MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security 550
Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."
Question about missed flight (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, my question is if you miss a flight because of these TSA guys, does your airline put you on the next available flight at no extra cost?
No surprise really... (Score:3, Interesting)
Similar though completely different experience... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sony X505 - Same result with TSA... (Score:2, Interesting)
What was so suspicious about it? I was told that someone overheard a TSA agent mention that it looked transparent on the x-ray machine. It seems that this was the case with the AirBook.
Perhaps companies like Sony and Apple that develop such advanced portables should notify TSA officials so they could, inturn, teach the line agents to not become alarmed when encountering such a device passing through the x-ray machine? Since that would make too much sense, it probably won't happen. Go figure.
If you happen to own an AirBook or other sub-notebook, good luck!!
Not always true (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:meh, sounds a lot like bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Show up on time, dumbass. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, every time I've flown with my family my 8 year old brother gets selected for the "secondary" inspection. It's pretty funny, last time he didn't even try to walk through, walked straight to the yellow feet... and they actually had him selected, they asked "how did you know?" He said 'you always pick me, I must look like a terrorist I guess..."
It's not just technology stuff. (Score:2, Interesting)
The lifestyle of small-scale private aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
I loved the freedom associated with being able to take off and land at any time, at any airport. In this particular case, he could leave out of Van Nuys airport, about 15 minutes from his home, instead of LAX which would have taken a grinding hour and a half to get to.
I will admit that flying a private plane is disappointingly non-luxurious - his interior felt more like a Subaru than a Mercedes - but even though I was not very good at physically flying the plane I enjoyed changing the frequencies on the radios and navigation systems. (This was before GPS took off in a big way - we used the old beacon system.)
I would have surely preferred a jet but I liked flying private better than commercial. As I remember it cost him about $55 per flight hour to run, including overhauls, and he certainly believed it penciled out for him economically. He had to carry fairly heavy amounts of baggage for the trade shows we went to and that definitely helped.
D
Re:slashvertisement (Score:4, Interesting)
I will SECOND that motion! It's a rare month that I don't fly, I often fly 3-4 times per month. I recently got my private pilot's license. (yay!)
Flying to Oakland, CA? Go on a commercial jet, and you experience:
1) 1.5 hour trip to the nearest "major" airport.
2) 1-2 hour long wait at the security line.
3) Rude staff.
4) Lousy amenities.
5) Destination airport virtually guaranteed to be 1-2 hours drive away from the actual destination.
6) Cramped seat.
Now, I'm flying more and more privately, I'm in negotiations to buy into a partnership. Here's what I see so far:
1) Local airport, 5 minute drive.
2) 10 minute wait checking the plane out before flight. Effectively no security check.
3) Friendly staff that make it a point to remember your name.
4) Gorgeous bathrooms, with plants, tile, and free hygiene kits. (shave, toothbrush, etc) Free coffee, dough nuts, etc. Often catered luncheons for free as well. Leather seats, free waiting rooms with DVD collection, free conference room!
5) Destination virtually guaranteed to be anywhere from 10 minutes drive to ACROSS THE STREET from a small, local airport.
6) Cramped seat. (Hey, some things never change!)
Seriously, the difference is NIGHT AND DAY. Commercial = cattle. Private = red carpet. And, for shorter flights, the price difference is less than you might think.
Completely off topic (Score:3, Interesting)
After years of dicking about the cost I finally went for it four years ago. I've spent $80k in total, spent a few hundred hours fixing and modernising, I have something I can live and work on if I want to. I should have done it 10 years ago.
Vigilantism, Rationality (Score:5, Interesting)
Devil's advocate: What attributes? Being brown?
This is what vigilantism looks like. [schneier.com]
II. RationalityI'm not so sure. Your argument rests on the assumption that the terrorists make well-reasoned decisions to further their cause. They do have objectives -- "get out of the Middle East, U.S!" -- but in my opinion they are horribly misguided in their decisions: If they wanted to reduce the U.S. military presence there, they sure as hell haven't succeeded.
Some people say, "the terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams." I don't think so. Rather, the current situation is a dismal failure for all involved, terrorists included. It's a failure for the U.S., which is now engaged in a bloody, costly (we have spent more than we did in Vietnam [spiegel.de]), no-way-out quagmire of a war. It's a failure for the extremists who downed those planes, who rather than convincing the U.S. to pull out of the Middle East has provoked it to deploy even more troops there. It is a failure for "Iraqi" civilians (even if no "Iraqi" ethnic identity really exists), who might have been oppressed under Saddam but who at least had electricity and drinking water. It is a failure for nearly everyone. The only reason this mess continues is that we, the extremists, and everyone else, are stuck together in yet-another (the world has so many) collective [wikipedia.org] action [wikipedia.org] problem [wikipedia.org].
[The list of those who have benefited from this situation is short -- mainly politicians (in the US and in the Middle East) and government contractors (Haliburton/KBR, etc) happy to multiply the terror and exploit the situation (see the BBC's The Power of Nightmares [wikipedia.org] -- video here [youtube.com]). But these people didn't engineer the attacks; they're just opportunists.]
I got a little sidetracked, but the point is this: The terrorists did not plan a well-reasoned attack to achieve their objectives; by most rational metrics I can think of, they have failed. Therefore, I wouldn't put it past them to do something stupid again -- like stage an attack which will ultimately make their task more difficult. That's the part of your post I was disagreeing with -- that these terrorists make smart decisions. I suspect they don't -- not because they're populated by stupid people (terrorists tend to be well-educated. I'm most familiar not with Middle-Eastern terrorists, but with the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo [wikipedia.org] that released Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway -- and that organization was full of Ph.D.s and physics students) but because their logical, analytical minds have been short-circuited by a seductive ideology.
In other words, we've got one group of people whose brains have been short-circuited by ideology and anger against another whose frontal lobes have been shut off by a hyperactive fear-and-stress center [wikipedia.org]. I'm not counting on rationality from anyone.
Re:Question about missed flight (Score:2, Interesting)
And because it was 22.5/h it's about 35$/h 4 times a week and 8-10 hoursh shifts. And it was nice because you got almost free flights to anywhere you wanted (example from sweden to italy) and two times even me and my shift group really flighted to italy for pizza and then back.