Things are so f-ing convenient now, handed to you, done for you, at your fingertips…it’s turned everyone into a mass of spoiled brats, and it’s sad and (now) less than funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk

“You’re sitting in a chair, IN THE SKY!”
I remember when the “convenience” of merely getting on a plane to get to a far away place fast was something incredible. It still is to me. God forbid someone should have to merely read a book on a flight, or busy themselves on their laptops without an internet connection.

I don’t consider myself a consider myself a conservative, GI-Joe type at all yet not having communications on a flight, be it phone or internet, makes perfect sense to me from a security standpoint, nor does it particularly put me out. There’s a lot that goes into getting from point a to point b safely, so usually I’m just grateful to have gotten where I was going without too much hassle.

Note to Xeni and pbundy (#16). Delta’s WiFi uses a ground-based network of cell towers, and a downward pointing antenna. It won’t work until you’re about an hour outside the Continental US. So, no, the FAs weren’t BSing you.

Doubt it. The expense alone would sink most American airlines.

I bet security will improve when we stop fighting wars in five different Muslim countries. I guess we should just expect the odd counter-attack – it’s easy to forget we’re at war when the government wants us to forget we’re at war.

http://cancer.ucsd.edu/Outreach/PublicEducation/CAMs/sawpalmeto.asp

Oh come on! In that case you should also keep all windows closed, and confiscate travelers’ watches. And since some people are good at telling time, we should have planes randomly changing speeds. And since that “1 hour before landing” is a dead giveaway, we should impose the last-hour restrictions throughout the entire flight.

I realize that attempting to ensure safety might inconvenience me, but is it too much to ask for some minimal cost-benefit thinking? (Answer: Yes.)

I’m going to go read “Here is Your War” so I can remember what Americans used to be.

It may take a while, but there is no way that those with a heavily vested interest in making lots and lots of money from people feeding the WiFi meter while on JFK–>LAX will let the rules be written in such a way that nixes WiFi on planes for very long.

Heck the airlines themselves need that revenue stream badly enough and they will certainly figure out how to offset the costs of keeping electronics and WiFi onboard – even if it means individual searches of every bad and pat-downs too.

Neither do I, and I doubt most Israelis want to either. But as the TSA regulations become increasingly draconian without improving safety, most people will gladly trade to an Israeli model.

It seems to me us Canadians could make a lot of money on this situation. We could simply have reasonable rules to fly into canada, and then the americans could screen everyone here, with their own agents (as they already do) before allowing entry. Of course that would result in more flights, business and travel here. Currently all flights from Canada to the US are domestic flights as soon as they take off.

This is a serious plan – have all flights into the US be domestic flights only – so the US sets up Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, (already done) and London, Amsterdam, Hawaii, Mexico city, and a few others be the only gateways into the US by air. Then they would not have to complain about foreigners letting ‘all this’ happen.

What’s the betting that some – or all! – of you will be registered as dissidents and put on the ‘no-fly’ list? And how long do you think it will be before this is extended to rail transport and long-distance buses?

Remember, we are talking about an agency who can detain you anywhere, at will; and there are disturbing allegations of people being stopped on the highway, miles and miles from the frontier, and beaten up for failing to show the proper ‘respect’ to unifomed TSA goons.

You do NOT live in a free country and you need to be far, far more circumspect in your comments concerning your rulers and masters.

Me, I live in a country where our equivalent of Greyhound long-haul buses are stopped by uniformed police, and they go straight to the numbered seats occupied by known dissidents – ‘known’ from unpublished surveillance reports – and haul them off the bus. No ID tags on the officers, no charges, no access to lawyers: just indefinite detention in an undisclosed location while the bus and their baggage rumbles off into the distance. Unlike the TSA, our goons can’t confiscate the dissidents’ mobile phones and wallets, so the victims weren’t stranded and could ring out for a lift home.

Lucky them, and me, living in a slightly free-er country than the USA. But we, too, have a long, long tradition of politically-active people and blameless joes who walked down the wrong street being harassed and beaten-up by the security forces. What’s new is that you, me and them can be targeted using information-sifting tools, and harassed by new powers – like the ‘no-fly’ list – that were unthinkable outside the Soviet Union thirty years ago.

It’s a good thing they did this! After all, wireless internet access can make your pants explosions even better!

http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/flying-home/

It is suprising (to me) how little I care about all this now that I do not fly very much.