In the event of a water landing…
I just got to DC from San Francisco International Airport, so I obviously flew...and boy are my arms tired. Thank you, Henny Youngman.
The flight attendants were giving the safety briefing and they spend the majority of the time, it seems, on the "water landing." Like most fellow passengers, I already know how to buckle a seatbelt and I will definitely put my oxygen mask on first before helping others, thankyouverymuch. However, will I really be using that seat as a flotation device? Will the slide from the emergency exit door really be used for a raft? I guess what I’m getting at - and I hate to sound fatalistic here - is, IF we really did have a "water landing" would any of these water devices be used? Have they EVER been used? Or, as I suspect, is all the "water landing" information meant to make us all feel a little better as we jump on the plane yet again?
What is the technology equivalent of "in the event of a water landing" instructions? I suspect it is very much like "please refrain from using your typewriter until we have reached our cruising altitude." Or, perhaps, "if you help that nice Nigerian son of the Treasury minister get his money to an U.S. bank account, you really WILL get a handsome helpers fee." Or, better yet, "giving all your personal information online in order to win that free IPOD will, in no way, ever be used by spammers."
Okay, perhaps I’m just a little cranky from traveling.
Posted by John Earnhardt at 12:55AM PST
Jim Fenton Apr 27, 2006
A possible technology equivalent (which is not to say that aviation isn’t technology) is the pervasive requirement to change passwords periodically, without regard to the security problem that’s trying to address. Gene Spafford has a good essay on his blog at http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/weblogs/spaf/general/post-30/ about how this requirement derives from threats experienced by non-networked mainframe computers, and in today’s environment may be irrelevant or even harmful.