If you think that’s why people are hating on your friend, then no amount of explaining it to you is going to help.
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The ‘bought and paid for thing’ is that he continually misrepresented the case for abolishing net neutrality, in favour of the telecoms companies. He lied and obfuscated tightly in favour of the folks he was supposed to be regulating, I.e, against the people paying his salary to protect their rights.
I’m less interested in how good he was at it than the fact he tried to do it tbh. Incompetence doesn’t mean people aren’t corrupt.
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Don’t forget outright lying and then blaming “Thanks Obama”:
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Respectfully disagree. I used to ride Caltrain to San Francisco every morning and the endless cell phone calls around me were infuriating.
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Exactly. Put cell phone calls in a more stressful environment and they’ll make an already generally unpleasant experience worse.
I admit I hate it when two people next to each other on the bus start talking. Especially in the morning.
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I pretty much just hate people on the bus in the morning period, through no fault of their own except they are there.
Worst of all is when you run into someone whose friendship Venn diagram overlaps yours just enough that you can’t ignore them without being a jerk, so you end up in an awkward conversation for [INFINITE] time before one of you can escape.
Of course, at other times it is a pleasure to chat with acquaintances and perhaps expand into friendships, but the bus at 630 am is not one of those times.
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The astonishing thing is that people who prefer this end result don’t care that the government is lying to make it a regulatory, rather than private restriction. There’s no FCC rule against using cellphones in movie theatres, or FDA rule against cellphones in fancy restaurants, these venues reserve the right to self-regulate. There was no safety issue when planes had those dollar-a-minute sky phones in the seat backs. We also know that public transit in other countries has been able to designate “quiet” and “cell allowed” areas of trains and the like without issue.
We also know and apparently don’t care that the ultra-rich ignore these rules on private aircraft and that this a regulation that will only affect the middle class… but rather than creating the option for short-hop commuter flights and the like to open up certain trips or portions of the plane to cell phone use, it seems folks would rather see false safety threats used to favor one group’s personal preference rather than allowing space for dialogue and compromise.
Remember when BoingBoing railed hard against TSA “security theatre?” Bygone days, apparently.
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Right. I mean frauenfelder and Ratel should be able to buy a ticket on the airline that prohibits cellphone use and people that want to talk on the phone should be able to buy tickets on the ones the permit it. It doesn’t seem to me that anyone is inconvenienced by this.
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Not going to say it’s all Pai’s fault, but the Internet sucks now more than it ever has as far as I can remember.
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During a pandemic that has shown that simply talking can spread more virus, this may not be a time to expand such usage. Indeed, talking on the airline phones probably should be dissuaded at this point.
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Especially since many people insist on pulling their masks down to talk on their phone.
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@frauenfelder I was so surprised at BoingBoing’s pro-regulation stance that I looked it up. The purported safety concerns are those of two flight attendant organizations and the “Safety and Security in the Air Coalition,” who are concerned about,
…the potential for air rage if passengers are using their cell phones, as well as the risk that important safety instructions will not be heard by passengers preoccupied by such use. In addition, SSAC representatives discussed that flight attendants will often be diverted from their primary duties of ensuring the safety and security of the airplane cabin and acting as the last line of defense to protect the cockpit if the ban is removed.
You have to acknowledge this is a crazy reason for federal regulation rather than regular old company policy. That cellphone distraction is going to have flight attendants so disoriented they can’t fistfight hijackers? That frenzied cellphone users will randomly freak out, or (gasp!) may ignore the preflight floaty-pillow-under-the-seat message? Calling it security theatre is an insult- it’s just a thin excuse, and a slippery slope.
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That’s actually a pretty rational reason to ban cell phones given how fervently we are arguing about it here on the forum. It is an issue that definitely divides people and makes them angry. And we’re not locked in a plane together for 1-12 hours.
Of course, on the same basis, I’m not really sure alcohol should be served on planes either.
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Could we just be able to use cell data? I hated flying. Jacking in to internet helps soothe my inner scared little boy.
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Let’s split this topic down the middle.
I am tempted to say:
- Using cell phone technology for voice, NO!
- Using cell phone technology for data (eg, SMS, email, games without voice input)
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You already can, it just stops working pretty quickly as you get off the ground - but some airlines have microcells connected over satellite that work once you reach cruising altitude. Basically the same thing as in-flight wifi, just using cell radio instead of wifi to connect your device to the plane’s satellite uplink.
On a train you can easily get up and walk around if someone’s phone conversation is annoying you. And there’s usually a quiet car you can opt to sit in if you’d rather not be bothered. Maybe planes need quiet sections, too?
That one’s a double-edged sword. Some people get belligerent, others need it to relax and fall asleep. But at the end of the day, the airline can charge nice thick margins on tiny bottles of liquor, so it’s not going away. Hey, remember when they used to have those credit-card-swipe payphones on airplanes? Same thing there I guess, and the ridiculous prices for in-flight wifi…
Let’s deal with that after they establish non-farting sections.
Outside the US, I’ve been on flights where they roll a cart of duty-free merchandise up and down the aisle.
I’m old enough to remember when they’d hand out playing cards gratis; American Airlines also had a Harvey comic book they’d hand out to kids (I think they only put out a new one every year or two, but still…) and other airlines had kids’ materials as well. Or an assortment of magazines (e.g. Ranger Rick) in protective covers that one could borrow – I think people might frown these days on those magazines being handed around from one passenger to the next; on the other hand I can’t remember pulling out an in-flight magazine where someone hadn’t already filled out the crossword and/or sudoku.
I’ve seen flight attendants try to get someone off their mobile while the whole fucking plane is waiting to take off. The response has varied from holding up a finger (best case, an index finger) to outright temper tantrum.
Why is that a safety issue? Because in the case of turbulence, flight attendants need to get people to put away objects like laptops that can become projectiles and buckle up (because passengers can also become projectiles). They need to do so with a moment’s notice, and get bucked in themselves or they also become projectiles.
Look into air turbulence incidents at the FAA site. There have been several fatal incidents of objects and passengers killing people due to flying around the cabin during extreme turbulence. I’ve witnessed one flight where everyone had followed the instructions, but one of the luggage bins hadn’t quite latched shut all the way. A roller bag fell out of the bin, hit the floor, hit the ceiling hard enough to dent it, then tumbled down into the aisle. A fellow passenger then stepped on it to keep it from flailing around the cabin.
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