The Firehouse

Airport security is doomed to fail in preventing terrorist attacks. Unless they want us to fly naked and possibly even then get an X-ray and proctologist exam before boarding, there is no way they can prevent nasty things happening.

We are currently forced into placing our toiletries (gels, perfume, shaving cream) into a small clear plastic bag, presumably because the small clear plastic bag will contain the brutal force of a liquid explosive going off inside it. Actually, the explosion would not be that spectacular, as The Register explained.

I happened to travel to London from Barcelona on the 20th, but on flight BA477, the early morning one – had I picked the later flight at 11 AM, BA478, I would have been on one of the aircraft contaminated with Polonium-210. On the way back that afternoon, we flew out of Gatwick, as the Heathrow flight was full…which happened to be BA479, also a contaminated flight. Near-miss on both trips.
Polonium-210 is a highly radioactive substance, but which emits alpha particles, which travel slow and cannot even penetrate the human skin. This makes it very difficult to detect, and since a dose of 1 milligram can kill a human, it is very easy to conceal and transport many lethal doses, for example, inside a pen. Delivery to a victim can be through water or food, inhalation, or an open wound. It’s unlikely a terrorist would start placing little pellets of Polonium in the food trays delivered during a flight, but he could empty one of the sub-100cc bottles he conveniently carried onboard in the clear plastic bag in the lavatory, a place likely visited by most passengers during a long flight.

The next obvious question is – how easy is it to obtain Polonium-210? Very easy, actually. Although it is a byproduct of nuclear reactors, United Nuclear sells license-exempt quantities to the general public. How easy is it to obtain Polonium-210 in toxic quantities? Not that easy – a lot of hype has been passed around the media regarding United Nuclear, but as their special note states, you would need to spend $1 million and order 15.000 samples to have a toxic amount of the stuff. Samples ordered are produced on demand at a reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

We should not worry too much about getting a whiff of Polonium-210 on our next flight, but we should raise against the draconian “security” measures imposed by panels of would-be experts. We are not realizing that the terrorists are winning one battle, which is to make us live in fear and paranoia, when the actual chances of dying in a terrorist attack are smaller than tripping over on the sidewalk and fatally hitting your head on the concrete. Maybe we should outlaw sidewalks…

Robert Scoble writes about whether having a decent WiFi connection at a conference is something that important, and concludes that if you can afford the $3500 price tag to get in, you can also afford a $80 a month Verizon mobile data plan. Ethan Kaplan thinks it is important, and I agree, but for different motives.
What Robert fails to appreciate is, that while Web 2.0 may be more US-centered in terms of visitor origin, there are many conferences where the bulk of atendees come from abroad. In this case, it makes little sense to get into a Verizon plan just for the few days when you are visiting. Roaming data charges (when roaming data connections such as GPRS even work, which I found impossible around California) are astronomical.

I am in favor of event organizers providing a good quality, solid and stable WiFi connection, even though it can be very expensive. An example was the WOMMA conference at the San Francisco Hilton, which didn’t provide WiFi, as the hotel wanted $20.000 to put a router in the hall. However, a compromise between the two postulates would be for Verizon to offer a rent-a-card service. Just like I pick up my car at Hertz for a week at SFO, I could also pick up a Verizon card, use it while moving about, and return it at the airport before leaving the country. I can already hear critics saying “but people would just keep the cards” – maybe, but what good would they be to them? Additionally, just like you have a retainer placed on your credit card when you rent a car, the same could apply to the card, if you don’t return it, Verizon actually could make more money!

This was seen on a Boeing 767 while en route from Las Vegas to Atlanta, the flight being operated by Delta. Apparently, many people were having problems with their purchased movies, and so the crew decided to reset the system, provoking a nicely familiar sight.

Now we could all start making jokes about nmapping the plane, or trying to run Asterisk off a USB drive plugged into the management console, which by the way was accessible to anyone who wandered to the toilet and happened to look left. It had a nice big “Reset all” button too, two USB ports, and a gigabit etherenet RJ45. I just hope they don’t run a kernel with some remote_crash_plane() buffer overflow exploit…

Last week I had to go to Romania for a meeting with a team of coders, landing at Cluj-Napoca on Tuesday. Scheduled to return on Wednesday, I duly turned up at the airport by 08:00, joining the long line leading to the security checkpoint. Wait. A long line? We’re talking about an airport with a single runway, one transfer bus (you could actually walk the 50 yards to the plane, but hey, if they have it they might aswell put it to some use!), about a dozen flights a day, all of them small turboprops with a capacity for around 60 people – which usually fly half empty.

So, what was the reason for the holdup? An overzealous security guard, who stared at each bag on the x-ray monitor while squinting his eyes as if it would bring more detail to the picture. After the long radioactive scrutiny, he would open the bags, shout a few things to their owners, and sometimes pull things out of them. Dangerous stuff such as sticks of SEMTEX I though.

When my turn arrived, some forty minutes later, I was rather curious apart from annoyed at what was captivating this guard. I should have guessed. Romania must have a healthy black market for….spray deodorants. My tiny Nivea sample spray tin was also taken, with a bad boy stare from the guard.

According to international safety regulations, flammable sprays are not allowed on board aircraft (albeit agencies such as the TSA allow toiletries in small quantities), just as dangerous chemicals, explosives, live ammunition, and a whole bunch of other nasty stuff. This guy had the right to take away my little piece of odour-fighting equipment – but was it really necessary to do so? I had almost calmed down, fearing I would miss my connection at Vienna, when I noticed the also tiny duty-free shop, which looked recently refurbished. On a closer look, they were selling…yep, you guessed it – a truckload of flammable products, from large hair sprays ten times larger than my former deodorant, to cologne with a high alcohol content. I could have just bought one and carried on with my world domination plans just as well, but all I wanted was to get to Vienna.

This got me thinking about the recent hubbub about exploding Dell laptops, basically when their batteries vented with flame and smoke, as it is technically defined. Laptop batteries are made of lithium-cobalt, or more recently, lithium-manganese oxide. This type of chemistry is very efficient at holding charge, and making it available at high rates, without damage or aging to the battery. The drawback is that they are very dangerous. A lithium battery can explode violently, sending chemicals and debris out at high speed and causing a lot of damage. They can also vent with flame and smoke, as seen in Dell’s promotional footage. For a great explanation of battery technologies, visit the Battery University.

The TSA officially allows laptops and their batteries in both checked and cabin luggage, so do we have to worry? If you ever find yourself sitting next to a burning laptop on a flight, take this comforting thought with you: there is nothing on the plane that can put out a lithium chemical fire.

Happy flying!

Why? Because demand either totally exceeds supply, or the other way around. And the fares stay the same. A few days ago, I found myself on a hunt to get a cab that would take me to the bus station so I could get the last ride home that night – and ended up walking half the distance while watching taken cabs go past all the time. When I finally managed to find a free one, I had to convince the driver I’d give him a handsome tip if he would cut off the bus that had already left the station.

What is my proposal? To link all the meters to a central database which tracks in use versus free cabs at any one time in a particular area or city, and adjusts the price of the minimum fare accordingly. This minimum fare could then be shown to potential clients on the LCD display most modern cabs now sport on their roofs. This would have a few effects:

1. It would make cabbies happier. They hate taking people two or three streets for the minimum fare, which then causes them to have to drive around again for a while to find a new costumer.

2. It would make people who really need to take a cab (like I did) happier, as they would be more likely to find one when they most needed it.

3. It would give tons of free publicity to the first city to implement this!

I bet some of the people riding the dozens of cabs I saw that evening would have been willing to pay a minimum fare of $5 instead of $1.50. Today, there were tons of free cabs at the stop, so the fare would be cheaper, and more people would feel compelled to take one.

The twist that makes this work is that the fare you pay doesn’t represent the same distance or waiting time regardless of the actual price, but it is proportional. So, a $6 minimum fare would get you four times as far as a $1.5 minimum fare. The travel cost is the same, but the value of it changes – that is, the distance people feel is worth walking to save the cost of the cab.