If someone were to steal this idea, I fear it would be as a customer-trap. Instead of a voucher to get free wi-fi, you'd get a rebate for wi-fi -- so you pay first and then jump through innumerable hoops to be paid back. Oh, and once you've subscribed you still get billed regularly unless you cancel.
Bitter? I hardly knew 'er!
Your mistake is in thinking that anyone connected with the airline industry gives a shit whether you're happy when you travel. We've trained them to believe that all we care about is cheap and nasty, and they deliver.
OT: Music also not free.
Dude - what airport? I don't know of any airport that has free WiFi... Where are you, Stockholm?
Unfortunately, I think 2 is right on, although I think Becks's idea is a great one.
What's the statute of limitations on downloading music? I got almost all my free stuff during the heady days of Napster, downloaded maybe 10-20 songs post 2000, and nothing in the last 3 years. Am I clear or can they still come seize my computer and ask me to prove I own all the mp3s on there?
IANAL, but I think they bust you during the crime (downloading). If they were to try and say "look at all the MP3s on George's computer!" you can just say "I borrowed CDs from my friends".
...at least, I'm in a similar position as you (got most of my MP3s off Napster), and that's the rationale I use.
Related: I've had a couple of friends dump the (non-DRMed) contents of their Ipods on my hard drive. Is that covered by fair use like making someone a mix tape is?
"I borrowed CDs from my friends".
Or just "I gave away the CDs."
I've seen the music companies argue that 6, 7, 8 are all illegal- you can't copy friends' CDs / files, and if you have a CD but give it away / sell it you have to delete all copies you have. Obviously their larger concern is mass file sharing because sharing with strangers will be a larger market, but they'd like to throw all of you in jail too.
I've had a couple of friends dump the (non-DRMed) contents of their Ipods on my hard drive. Is that covered by fair use like making someone a mix tape is?
No, and what's more, making a mixtape for someone isn't considered by the RIAA to be fair use.
I don't know of any airport that has free WiFi... Where are you, Stockholm?
The JetBlue terminal at JFK has free WiFi.
Where are you, Stockholm?
Dude, there's no internet in Sweden.
The JetBlue terminal at JFK has free WiFi.
But no departing flights. *rimshot*
I'm on a layover in Phoenix right now, and they have free wifi as well. (It's nice and fast, too.)
Dude, there's no internet in Sweden.
But Finland doesn't have a password on their WiFi. If only the Grad Student knew...
And back to the copyright thing: I've asked the following question of a couple of lawyer friends, none of whom knew the answer (although they don't work on IP). Say I have an album on vinyl and want to digitize it and put it on my computer. It that fair use (viewing it as, say, a personal back-up copy)? Does it make a difference if the only CD reissue is re-mastered, or issued by a different label, and thus not techincally the same work?
My excitement was premature -- yes, there is free wi-fi in the terminal. HOWEVER, I am about to board the flight, despite us being told that the earliest we might take off is 6 pm. We're going to sit on the runway for at least an hour and a half instead.
I'm on JetBlue.
Oh shit, we might never hear from Becks again. We'll miss you, Becks!
Say I have an album on vinyl and want to digitize it and put it on my computer
That's fair use, yes. You can't give it to anyone else, though (at least while retaining your own copy).
Good luck, Becks. Remember, when the passengers and crew start to turn on each other, be sure to leave someone alive who knows how to fly the plane.
be sure to leave someone alive who knows how to fly the plane.
Becks is a licensed pilot.
"fly the plane" s/b "open the doors". That sucker ain't leaving the ground any time soon.
21: Really? Well I guess she can eat anyone once the food runs out.
I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
I already hate flying, even when it's timely and everything goes OK. The last time I flew I was on a plane with a loud drunk whose foot had swollen and turned purple and had to be elevated, a skinhead with Tourette's and three busted bathrooms and the in-flight movie was The Bourne Supremacy. I'm never, ever flying again unless I am knee-walking drunk.
That said, parts of RDU have free WiFi (other parts have AT&T's subscription WiFi).
The last time I flew I was on a plane with a loud drunk whose foot had swollen and turned purple and had to be elevated, a skinhead with Tourette's and three busted bathrooms and the in-flight movie was The Bourne Supremacy.
Dude, what? Everyone I've ever sat next to on a plane has been exceedingly normal. Maybe they're keeping a lid on it so as not to provoke me into blowing the thing up, but I don't think so. And the Bourne movies are good!
That sounds like the beginning of a wacky farce, Robust.
And the Bourne movies are good!
Neighbor, please.
Neighbor, please.
What, did he break the speed limit in one of them?
It's possible that I simply dislike Matt Damon.
34: fwiw, I always drive the speed limit, and have for about ten years now.
I always drive the speed limit
Seriously, people, that's dangerous.
Unless you're on the five or something, is there really any reason to go over 60, 65 MPH?
I'm just going to believe that you're baiting me. No one, especially no one dating an Iranian, thinks the way you claim to think. No one!
No one under 70 years of age, I should say.
38: Only if you want to get to where you're going sooner. Also best if there's no traffic, cops, ice, etc.
Unless you're on the five or something, is there really any reason to go over 60, 65 MPH?
Yes, if everyone else around you is going 75.
on the five
The slang of today's youth confuses me.
As for going over 65, you get there faster, first of all. There are also quite a few roads where the appropriate speed is more like 70 or 75. Going slower than the flow of traffic just messes things up for everyone else.
If everyone else is driving 75 MPH, A) it is obviously safe to drive that speed unless your cataracts are bothering you, and B) you constantly get in the way of other drivers and force them to change lanes more than they want to when you go 60 MPH.
There are also places where the speed limit is 75.
Thing is, you really have to be driving for several hours before the 10 MPH difference between 65 and 75 really saves you a significant amount time.
29, 30: I'm sparing you the longer version. It features the family of screaming hicks (for whom said skinhead was the diplomat), a lot of me trying to burrow into Rah's armpit and the abrupt realization, mid-flight, that despite all the other things going on at least one flight attendant had decided that I was the #1 risk for screaming panic. It was a wacky farce only not at all fun. Well, OK, when I get wound up and tell the whole thing from start to finish it's pretty fun to tell. Like many of life's misadventures, ultimately it was worth it for the story. Still: I hate flying.
not to provoke me into blowing the thing up
People do a lot more talking when you're not wearing a turban with a giant, cartoonish fuse sticking out of the top.
And maybe TBS is good. I actually liked the first one just fine, as action movies go. But a movie with lots of guns! violence! international intrigue! is not a plane-friendly movie these days no matter how stupid it sounds when said.
Montana used to have no absolute speed limits, opting for a "reasonable and prudent" standard instead. That didn't last too long, though. I think they do still have some roads with 80 mph speed limits.
Go 65, Jackmormon. The rest of the world can slow the fuck down.
you really have to be driving for several hours before the 10 MPH difference between 65 and 75 really saves you a significant amount time.
Sure, and the only times I drive particularly fast are on long road trips. It only really makes sense on big interstates. But if you're driving several hundred miles, it makes a big difference.
In all seriousness, I'd guess that about 70-80% of the borderline dangerous driving I see, meaning abrupt lane changes, passing on the right, cars clumping too close together, are caused by people driving slower than the rate of traffic. Just drive whatever speed people in the right lane are driving, if you don't want to go fast.
Recent conversation:
"When should I pick you up at the airport?"
"Well, my flight gets in at three, so figure an hour to process a lost baggage claim, see you at four?"
I hate air travel.
I'd guess that about 70-80% of the borderline dangerous driving I see...are caused by people driving slower than the rate of traffic.
You're high. It's all people on cell phones.
Apparently, my honey used to have one of those death-trap crotch-rockets. I suspect that he used to be much more stereotypical.
It's all people on cell phones.
That true, but mainly because they slow way down.
55: I'm just pissed that about the time we got pretty good at limiting ourselves to carryons, we get these idiotic liquids rules that are going to force us to check bags in order to have enough contact lens solution for a week.
are caused by people driving slower than the rate of traffic
Nu! It's impatient aggressive drivers getting ticked off by the slower drivers. The slower drivers aren't the ones passing on the right and making abrupt lane changes, dude.
Cairo airport has free wireless, for heaven's sake. Dialup there is also free -- the numbers are on huge billboards all over the city.
They also pause dangerously in the middle of intersections, fail to look for pedestrians, and drift out of their lane.
Didn't someone on this site write the book on driving-cell phone hating? I think it was one of the first posts I ever read, maybe a year ago. FL?
Driving the speed limit in the right hand lane of a 3 line highway isn't a huge problem. If it's a 2 lane highway it can be pretty annoying for people who like to go 5-10 miles above the speed limit but don't go 85. The Meritt parkway is often really annoying like this: there's an effective 20-25 mph differential between the lanes, so you're either stuck behind someone slow on the right or being tailgated on the left.
Depending on the traffic it's also sometimes safer/more polite to move to the middle lane & let people merge in, and driving slower than the speed of traffic in the middle or left lane is really a hassle.
You get better gas mileage if you go 55-60 mph ish though. Not totally sure how much of a difference it makes.
Look, Mormon, the combination of road, car, country, weather and traffic conditions has its own natural speed, if you will, and you can either drive at that speed, or be part of the problem.
I believe it's a 5% decrease in fuel efficiency for every 5 miles over 55. Or maybe only one number works on my keyboard.
You know what would also help at airports? Some damn outlets.
The slower drivers aren't the ones passing on the right
No, they're on the left, where they shouldn't be, thus forcing people who actually want to get to a destination within their lifetimes to desperate acts.
I find the concept of "free wireless internet" to be almost unimaginable awesome, and tend to get annoyed by anyone complaining about its quality, given that it is something none of us envisioned ever having the benefit of ten years ago.
65: goes as cube of the velocity, so that can't stay linear for long.
No one, especially no one dating an Iranian, thinks the way you claim to think. No one!
I dunno - her's is quiet and well-mannered. I think he might be a ringer.
and when Montana had a speed limit that was whatever is "reasonable and prudent for the driving conditions" on the highways, in some cases the night speed limit was as low as 45mph. This was indicated by some pretty trippy signs.
On the speed thing: if I'm on the highway, I'm going. (Usually a multi-hour trip.) Speeding in a town is bad, but if your next stop is four hours away, book it.
Earlier we were discussing what makes a good driver, and I'd say the most important thing, more than confidence or decisiveness, is to telegraph what you're doing. Don't surprise the other drivers.
This isn't just limited to turn signals; cars have body language.
cars have body language
I'm now in love with Cala.
Ogged, if everyone around you were driving off the Golden Gate Bridge, would it be a good idea? I postulate that no, it would not be.
Are they driving off the bridge to get around a slow person in the left lane? 'Cause then they might have a case.
Most of us are coming to this from a perspective where it is not only more accommodating but more comfortable to drive at the speed that everyone else is driving. I don't know what goes through people's heads as they drive 55 mph on I-81, getting passed 100 times a minute. I usually assume either they have kids in the car and want to set a good example, or they are terrified of driving in general and would rather be at home asleep, or they are terrified of the 0.1% chance of getting pulled over because they are drunk or because one more speeding violation will make them lose their license. Either way I always feel sympathy for such a car when I pass it, and wonder what is going on. It seems odd that such a rational person as Jackmormon also engages in this behavior.
Some damn outlets.
My RSS reader needs a search engine, because I just read somewhere they're looking to start pulling these out in favor of stands where you pay $2 to charge your laptop for 20 mins. Pure evil.
gas efficiency is the cube of velocity?
Hey, here's my favorite calculus quote:
Nixon once said, "The rate at which inflation is increasing is slowing down", thus being the first president to invoke the fourth derivative for re-election purposes.
78: Aren't you supposed to be off taking pictures of your ass?
Remember, every time I drive it's a special occasion, and I'm just happy to be going so fast just by pushing down my foot.
JM, maybe I missed this in the other thread, but do you actually drive? Or are you making an academic argument that putting your fellow citizens' lives in danger is virtuous?
80: I'm at work. How 'bout a photocopy?
or they are terrified of the 0.1% chance of getting pulled over because they are drunk
Ever since I had to go back to a driving commute, I've been astounded by the number of people who are bombed clean out of their minds at 8 in the morning. (Either that or the number of people who just drive that way, which is probably less astounding.)
82 seems to be calling for a thought experiment. Imagine that your train would run over one person per mile in the right lane while driving behind slowpokes, but you would run over two people per mile if you started passing in the left lane, but you were on your way to a house fire and an unspecified number of brains in vats would die, according to a Poisson distribution with its median at 2 per hour. What would be the minimum speed at which you would find it no longer bearable to drive in the right lane? Remember that you are not aware of what speed you are going.
Quit tailgating heebie.
Sorry, that turned into more of a neuroeconomics questionnaire. You might as well replace "mile per hour" with "dollar" and go all the way towards answering it with an arbitrary number which the wisdom of crowds will transform into truth.
Both 89 and the idea of dropping trou and sitting on the photocopier in the middle of the administrative office have me in stiches.
A photocopy?
She is just going to use the reduce feature.
No more moral equivalence. If a law-abiding person "causes" a miscreant to commit a crime, the miscreant is still wrong and should be punished. It's a sting operation kind of thing.
People should form rush-hour Obendience to Law clubs to "out" as many criminal drivers as possible, thus making it possible for the police to arrest or kill them.
A. The airport in Ft. Lauderdale has free wireless everywhere, and so does the one in Syracuse. Miami says it does, and my laptop had a good signal when I was there yesterday, but some weird technical problem prevented connection. I think Kansas City airp has free wireless too.
I'm a big fan.
National will probably be one of the last places to get it.
B. The guy who challenged Montana's 'basic rule' speed limit should have been run out of the state on a mule. The prose speed limit was a wonderful idea, and I don't think it was void for vagueness at all. The prior arrangement, where speeds between 55 and 70 weren't 'speeding,' but got you a $5 Special was also a pretty good deal.
Syracuse airport has free wireless? This is a useful piece of information.
Montana also allows drinking and driving. They even have driveup windows in the liquor stores so you don't hurt yourself getting out of the car if you're falling-down drunk.
When I first moved to Texas (in 2000), there was no open container law. I thought that was insane. The rule was: One fewer open beverages than people in the car.
Of course, 96 is a better fact than mine.
You're filled with smallminded prejudices, HG. Against carp, against moderate, self-monitored drinking while driving, against freedom.
Many players make the rookie mistake of having one or two gigantic prejudices (minorities, sexual orientations, bi-coastal elites).
But we experienced haters know to maintain many, small prejudices. (carp, women whose children have birth defects, people who don't read every last word of my long-winded comments.)
a Poisson distribution
You're giving out carp? I thought HG didn't like carp.
97: Admit it. You're down at the Party Barn every weekend, aren't you?
I admit it. I'm guilty...of knowing how to PARTY DOWN.
94 -- since when does Syracuse have free wireless? I remember being disgruntled on multiple occasions because they had no wireless at all. The last was maybe a year-ago-ish?
43: the five refers to I-5 in Southern California. Southern California freeways all employ the definite article. Not sure where exactly they revert to numbers and letters. Does the Internet explain? I have read a lot of it, but I still don't know.
Does the Internet explain
The naming of interstate freeways seems to come up in blog comments a couple of times a year and never fails to provoke endless discussion. I've seen it hashed out on Crooked Timber, LanguageHat, Making Light, and (if memory serves) this very forum.
Now the Ontario Provincial Police don't think much of Bud
Yeah the cops have been lookin for the son of a gun
That's been rippin the tar off the 401
They know the name of the truck shines up in the sun...
Green Gables
OT, but people should totally encourage mcmc in this.
104: At whatever point along said freeways you get a critical mass of right-thinking people. (In other words, the useless definite article is a SoCalism; it's not like everyone in California agrees that "the five" becomes "I-5" at, say, Bakersfield.)
SoCalers don't just use it to refer to SoCal freeways, either. I once got a ride to the Ontario airport with a guy who had driven across the country a couple times and spent the whole drive talking about the routes he'd taken (as you can imagine, it wasn't a very interesting conversation). He used the article with every freeway he mentioned, even the ones that don't go anywhere near California.
What's with the hating on carp?
I was in Syracuse last Thursday: free wireless at the airport. I don't know anything at all about what went on there last month, last year, last decade . . .
Hey, there's a list!
Charley, you have enemies. A word to the wise.
I like nothing better than a nice, greasy smoked carp, but not everyone feels that way.
110: It's easy to pick up, Johnny Carson and other TV shows have primed everyone in the US for it. It's no big deal, it takes the same amount of time to say "the" or "I" and the number.
Biohazard assumes facts not in evidence, to wit that people preface highways with "I". The only time I do that is when talking with someone who is unfamiliar with the area, to make sure they know what kind of highway it is. On the other hand all the interstates around here sound good without the "I" -- 79, 80, 81, 83. I might feel uneasy if I was forced to say "Take 90 until you get to 5" and would probably stick an "Interstate" before the 5.
When I first moved to Texas (in 2000), there was no open container law. I thought that was insane. The rule was: One fewer open beverages than people in the car.
I was just recently in an argument about this regarding Virginia law. "No, we can have a beer in the car, it just can't be in reach of the driver. I swear! A lawyer told me," said my co-traveller.
"I don't think that's the case at all. Think about it. Virginia would probably limit the amount you could take in a given sip, had the state the authority to patrol it. Open containers?! I doubt it," I said.
I routinely use "I" to refer to interstates. Near my house in Albuquerque there's the intersection of I-25 and I-40, which is commonly referred to as "the Big I."
I have noticed that people in the Northeast tend to refer to them by number alone.
"The Big I" is the intersection, not one of the interstates. In case that's unclear.
Becks' proposal would almost certainly cost more than the incremental cost of the extra upstream bandwidth. Just make it furrreeee.
LHR is covered by several competing pay-WLANs (T-Mobile, BT Openzone, and The Cloud), but it's worth scanning because the world's favourite WLAN aggregator, "linksys default", has quite a large presence as well.
When you live in the middle of nowhere and only have a couple interstates to refer to, you have plenty of time to add an I. In the northeast, they just do the number because there are too many, both main interstates and spurs (395, 295, 495, 190, 290), to take the time to add an I to all of them.
I only use "the" for roads with names, but not always then -- depending on initial sounds, I guess: the Sun road, the Looking Glass, the BW Parkway, but Skyline Drive.
In my 1935 Britannica, there's a highway map of the US, and the major highways have names. And special color coded signs. The Arrowhead Trail, for example, went from SLC to LA, while the Dixie Bee Line went from Chicago to Nashville. They would, as numbered highways aften do, overlap. For example, the highway between LA and SD had 5 different names, including the Jefferson Davis National Highway (which ran from DC to SF, via Raleigh, Montgomery, NO, San Antonio, Phoenix, SD).
What do you know, there's a list!
118: In the Southeast there are many, many un-named but numbered routes. I think that's why saying "I" for the big interstates became a habit. All I remember about the Northeast is "the El Eye Eee".
In Chicago, the Interstates have names that help distinguish what part of the road you—or the traffic announcers—are talking about. So from south to north I-94 is successively the "Dan Ryan," "Kennedy" and "Edens."
For some reason, British roads are very rarely named, always numbered according to a plan radiating out from London. (Anything east of the A1 is 1x to 1xxx, then anything south of the A2 is 2..x, anything west of the A3 3..x, anything north of the A4 4...x, anything north of the A5 5..x, anything between the A6 and A1 6..x. Motorways follow the pattern. If the first digit is between 7 and 9 inclusive, you're in Scotland.)
The old line of the A1 was the Great North Road, which is rather good.
Can there really be a road called the Looking Glass? As in both the head of SAC's airborne command post, and the server that lets you see your computer's routeview? Stupercool.
I need to mention "East", "West", etc. appended to a road designation in SoCal means perhaps some arbitrarily defined stretch of it, no matter how short, goes in that direction. IMX it's better to think of "North", "South", "East", and "West" as names, not directions.
The Looking Glass hasn't changed much since 1935.
That happens in Boston- there's a stretch of road that is simultaneously called 128 north, 3 south, and 95 north. Obviously, the other side of the road is 128 south, 3 north, and 95 south.
"For some reason, British roads are very rarely named, always numbered "
True; there was the Great West Road, the Eastern & Western Avenues, the Brighton road, and that's about it, all fallen into desuetude. North Circular and South Circular still used, of course, but routes rather than roads, mostly.
I was listening to "Family Entertainment" the other day and Roger Chapman sings about "the 46", which is a usage I hadn't heard in 1969 when the record came out, and haven't heard since either. The A46 is a cross-country route from Bath to Grimsby (I think. can't be bothered to look it up, goes through Leicester). That and the A38 (Bodmin to Derby) were almost certainly routes many years before the roads were numbered. As was Watling Street.
the M56 is always "the East Lancs Road"
There's a highway through the Bronx called the Major Deegan. Throughout my childhood I assumed that it was the larger of two roads serving the same area, and that one of these days I'd find myself on the Minor Deegan. This proved not to be the case.
The only interstates I've heard referred to I-whatever are ones with single-syllable numbers, e.g., I-5. All other interstates in the Bay Area (and we do have a fair number) are all just 80, 280, 680, etc. When names are used, it's "the," as in, "the Nimitz," though names aren't used so much any more. The one name that continues to stick is "the maze," for the clusterfuck of freeways just east of the Bay Bridge.
134: I used to wonder who "Dialogue" was, on the radio serials. He or she showed up in them all, along with "The Lone Ranger by... " and "The Green Hornet by..." but never seemed to be in the plot.
D2, I'm surprised at you. The East Lancs Road is the A580.
