Regarding privacy... I was downmodded on another thread for stating the obvious, but it is the Pilot's union that does not want longer cockpit voice recordings. The logic is reasonable enough; two hours before an accident should be sufficient to give adequate information for crash investigators. The issue here is that it isn't an accident, it really should be a criminal investigation into the activity in the cockpit.

An airline pilot is a professional, and they don't want to work in an environment where every conversation can be analyzed later, independent of the outcomes.

Efficacy... "it's just metadata." The same reasons we dislike the NSA dragnet is the reason why it is a bad idea for every detail to be recorded and stored indefinitely.

Air transportation is traditionally extremely safe. A very substantial amount of money is put into it to get this outcome. The issue with trying to make marginal improvements is that the return on investment is extremely low.

And back to cost, at $2/message, a message broadcast every 60 seconds on a 6-hour flight with 300 passengers is a premium of $24 per passenger. That would roughly cover position, heading, altitude, and any alarms only. If you wanted to add voice data you are likely looking at something in the range of $60 more per passenger for the flight.

What was needed here was a detachable ELT that activates on impact/submersion and floats on the surface. The logistics of making this sufficiently robust are non trivial, but it would be substantially cheaper than 10 flights with real-time voice streaming from the cockpit, and provide substantially more useful information.

Money, privacy, and efficacy. An Inmarsat message apparently costs $2-3 for the equivalent of a tweet. Recording every word said will likely prevent much from being said, which could reduce CRM. Sending all this data to the cloud for what purpose exactly? So that one CVR every 10-20 years that isn't recovered can be addressed?

More can be done, but it isn't as easy as just "putting it in the cloud."

You still have to flair on touchdown; gliding level into the ocean (slight nose-down attitude) is messy. The tail needs to touch first.

SATCOM is not ACARS. SATCOM is used for more than ACARS, and ACARS doesn't just use SATCOM for uplink.

Unions and privacy concerns.

The CVR only records for an hour or two of audio. In all probability, nobody in the cockpit was making noise the last two hours. The FDR would have the whole flight, and will likely show the cause of the crash being fuel exhaustion.

As best I can tell, there is nearly zero chance that there was a fire that turned off ACARS message transmission, then caused corruption in the flight management computer to add several waypoints off the programmed course, then slowly proceeded to short out the transponder 5 minutes later, then caused the VHF radio to stop working immediately after handoff from Malaysian ATC, all the while not impacting the ability for controlled flight of the plane.

Unfortunately, the bat-shit scary truth of the matter appears to be that the pilot decided to kill himself and everybody else on the plane, and there really isn't much that passengers or other flight crew can do to prevent the outcome.

Quite honestly, in the current market the pay gap (in my industry) between a 45 year old and a 28 year old is as small as it ever has been. Similar small gap between a 23 year old and a 28 year old. The challenge in a few years is that there really isn't much in the cards except cost of living adjustments because the value provided doesn't improve as much over time.

Digital or analog? I doubt analog is protected, but looking at Walmart's website the only one under offer that looks like a Fluke... is a Fluke. The SparkFun unit looks like a Fluke.

Actually they are a grey faceplate with an orange or red border. Fluke equipment is easily identifiable with the yellow/grey. I always wondered why some of the other color schemes were out there.

My only issue with things like this is small production runs. Is 2k units small? Seems borderline to me. For $30k should they have thought about it? I would think at least on a cursory basis, which should have made someone say "nice, it looks like a Fluke."

NOW, if they made it red with white lettering like their retail boxes and got in trouble I would be completely sympathetic. Or, if they infringed on a less dominant player's trademark in any form it could be easily excused.

The link is not (just) for engine monitoring. The ACAMS module can be controlled from the cockpit, and was supposedly shut off ~10 minutes before the transponder.

Presumably the satellite transmitter is powered from a DC bus somewhere that has battery backup. If the only thing running is a few strobes and the transmitter pinging periodically then the battery should last a long time...

The problem with my theory is that a high-g (crash) landing should activate the ELT. Not sure if there is a way to disable that, but I would think it is impossible based on the Ethiopian 787 fire last year.

Great explanation.

It sounds more like like the fuselage floating with battery power available for 4 hours, but time will tell on that one.

The easiest approach for 20TB is to properly partition it into static and dynamic groups of data that easily fit on one drive. Get two drives for each static group of data, and three for dynamic data, and rotate a current copy.

Most people have a lot of bulk archival data that they need a backup of, not a business solution that allows for every file to change constantly. Simplify the problem and the solution becomes pretty simple as well.

Now, if you really have 20TB of dynamic data that cycles on less than a 30-120 day basis, buy a frigging tape system.

Ok... Karma to burn.
The design overall was sufficiently unique to the market; it may not have been *patent worthy*, but is it deserving of some level of protection? I have very narrow ideas on what types of intellectual property should be protected; generally that is limited to what could reasonably be considered wholesale copying of a product.

My question is quite simply what type of protection should a company be provided to prevent effectively wholesale copying of their product. Denying that this is what Samsung did is disingenuous, especially in the first rounds of Galaxy products.

The patent suits and the patents themselves are absurd, but that is largely a function of the broader situation-- thousands of patents for trivial inventions, plus a court that limits how many patents can be litigated in a suit.

So what kind of protection would you feel is reasonable for a unique, refined design that makes all its competitors look like they were designed by idiots? The first-mover advantage is pretty useless when a competitor can duplicate your device in a few months.

Because the pilot needs the means to be able to shut off power to any system for safety.