snom380

It's trivially easy to show that there is a risk of interference, the question is just how big the risk is, and whether turning devices off during takeoffs and landings is worth the inconvenience.

And as mentioned elsewhere there had been reproducible incidents of interference reported, which was the initial reason for the ban.

While I have long maintained that the ban is most likely not necessary, I'd much rather have he FAA make that decision and wait a few years until they have done enough studies and collected enough data.

I agree that we can't run the entire civilization on a precautionary principle, but then again that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about 10-20 minutes of inconvenience during critical flight phases. And believe me I hate the beurocracy and often overreaching rules of the FAA (or EASA in my case), but again I appreciate that we would not have he current air safety record without it. In fact, the FAA is usually reactionary in that they usually only act when fatal accidents have happened. (Pilot and crew rest hour limits is one very recent example).

If it was only a PR stunt, don't you think they would have found a cuter story to tell?

That's the problem though. You don't fly thousands of passengers each day and have seen several of your peers bankrupted or seriously financially wounded by a single high profile accident, so you might have a different view on the risks compared to the ones running the airline.

By definition I take far more risk when flying a single-prop light aircraft, and I'm fine with that. What I don't expect is to be able to force that risk level on other people.

You're still welcome to get a PPL and have as many cell phones as you wish turned on while you fly.

If you think anything that doesn't directly cause accidents aren't worth regulating, you don't truly appreciate why we have such good air safety.

Letting he pilots chit-chat when landing can't hurt either, right? Millions of successful flights before the sterile cockpit environment idea came about, would perhaps seem like close to zero risk for you, yet we are all safer now because of it.

If you want to compare a commercial aircraft with 2-3 independent radios and electrical systems to a light aircraft, I can as well, and I'm happy to tell you that it's trivial to get a cell phone or tablet to cause annoying interference in the headset. I have to turn some of them off during flights, but always keep at least one of them on and away from the instrument panel, in case of an emergency or radio failure (which has actually happened to me once).

It's a matter of trade-offs of convenience vs "better safe than sorry". It's not a binary either-or decision. Just like with lithium batteries, which can still cause nasty fires. Yet they aren't banned because if they were, it would be a huge inconvenience.

Not necessarily. Avionics fail all the time and it's pretty much impossible for pilots to pinpoint a specific incident to cell phone interference. I've had at least one incident where the pilot came in the PA and asked us twice in flight to make sure all electronic devices were off, because they had problems with the instruments.

Agreed. And there's been a few cases of (presumably poorly shielded) laptops in the 90s causing interference, to the point where the pilot would see the effect appearing/disappearing when the passenger turned on/off the laptop. The ban came about as a proactive measure because of these reports.

This argument is false. It's a matter of reducing the possibility of interference, not eliminating it (which you can't do). Lithium batteries can and have caused in flight fires, would you start claiming that they physically can't, just because we are still allowed to bring them onboard?

They want as many transmitters as possible off to reduce the _chance_ of interference. With in-flight Wifi and picocells it will be possible to have everyone connected without having lots of cell phones trying to connect to base stations far away using high power.

As a private pilot I've had to turn off GSM on tablets and phones to avoid interference in the headset. I still try to keep one cell phone on in case of an emergency.

There has been a few reported incidents with laptops etc causing interference with nav systems. While the rule may be too strict, I understand the "better safe than sorry" approach.

I didn't miss them, and I'd like you to link to the revelation that tha NSA routinely collects data stored locally on iPhones with Apples consent and involvement.

The processing happens on the A7 chip, but separated from the OS. Of course, the question is whether it's possible for Apple or someone else to update the fingerprint software to give back more data than just the yes/no, or if you could reconfigure the hardware so that the OS can talk to the sensor directly.

But again, I'm much more concerned about all the other information my cell phone operator, so this is quite simply just hysteria, and undermines the rightful concern us techies have about surveillance.

Given the fact that we've seen no evidence of such updates previously, and rather we've seen Apple take many steps to protect privacy and even seen NSA leaked slides detailing how they need access to PCs to read iPhone backups, I think it's extremely unlikely that they would ever take the risk of pushing an customer-wide software update.

If you are worried about being specifically targeted, you shouldn't use an off the shelf cellphone at all, and this discussion is moot.

You missed the part where the fingerprint is stored so it's not even accessible to the OS and are never stored online?

Oh, but I guess the NSA has a back door and will manage to collect them all without anyone noticing, right? Just like they record all the sound from your phone mic and upload it?

I'm all against unlawful spying by the NSA, but give me a break.

What's special about the A380 FBW? I think you're optimistic with that 5-10 years.

What this video doesn't show is the multiple redundant checks that are done, and the warning systems that sound if something is out of place (like the one that the Helios pilots misunderstood). Newer airplanes do have more human friendly designs and more automation, including electronic checklists. For existing cockpits, they are usually only upgraded when serious design flaws are discovered. But that doesn't happen often.

Some modern airplanes do have integrated electronic checklists.

Which OS and hardware platform are you referring to now?

As long as you keep a backup of your old app bundles on your computer (for instance using Time Machine) I don't think it's a problem to load old apps. The exception being if some of those apps require online services that are no longer available.

While I've had a very liberal view regarding drugs and certainly not bought into any campaign stories, I've also become much more respectful about their potential consequences in the past years from firsthand experience. It would be interesting to see more about how prevalent drug use is. I do think you underestimate the negative consequences they can have. Drugs like meth and cocaine don't just cause the users to think more clearly, it can also cause some big behavioral changes. For instance, it's not far-fetched that the economic crisis has been at least partly been caused by overconfidence from drug use: http://www.theguardian.com/business/shortcuts/2013/apr/15/co...

Well, I think that a big part of those "functional" users are like functional alcoholics. They continue for many years to hold a job, but their daily usage causes problems for everyone around them.

At least that's the story you'll often hear at family group meetings. Not the usual homeless drug addict story, but people keeping up appearances while hiding some pretty big problems.

My brother was a functional meth user for many year before he lost his fiancée (mostly because of the anger outbreaks and lies, we didn't know he was using then), then his license and car, and finally his job. Of course then again there may be far more people that just continue using without ending up in the same situation.

I think the main problem is that lots of people who have heard the "try it once and get hooked" story realize that they did try it once without problems, and therefore assume that addiction won't be a problem. From once to a few times to regular use to addiction is a slippery slope that most avoids, but for some it can take several years. But none of them started it with the assumption that they themselves would get addicted, and along the way made up many rationalizations for their drug use. So in that way, this anecdote is interesting.

If you look at heroin and meth addicts, I think it's pretty easy to see that it's not only dependent on price (which for meth is quite cheap in some countries). A lot of addicts will in the long run be unable to hold a job because of their drug use, and will only turn to crime when that happens.

It's not so much try it once and you're hooked, but for a certain percentage of those who do try it can get hooked in the first try. For many or most others, it takes persistent use (which will often happen when the first try doesn't get them hooked).

I use a random 63 character WPA2 password, and my solution was to cable it initially, and then set up the WiFi password using the iPhone remote app.

It looks even more inspired by the DigiSpark: http://digistump.com/products/1

By itself at can't do those. If you connect it to a WiFi or Zigbee module using SPI it can, but for WiFi you'll probably want to buy a more powerful microcontroller board anyway.

Those are more subtle fuck ups that the company might not notice for a long time, usually when you're eclipsed by the competition and upper management has been replaced.

A better slogan might be "always make new mistakes".

"Stop fucking up" quickly ends up with "stop taking risks" and "design by committee", which may be a good idea if you write avionics or banking software, but perhaps not in other markets.