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TSA Screeners don't like enhanced pat downs, either

> Each of the 17 TSA TSOs that responded to me detailed their personal discomfort in conducting the new pat downs, with more than one stating that it is likely they are more uncomfortable performing the pat down than passengers are receiving them.
via [boardingarea.com](http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2010/11/18/tsa-enhanced-pat-downs-the-screeners-point-of-view/)
Well, that’s no surprise. And I’ve never blamed the agents in the field for this issue. It’s the system that’s broken. The entire approach is flawed, and it benefits absolutely no one but the millionaires who contract out to the government for these contracts.

But before you feel sympathetic enough towards these folks to decide to just go ahead with the X-ray scan, remember: The more you opt out, the more of these pat downs need to be performed, the more likely that both passengers and TSA agents alike will lodge complaints.

Remember when they made women throw away their lipstick for about a week after the liquid bomb threat? Women threw a fit, and they changed the policy.

The enemy here is complacency. Thinking “it’s not such a big deal” is how we got this far in the first place. We should have raised hell back when they started making us take our shoes off. Don’t wait until we’re taking our pants off and bending over (literally) before you take a stand.

Where Are the Android Killer Apps? (good read from Daring Fireball)

Developers complain, not without merit, that the iTunes App Store is rigged toward low-priced apps. But the Android Market seems rigged toward no-price apps. Apple is making a high-profile foray into mobile advertising, yes, but it doesn’t seem to be displacing the market for paid apps. On Android, on the other hand, advertising seems to be the only way for developers to generate significant revenue. Paid Android apps don’t seem to sell well. Are ads a good revenue model for mobile games?

via daringfireball.net

Very good piece from John Gruber on the Andriod vs. iOS app markets.

I would add that the reason Android is rigged toward “no-price apps” is that Google wants it that way. It wants money from ads, since ads are the only way Google has ever made money. This makes perfect sense for Google, but it makes no sense for developers, who are currently doing better with quality apps that they can SELL rather than give away.

Google has no interest whatsoever in whether or not developers make money.

This is the primary reason why I believe that Android will NEVER have the quality of apps that iOS has. For a developer considering Android, there is only one positive motivation (the sheer size of the audience) but dozens of detractors (can’t have paid apps in most countries, need to support hundreds of hardware configurations, ease of pirating, no single marketplace, etc.).

Google is betting that in the long run apps won’t matter. It created a platform that caters to hardware makers (make any device you want, take our OS for free, do whatever you want with it) and primarily serves Google financially (ads, ads, ads). It also makes deals with whatever carrier will take Android, no matter what the carrier demands.

This is all done in the interest of winning the numbers game. Google fans can shout all they want about “open”, and “don’t be evil” but Google has always caved in to corporate interests, rather than serving the interests of its users. “Open” means open to the carriers and the hardware manufacturers, not the users. That’s why you get bloatware apps that you can’t erase, software updates controlled by carriers, new devices shipping with old versions of the software, devices that can’t connect to the marketplace, 7-inch screens on tablets made available before Google was ready with a true version of a tablet-ready OS, etc. Google will literally sell its grandmother’s soul to sell one more Android device.

Apple, on the other hand, created a platform in order to make hardware profit for itself directly and itself alone. It signed on with just one carrier per region at first, so it could be given greater control over the device and its distribution. Whether it be software updates, hardware features, or the app store itself, Apple wanted to call the shots. The idea was to limit third-party involvement to the bare minimum. Have no partners who can screw you in the long term (as Apple has a long history of getting screwed by partners).

All of this was done with a very keen focus on the user. Say what you want about Steve Jobs being a control freak, the majority of his decisions about the iPhone have favored the interests of the users (as a group, not as individuals) over the interests of corporate profits for its partners. This is not out of some selfless desire to do good, of course, but rather in order to give Apple the opportunity to please the customer as much as possible, leading to more sales, and of course, that all-precious asset: loyalty.

Apple wants to be the best, first and foremost, not sell the most. If it happens to sell the most, too, so be it. But it makes far more money selling fewer units to a carefully curated audience than it would if it let the carriers and developers run wild.

Which brings us to developers for iOS. Developers get caught in the middle of Apple’s drive for user loyalty. On one hand, there’s an incredible opportunity to make serious money on the App Store. And Apple’s tight control of the ecosystem has made that possible. No matter how much larger the Android audience gets, iOS will always have the more attractive demographic. Piracy is less of a concern. There’s a limited number of hardware configurations. There’s only one extremely convenient distribution channel. The paperwork is largely taken care of for you. And the 70/30 split of the profits are in your favor. It’s a good place to try and stake a claim for yourself.

On the other hand, Apple is so paranoid about the user experience that it will side with what it thinks is best for its audience over what’s best for the developer. (Camera+ and the volume button come to mind.) App Store customers are APPLE customers first, app developer customers second. You are forever cut off from developing the sort of close relationship Apple builds with its customers.

While there’s always potential that Apple will go too far with the controlling tendencies, and while it is clear from Apple’s behavior that keeping any one developer from becoming too powerful is a high priority (Apple doesn’t want to relive its history with Microsoft and Adobe), for the time being, most developers are seeing the good outweighing the bad with iOS. Unlike with Android, at the end of the day, if you play by Apple’s rules you have a good opportunity to make some decent profit on iOS, at least.

I don’t know whether Google’s bet on high volume sales, user experience be damned, will pan out in the end. I like to think users will choose the better experience at the end of the day. If I had to guess, I’d say that once Apple opens up to more carriers in the coming year (hello, Verizon), and as Windows and RIM stop bleeding customers and even out, Google will see a significant drop in Android growth. (Android will still grow, just not nearly as quickly.)

There are tons of people out there who have yet to buy their first smart phones, so there’s plenty more share to be taken by Google and everyone alike. But Google won’t pose much of a threat to Apple’s core audience in the long run, and Apple will certainly find a way to pick up more new users with more variety in its offerings. (Remember the iPod mini, nano, and shuffle?)

This will leave Android hardware makers with little choice but to get cut throat on price. (We’re already seeing some low-cost Android phones hit the market.) Whether or not hardware makers will be able to make any sort of profit on the scraps from bargain hunters is hard to say. Its even harder to say whether or not anyone can beat Apple on price much, anyway, given what we’re seeing with iPad competitors so far.

If Apple figures out a way to sell a $49 iPhone something on Verizon within the next year or two, I’d say there’s little chance Google’s plans for world domination are going to pan out.

And iOS will still have the best apps, in any case.

So how's that fragmentation working out for you?

>
We have received a lot of feedback regarding the latest Angry Birds update on Android. > > First of all, we offer our apologies to all of our fans who have had trouble running Angry Birds. We thank everybody who has sent their feedback and comments to us – we really appreciate you taking the time! > > With our latest update, we worked hard to bring Angry Birds to even more Android devices. Despite our efforts, we were unsuccessful in delivering optimal performance. > > … > >   > > We are preparing a new solution for the next update, but for the time being, the Android devices listed below are not officially supported by Angry Birds: > > - Droid Eris > - HTC Dream > - HTC Hero > - HTC Magic/G2/Sapphire/Mytouch 3G > - HTC Tattoo > - HTC Wildfire > - Huawei Ideos/U8150 > - LG Ally/Aloha/VS740 > - LG GW620/Eve > - Motorola Backflip/MB300 > - Motorola Cliq/Dext > - Samsung Acclaim > - Samsung Moment/M900 > - Samsung Spica/i5700 > - Samsung Transform > - Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini > - T-Mobile G1 > >
via [rovio.com](http://www.rovio.com/index.php?mact=Blogs,cntnt01,showentry,0&cntnt01entryid=47&cntnt01returnid=58)
The comments on this blog post from Rovio (makers of Angry Birds) are a good read for developers who think maybe it’s time to branch out from iOS to making Android apps.

Here we have the most popular app on the iPhone, Angry Birds, made by a company that has literally made millions of dollars on this one app on iOS. So they decide to make an Android version, too. Why not? But they can’t charge for it, because there’s no money in paid apps on Android. (Too many countries don’t allow paid apps on Google Marketplace.) So they instead offer it for free with ads.

Next they run into the infamous problem of fragmentation on Android. Several models (some of which are not old models at all) can’t be officially supported; they will need to make a special “lightweight” version with crappier graphics and animation for underpowered phones. So complaints have been pouring in about poor performance from disgruntled users.

The users, of course, have a lot of nerve blaming Rovio for this mess. They complain that Angry Birds should be free, have no ads, and work perfectly on any of the thousands of Android devices out there. Of course it should. Because they have the open phone. And open is always better. And Google doesn’t do evil. Blah blah blah. They honestly expected Rovio to test every one of the models out there?

And this is an audience that developers should be lusting after?

Think about this article next time you read some pundit yapping on about all those developers who are going to be flocking over to Android any minute now. I just don’t see it happening, and this blog post is exactly the reason.

I hope that Rovio posts a comparison of how much profit they made on each platform. Even if they don’t, you’ll know how profitable this Angry Birds Android experiment was by which platforms Rovio decides to target for their next app.

If the world really wants to move toward buggy, ad-supported crapware made by hobbyists, then I guess they’ll get exactly that. Meanwhile the good developers are going to stay where the money is.

Just feel me up, or whatever

> When we got to the scanner, I opted out. Then they opted out. She’d already convinced the family behind them to do the same. Her response to the TSA agent was awesome, I wish I’d thought of it: > > “Ma’am, please step over here.” > > “No thanks, I’ve already had cancer, just feel me up or whatever.” > > After the first 4 “OPT-OUT” calls, they just passed us all through the regular metal detector. No one got groped. > > Information, properly delivered, is power.
via [blog.izs.me](http://blog.izs.me/post/1591805056/tsa-success-story)
Great success story on resisting the TSA. A little information and courage can go a long way. And I agree with the advice that we should all be following up with a note to our congressmen and senators. You don’t even have to call; most have web forms you can fill out. Keep it simple and polite: Change the policy, or you don’t get my vote. That’s the language they understand.

Objects are not a threat - People are the threat

> At a Senate oversight hearing today, Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole explained that TSA agents really do need to [encounter testicular resistance](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/assume-the-position-tsa-begins-new-ball-busting-patdowns.ars) when performing their newly enhanced airport pat-downs. Since switching to the new pat-downs in the last few weeks, “We have detected dozens and dozens of, let’s say, ‘artfully concealed objects'” that could pose a risk to flight, said Pistole. > > Indeed, the government’s own covert penetration testing of airports showed that it wasn’t difficult to get contraband into airports under the old regime, thanks in large part to this “artful concealment.” Those tests showed that the US was “not being thorough enough in our pat-downs,” said Pistole. When combined with 2009’s “underwear bomber” case, it became clear to TSA that something much more aggressive (though short of a cavity search) would be required. > > Pistole faced surprisingly gentle questioning from senators of both parties, even though most admitted that their own phones were ringing off the hook on the issue. “We’re getting hundreds of calls,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). The public is “significantly upset,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), adding that much of the outrage focused on children being searched. > >
![](http://static.arstechnica.com/2010/11/17/pistole_head.jpg)
TSA head John Pistole
Pistole said he “understood” the concern (and he added that children under 12 weren’t subject to the enhanced pat-down). When one senator asked if this “understanding” meant changes were coming, Pistole was direct. “Am I going to change the policies? No.”
via [arstechnica.com](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/11/tsa-boss-our-patdowns-turn-up-artfully-concealed-objects.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss)
So kids under 12 aren’t subject to the enhanced pat down? Great. Let’s play a game. Let’s say I’m a terrorist. I want to get a bomb on board an airplane. What this guy is saying is that all I need now is a kid under 12?

You think terrorists don’t have kids?

We can play this cat and mouse game all day long. There’s always going to be a loophole that any person with a brain can get around. As long as you have to make exceptions to rules, people will exploit those exceptions. So what’s the point of the game in the first place?

And what is it about turning 12 that suddenly makes it ok for the government to legally molest you?

Should we be randomly searched when walking into a grocery store? After all, we might have artfully concealed objects on us then, too. What’s so special about an airplane that warrants this extra scrutiny?

If you were a terrorist, wouldn’t you just blow up your bomb in the terminal? Or on a train? Or in a Wal-Mart?

But let’s get back to these “artfully concealed objects.” What were they, exactly? They weren’t bombs, obviously, or it would have been all over the news. So what are they finding? Hash pipes? Plastic baggies of pot? Are those things illegal? Yes. Are they a threat to an airplane? I don’t think so.

Objects aren’t the threat. People are the threat. A small group of determined people. We need to be looking for suspicious people, not objects. Metal detectors and X-ray scanners can’t detect intentions. You need human intelligence, highly-trained professional detectives.

And and ounce or two of common sense wouldn’t hurt, either.

You can find all the illegal contraband you want, until you catch an actual person who was actually trying to blow up a plane, you aren’t succeeding.

The underwear bomber was caught by intelligent civilian passengers who detected his suspicious behavior. If more intelligence and less machinery had been deployed prior to his lighting his pants on fire, he would have never made it onto the airplane in the first place.

But as usual, we learned the wrong lesson from that incident, just like we learned the wrong lesson from 9/11. We added more machinery, and paid even less attention to behavior.

Meanwhile, we have a living example of an airport in Tel Aviv that faces ten times the threat, doing security in a completely different fashion, with minimal inconvenience to passengers, a much more effective track record of catching actual threats, and it doesn’t cost as much. Until the TSA can explain to me why what we have is better, everything else is nonsense.