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Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

bloomberg.com

31–40 of 166 posts

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#32
post #17

Another case of a rambling article burying the lede. I skimmed the article and still can't figure out why we're weeks away from a point of no return. Is the search going to be called off? Is there a transponder that's going to give out? Why can't the journalist just put the important information up front , instead of a bunch of irrelevant crap about someone's sleep deprivation?

Malaysia, Australia and China funded about two years worth of search. Second anniversary is March 8.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#33

Rest assured that this mystery will be solved. Petabytes of data? Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps. The fact that we can't successfully crowd-source this search is indicative of our having very incomplete maps of the ocean floor. Eventually (could be a hundred years but I expect less) there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans. They will find all kinds of int…

>Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps.

What do you think "add[ing] it to Google Maps" would accomplish? What makes you think the data analysis is easily crowd-sourced? I.e, what makes you think that analyzing the data requires no special experience or expertise?

>there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans

Why? What would be the economic case for doing this? Building machines that work at the extreme depths of the sea floor is incredibly hard. The search for a single lost airplane (and it really is just the one, not a single other commercial airliner is unaccounted for) certainly isn't going to fund this pipe dream.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#34
post #30
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is disingenuous in the extreme. You absolutely can not track a $100 smartphone in the middle of the Indian ocean, for any price.

That's Bloomberg's comment not mine. Not sure where the sudden need to downvote is coming from. My point is that it's now a free service to track planes. It was possible to track MH370, for example, but it required a fee.

Yeah, I know what quotation marks mean... My point is that the quote makes it seem much easier to track an airplane than it actually is. It's great that Inmarsat is providing the service for free now, but the quote makes it seem like the service is trivial to provide when it really isn't.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#35
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't cell towers need to know your position to transfer you from tower to tower?

Nope edit: though I guess that fact that you are connected to a specific tower leaks location information

Great. Here's your next phone. It puts out 2,000 watts and comes with a free tinfoil helmet. Battery life isn't great, but at least you're not being tracked by local cell sites.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "$250M airliner" has the equipment, the issue is that Malaysia Airlines didn't pay for the service, no doubt they didn't imagine really needing it.

Well when the person who ultimate trust is placed in violates that trust it isn't something many consider there any viable counters too. GermanWings suffered a loss from what likely was a similar reason, the difference being that this pilot didn't send the plane into the sea. I am not sure there is a viable means to guard against suicidal pilots except to speed up the acceptance of full automation

I am not sure there is a viable means to guard against suicidal pilots except to speed up the acceptance of full automation

Sorry, Dave, I don't think that will guarantee perfect safety either.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#37

Rest assured that this mystery will be solved. Petabytes of data? Please give it to Google so they can add it to Google Maps. The fact that we can't successfully crowd-source this search is indicative of our having very incomplete maps of the ocean floor. Eventually (could be a hundred years but I expect less) there will be a swarm of autonomous submersible robots doing detailed scans. They will find all kinds of int…

In a hundred years I expect the wreckage to be found, even by accident. That's a moot point though, as in a hundred years, the relatives will be no longer alive and noone will care too much.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#39

"The company already offers a similar service for ships and boats, which use Inmarsat’s network free of charge for distress signalling." Interestingly, back when I was an intern, BT used to charge an exorbitant rate for those distress calls. I once wrote-up the whole internship thing http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-ei... "I was pretty uncomfortable when I found that mayday calls were being c…

Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what?

Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute?

(Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#40
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the fifth paragraph, it says "Without fresh clues, the hunt should end about June, when four ships are due to finish combing the seas off western Australia." I imagine that the news would be quite boring if every article were written as a bullet-point list of points. Sometimes people enjoy reading a story, not just a two minute summary.

That's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where-why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.

It's the business model. The longer you are on a web page the more ad cycles you see. I agree with you, its' not good writing, but I think that is where it comes from.
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