing distribution system for medicines and don't have pharmacies all around the place. And the US has no existing private and commercial aviation just like Bhutan doesn't, so there can be no issues of mixing human traffic with automated.
I'm sorry that you can't get your Amazon deliveries as fast as you want them. It is a real hardship to have to wait a day or two for UPS or USPS to deliver your new gadgets to your front door.
It is depressing to hear people who have so much complaining because they can't have everything that poor countries have, too.
By the way, the FAA is working on integrating UAS into the national airspace, so your claim that they are "sticking their head in the sand" is false.
Especially since my riding lawnmower has one.
Your riding lawnmower has one because there were sufficient numbers of people who were getting off an operating riding lawnmower to do something like move a hose or other impediment, and the legal department said "we need to avoid liability".
Until the advent of more automated vehicles there weren't a lot of people departing the driver's seat while their cars were in gear and the engine was running. Yes, it happened, but everyone knew that the person who did that was an idiot. "What did you expect, your car to drive itself?"
Now imagine the utopian future with more autonomous features in the vehicles. It isn't so idiotic to fail to understand that the car you are currently driving can't deal with your absence if the car you normally drive can. And imagine the conflicting messages that the manufacturers of the future will be sending if they have to install driver sensors in their new-fangled autonomous vehicles because too many drivers are getting out and the car just drives away without them. They'll be selling completely autonomous vehicles that must have a driver in the driver's seat!