Sheesh, kids these days. 'Responsible disclosure' used to be about not screwing over the numerous people running a piece of software. Then it became about helping websites implementing software to regress us back to centralized computing. And now it's apparently about helping preserve clunky business models by helpfully suggesting exploiting weaknesses in TLS. What's up next, volunteer implementations of using nmap for client OS fingerprinting so they're even better able to extra money from more-capable device owners? Or helping to conceal the latest government trojan? Sigh.
It's a bunch of little niggling aspects that add up into just feeling the whole thing is yet another gimmicky disposable income scoop for out of touch spendthrifts.
1. Fifteen different prices depending on what alleged type of device you're using, and gasp whether you have more than one.
2. Internet access is only required for most tasks due to people's laziness of using webapps.
3. Alternatively, "yay, I can refresh reddit on a plane"
4. Partial Internet access given before payment, to make it as disruption-free as possible, even though it will necessarily end up admitting things like the original article.
5. These whole "enter your credit card" wifi networks in general. Network access is infrastructure. Yeah, it takes a bit of work to backhaul a plane. But it also took quite a bit of work to build the plane. Just make the infrastructure universal so we can rely on it instead of clouding the thing with massive transaction overhead.
6. Why give the spineless airlines any more money than you have to? This attitude is subject to change when they start sticking up for their customers by giving the TSA the boot.
But honestly I'm doubt I'm going to win any points for these views on HN. I should probably just turn my commenting threshold back down.
> 1. Fifteen different prices depending on what alleged type of device you're using, and gasp whether you have more than one.
The device type is a good indicator of bandwidth usage. It's sensible to bill using this model for now. They could use metered bandwith, but something tells me you'd complain about that too.
> 2. Internet access is only required for most tasks due to people's laziness of using webapps.
What does this have to do with anything? People use the internet for all sorts of stupid stuff. I happen to use it mainly for vpn and ssh, but why does it matter?
> 3. Alternatively, "yay, I can refresh reddit on a plane"
So? Again, who cares?
> 4. Partial Internet access given before payment, to make it as disruption-free as possible, even though it will necessarily end up admitting things like the original article.
Partial access is given due to exclusivity deals and that sort of thing. Would you prefer the alternative of just not giving you anything? Who the hell complains about free? Seriously.
> 5. These whole "enter your credit card" wifi networks in general. Network access is infrastructure. Yeah, it takes a bit of work to backhaul a plane. But it also took quite a bit of work to build the plane. Just make the infrastructure universal so we can rely on it instead of clouding the thing with massive transaction overhead.
You do realize that Boeing, Detla, and GoGo are different companies right? Also, it takes a lot more than a "little bit of work to backaul." It took GoGo many many years working with the FAA, ISPs, and others to only just recently get this setup and approved. Look at what's happening with the dreamliner if you want an example of what can go wrong if you do this incorrectly. Finally, most of the planes in a typical airline's fleet are decades old. You can't just bake this cost into the price of the plane (as if that makes sense anyways. not all 747s are passenger planes). With your proposal, we'd maybe get wifi in 2030 (assuming this proposal would be possible at all, which I doubt it would).
> 6. Why give the spineless airlines any more money than you have to? This attitude is subject to change when they start sticking up for their customers by giving the TSA the boot.
OK, seriously, W.T.F. are you talking about? The TSA is employed by the airport, not the airline.
Re: 6 - I should also say that to "give the TSA the boot", it is the US government who should stick up for its customers and end this security theater.
