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ACARS Drama

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Re: ACARS Drama

#101

Post by lproven »

closewith wrote: post #67
marcellus23 wrote: post #18

Interesting that the keyboard for these[0] is not a QWERTY keyboard but instead has the buttons arranged alphabetically. That must be a pain in the ass to type in. Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? Do newer planes have QWERTY? 0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp Unrelated, this one is cute: https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209

QWERTY isn't universally used internationally, whereas the alphabet order is.

> whereas the alphabet order is.

I have news for you.

Re: ACARS Drama

#102

Post by sterlind »

lxgr wrote: post #58
cccbbbaaa wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the A350 has it in qwerty.

The A380 even has a stowable full-size keyboard, as far as I know! Not sure if it can input data into this particular system, though.

but is it a mechanical keyboard? or type-by-wire?

Re: ACARS Drama

#103

Post by [deleted] »

buildsjets wrote: post #45
Suppafly wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? QWERTY predates electronic devices.

QWERTY was invented to make input slower on mechanical devices and prevent the mechanical equivalent of a buffer overflow.

[deleted]

Re: ACARS Drama

#105

Post by rounce »

lxgr wrote: post #76
marcellus23 wrote: post #18

Interesting that the keyboard for these[0] is not a QWERTY keyboard but instead has the buttons arranged alphabetically. That must be a pain in the ass to type in. Is that because the tech is 50 years old from before QWERTY was the standard? Do newer planes have QWERTY? 0: https://acarsdrama.com/fmc.webp Unrelated, this one is cute: https://infosec.exchange/@acarsdrama/114194436695883209

My guess would be: QWERTZ touch typing was not a common skill in most pilots at the time these were introduced, and an ABC layout is slightly more ergonomical than QWERTZ for users not familiar with either. Now that's changed, but changing the keyboard now would ruin older pilots' muscle memory.

You’re likely not touch typing with two hands anyway because it’s often down on the centre console. Besides they’re primarily used for entering flight info into the FMS, not for long form messages.

Re: ACARS Drama

#106

Post by lxgr »

lxgr wrote: post #78
lazide wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of ATC is that everyone in the area is able to figure out what is going on by listening in. What/how is making listening in on that illegal ok?

Not sure about the details, but I suspect it's more a consequence of laws on telecommunication privacy from analog days being very generic than a specific intention to make ATC listening illegal. Opt-out vs. opt-in by frequency and/or purpose, essentially. That said, it's supposedly still being very much enforced against e.g. planespotters at airshows in some places – no idea what the point of that is.

Baffling to get downvoted for a suspicion about the origins of the status quo, as if that were an endorsement of it.

Re: ACARS Drama

#107

Post by lxgr »

tjohns wrote: post #82
lazide wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of ATC is that everyone in the area is able to figure out what is going on by listening in. What/how is making listening in on that illegal ok?

ACARS isn't ATC traffic. It's semi-private communications with airline company dispatch. Text-based ATC communications is done over a different system called CPDLC (FANS-1/A). That said, this is no different than listening to any other unencrypted, non-cellular radio traffic. Totally legal everywhere (except a few rare exceptions, like the UK). And as I mentioned in my other comment, in the US the ECPA specifically s…

> Totally legal everywhere (except a few rare exceptions, like the UK).

And (after a cursory search) Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, maybe France... In other words, legal in some places, illegal in others.

> Text-based ATC communications is done over a different system called CPDLC (FANS-1/A)

ACARS is both an application and a (legacy) lower layer suite of protocols supporting it, but modern ACARS versions and CPDLC can use the same underlying digital channel, as far as I understand (i.e. VDL Mode 2).

As a result, many of these tracking sites can capture both, as well as presumably "legacy/analog" ACARS.

Re: ACARS Drama

#108

Post by lazide »

lxgr wrote: post #106
lxgr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the details, but I suspect it's more a consequence of laws on telecommunication privacy from analog days being very generic than a specific intention to make ATC listening illegal. Opt-out vs. opt-in by frequency and/or purpose, essentially. That said, it's supposedly still being very much enforced against e.g. planespotters at airshows in some places – no idea what the point of that is.

Baffling to get downvoted for a suspicion about the origins of the status quo, as if that were an endorsement of it.

Forget it up Jake, it’s Chinatown

Re: ACARS Drama

#110

Post by codetrotter »

isoprophlex wrote: post #93
codetrotter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact about character ordering: Swedish sorting traditionally and officially treated v and w as equivalent, so that users would not have to guess whether the word, or name, they were seeking was spelled with a v or a w. The two letters were often combined in the collating sequence as if they were all v or all w, until 2006 when the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista (The Swedish Academy's Orthographic Dic…

That's pretty interesting, on the face of it its not a bad idea at all to just merge v and w... simplify language without losing much resolution. although f and v would make more sense in terms of the actual sounds made?

> f and v would make more sense in terms of the actual sounds made?

Depends on the language. In German, f and v sound similar. And from your profile description I am guessing you are from the Netherlands, which I guess also might have f and v sound very similar to one-another.

In Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, we have pretty clear distinction between f and v.

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