Cardboard Spaceship

A good TSA Summary by Bruce Schneier

I wrote last time about the knee jerk reaction to the posting of a bomb made out of an ink cartridge.  Bruce Schneier, who many of you will know as "Mr Security" in the IT sense, has a blindingly good summary of the current really invasive security procedures in the USA with the Nude Scanners, and the Crotch Grab pat down. 

Luckily I have no reason to fly to the States at the moment, but neither have I any great desire to try, given this approach. 

"Hey Yurpeens, bring your offspring to disneyland for a litttle kiddly friendly ass and junk groping!"

I'll pass on that one until I have to. 

Which is Worse? The Inevitability or the Stupidity?

Well, the TSA have responded in their inimitable knee-jerk style, and banned printer cartridges of over 16 ounces from flights.  So another homage to a failed terrorist attack, so now it's no blades, no shoes, no liquids, luckily underpants seem to be okay still, and now no printer cartridges. 

Because, there is no way on Earth that a motivated experienced bomb builder will be able to think of something else of that size and shape to put some undetectable explosive into.  Will they?

The real answer to separate the risky unchecked cargo from the not-risky radiated, anally probed and otherwise inspected passengers, but of course this would bankrupt the airlines, and grind world trade to a halt.  This is the same reason that you cannot carry nail clippers onto a plane, but your litre glass bottle of spirits is fine, because it's in sealed plastic bag.  There is no way that a suicide bomber could open that seal, and smash the bottle to get a deadly weapon, none.  But the duty free sales, which keep the airports afloat must go on.  (Actually they did get the right answer to that one, lock  the cockpit, and don't come out.  Might get nasty for the passengers, but that's the limit.)

So we have a new act to the Security Kabuki Theatre.  Marvellous.  What next, I dread...

Interesting Article on the European Ash Crisis

I am linking to an interesting piece on the Huff Post that asks a very good question: if military jets are coming in with ash damaged engines, as they are, why do KLM, Lufthansa, and others claim that it is Okay to fly?

"Military jet aircraft conducting operations, since the most recent Icelandic eruption began on Wednesday April 14th, have reported internal engine damage as a result of volcanic ash. Glass-like deposits have been found inside the planes' engines after they patrolled over European airspace. The danger of flying through volcanic ash is significant as evidenced by damage sustained to NATO fighters and Finnish Air Force fighter-bombers in recent days. The Finnish Air Force has released photos of engine damage sustained by a Boeing F-18 Hornet fighter jet that flew through the ash plume just hours before the imposition of airspace restrictions."

Given how many people I know and work with fly for a living, his point is a good one, and makes me think.

Heathrow is Shite

As I was called to a meeting in SAP UK headquarters in Feltham, which as we all lovingly point out is near the Young Offenders Institution, I had the joy of passing once again through Heathrow, AKA here in the Spaceship as the "Aird of Sleat," thusly christened by the late Douglas Adams, a very talented and funny man. 

"aird of sleat n. archaic [From the place name. Note: Coined by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd in The Deeper Meaning of Liff.] "Ancient Scottish curse placed from afar on the stretch of land now occupied by Heathrow Airport."

Anyway, I had the pleasure of going through terminal five, and as I was only going for the day, I ditched even my laptop, and relied instead on the faithful old Crackberry for all of my international flogging of banking software needs. 

Flight landed more or less on time, and then there was a ten or fifteen minute wait for the ground crew to notice that we were there, and to attach the ramp to the plane.  I can just imagine the scene.

"What's that big thing outside the window?"

"Dunno, just ignore it."

Anyway, then we finally all disembarked, and took escalators down from the aeroplane level, down multiple levels, (four, or five at least, like being in a big department store.) and then took a little train over to the main building, and walked for ages to the taxi rank.  Felt a lot like CDG really, except that the taxi driver was, if anything, ruder, and the scenery around the airport even less charming.  All in all, not a bad experience.

Had a days meeting, and then came back with a couple of hours in hand, so had a chance to have a good look at the place.  The architecture is okay, if you like glass boxes that have needless frills added to make them seem interesting.  But what really struck me was the shopping.  Ever since this terminal has been mooted, the consumer experience has been touted as being one of the highlights.  To this end, they have a parade of shops that was smaller than I expected, but most interestingly of all sold nothing that a rational human being in an airport could possibly want.  Who in their right mind decides, when getting ready to catch the 10:30am flight to Berlin, that the world will stand still if they do not buy a five hundred pound Prada handbag? 

However, things that you might want, like a book to read, are completely out of luck.  Despite there being several bookshops, all of them stocked the top 30 trash novels of the moment, and nothing else.  If Jackie Collins, isn't your thing, then nothing for you, intellectual snob that you might be.   City airport is  much better with one bookshop, with a good fiction section, history, classics, and a complete shelf of textbooks on quantitative analysis of derivatives, for those looking for handy excuses about were all the money went, that they are going to have to explain when the plane lands at the other end.  I admit that this is a specialist interest, and that anyone looking for a sex and sun holiday in Benidorm would probably complain bitterly that there were no Jackie Collins novels, so maybe I am just not the right target audience.   

They do have a Wagamama though, for which much can be overlooked in return. 

The one thing that they still do not seem to have mastered is the notion that travellers and their luggage need to be on the same plane, but this does not effect me much.  They have also decided to not move their lucrative transatlantic business from terminal four, as clearly they are still afraid that the terminal, even though operating a half capacity, still can have all the wheels fall off if stressed. 

So, all in all, I would conclude that the turd has been wrapped in shiny new clingfilm, but that basic content remains much as it was.  Oh Joy. 

Heathrow Operator to Slash Jobs

As if Heathrow, AKA the Aird of Sleat, were not bad enough, then there come this news.  Ferrovial, the Spanish owner of the airport is going to slash a thousand or so jobs. 

Then there is my favourite quote in the article:  "The cuts will heighten concerns that Ferrovial, the Spanish company that borrowed heavily to buy BAA last year, is not focusing on the long-term interests of Britain's key international gateways."

Corporations exist to make profits, not strategic infrastructure decisions to support other industries and activities on a loss making basis.  That's why we tolerate governments and taxation, to fulfill these roles and provide a framework for the other economic activities, or am I missing something?

Anyhow, seems that the Heathrow experience is not going to get better anytime soon. 

Aird of Sleat - The Reckoning

I was going to take a complete sabbatical for the two weeks of my holiday, but seeing this on the newswires about the Aird of Sleat, I could not resist a timely boot into one of my pet hates. 

"aird of sleat n. archaic [From the place name. Note: Coined by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd in The Deeper Meaning of Liff.] "Ancient Scottish curse placed from afar on the stretch of land now occupied by Heathrow Airport."

I have begun to hate that pestilent airport, and it seems that others are beginning to agree, for example the IATA; who described the levels of service in the airport as: ``embarrassingly low service levels," and that "the U.K.'s ``unique screening policies inconvenience passengers with no improvement in security,'' IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani said in a statement."

In addition, the FT notes that the airport is beginning to be a problem for the financial community, as the new minister says:

"In frank criticism that reflects mounting government concern, she voiced fears that multinational companies could question the rationale for holding annual or other important meetings in London. “I want multinational companies to feel really confident about housing their annual general meetings here,” she said.

“They often have it in a different financial centre every year, or board meetings, that kind of thing. I don’t want their New York or Dubai executives saying ‘Oh God, I don’t want to go through Heathrow’. I don’t want that to be an issue.”

She said of the airport: “You spend so much time being processed. That’s the issue... passports, security, just the layout of the buildings which makes it more difficult.”

And just to compound the issue, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone has weighed in on the affair, with very little good to say about the airport operator BAA.

Maybe the curse will finally be lifted. 

Aird of Sleat (Heathrow) Queue Madness

Regular readers here at the Spaceship will know that I travel a lot on airlines, and that of all the airports that I have to go to, Aird of Sleat is the worst. 

(From the Douglas Adams book the "Meaning of Liff" "AIRD OF SLEAT (n. archaic): Ancient Scottish curse placed from afar on the stretch of land now occupied by Heathrow Airport.")

Here is a lovely YouTube video of the kind of crap that you go through when travelling there. 

Solution:  if going to London on business go to the very nice and effective London City Airport.  (Short haul only, sorry non-Europeans) or if changing, go to via Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or even Frankfurt.  Munich is also good. 

Problem:  SAP UK headquarters is nearest Heathrow. 

Also to overcome the "really, really, only one piece of hand baggage" crap I bought another Rimowa case, bringing my total to four now.  This one holds PC and clean underpants in perfect harmony.   

I mean seriously, if you're going to commit suicide on the plane, you don't need to pack stuff for your onward journey, so you are unlikely to decide, "damn, after I have my clothes for the after life, I have no room for the bomb in my one piece of hand baggage, better leave it." 

Ninety Percent Success Rate for Bomb Smugglers

In case you were of any doubt about the effectiveness of screening, at least in the USA, here is an article about the sucess rate of TSA agents - 90%!

Hurrah!  They would have stopped nine out of ten terrorists.

Oh wait!  These were the agents sent to test the effectiveness of the screening, and they got through ninety percent of the time. 

Wow.  TSA = DRM in overall efficiency, punishing the innocent, and doing jack to deter the guilty.  After all, if in the unlikely ten percent that you get caught and challenged in your suicide mission, heck, just pull the string there and then!  100% shock value anyway!

In the meantime the PR war on moisture continues to no great effect.

Touch Your Toes, Up it Goes!

Interesting report on the Tin Foil Hat side of existence, as it concerns air travel.  Recently, I was complaining about the fact that the War on Shampoo has now been shown to be completely bogus, but we`re still wandering around with ziploc baggies that show what toothpaste we prefer, or at least can buy suitably small packets of. 

Thus, I was not amused to read about this information grab by the USA.  Every time you travel, the US government feels that it has the right to rather a lot of information about you.  And when I started looking a bit more into it, I found an article that made me want to run right into the kitchen and get going on the bacofoil millinery front.  Bruce Schneier has an article on the ATS terrorist tracking mechanism in place in the USA.  Anyone going to the USA should read this.

I do feel sorry for the club of people called David Nelson, which is not exactly an uncommon name, and it also makes me want to make sure that I am not going to be added to such a list.   

Parisian Hotels

I love Paris as a city.  I like the French, with their gloomy intellectual world view, the good food, and the notion of social infrastructure that still exists, provided of course that you are not a second generation North African immigrant living in the Banlieues . 

But what I am finding frustrating is the notion of hotel management that exists in Paris.  A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I had a salmon day coming up, little did I know in terms of accommodation that it would be a salmon week. 

Here is the sequence:

I make a booking via our electronic booking service for SAP hotels, and get a couple of nights at the Villa d'Ambassadeurs in Longchamps.  That, according to my previous experience, should have been that.

Then I get a mail back from the hotel saying, no actually we are full.   

I assume that I will then cancel that booking, and find another hotel altogether in the same area.  This is when it starts to go a bit surreal. 

The hotel then says that they have booked me into another hotel in the same chain, and that I should go there.  I say that I would rather cancel the booking, and stay near where I wanted to go thanks very much.

They reply that if I do not take the night in the other hotel they will charge me a cancellation fee for the room that they are incapable of providing in the first hotel.  (Eh?  At this point I am kind of a commercial hostage of their greater organisation).

I call this second hotel, VIlla van Gogh in the Pigalle, and ask if in fact they have a booking in my name,  which they do not. 

I then get the hotel booking organisation involved, who start sending a load of exasperated e-mails asking them how they can be such a bunch of unprofessional goobers, and what they hell is going on?

Finally, they admit that they can do nothing, and that I do indeed have be a commercial hostage, and go to this other hotel, which at least at this point has acknowledged my existence. 

So, I go there that night, and it's an OK hotel, and in fact I find a very nice little Italian restaurant next door, and have a very authentic pizza, a glass of red wine, and then go and have a good nights sleep in this very Parisian hotel.  This means that there are five floors, each with about three rooms on them, each of which is itself quite small. The lift is also generally tiny, being retrofitted into the tiny staircase.  I think they are cute, but they are not for the claustrophobic...

So, the next morning I take the metro to the SAP office in La Defense, and log in to my e-mail.  After I had left the office last night, it transpired that the  hotel booking service had sent me a notice saying that the Villa van Gogh only had a room for one night.  But I only get this having travelled half way over Paris, and so after another electronic shouting match I have to get back onto the Metro, and go and collect my stuff from the first hotel, as they are about to throw my gear into the street. 

Now, this is actually, apart from the inconvenience starting to be funny.  I mean, how much more incompetent could you be? 

So, I get my stuff, and I go back to the office, work the day, and then in the evening I go to the other hotel, who have in fact got a booking for me, which at this stage I see as being nothing short of miraculous.  So, once booked in, I want to go to the room in this hotel, which is much like the other, i.e. more vertical than horizontal, five floors of four rooms or so.  Only now the elevator is broken, and I have to the ascent, luckily to the first floor only, up a staircase that looks like something out of Dr Seuss, so narrow and steep is it.   

But there are a fair few "third age" tourists, e.g. coffin dodgers, being forced to make the dizzying ascent to the fifth floor on foot.

Well, that would have been one of the most frustrating hotel experiences in my more than a decade of travelling with SAP, but there was one upside.  Because of their utter disorganisation, they forgot about who I was and where I had been, and only charged me for one night of the two.  Normally I would have pointed out the error, because small hotels have proprietors, and they rely on the revenue, but in this case I just quietly grinned and signed. 

There is a saying in marketing that the delighted client will tell almost no-one, where the disgruntled one will complain endlessly.  I cannot give a stronger recommendation to anyone looking for a hotel in Paris.  Avoid these incompetent clowns like the plague.

The next night I was in Frankfurt, and I walked up to the reception desk of the new Movenpick Hotel near the conference centre, and just said one word: "Newlands".  The young German clerk smiled, tapped in a couple of letters, and welcomed me, produced a room key in seconds, and wished me a good stay, and if I smiled with contentment at the difference, well, likely he had no idea why. 

Interestingly I went to Paris again on Thursday and got the same treatment, but not so extreme.  Went to the booked hotel, and lo and behold they were fully booked!  Still, this time rather than being taken commercial hostage, and being whisked off as a prisoner to the other side of Paris, he phoned other hotels in the neighbourhood, and found me a hotel within half a block at the same price.  This is obviously a bit like the old commercial overbooking trick on airlines that used to take place with business class flights. 

I am trying to think about how to prevent this happening again, but I have not thought of any foolproof strategies...