Phones on planes

EU allows mobile phones on airplanes

You can use your cell phone in the skies over Europe as early as this summer under new European Union rules — allowing travelers to stay in touch but also raising the cringe-inducing prospect of being stuck next to a chatterbox at 30,000 feet.

Announcing the guidelines Monday, EU officials said they expect several Europe-based airlines to move within the next few months to launch services, effectively making the 27-nation bloc the first region in the world to scrap bans on the use of cell phones in the sky.

They insisted that the new rules would not heighten the risk of terrorism or interfere with flight instruments, explaining the system, relying on European GSM technology, has been thoroughly tested and safeguards will be enacted against the terror threat.

The United States and many other countries ban the use of cell phones and other mobile devices in the air because of concern they could disrupt a plane's instruments.

Travelers expressed fears about another kind of disruption: Noisy passengers.

"If they use a mobile phone on long distance flights, it would be an inconvenience, especially at night," said train commuter Stein Smulders, from Halle, Belgium.

Takeoff, landing, turbulence off limits

Airlines and EU officials said the security risk will be minimized because the system will not connect inflight phones directly to the ground — instead using an onboard base station to link up to a satellite and then to ground networks.

"It has to go through a central onboard cellular network that can be switched off by the captain at any moment, so that enhances the security of the passengers," said EU spokesman Martin Selmayr.

He added that for safety and security concerns the phone services will not be available during takeoff, landing or during turbulence.

Francoise Humbert, from the Association of European Airlines, which represents over 30 European carriers, said the network had been "very rigorously tested" and would not interfere with the aircraft's communication and navigation systems.

The installation of base stations on the plane allows calls to directly target a satellite system, preventing mobile phones from wreaking havoc with flight instruments or ground networks by sending out signals indiscriminately.

Mobile phone users will be allowed to turn their phones on after the plane reaches 10,000 feet, when other electronic devices such as portable music players and laptops are permitted.

Monday's decision was welcomed by airlines — some of which like Air France-KLM have already launched a trial of in-flight phone services on some European routes.

Alison Duquette, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, said the United States has no immediate plans to remove its ban.

Etiquette an issue

The new freedoms pose new pricing and etiquette questions.

Selmayr said EU regulators would be keeping a close eye on the airlines and phone operators to make sure they set fair rates for the service. But he acknowledged that making a call at 10,000 feet will be more pricey than those made on the ground.

"We understand there is an additional cost because you need to route these services via the onboard cellular network and there is some investment that has to be made," Selmayr said. He did not give any cost comparisons.

British Midland Airways Ltd., also known as bmi; Portugal's TAP, and low-cost airline Ryanair are also planning to offer services later this year.

Dubai-based Emirates Airlines introduced its in-flight phone services last month on its Dubai to Casablanca route, but limits the number of calls passengers can make and bars calls during night flights.

The EU also urged airlines to set in-flight etiquette rules to ensure a balance between those wanting to make calls and others who in need of a few hours of quiet-time.

Lufthansa to sit out

German airline Lufthansa said Monday it does not plan to introduce the service because a majority of its customers saw no need for phone calls during flights. Surveys have shown that a large majority of customers were against it, Lufthansa spokesman Jan Baerwalde said.

"People don't want to be disturbed," Baerwalde said.

Lufthansa will, however, look at providing fast Internet access on its planes, a service it already offered from 2004 until the end of 2006. The airline is currently looking for a new service partner to reintroduce the service.

The Association of European Airlines said airlines would inevitably set conditions on use to avoid in-flight flare ups between passengers.

"There will be conditions of course because other passengers should not be inconvenienced by this possibility so there will be guidelines," said spokeswoman Francoise Humbert.

Such rules were welcomed by travelers in Rome.

"I think it can be helpful if it will be fairly ruled, avoiding abuses," said Antonio Bilancia, a traveler in Rome.

Source: msnbc.msn

Vocabulary Practice:

You will notice that there is not a direct link between the vocabulary in green and the dictionary. Try to guess the meaning of the expressions and then put(some of) them (in the correct form) into the following sentences. You can check your answers by going to Cambridge Advanced Dictionary and looking up the words there.

1. They're considering _________ the tax and raising the money in other ways.
2. Lawyers will ____ the parents to take further legal action.
3. Violence _________ again last night.
4. The train was packed with _________.
5. Your sister's a real __________!
6. These scandals will not _______ the organization's reputation/image.
7. The incident led to him being ______ from the country.
8. It's a bit ______ but the food is wonderful.

SPAM

Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages.

Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high. The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.

The people that create electronic spam are called spammers.

E-mail spam

E-mail spam, also known as unsolicited bulk email (UBE) or unsolicited commercial email (UCE), is the practice of sending unwanted e-mail messages, frequently with commercial content, in large quantities to an indiscriminate set of recipients.

Spam in e-mail started to become a problem when the Internet was opened up to the general public in the mid-1990s. It grew exponentially over the following years, and today comprises some 80 to 85% of all the email in the world, by conservative estimate; some sources go as high as 95%.

Pressures to make e-mail spam illegal has been successful in some jurisdictions, but less so in others. Spammers take advantage of this fact, and frequently outsource parts of their operations to countries where spamming will not get them into legal trouble.

Increasingly, e-mail spam today is sent via "zombie networks", networks of virus- or worm-infected personal computers in homes and offices around the globe; many modern worms install a backdoor which allows the spammer access to the computer.

E-mail is an extremely cheap mass medium, and professional spammers have automated their processes to a high extent. Thus, spamming can be very profitable even at what would otherwise be considered extremely low response rates.

An industry of e-mail address harvesting is dedicated to collecting email addresses and selling compiled databases. Millions of email addresses can be cheaply purchased

History
It is widely believed the term spam is derived from the 1970 Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the server recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out all conversations with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely SPAM, wonderful SPAM", hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to British rationing during World War II. SPAM was one of the few meat products that avoided rationing, and hence widely available.

Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail occurred in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other media, with the first recorded instance being via telegram in May 1864), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied.

It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting—the repeated posting of the same message. The unwanted message would appear in many if not all newsgroups, just as SPAM appeared in all the menu items in the Monty Python sketch.

There are three popular false etymologies of the word "spam". The first is that "spamming" is what happens when one dumps a can of SPAM luncheon meat into a fan blade. The second is the backronym "shit posing as mail." The third is similar, using "stupid pointless annoying messages." Most suitable seems to be the Esperanto interpretation: The term spamo (with the o-ending designating nouns) makes sense as "senpete alsendita mesaĝo", which means "message being sent to someone without being asked for".

In 1998, the New Oxford Dictionary of English, which had previously only defined "spam" in relation to the trademarked food product, added a second definition to its entry for "spam": "Irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent on the Internet to a large number of newsgroups or users

Spam (food)
SPAM luncheon meat is a canned precooked meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation. The labelled ingredients in the Classic variety of Spam are: chopped pork shoulder meat with ham meat added, salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite to help "keep its color". The product has become part of many jokes and urban legends about mystery meat, which has made it part of pop culture and folklore.

Varieties of Spam vary by region and include Spam Black Pepper, Spam Less Sodium, Spam Garlic, Spam and Cheese, Spam with Bacon (Hormel bacon), Spam Spread, Spam Fritters, Spam Lite (containing pork and chicken), Spam Golden Honey Grail, Spam Hot and Spicy (with Tabasco sauce), Spam Hickory Smoked, and Spam Oven Roasted Turkey - the latter is also available as halal food, meaning that it is permissible under Islamic law, and is especially popular in Muslim markets.

Spam is produced in (among other places) Austin, Minnesota, USA (also known as Spam Town USA). In 2002, the six billionth can of Spam was sold. Spam for the UK market is produced in Denmark by Tulip under licence from Hormel.

Name origin

Introduced on July 5, 1937, the name "Spam" was chosen in the 1930s when the product, whose original name was far less memorable (Hormel Spiced Ham), began to lose market share. The name was chosen from multiple entries in a naming contest. A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name Spam was "Shoulder of Pork and hAM". According to writer Marguerite Patten in Spam – The Cookbook, the name was suggested by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president. At one time, the official explanation may have been that the name was a syllabic abbreviation of "SPiced hAM", but on their official website, Hormel denies this and states that "Spam is just that. Spam." The fact that the originator was given a $100 prize for coming up with the name, however, still appears on the site's Spam FAQs.

Many jocular backronyms have been devised, such as "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Meat." "Special Purpose Army Meat" has been suggested as another apocryphal backronym referring to the product's WWII roots.

According to Hormel's trademark guidelines, Spam should be spelled with all capital letters and treated as an adjective, as in the phrase "SPAM luncheon meat". As with many other trademarks, such as Xerox or Kleenex, people often refer to similar meat products as "spam".
Regardless, in practice, "spam" is generally spelled and used as a proper noun.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: aphexnon3 (You Tube) Key words: monty python spam subtitles

Here's the famous sketch all about the tinned meat.