Laptops that go BOOM in the plane

Speaking of things that go BOOM I was slightly disappointed that the Dell laptop battery recall didn't affect my Inspiron 700m. It is about 18 months old now and still going strong however the battery is starting to show signs of aging and a nice new and free one would have been great - never mind that it might have blown up any time in the last 18 months. Unfortunately mine is manufactured in Korea and the recall only affects older Sony Japan manufactured ones. Oh well.

However it does make me wonder what would have happened if I'd been sitting there in economy bashing away on my laptop when all of a sudden it bursts into flames. Can you even imagine how much shit that would have caused? Or what if it was in the hold and burned up all the luggage and maybe even took the plane down? At least inside the plane there would be a chance to get a fire extinguisher on it pronto. I doubt you'd ever see the end of homeland security probings ("bend over please") and FBI investigation of your entire life - heck you might even end up in Guantanamo before they would believe that well, the battery just blew up all of its own accord.

If a plane went down mid-flight becuase of an exploding battery it would cost billions... I think this, more than anything else might have been the ultimately driving force behind Dell's recall.

FAA Bans organic lifeforms on planes, cites spontaneous human combustion risk

I don't read The Onion very often but it occurs to me my blog entry title "FAA Bans organic lifeforms on planes, cites spontaneous human combustion risk" would make a good Onion headline. It occurred to me after I read that the UK was banning books on flights. I mean seriously - books - WTF? Even if you think something could be concealed inside one, how hard is it to x-ray a book? And how hard is it to flip through the pages as I've actually seen inspectors do to my books before now?

Are they worried that someone might carry on a copy of Fahrenheit 451 and it would spontaneously ignite? Or write down two halves of a funny joke, read them out together Monty Python style and bring a plane down that way?

Sure I can understand their temporary ban of liquids and gels, or even a permanent one, but it makes no sense for them to ban them in carry-on baggage and still allow them in hold baggage. For some reason they think that explosives undetectable in carry-on checks will magically be detectable in hold baggage. More accurately I read it was that hold baggage explosives would require a proper detonator which would be detectable but even that doesn't make any sense. As I've said before, and I'll say it again, it would be so easy to fabricate a remote or location based detonator from everyday electronics items like a phone, smart-PDA, or GPS with a battery or two used as detonator charge.

And if you think the location in the hold prevents a precision explosion over a populated area think again. All it needs is a wireless link from the baggage hold to the passenger seating area - something easily achieved with modern off the shelf wireless devices that support bluetooth or WiFi. And if planes happen to start providing WiFi or phone connectivity then it would be even easier to remotely detonate half a world away by tracking the flight over the Internet using one of the many flight tracking services and sending timing instructions from the ground.

Interestingly the British have figured out this problem and already restricted that information for flights over the UK - however the US doesn't seem to get it just like they didn't get the risk from liquid explosives, hold baggage explosions or even the risk of hijack because the cockpit door is wide open. All along its been money that has allowed airlines to say "it's too expensive" and money that has persuaded the government not to legislate.

Then all of a sudden after 9/11 every airline rushed to bring in lockable reinforced cockpit doors which they managed to implement oh-so-quickly. Of course as if to prove their point they promptly put out their hands for a big far industry wide bailout, none of which would probably have been necessary if they'd just done the obvious in the first place. So wasn't the cost of not acting and having a hijack incident demonstrably higher than that of acting without one, never mind the actual cost of 9/11 (tens of billions) and indirect cost of its effects (which is now in the hundreds of billions).

I personally think it may be time for Israeli style baggage checks, or for airlines to start transporting baggage separately from people carrying flights using 100% remote controlled aircraft which as the military have shown can be done even with current technology, never mind what could be developed if the industry just put its mind to it. Then all we'd have to worry about would be the baby or garrulous blabbermouth in the seat next to us and so far I've yet to hear of a plane being brought down by either of those.

Google Radio Ads - the dawn of a new era?

I knew this was coming, Google ads on the radio, not on XM radio, hadn't predicted that, more like Internet radio - I'm sure that will follow. It's obvious that Google will have to penetrate radio and then TV/video with advertising and because selling advertising is such an incestuous and inefficient market it will take them time to break into it.

There's a lot of apple-carts to upset but by the time they are done the face of media distribution and aggregation (think TV and radio channels) will have changed radically. You'll have location, market, and consumer specific ads coming to you and we'll hopefully no longer have to suffer ads for viagra when we're in our twenties, and running shoes when we're in our nineties. And advertisers wont have to waste money paying for those ads that no one wanted to see anyway and hopefully "ad spam" will be a distant and laughable thing of the past.

Ice and solar air conditioning

Stuff like ice based air conditioning using off-peak cheap electricity makes so much sense its a wonder everyone isn't doing it. Technology like this actually makes more sense for industrial AC where its not the heat that requires it, but humidity.

Of course the only thing that makes more sense is solar powered AC - a roof full of solar P-V panels generating enough electricity to do the cooling with free power. Come on guys, when its stinking hot it usually super sunny - get the connection??? If only California and other sunny states mandated solar panels for residential and business, in our state the cost of them is a small fraction of the average house price and just think of the F-U we could send to the Enrons of the world afterwards.

California has always prided itself on its difference and independence - there's still a movement to leave the union going strong here. So how about starting with energy independence. Seriously, even my bro' in the UK is getting solar power on his house and they get a fraction of the sun that we do so lets not keep dragging our knuckles like the sun ain't shining and the power bills ain't rising!