What does it matter, on a plane like the 777 that costs $260 to $377 *million* dollars to acquire? That's less than 4 hundreths of a percent of the acquisition cost. 100K$ is peanuts on the scale of costs it takes to acquire and operate a large airliner.

And since it is not, strictly speaking, a piece of *safety* equipment, there's no need to take planes out of service to install it. Just require it on new planes, and maybe retrofit existing large airliners when they're down for major maintenance.

It seems likely to me that the probably reason this device isn't required is engineering conservatism. Before something like this is required, you have to convince people that (a) it's a good idea, and (b) this is a good implementation of that good idea.

Ah, but who are the "takers"?

Maybe this will help a little: http://pando.com/2014/02/26/fo...

The document in question was an internal CIA investigation that concluded that the CIA's post 9/11 extraordinary rendition and torture program had not produced any useful intelligence. That contradicts the CIAs reporting to congress on the program.

There's a difference between surveillance and transparency.

People have a basic, animal need to be left alone sometimes. If there is "omnipresent surveillance", and you can't possibly know who's watching, how can you ever say "no"?

I don't think "decorum" is something that is decided democratically. It is almost imposed on us by the powerful, and that means that it will be beneficial to a few and less so to everyone else.

But again, it's good that smart people like you are talking about this.

These days, if you're not a political dissident, you are not paying attention.

There are over six million people in US prisons, only a small minority of which are in there for violent crimes. You're 8.5x more likely to go to prison for a non-violent drug offense such as possessing a trivial amount of drugs or even living in the same home as a drug dealer and being charged as an accessory. Your are 6x more likely to be in prison for a public order or "victimless" crime such as prostitution than a violent crime. You are 2.5x more likely to be in prison for a "weapons violation" in which nobody was hurt than you are for a violent crime.

So why is it OK to be happy about the prospect of people in prison being killed in a fire?

One solution to many of the technical, administrative and financial problems of running prisons would be to imprison fewer people. Canada imprisons less than 1/6 the fraction of its population than the US, and it's not a crime-ridden hell hole; Germany 1/9th and Denmark 1/10th the US incarceration rate. We could half our prison spending and spend the money on education (or give people a tax break if you prefer), and still have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.

Why do we have so many people in prisons? Well, putting people behind bars is good for a prosecutor's career, especially if he has political ambitions. Also in states with privatized prisons the taxpayers are financially penalized for having occupancy rates less than 95 or even 100%. Think about that. Your prisons are overcrowded, so you hire a politically contractor and build a virtual guarantee into the contract that prisons will remain overcrowded.

Anyhow, a coarse net wouldn't rain fire down on prisoners. Stretch a piece nylon (very flammable) rope and try to ignite it by throwing burning stuff onto it. Even if it does catch it will only smolder. So net would be cheap and practical, which is precisely why it would never be used in the US: not enough profits to prison operators.

fly a gun inside

Unfortunately, that means they have to be several kilometers in width...

It makes me feel better knowing there are smart, tech-savvy people saying what you're saying.

I get a little disheartened when I hear otherwise informed people say, "It's the internet age. You don't have any privacy, so just get over it". They just don't seem to have any awareness of the role that privacy, agency and basic human liberty have played in getting us to a point where we can have such powerful technology.

If there had been ubiquitous surveillance thirty years ago, we might not even have an Internet as we know it today. And the gains we have made will not protect themselves.

I doubt you're a political dissident or whatever.

Well...

but I'd like to go on record as joining the beta sucks bandwagon

Instead of cursing the darkness, why not light a candle?

http://soylentnews.org/

Ummmm... just a thought: Google?

It's not that it can't do useful things for everyone; it's that you have to balance that against things like time wasted. For the head of a major agency with private secretaries and aids at her call, checking and sending emails might not be the best use of her time.

... we don't glorify hackers, we glorify good people doing good things that benefit the common good. It just so happens that some of those people accomplish that goal by hacking.

Robin Hood. Dick Turpin. Butch Cassidy. Bonnie and Clyde. Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.

People who break the law have always been the subject of fascination, and for a certain subset of the fascinated, glorification. We still enjoy caper movies about criminals pulling off complicated heists, movies which gloss over the innocent victims of crime or even depict the criminal as an instrument of poetic justice. For the vast majority of people fascination with criminals is harmless. Living in a civilized society requires restraint that makes fantasies of anarchic behavior attractive. In moderation, some measure of admiration of rule breakers probably helps keep the people who run things in check (e.g. the Edward Snowden case).

The problem is that some people have difficulty separating fantasy from reality, keeping to moderation, or understanding how complex or ambiguous people can be. Julian Assange is neither an angel nor a devil, but a flawed, complicated person who did something that needed doing. George Washington wasn't the childhood paragon of the cherry tree legend, but an ambitious, rash, somewhat dishonest social climber who achieved greatness under the pressure of circumstance.