Why United Does Not Allow You To Use In-Flight Screen As Extended Display
For more than a decade, I have traveled with an extra monitor. It is a life-saver for productivity on the go. Plus, if you keep an HDMI cable, you can use
Confidentiality. Or porn. One of those things.
Bro, relax
There are very very few things that I believe deserve summary and immediate execution, and that's just made the list.
Eh. At least it looks like it's daytime. If it were on a redeye, I'd vote to push him out the nearest hatch.
I never recline my seat, but if I was sitting infront of that guy I would move it down for a bit. Then up again. Then down again. Etc for however long the flight is
No darkmode... Pedestrian flash banging the plane
Seriously. What a fucking ridiculous "problem". The photos in this article are absurd.
I'm already annoyed when someone is using their phone in the dark and doesn't adjust the brightness settings.
If you do this during night flights, sincerely, fuck you.
My wife does this. At 2am. Often mid week. And wonders why I wake up in the middle of the night and grumpy.
If it’s wireless someone will be sent porn by the creep 2 rows back.
yeah this whole article was an unnecessary rant which the author realized only after publishing.
Update: A reader writes in with an obvious comment that did not occur to me:
The obvious reason not to let people put things on the screens you own in public is that invariably people will put porn on them, and then you'll have other people complaining that the united screen system is showing porn. They don't say this because no corporate PR hack is going to talk about porn when it's not necessary. But it's definitely the real reason, and it's one they will not and should not budge on.
Then you'll still have people screencast porn to their own screen, photograph it and post it on social media with a title like "United's in-flight entertainment".
Reminds me of the time when I was living in Phoenix and picking up a friend from the bus station. The bus departures came in one big door and right next to the door was one of them new standing internet kiosks that allowed you to browse the internet. This was back in 2003. I was checking it out to see what you could do and where it allowed you to go, when my friends bus came in. I was on goatse.cx and saw my friend and left the kiosk open and we went to leave and noticed many older Hispanic folks freaking out, or laughing as they entered the bus station. The timer ran out on the internet access, but it was a lot of fun with open monitors in public.
There's no reason they couldn't expose an HDMI port, or even provide a cable that runs down the seat to the tray table.
I worked in a wine shop that had banks of conputers that people could ise to look up reviewer’s rating on wines or place orders on our website. I ended up having to get IT to lock them down to only 6-7 websites because people would use them to try to access their banking. I had to explain to way too many people with jobs in high finance the risks of them doing this on a public computer. Too many idiots would do banking on a flight only to get robbed.
When I bought my house it took the old owner ages to reroute all of her mail to whatever her new address was. At one point sje had a credit card sent to her and it came to my house along with the PIN number.
If I'd been so inclined I could have withdrawn all the money from her account.
Meanwhile when I moved in I spent the first 2 days basically doing nothing other than making sure all of my mail was coming to my new address.
People are just really bad at thinking
Right? I keep a list of every single company/service that I gave my email address, physical address, or phone number to. Every time I give it out I add it to the list. When it needs changing I go through the list and update it in all of them.
I watched a woman log into her email at a Best Buy laptop kiosk then walk away. I went over and logged her out.
The user is a moron. Lock your shit.
I spent two years at that aforementioned wine shop emailing “I love you” to my co-worker buddy Rob should anyone have left open their email. Rob knew it was me but always made a point to thank the person who said they loved him.
The article is about extended displays though. No traces left.
And The last time I flew the displays had viewing angles tht made it so only you could see the display, sp they were actually more private than laptops.
I just want to know when I can connect my noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones to the display instead of the tinny pair of wired "maraccas" that I keep in my travel bag.
Idk, 150 people in a tin can all using Bluetooth could cause issues.
It would be better to get noise cancelling headphones with a 3.5mm headphone jack. I had some until my daughter broke them, and I loved them.
Number of stews who have the time to help you figure out the pairing rigamarole or why the radio on this unit is fucked: ZERO.
Number of issues with regular fucking headphones: zero.
Cases where the tinniness will impact your enjoyment of visual spooge: zero
People stopping you from buying some $15 apple 3.5mm pods for your earballs: zero
I'm thinking you'll be fine. Leave the air safety officers alone so they can do their job.
Number of stews who have the time to help you figure out the pairing rigamarole or why the radio on this unit is fucked: ZERO.
No help necessary. Leave it as an advanced option and provide those who request assistance a cheap pair of 3.5 mm headphones. SOLVED.
Number of issues with regular fucking headphones: zero.
Cases where the tinniness will impact your enjoyment of visual spooge: zero
I'm sorry you're not able to appreciate hifi sound but that's a a you problem.
People stopping you from buying some $15 apple 3.5mm pods for your earballs: zero
Those sound like shit compared to the expensive pair of wireless ear buds that I already own.
I’m thinking you’ll be fine. Leave the air safety officers alone so they can do their job.
Of course I'm fine. But what's this nonsense about bothering air safety officers? Nobody is berating airline employees about bluetooth headphones lol.
The second we get a better short range wireless protocol so there aren't a hundred Bluetooth devices jamming each other on the plane.
If you travel a lot they do make airplane headphones that have a 3.5mm connector and run noise cancelling.
They make a thing for that.
People can’t behave themselves in public. Even more so on airplanes.
Reason is a shit rag, and I don't think their slop should be posted.
I think they're one of the better ones since they tend to cite their sources clearly. Media bias fact check agrees with me as well.
They are super biased though, and you'll get something between a libertarian and Republican lite perspective (think socially liberal Republicans). They absolutely shouldn't be your only source of news and they're very selective about what they cover, but when it comes to factual accuracy, they're pretty good.
Perhaps you disagree with their political bias, but that doesn't make them inaccurate. I highly recommend reading some high quality news sources with a different political bias than your own to get a broader perspective. It doesn't have to be Reason, but Reason is a decent option for left-leaning people because the factual accuracy is pretty high and the perspective is so different.
So you make a point with great arguments.
Care to elaborate?
I always thought it was so whatever company they contract with could show their brainwash ads
Yeah, that was my take as well. That, and adding the ability to plug in/connect costs money and probably isn't popular enough to make it charging for it profitable.
What a jackass.
Rule 34.
Ahh yes, the Volokh Conspiracy:
We're clever enough to come up with a superficially consistent frameworks that permit our awfulness, therefore we should!