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Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

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Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#101

Post by leoedin »

DanBC wrote: post #81
nicholaides wrote: post #10

I was thinking about this same idea earlier today: Buses in Philadelphia have a bunch of "No Eating and Drinking" signs and consequently no trash cans. The result is that the back of the bus is covered in trash. If they had just 1 or two trash cans it would be a much more pleasant ride.

The people who throw trash on the back of a bus are not the people who would throw that trash in a bin in the bus.

I disagree. When you're on a bus for a long time and the option is either to sit with whatever trash you have on your lap/put it in your bag etc, or drop it, you may well drop it. If there's a trash can conveniently located, most people would place their stuff in it.

It's not foolproof. There are people who toss trash around regardless. It's a question of making people go out of their way to do something vs allowing them to do it easily.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#102

Post by GoodIntentions »

WalterBright wrote: post #65
phamilton wrote: post #45

This reminds me of a presentation by Twitter at a conference where they discussed MTBR (Mean Time Before Recovery) instead of MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure). Instead of trying to prevent all possible failures, they focused on acceptable failure and speedy recovery. If a server takes twice as long to response to a request, mark it offline and let the automated recovery process diagnose the problem and if it's just an…

Airliners are designed to withstand failure, not to not have any failures. It's a change in perspective, and is very effective. Both the Fukishima plant and the Deep Water Horizon rig were unable to withstand single failures.

>> Fukishima plant

Actually it sounds like the plant failed due to some poor - in retrospect - design assumptions. The generators required to keep cooling systems running safely were buggered by the same disaster.

"fail-over" - they got it half right.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#103

Post by mertd »

duaneb wrote: post #73
snowwrestler wrote: post #64

The illustration of the door handle is a great example of piss-poor affordance. A slight ridge is not going to clearly communicate push vs. pull. Especially since our fingers, when gripping, actually like a ridge to fill in the open angle behind the first knuckles. If you want someone to push, give them a big fat flat metal plate or bar to push on. If they can't pull, they are guaranteed to get it right every time. I…

I would have tried to rotate both of those handles. You want to know a great user interface that is universally understood? PUSH: http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/... PULL: http://www.artfactory.com/images/Door-Handle-HH199.jpg The door handle sacrifices usability for aesthetics.

Except your pull handle looks like it is on both sides, and the big flat surface regardless of the shape of the handle communicates "push" to me.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#104

Post by fr0sty »

lloeki wrote: post #86
brc wrote: post #5

That's interesting news to me. I did wonder why smoking paraphernalia continued to appear in planes that were covered in anti-smoking insignia. I always assumed that the bathrooms, seat etc were made in large quantities, and that there are a lot of countries in the world where you can still light up in a flight, not to mention privately owned planes. I once flew on a Japan Air Lines flight back in the '90s. At that s…

> Allowing smoking on planes was and is a terrible idea. The fire risk alone should immediately discount it. Yet, people still smoke around pumps at gas stations and even throw the butt to the ground.

And given that a lit cigarette is not hot enough to ignite gasoline vapor what is the issue?

Representative sample: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/feb/27/smoking.film

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#106

Post by MattRogish »

corin_ wrote: post #99
MattRogish wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what you claimed - you claimed that it was a) recirculated less and as a direct result b) more airborne germs are prevalent and c) cost is saved. Sorry - it's my fault for not giving more background on Mr. Smith - Patrick Smith has been a Delta Air Lines pilot for about 10 years, written two books on airlines, before that flying cargo, and I've met him more than once, so I'll trust him and the other pilots…

That's not what I claimed because I didn't claim anything at all. Your sources are all (I think?) about the fact that the way they deal with air is good, and you may well be right that it's cleaner than in your office. That doesn't mean that it's not less clean than when smoking was allowed - it may well be that in order to get rid of the smell of smoke they needed to clean the air way more than technically necessary…

I'n sorry, you're right. I confused you with the OP, please accept my apology.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#108

Post by jgrahamc »

ricardobeat wrote: post #23
kgermino wrote: post #6

It seems to be down now. Here's the text if it continues to not work: I’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to fly a lot over the past year or so. Working with Stephen Foskett and the rest of the Tech Field Day crew means that I’ve been to California almost every month. That’s a lot of flying. One of the things that I’ve noticed on my flights is that they don’t want you to smoke. You actually used to be able to s…

CloudFlare caches seem to always fail when they are most needed.

I decided to investigate this comment to see if we (CloudFlare) actually had failed while this story was hot.

Bottom line is that the site is on CloudFlare, and during heavy load (probably from Hacker News) the site did go down or slowed a lot. Unfortunately, it's the real web server that died or went very slow and not anything in CloudFlare.

The server appears to still be having problems because if I browse to other pages on the site (e.g. http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/sysadmin-calendar/) you'll see that CloudFlare's "Always Online" is enabled and showing a cached version of the page. Here's a picture of what that looks like: http://i.imgur.com/QIeQF.png

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#109

Post by pcopley »

duaneb wrote: post #73
snowwrestler wrote: post #64

The illustration of the door handle is a great example of piss-poor affordance. A slight ridge is not going to clearly communicate push vs. pull. Especially since our fingers, when gripping, actually like a ridge to fill in the open angle behind the first knuckles. If you want someone to push, give them a big fat flat metal plate or bar to push on. If they can't pull, they are guaranteed to get it right every time. I…

I would have tried to rotate both of those handles. You want to know a great user interface that is universally understood? PUSH: http://www.vanseodesign.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/... PULL: http://www.artfactory.com/images/Door-Handle-HH199.jpg The door handle sacrifices usability for aesthetics.

PUSH looks perfect to me, but while I wouldn't say the PULL example is anti-affordance it is at best confusing. If the handles were rounded and rotated so the curve faced the user (http://image.made-in-china.com/2f0j00fviQTDboYJqL/Door-Pull-... OR http://www.bnl.com.au/catalogue/door_handles/6x4%20handles/D...) then I'd agree 100%.

Re: Why airplane bathrooms have ashtrays

#110

Post by afterburner »

yardie wrote: post #84
yxhuvud wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Drivers are gatekeepers that let people onto the bus and validate that the people that enter the bus have tickets. If people don't respect what the driver says, the driver should stop the bus, and call security and then not move until the issue is resolved. There should be no tolerance at all for people that threatens the driver.

The driver isn't a gatekeeper or tollbooth collector. They stop, you pay your fare. You don't pay the fare they aren't going to argue with you, just pull off to the next stop. Because the bus driver has a schedule to keep and if he has to stop the bus for every minor infraction (and eating on the bus is very far down that list) than the schedule becomes unreliable, people stop taking the bus, and then revenue drops.…

"You don't pay the fare they aren't going to argue with you"

Where does that happen?

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