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Technology

The Buttocks Have It 243

Posted by michael from the hot-seat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "From this ZDNET article: Future hijackers may find that their buttocks betray them, if UK defense firm Qinetiq has its way. The company has developed a smart chair stashed with a thicket of seat sensors, according to New Scientist magazine this week. The same seats could also be used to warn cabin staff of illness among the passengers, potentially alleviating the risk of deep vein thrombosis or DVT."
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The Buttocks Have It More

The Buttocks Have It

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  • Finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:29PM (#6201310) Journal
    Hopefully this technology will allow me to find that inconsiderate bastard that keeps farting near me on international flights.

    • Re:Finally (Score:3, Funny)

      by evilquaker ( 35963 )
      Hopefully this technology will allow me to find that inconsiderate bastard that keeps farting near me on international flights.

      What? You mean you can't tell who farted?!? Awesome! I always kept it in because I figured it would be obvious who did it... All I can say is that I pity the foo's on my 7-hour flight next week.

  • DVT? Just increase the fucking legroom. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) * on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:31PM (#6201323) Journal
    Damn airlines [1] do everything they can to avoid the simple fact that their seats are too small, and too close together. What will it take, a class action lawsuit? Just give passengers enough room (36" pitch is reasonable, not the appalling 30" on some flights) and the whole DVT thing will go away.

    [1] Except United in "economy plus" and most American planes, though AA is reducing room again on some flights. Fuckers.

    • So what are they going to do when they suspect DVT in a passenger? Bump them to first class?

      Guess who's gonna be fidgeting nonstop on my next flight...

      -j
      • Suspect? It's one of the easily misdiagnosed conditions, even by physicians. But if they actually do suspect you have a DVT,by then it's too late. The thrombus has already lodged. So you suffer with some shortness of breath and chest pain if it's a small clot, or they have to figure out where to stash your corpse if it's a reall big clot. ;)
    • It makes me wonder: we have regular airlines offering flights in cramped seats for regular prices, and cheap-ass no-frills airlines like Sleazyjet offering the same cramped seats sans in-flight meals or drinks, for less than half the regular rates.

      So which airline is going to offer flights at the regular rates, but substituting the frills, meals and drinks for more leg room? I'd fly them, no doubt about it.
      • I had hoped it would be American, but their bean-counters seem to have concluded that people only buy based on price and not based on comfort. It's too bad, as I usually fly AA or UA, precisely because I don't like being smashed into a tiny pulp by the guy in front of me (leaning back) and the kid behind me (kicking my seat). At least UA seems to be keeping Economy Plus.
        • That's the point.

          AA sucked financially because people won't pay for a better service.

          Fly business if you want better room... yeah it is expensive, no? But that is more like the 'real' price of your flight - the economy passengers pay the marginal cost of their seat, but the business class pay quite close to the average cost... so quit complaining and pay more, or does it come down to price and not comfort.

          Note: Total cost = fixed cost + marginal cost (cost for an additional unit, or in this case, passe
          • And I forgot to mention that NO intercontinental airline is around at the moment that didn't and still don't get some substantial government subsidy (be it purchase of planes, assistance in maintenance etc).

            The best thing would be to for the government to let American go under... we have a serious overcapacity at the moment, but no, Mr G Dubya (hell, Bill C would probably have done the same) will subsidise and bail out AA all it needs vainly hoping another intercontinental carrier will go under, while thei
            • The best thing would be to for the government to let American go under

              Yep. A real free market would solve the problems, as with most everything else. But the longer the government props up ailing companies, the more difficult it gets to pull the plug later. The collateral damage risk to the economy just keeps growing.

              I think it's already too late though. The loss of jobs would probably be enough to drive the market back down again. But then, most of the things that are better in the long term are comp

          • But it doesn't. Checking today, a business (or first) class ticket costs approx. 8x a coach ticket for the same (transcontinental) trip. Eight coach seats take up a lot more space than two first-class seats.

            AA made money on More Room for the first year or so. The thing that changed was that low-fare airlines like JetBlue have been pulling down both the average fare and the last-minute fare. Sadly, more people buy tickets based on that than comfort.

            Maybe United has it right - Economy Plus with 5" more

          • Fly at night. Next best thing to teleportation.

            My last flight between texas and washington arived at 12pm, and everyone on the flight had a whole row to them selves. So it was grab a pillow, strech your legs out, and fall asleep.

            Problem solved.

    • Actually...you guys have it _really_ bad in the U.S. I have flown internationally quite a bit...and usually I go QANTUS or Air NewZealand or something like that. The economy class of those two is actually pretty good...two seats on either side, three in the middle...it's not as good a business class, but it's quite comfortable...even on a 13 hr flight. However, a couple of years ago I had the misfortune of flying United Airways...I flew first in Business, then economy on the way back (they only had one bu

      • United is the only U.S. airline I have flown..perhaps someone would like to comment...are the U.S. airlines like this?

        Well, Continental is about the best I've found in the US, at least recently. But yes, they are all like that. For short trips (inside the continent) I'd rather go by ground.

        Worst I've ever had was Northwest, across the Atlantic. Every time the cart came down the isle: *Bump* "Sir, could you move your legs?" "No. They don't fit anywhere else." Eight hours. (I know, not really a long

      • United is the only U.S. airline I have flown...perhaps someone would like to comment...are the U.S. airlines like this?

        Not all of them are quite as bad as United. Flying packed into a UA cattle car qualifies as some of my worst travel experience. If you have *any* choice do not fly United.

        Some of the regional U.S. airlines are not bad. I'm sure that any of those that become sucessful are taken over by money men and drop the service levels to those of United.

      • Yeah, US airlines tend to cram people into economy. (Unless you buy "full price economy", which is actually just first class but named otherwise so businesses will comp it.) On 747s it's usually 3-4-3 in economy, and 3-3 on most of the medium jets. It's a matter of price. Most Americans just won't pay what it costs jfor more room. It's uncomfortable, but it's cheaper.

        As to service, maybe I'm just used to it but I rarely have anything to complain about. The flight attendants at least pretend to be friendly

    • Air Canada seems to be "getting it."

      I'm a pretty big guy (187cm, 100kg) and lately Air Canada has been giving me two seats for the price of one. They're very subtle and polite about it, which I like.

      Here's the scenario:
      Last year, I was travelling from my home in Halifax to Toronto and back with a co-worker. On both legs of our trip, when we asked to be seated together, they informed us that the flight was booked and placed us in separate rows. However, both times, the seat next to me was vacant. It wa
    • Planes are bad enough but when is the last time you went Greyhound? Damn sit in that cramped a space for 36 hours and you'll hurt for days afterwards. If you did it often I'd imagine you'd see longterm damage. I'd love to find an affordable method of travel where I had enough leg room and didn't bang my head constantly. I espeically hate when the fucker in front of me is sleeping and leans their seat back smashing my legs (even after being asked not to). For short people planes and buses might be okay but i

    • Just give passengers enough room

      This reminds me all too-much of the way modern farmers deal with chickens. Having them all running around just isn't terribly effecient, so they stick them all into small crates, just bigger than the body of the chicken.

      There was one problem though... The chickens were so miserable by the crampped conditions that they would actually peck themselves to death. Of course, to the farmers, the answer was obvious... Cut off their beaks, so no matter how miserable they are, th

    • Re:DVT? Just increase the fucking legroom. (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @07:15PM (#6201746)
      I echo your sentiment about the legroom... though that in itself might not prevent DVT. In fact, I could see it increasing your risk (more comfortable seat = you stay in it longer = more venous stasis). The way help avoid a DVT is to unbuckle your seatbelt, and move about the cabin... You have to walk a bit, maybe do some knee bends (pretend you're looking for something under your seat if you're concerned about other passengers looking at you funny). I would even consider taking an asprin before a long trip. That single asprin (avg dose 325mg) will "thin" your blood by inhibiting your platelets... irreversibly, I might add. Don't worry... you'll replace those platelets with normal ones over time, assuming you take no more asprin, but it will take you a week or so. Ever wonder why surgeons ask you to stop taking asprin for two weeks before any elective surgery? That's why.

      DVTs come from a couple of factors; venous stasis (blood pooling in your veins) is only one. The others are injury (getting kicked in the leg), and any sort of hypercoagulable state... ie. your blood clots more readily than normal. This last category is large, and includes pregnancy, birth control pills, smoking, cancer, genetic problems, etc, etc.

      I took one trip that lasted almost 30 hours (20 hours+ of pure flying time)... inbetween sleeping and eating, I got up and walked the length of the airplane any number of times. Not only does it let you get the kinks out and stretch, but it also helps prevent DVTs, and their lethal sequela, the feared pulmonary embolus (PE).

      A big PE (so-called "saddle embolus") will turn you out like a light. A large enough clot blocks your blood flow to the lungs, effectively dropping your cardiac output to zero. That, as you might imagine, is rapidly fatal... so rapidly fatal in fact that I've had people have huge PE's right in front of me and die, right there... nothing we could do for them (diagnosis made on autopsy). PEs are one of the major contributors in sudden death cases, though that's gotten a bit better with proper diagnosis and treatment.

      While PEs are a problem, they used to be a bigger problem. Years ago, if you broke a hip, you were on bedrest for 6-8 weeks until it healed (these days, whenever possible, aggressive surgical repair and early ambulation are the rule). In retrospect, the bed rest was a bad idea; those folks were dying left and right of pulmonary emboli... thank god for medical progress.
      • Jesus man... what do you do that you have all these people dying in front of you all the time?

        maybe you should brush your teeth or something??

        I'm sensing a trend if "I've had people have huge PE's right in front of me and die, right there..." maybe there's something with you and not them.
    • Obviously the seats are too small and close together; this expensive waste of technology is not actually designed to prevent hijacking. If they really cared to prevent hijackers, they'd have bullet-proof lockable doors between pilot and passengers, and armed undercover guards onboard every flight. In other words, they'd do exactly what El-Al does. [elal.co.il] Notice that no El-Al planes have been hijacked since 1968.

    • My observation has been that this less-leg-space problem occurs mostly in airlines where they have that attached flight-screens for every seat. I usually tend to avoid that kind of airlines (which, in a Europe-Asia context, would be Cathay, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, BA (?) etc) Personally, I see no reason to watch movies or play games off a teeny weeny screen when you can download them off Kazaa (or, if you want to play legit, watch them with full effects in a cinema)

      Or may be it's just that the older air

    • Fly MidWest. All the seats on all their planes are "first class", leather, roomy.

      Course it's twice the price sometimes.... but no better way to go if you are travelling for pleasure.

  • Fight against terrorism (Score:4, Funny)

    by jabbadabbadoo ( 599681 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:31PM (#6201324)
    The battle against terrorism has taken a new turn, exploting the Nervous AsS Syndrom (a.k.a. NASS).
  • use a liberal dose of PreperationH before that next flight. Wouldn't want to 'cause an armed pilot to get nervous over little ol' me.

  • How helpful. (Score:5, Funny)

    by chundo ( 587998 ) <jeremy&jongsma,org> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:32PM (#6201334)
    "Excuse me sir, the computer is telling me you might need a hemorrhoid cushion?"

    -j

  • That is... (Score:4, Funny)

    by niko9 ( 315647 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:32PM (#6201336)
    the mos ASSinine thing I have ever heard.

    Ok, so I can;t spel. :p

  • One problem (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cipster ( 623378 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:32PM (#6201337)
    used to warn cabin staff of illness among the passengers

    What I'd like to know is how in the world will they be able to differentiate true illness from mere consequences of eating airline food)?

  • The future of embarrasment (Score:5, Funny)

    by Captain Galactic ( 651907 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:34PM (#6201348)
    "Excuse me, sir, our in-seat rectal analizers have found that you are ill. Would you like some asistance?"
  • I wonder what would happen when I'm on a flight and decide in need to call my grandmother to see how her day was at the community center?
    Will this system throw off false alarms that I've shit myself to the sexy cabin chicks?
    Even if it doesn't suffer from interfereance I dont want the cabin girls to know I've farted!!!!

  • Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:35PM (#6201352)
    Sensors which detect seat movement. Now that's definitely a solution looking desperately for a problem.

    • stick in some forcefeedback hydraulics (like the ones in force feedback joysticks), and viola! AutoPr0nSeats available on Business Class seats for $499.95!

      Man, I may fly business class if I can have them seats massage my buttocks for the 24 hour flights I have to take to get home....
    • Agreed. Why have extra cabin crew looking at screens about the behavior of passengers when they could be looking at passengers directly? Are you willing to stake the safety of your airline on the shiftyness of passenger's butts?

      A locking cabin door would be much more secure for about 1/100th the cost.

  • Should put these in movie theaters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by isn't my name ( 514234 ) <slash@@@threenorth...com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:37PM (#6201362)
    The MPAA should put these in theaters that are used for sneak previews.

    Had a friend who rated movies by the butt scale. Basically it was how long it took until he noticed his but was hurting from sitting in an uncomfortable theater seat. For a good, engaging film, he never noticed. When his wife dragged him to a chick flick, it was about 20 minutes.

    Seems like the movie studios could tell a lot about the success of a movie by using these in previews.

  • Privacy Policy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bobthemuse ( 574400 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:39PM (#6201372)
    What is their privacy policy? How do I know they won't sell the info to Jenny Craig?

  • Just in case first-time fliers weren't scared.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:41PM (#6201389) Homepage Journal
    You can always count on the airline industry! Just in case first-time fliers weren't scared enough, they now need to be worried about being jumped because they're acting scared.
  • "The seat monitors the way the incumbent shifts their weight, producing an indication of whether the occupier is asleep, jumpy or otherwise not conforming to expected normal lower-torso motions."

    Won't this be thwarted by the first half-decent poker player?

  • I'm sure those cunning terrorists can come up with a devious method of sitting still, or something similar. This technology would only work if nobody knew about it.

    The freedom fighters got to come up with something better to protect our way of life. I'm sure TIA will take care of it all.

  • Well (Score:2, Funny)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 )
    I guess this rules out sitting arrangements for the goatse guy.

    No link this time!

  • False positives... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@[ ]ata.net.eg ['ted' in gap]> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @05:48PM (#6201428) Journal
    Future additions may include temperature and moisture sensors to increase the accuracy of remote diagnosis of problems, and as part of a drive to make the aircraft's environment react intelligently to the needs of the passenger.

    Considering some of the flights that I've been on, I could just imagine what would happen with these "future additions" in case the plane hits an air pocket & drops a few hundred feet...

    "Oh my gosh! According to the seat sensors, we have about 50 terrorists on board!"

    "Nah...they just all pissed their pants after that last air pocket. Grab some TP and follow me..."

  • Future additions may include odor sensors to increase the accuracy of remote diagnosis of problems, and will be able to detect previous meals.

    If the system detects that pork has not been recently eaten, then we're dealing with terrorists for sure.

    It'll be able to detect flatulence. Farting inside an airplane, is also a despicable terrorist act.
  • I saw this story om Google News early this morning and contemplated submitting it to Slashdot but, the thought of all the ass jokes made me decide against the submission. Seems I was right.

    But, the story did make me think. It made me think that with technology and terrorist parranoia, we have now past into a positively sureal world. A world where we will be watched by machines that will decide if we are "too fidgety" and act against us. A sureal world where we either try to convince ourselves that this is
  • in the event of a water landing?

    I'd hate to have my plane land gracefully in the Atlantic Ocean, the passengers exit the plane in an orderly manner via the designated exit rows, and then be pulled to the bottom by the electronics in my seat cushen.

    Wouldn't you hate that?

  • As a security device? (Score:5, Funny)

    by twoallbeefpatties ( 615632 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:20PM (#6201548)

    Great. In those old sci-fi flicks, they used to kill the guy, pull the eye out of his socket, and use it to bypass the retinal scanners. Now, it's:

    "This is Agent 003. The president is dead. I repeat, the president is dead, and they've taken his buttocks. Get the security system changed. Now."

    "We can't do it, sir! A virus is blocking our entry into the system!"

    "Goddammit, I want every man on the streets looking for that ass!"

  • So what happens if they catch someone whose body language triggers the sensors, and then find he has something on him that could be used to hijack a plane? The airline and the US Government would be liable for damages to him.

    By the time the US legal system got done with him, it would be proven that his civil rights were violated, he carried a weapon for protection from religious persecution, and that the use of the seat was unconstitutional search and seizure.

    How about if the same passenger died of DVT s
  • "Huh... The sensors are showing a shift in load distribution from seat 32A to 32B.
    "Wasn't that the gentleman who just asked for a blanket?
    "I think so. And now the reading is oscillating at around 0.5 Hz. Odd....

  • And people always call me crazy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MongooseCN ( 139203 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:33PM (#6201593) Homepage
    ...because I'm wearing tin foil underwear. Looks who's laughing now!

  • Seriously... (Score:3, Informative)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Saturday June 14, 2003 @06:35PM (#6201601) Journal
    This has a lot of potential to result in whackloads of false positives. 1 in 20 people have some form and some degree of ADD, a chemical imbalance in the brain that naturally causes fidgetiness and the inability to remain too still for prolonged periods.

    That has a potential to misidentify waaaay too many people, and the system would end up getting ignored.

  • So they would be watching the first time fliers while the calm, cool, collected hijackers relax and think about who they are going to kill first?

    What makes them think that terrorists are jumpy? I'd think a guy who is on his flight to 1000 virgin wifes in Heaven would be nice and relaxed. Why don't you try looking for the guys buying viagra just before getting on the plane?

  • drawbacks (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    I don't like the idea of every fart of mine being stored in a CIA database.
    • I believe that William Pointdexter is in charge of this program - T.F.A. - Total Flatuance Awareness.

      While the CIA has consistently denied the existence of the T.F.A., any eight year old can tell you that, "He who denied it supplied it."
  • People will start packing phone books in their carry on luggage. It may not be comfortable, but the privacy of one's ass will be retained.

  • Hopefully it won't give away to the stewardess that I hav a deep vein throbosses from watching here walk up and down the aisle.

  • Durability? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sukotto ( 122876 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @07:23PM (#6201796)
    The last 4 flights I was on the headphone jack and/or the channel/volume selecter was broken.

    I wonder how long it will be before these things break. Or even better, when they develop an intermittent short like the headphone jack did the last time. Seat 42 is a terrorist! oh maybe not... oh he is! oh maybe not...

    How about a low tech solution? Put a f*cking steel door up between the pilots and the passangers and stop harrassing the 99.999999999999% of passangers who are law-abiding.

    Sorry... I fly a lot and it keeps getting worse and worse.

    • Re:Durability? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by surprise_audit ( 575743 )
      Sounds about right - put in one 300lb steel door, take out one or two seats from coach to even out the load (one or two less passengers, depending on how much the seats weigh). The remaining coach seats could be spread slightly further apart, giving a little more (inch or two) or legroom, allowing people to move in their seats to avoid deep vein thrombosis. Everybody wins.

      Let's face it, flight attendants have a hard enough job keeping dozens of passengers happy without having to watch the fart monitor as

  • ...an increase in sales of Beano [beano.net] at airport concessions.

    (raises pinky to pursed lips) On the hole (sic), I'd say this sounds pretty good...

  • Hopefully this will help catch the kid^h^h^hterrorist who keeps kicking the back of my seat.

    And if they could make it sensitive enough, it will also catch people who drum on their tray table too...

  • another privacy violation (Score:5, Funny)

    by falsification ( 644190 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @08:35PM (#6202043) Journal
    This is a revolting privacy violation. Talk about the government crawling up your ass.

  • May it please the court to hear this testimony... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zhe Mappel ( 607548 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @08:37PM (#6202053)
    The seat itself will not make a fundamental assessment of the mental or physical state of its load but will merely point out the discrepancies, leaving it to the cabin staff to work out whether 45B is jumpy because they're scared of flying or because they're planning to take over the plane.

    (Excerpts from the prosecution testimony submitted to the court by Northwest Airlines Smart Seat #423aY9)

    ...At approximately 13:54h, two highly suspicious buttocks settled upon me creating a sensation in my sensi-cups beyond all imagining. I compare it to being asked to lay under twin inflatable Walmart children's swimming pools filled with seven-layer jello salad while that lady from the Ebay ads does belly-flops in them. I've assessed a lot of butts in my time, but none, to be sure, immediately struck me as being so bouncy with evil.

    Lightning fast calculations conducted by my WinCE Special Edition Ass Patriot software came up showing POSITIVE in multiple categories for a BGI (Butt Guilt Indicator) value of .00457, or a full .00257 above the standard benchmarks for PI (Posterior Innocence).

    Without hesitation I silently activated the vibra-alert pager of Senior Chief Air Attendant Kitty M., who, according to protocol, approached the owner of the buttocks in a nonchalant, oblique manner with the offer of a bag of complimentary Freedom Nuts (unsalted).

    The peanuts were accepted and, judging from my continuous real-time nether feed, consumed in two large gulps. At 13:59h, rumbling ensued. At 14:01h, I registered a seismic event that I would rather not discuss. By 14:02h, airline security had been alerted and at 14:06h three agents boarded the plane cleverly disguised as a troupe of disgraced former Citigroup executives. Slyly, they engaged in covert-ops conversation, as follows:

    Agent #1: Beautiful part is, I'm spending more time with Gale and the kids.

    Agent #2: Golden. Mind if I run with that tip?

    Agent #3: Ha ha ha. The best tips are the ones that help society to be more productive and honest!

    At 14:10h, the suspect was seized, hooded, cuffed, pinned, tagged, numbered, bagged, and escorted from the plane in accordance with the Zero Tolerance for Terrorist Tushes Act passed last term by Congress.

    It is the considered opinion of this chair that the buttocks in question presented a substantial and credible threat to the safety of the passengers and crew, and should be dealt with in the harshest fashion, up to and including electrocution. Nor is this chair displeased to report that the On Call passenger who claimed the terrorist's seat turned out to be a 22-year old aerobics instructor from Cincinnati who spent the flight reading fellatio tips in the latest Cosmopolitan. And squirming ever so nicely. Ain't freedom sweet?

  • Clippy: Hi, our sensors show you are trying to detonate a bomb in your shoe. Would you like some help?

  • SARS. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by The Cydonian ( 603441 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @09:17PM (#6202199) Homepage Journal

    I'm not sure I'm convinced this technology will prevent hijacking, but if you really want to put technology into seats, perhaps they could do something to monitor passengers' body temperatures. If a certain passenger's body temperature is above a certain value for some period, then the passenger could be asked to shift to a quarantine within the flight. Inflight SARS-infections are, I believe, rare, but should be a good idea to quarantine SARS-suspects at least.

    Now, many people might not like such intrusive and constant monitoring, so the technology could be opt-in, that is, if you don't like the idea, you'll be given a non-monitored seat (which could be close to, or within, the quarantine zone)

    Of course, I guess the bigger problem would be space within the flight; as others have pointed out already, even legspace is at a premium, so allocating inflight space for a quarantined zone might be challenging.

    I don't know, just a thought.

    • Having separate air for a quarantine area would also be challenging. I suppose quarantined passengers could be asked to wear a full NBC suit, on the assumption that clothing designed to keep bugs out could also do a reasonable job of keeping them in...

  • Sounds like voodoo to me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Saturday June 14, 2003 @09:19PM (#6202209) Journal
    As I recall back in the 19th century (before fingerprints) Scotland yard was using an 'identification' scheme in which they measured all of these esoteric face measurements under the auspices that no 2 people had the exact same set. Well they did and someone got caught and turned out he didn't commit the crime. And that scheme was shot down.
  • I would have a hard time flying an airlines that would be so stupid to install such devices in the belief that security is being enhanced. If people think this technology [slashdot.org] produces false positives then monitoring the twitching of someone's ass will be a nightmare. What? One twitch of the ass too many and a jet on a cross country flight is diverted to the nearest airport under F16 escort. Yeah, right. There are so many holes in the logic behind this story as it relates to airline security that I don't ev
  • Now it will not only be necessary to wear a tinfoil hat while on aircraft (especially necessary because you are closer to the orbital mind control lasers!) but now also tinfoil pants. Perhaps you could just have a tinfoil butt-flap like on the footie underwear you wore as a kid.

  • First of all, in the United States the FAA has recently made airplanes adjust their weight estimates per passenger up. An overloaded plane was the suspected cause of a recent crash, and it's important, for safety reasons if nothing else, to know how much load your airplane is attempting to bear. If every seat had sensors like these, they wouldn't have to estimate; they could know with reasonable precision whether they could safely take off.

    Second of all, the more difficult to implement idea of 'buttmetric

    • A weight sensor in the floor in front of the checkin desk ought to be cheaper to install. By the time passengers actually reach the airplane, cargo handlers could have loaded or unloaded enough cargo to keep the plane in safe limits. Even a fully loaded plane carries some cargo.
  • "He's got a seat cushion! Drop him!"
  • So, I wonder how long it'll take to hear the first news report of a plane being grounded early because someone didn't wipe their butt early enough and was a bit *itchy* down there?
  • Does anyone else find it annoying that slashdot just rips off the first paragraph of the article as their summary? Is there a reason the submitter / editor can't write their own summary, but has to plagiarize it instead? (In my book it's plaigarized because they don't give credit). Come on people, it takes 30 seconds and a bare minimum of creative thought... it really isn't that hard to do it right.
  • AIDS is still decimating Africa. Cancer kills millions a year.

    Although the pursuit of knowledge is an admirable goal, I seriously wonder about why these kinds of projects are authorized. Surely there must be far more important research to be done at Qinetiq. Maybe like developing face recognition technology that can defeat disguises, better scanners and detectors for people and luggage. Just my personal opinion.

  • "Step aside, ma'am, the system is down again, we need to perform manual check-up"
  • I can walk how I want, I can think what I want, despite the possibility that my thoughts may be deduced from my way of sitting/walking. This is similar to contantly being strapped into a lie detector, does the Government have the right to do that?

    MY PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS ARE MY OWN, THEY WILL NOT CONSTANTLY BE MONITORED, especially if that information will eventually be sold to advertisers.

    "You're farting too much, get off the plane. Planes have expensive air recirculation systems because of people like y

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Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.

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