Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Style from how stuff works dot com. Hello everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Crispy, So what do you want to talk
Speaker 1: about today? Today? I want to talk about um flying? Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, wait, we did our podcast about cell phone
Speaker 1: safety and whether or not it was safe to actually
Speaker 1: have a cell phone working on a plane, and then
Speaker 1: it occurred to us that there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: cool technology that planes use to not only take flight,
Speaker 1: but to get around to where they're going, and we
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to touch on some of the systems. No, granted,
Speaker 1: a a really detailed discussion about airplane technology would probably
Speaker 1: take hours and hours, so again, this is going to
Speaker 1: be an overview, but we're gonna hit some of the
Speaker 1: uh the cool technology that gets you to where you're
Speaker 1: going when you're taking flight. Yeah, some of it's really
Speaker 1: really complicated. Other parts of it are just plane simple,
Speaker 1: ha ha. Alright, So with that in mind, let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get started. Did you have something in mind
Speaker 1: to start with. I was going to talk about sensors
Speaker 1: for because sensors you know, this is of course this
Speaker 1: is these are all the systems on the plane that
Speaker 1: tell it where it is, how fast it's moving, what's
Speaker 1: its relationship with other stuff that's in the area. And
Speaker 1: it's all obviously very important for the safety of the
Speaker 1: plane and for navigational purposes. And there are tons of
Speaker 1: different kinds of sensors that we can talk about, but
Speaker 1: in general, the ones that are pretty much standard across
Speaker 1: pretty much any plane of significance would be you'd have
Speaker 1: to have something that keeps time right, so a clock
Speaker 1: of some sort um you iCal device, US econological device,
Speaker 1: and altimeter, which in general uses measures air pressure and
Speaker 1: determines how um how high up you are, UH, something
Speaker 1: that can can detect and measure air speed UM and
Speaker 1: definite accelerometers both for vertical acceleration and horizontal UM. A
Speaker 1: compass of some sort so magnetic heading. You would need
Speaker 1: some sensors that would be able to uh indicate where
Speaker 1: the controls are, I mean, like what what setting they
Speaker 1: are in obviously UM fuel sensors, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: UH stabilizers. UM. All these sensors are very very important
Speaker 1: so that the pilot can make sure that everything is
Speaker 1: is UH as it should be and or make adjustments
Speaker 1: if things aren't quite right. And they also the equipment
Speaker 1: that needed to judge the state of the aircraft, like
Speaker 1: where the flaps are, the wheels, and all the other
Speaker 1: things that need to move, how much gas is in
Speaker 1: the tank jet fuel jet fuel. Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we can simplify a little bit. I think I think
Speaker 1: we'll only get maybe ten or fifteen listener mails if
Speaker 1: we do that. UM. But yeah, all of this information
Speaker 1: gets fed UH to a flight data recorder as well
Speaker 1: as to the instruments on the pilot's console. And the
Speaker 1: flight data recorder is very important in the case of UH,
Speaker 1: something unusual happening, whether it ends up being an actual accident,
Speaker 1: which you know hopefully that's not the case, or if
Speaker 1: just something is not quite right and then they need
Speaker 1: to review it at the end of the flight. UM.
Speaker 1: And the flight data recorder is located along with the
Speaker 1: cockpit voice recorder in UM in special a special kind
Speaker 1: of casing, and there's a very common term for this
Speaker 1: kind of casing. It's actually a very deceptive term. Considering
Speaker 1: what looks like a really sturdy box, well, it's called
Speaker 1: it usually a black box, even though they're not black, right,
Speaker 1: they're not black, and they don't really look like boxes. Necessarily.
Speaker 1: They're usually bright orange UM because it makes it easier
Speaker 1: to spot if again, the unfortunate conclusion of a wreck occurs,
Speaker 1: if you've got a lot of wreckage, right, orange container
Speaker 1: stands out black not so much, especially there's been fire damage.
Speaker 1: So the black box, as they're known, UM, they shield
Speaker 1: the flight down of recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.
Speaker 1: Actually there's often two different ones, one for each, and
Speaker 1: they're most often in the very back of the plane
Speaker 1: and the tail of the plane because that's going to
Speaker 1: be the area of the plane that suffers the least
Speaker 1: damage in case of an impact in most cases. Yep
Speaker 1: and UM. Actually, the information that goes to these machines
Speaker 1: is collected by the flight Data Acquisition Unit, which basically
Speaker 1: is a go between UH for the sensors and the
Speaker 1: black boxing. I'm still making a case that boxing should
Speaker 1: be the plural for box. Well, I mean, you got
Speaker 1: good luck that anyhow, They basically have two separate responsibilities.
Speaker 1: The the cockpit voice recorder is used to record the
Speaker 1: voices in the cockpit. You don't say, I do say? Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, basically all the all the communications in the
Speaker 1: cap and you know, in the actual cockpit itself, between
Speaker 1: the pilot and anybody else who happens to be in there, right,
Speaker 1: the co pilot and maybe another and anyone else who
Speaker 1: actually is in the cockpit. Sometimes there are three yeah,
Speaker 1: officers in the cockpit or um and usually they it's
Speaker 1: taking taking a sound from the microphones that are located
Speaker 1: in the pilot's headset, that copilots headset. There's usually also
Speaker 1: another microphone that's in the cockpit itself. It's not connect
Speaker 1: to a headset. It's just there to pick up any
Speaker 1: other sounds and its warnings for example, right yeah, and
Speaker 1: it'll pick up like if there's a loud thud or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. I mean, it'll that will help
Speaker 1: people figure out what happened after the event. So um yeah,
Speaker 1: everything that that goes on in the cockpits recorded there. Now,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that, uh, it doesn't keep all that
Speaker 1: information forever. No, it actually, uh, depending on the the
Speaker 1: media upon which the voices are recorded. It will keep
Speaker 1: that for between thirty minutes and two hours. And in
Speaker 1: most cases now I think most of them have used
Speaker 1: solid state tape solid state technology, can I not say that? Right?
Speaker 1: More times? Basically they used to use real to real
Speaker 1: tapes magnetic tape, um, you know, which has a finite
Speaker 1: beginning and end. Uh. The solid state flash type memory
Speaker 1: has the ability to you know, keep racing and um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's also got the advantage of not having
Speaker 1: as many moving parts, right, yeah, it's it um also
Speaker 1: not uh yeah, it's not as vulnerable to damage as
Speaker 1: the magnetic tape is necessarily I mean, and U it
Speaker 1: can hold a lot more information to in a in
Speaker 1: a in the same physical amount of space. So yeah,
Speaker 1: up to two hours, maybe even more than that. Actually
Speaker 1: that the latest I saw was two hours, but I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that you know, with the way that that solid
Speaker 1: state drives have have advanced over the last few years,
Speaker 1: I bet it's even higher than that now. But the
Speaker 1: idea being that after the reason why it would record
Speaker 1: over after the last couple of hours is the only
Speaker 1: reason you would need to review this in the first places.
Speaker 1: If there was a catastrophic accident, and the chances are
Speaker 1: that anything that would really indicate a problem would have
Speaker 1: occurred half an hour or closer to the actual event.
Speaker 1: You're not you know, it's not gonna you know, any
Speaker 1: problem that's that serious, that's detected earlier would probably result
Speaker 1: in an emergency landing, unless, of course you were maybe
Speaker 1: over a huge body of water and couldn't do that right, Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the reason for the you know, that's why
Speaker 1: you're not too concerned over the fact that's going to
Speaker 1: record over the previous you know recording, UM, the flight
Speaker 1: data recorder. That's very important as well, because it will
Speaker 1: record all the conditions that were uh that we're leading
Speaker 1: up to the incident, and then of course everything thereafter,
Speaker 1: and that gives investigators a chance to really determine what
Speaker 1: it was that caused the problem in the first place.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean that's important. You know, if it's
Speaker 1: a manufacturing error, then obviously that's something you have to address,
Speaker 1: because what if that affects everything else in the fleet
Speaker 1: of planes or everything that's you know, of that same designation, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is um it's gonna track all kinds
Speaker 1: of information about the aircraft. Uh, you know, including stuff
Speaker 1: that I said before, all about the flaps, the positions
Speaker 1: of the flaps and and things like that, air speed. Um,
Speaker 1: and based on the conditions and uh, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: the weather conditions in the area and anything that the
Speaker 1: pilot might have said. They can sort of piece together
Speaker 1: what may have happened in the event of an accident
Speaker 1: right now, and they're there are plenty of transcripts out
Speaker 1: there from that. We're taken from black box recordings, and uh,
Speaker 1: I tried reading a few of them, and after a couple,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can't read any more of these. It's
Speaker 1: a little too intense for me. Um. You might wonder
Speaker 1: water these these black boxes made of these black boxes
Speaker 1: that are neither black nor boxes. Um. Well, you've got
Speaker 1: an aluminum housing that surrounds the sensitive equipment. Then you
Speaker 1: have you have some insulation that goes around that because
Speaker 1: of course, if there is a fire, right and jet
Speaker 1: fuel burns pretty hot, yes, so you have to have
Speaker 1: something that can withstand intense heat and protect the electronics
Speaker 1: insided so that people when they recover the electronics can
Speaker 1: figure out what happened. Um. And then around that you
Speaker 1: have a stainless steel shell. Wow. Yeah, so I mean,
Speaker 1: and people often make that like that. I've heard comedians
Speaker 1: make the joke of, you know, when there's an airplane crash,
Speaker 1: they find the black box and it's fine, Why don't
Speaker 1: they make the whole airplane out of that hauh? Because
Speaker 1: it be way too heavy, that's why. But that's not funny.
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess if you stand up and you
Speaker 1: and you talk back to a comedian who's doing observational humor,
Speaker 1: and you explain in logical terms why the joke would
Speaker 1: not work, that makes it less funny. I suppose I
Speaker 1: would imagine that that would not endear you to your
Speaker 1: fellow you know, crowd members. Yeah, that that explains why
Speaker 1: I'm no longer allowed in the chuckle hut. So yeah,
Speaker 1: do you like that? I just came up with it,
Speaker 1: all right. So another thing that these uh, these black
Speaker 1: boxes have usually is an underwater locator beacon. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be very useful well, of course, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you if you do happen to have an emergency water
Speaker 1: landing or a crash, you would need to have some
Speaker 1: way of being able to find this this device underwater
Speaker 1: and the way these systems work is they have a
Speaker 1: sensor that will detect if the black box goes underwater,
Speaker 1: and then it activates a a subsonic signal. Actually I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: an ultrasonic signal, so I should go the other way,
Speaker 1: not subsonicum, ultrasonic signal, And so you can't hear it,
Speaker 1: but it can be detected by UH wall detection equipment,
Speaker 1: so people searching around the area using the right equipment
Speaker 1: can locate it very quickly. Right, so it's a pitch
Speaker 1: so high that only underwater dogs can hear it. Right,
Speaker 1: it might affect the behavior of dolphins in the area,
Speaker 1: but other than that, right, And even despite that, of course, um,
Speaker 1: they can't always find some of the the black boxes.
Speaker 1: I mean that happened in the case of that that
Speaker 1: crash in the ocean earlier summer or two thousand nine. Um,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, last i'd see they had
Speaker 1: they'd given up looking for it because they were unable
Speaker 1: to find that signal. Yeah, well, I mean there are
Speaker 1: many things that could affect that. I mean you're talking about,
Speaker 1: like the wreckage of a crash can spread over a
Speaker 1: very wide area, so that makes it difficult. Then of
Speaker 1: course you have things like currents and the depth of
Speaker 1: the water exactly. Um was not exactly known for not
Speaker 1: distorting audio, right, Yeah, so it might depending on many
Speaker 1: different uh factors, you may or may not be able
Speaker 1: to find that very quickly. But that's the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of it is to to try and facilitate that, make
Speaker 1: it a little easier, so that the answers can can
Speaker 1: be found too. I mean, anytime there's a crash, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be lots of questions about exactly what happened. You know,
Speaker 1: was it human error, was it mechanical error, was it
Speaker 1: you know, unexpected turbulence, all that kind of stuff everyone
Speaker 1: wants to know. I mean, you know, it's a very
Speaker 1: traumatic experience. Um, moving on to unless you have anything
Speaker 1: else about black boxes. I was going to move on
Speaker 1: to a different technology now. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: you know, that's you know we've been talking about that's
Speaker 1: kind of a somber one way. You always have something
Speaker 1: else that's not not so somber. Um, this is this
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily upbeaten chipper. It's just a neat technology. I
Speaker 1: was gonna talk about transponders. So transponder is a well
Speaker 1: the word transponder. It's kind of a combination of the
Speaker 1: words transmitter and responder. That's a transponder. The idea is
Speaker 1: that it's a device that when you send a signal,
Speaker 1: it automatically sends a signal back. And it was very
Speaker 1: useful during World War Two because what they used. The
Speaker 1: way the military used transponders was it was a way
Speaker 1: to identify planes as being allied planes. Clearly, I mean,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to fire upon an allied UH airplane.
Speaker 1: That's a typically considered a bad tactic in warfare, as
Speaker 1: I understand it, So you would not want to fire
Speaker 1: upon one of your own allies that you've got this transponder.
Speaker 1: You send a signal out, you get a signal back,
Speaker 1: you see that this is one of the signals that
Speaker 1: UM signifies a friend, you don't fire upon them. Now
Speaker 1: in commercial jets, it's more of a way to identify
Speaker 1: the plane and make sure that you're that they're on
Speaker 1: the right track, they're on the right flight path, UM
Speaker 1: and UH so it's very useful for air traffic control
Speaker 1: and UM. I used to have to write a lot
Speaker 1: about transponders. One of my first jobs out of college
Speaker 1: was I was working for a particular airline which I
Speaker 1: will not name. But um, my job was to take
Speaker 1: really old sound files, uh that were descriptions of the
Speaker 1: various systems aboard their airplanes and transcribe them because they
Speaker 1: lost the hard copy scripts. So I got to listen
Speaker 1: all day two sound files about things like the seven
Speaker 1: forty seven and and write down everything about all their
Speaker 1: various systems. Yeah. That was my job for about well
Speaker 1: a couple of months. Really that long. Yeah, I'm impressed
Speaker 1: as you made it that long. Well, it was a
Speaker 1: temp job in the first place. It wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: a permanent assignment. Yeah, no, I know, I know more
Speaker 1: about the m D A eight than I cared to remember. Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, actually transponders are very important because they lead
Speaker 1: to some non airplane airplane tech too. Yeah, because not
Speaker 1: just using aircraft. Well that's that's not exactly what I meant,
Speaker 1: because part of um, the tech used in flying a
Speaker 1: plane is based on the ground. Well that's true too,
Speaker 1: because the transponder is used by air traffic control, very
Speaker 1: human piece of airplane tech to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: everything and there. Um there's we have an article on
Speaker 1: um that actually sort of you know, went through and
Speaker 1: made some minor changes on not too long ago about uh,
Speaker 1: the how the f a A A works. It's kind of
Speaker 1: thing because you realize that the FAA is tracking those
Speaker 1: planes pretty much everywhere. They are using that transponder signal, um,
Speaker 1: using the ground control equipment and basically they subdivide the
Speaker 1: country into different sections and with each individual. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that transponder code from that particular aircraft is
Speaker 1: unique to that plane. So, um, you know that's a
Speaker 1: very important part at tech because at any given moment,
Speaker 1: they're they're aware of where that is. That's true, That's true.
Speaker 1: And of course we now also have the um the
Speaker 1: wonderful technology of GPS, and many planes have a GPS
Speaker 1: receiver that so that the pilot can see very quickly
Speaker 1: exactly where the plane is. And um that's often a
Speaker 1: useful thing, especially in really bad flying conditions. Uh, I
Speaker 1: was gonna talk a little bit. And and the GPS
Speaker 1: also comes in handy if you have to be sitting
Speaker 1: on one of those planes that has the monitor in
Speaker 1: the back of the seat in front of you and
Speaker 1: you get want a track where you're plane is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gives you the flight track information and you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: we're directly over Tucson right now. Um. But I was
Speaker 1: also going to mention there's some other tech on on
Speaker 1: planes that it's a little more recent that. Uh. I
Speaker 1: thought i'd chat about the WiFi that you can get
Speaker 1: on some planes. Now, okay, I have an older piece
Speaker 1: of tech too, So do you want to do that ahead? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: it's okay. If we're going chronologically, then I should skip
Speaker 1: back real quick. Shoot for it. One, two, three, shoot
Speaker 1: all right, all right, Chris, one, go ahead, Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I l S. Oh all right. Um. The I l
Speaker 1: S system is basically tells a pilot where he or
Speaker 1: she is with regard to a runway. Um. It actually
Speaker 1: uses combination of radio signals based around, um, the runway
Speaker 1: itself and uh so maybe the runway is obscured by clouds.
Speaker 1: Um it will you know use sort of. It uses
Speaker 1: a combination of altitude, well, the glide path and then
Speaker 1: also the uh you know, it's the excuse me, Instrument
Speaker 1: Landing system is what I l S is short for.
Speaker 1: So it basically is giving them a combination of while
Speaker 1: you are right here with regard to the runway. Uh,
Speaker 1: you should you know, turn this way a little bit
Speaker 1: and you'll be lined up with the runway. So even
Speaker 1: if he or she can't see it, um, they know
Speaker 1: exactly where it is based on the signals generated from
Speaker 1: the ground, and you know, they coordinate that with where
Speaker 1: the plane is. So that's a very useful piece of
Speaker 1: definitely technology because if you've ever wondered when you're coming
Speaker 1: into an airport and it's cloudy out and they make
Speaker 1: a perfect landing, that's how they're doing it. They're relying
Speaker 1: on that instrumentation to help them help them find where
Speaker 1: they are. Also, the orientation really important. Whenever Johnny unplugs
Speaker 1: the lights on the runway, that happens in so few
Speaker 1: circumstances that that's problem. Surely you can't be serious, um,
Speaker 1: all right, so now we'll go on to the WiFi. Alright,
Speaker 1: the WiFi, No Johnny's on the ground. So yeah, WiFi
Speaker 1: on planes is fairly recent. Um. It's something that had
Speaker 1: been discussed, uh well for a few years now, and
Speaker 1: a couple of companies have been doing it for since
Speaker 1: about I guess around two thousand and six, but in
Speaker 1: the United States it's a little more recent than that.
Speaker 1: And um, it's a it's a pretty simple system. They
Speaker 1: there's some technology, there's equipment that's put aboard the plane
Speaker 1: that turns it turns it into a hot spot essentially,
Speaker 1: and your laptop or other device can connect wirelessly to
Speaker 1: this using typical WiFi technology, and then the hardware on
Speaker 1: the plane actually sends that signal down to the ground
Speaker 1: to towers on the ground and communicates that way. And
Speaker 1: that's how you are getting acces us too, uh, the Internet.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, you know, you're you're not tapping
Speaker 1: into this magical Internet that's all around you in the air. Um. Really,
Speaker 1: the reason why you're able to do it is because
Speaker 1: the plane has a very specific kind of transceiver. Really,
Speaker 1: it's a very very long Ethernet cable. Yes, right, there's
Speaker 1: there's some poor schlubs job to just keep unwinding that
Speaker 1: cord and then another poor poor person's job to wind
Speaker 1: it all. No, it's not wired. Man, Talk about the
Speaker 1: letters we would get from that one? Yeah? Um, was
Speaker 1: that all with WiFi? Yeah? That was all I had
Speaker 1: for a WiFi. It was just really it's just interesting
Speaker 1: to me that it's you know, again, you're turning the
Speaker 1: plane itself into a hot spot, and depending on what
Speaker 1: airline you're on, you'll see that they have different um uh,
Speaker 1: different pricing plans for it. Um. Some some people found difficulty, um. People,
Speaker 1: some companies found difficulty implementing this and making it uh profitable. UM.
Speaker 1: I think Boeing did it briefly and then jumped out
Speaker 1: of it in the connection. Yeah yeah, I think. Weren't
Speaker 1: they charging like thirty bucks a flight or something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the price point, but I do
Speaker 1: know that they've done They've washed their hands and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened was, as I recall, the way it worked
Speaker 1: was they were charging thirty bucks for per flight. No.
Speaker 1: I don't know that necessarily um scale depending on the
Speaker 1: length of the flight. But because most people weren't willing
Speaker 1: to pay about as much as it costs to have
Speaker 1: WiFi for a month at your house for a single flight, um,
Speaker 1: it ended up not making Bowing very much money and
Speaker 1: they abandoned the project. But other you know, like actual
Speaker 1: airlines have have implemented this on their own and um,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of companies that partner with to
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah. Um, and they give you broadband speeds
Speaker 1: of slowish DSL, So I mean it's it's fast, but
Speaker 1: not really really fast. Yeah. Yeah, most people I think
Speaker 1: will be using it to do things like checking l
Speaker 1: I mean you might have a few folks who are
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to use it to to use Hulu
Speaker 1: so they can avoid having to watch whatever the movie
Speaker 1: is on board the plane. Yeah, there's only so many
Speaker 1: times you can watch Uncle Buck, by the way, is
Speaker 1: the number of times that would be a good segue
Speaker 1: into a satellite TV though? Um? Now, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of era carriers now offer satellite radio and satellite TV.
Speaker 1: Um and um, they're the signals are a little bit different.
Speaker 1: Satellite radio is not nearly as directional. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: really it doesn't matter. The antenna position doesn't matter nearly
Speaker 1: as much as it does for a satellite TV. If
Speaker 1: you're a person that owns a satellite dish, uh, and
Speaker 1: it's in your yard and you know, the neighbor's kid
Speaker 1: kicked a soccer ball into it, and it looks like
Speaker 1: it's position right, but it through your TV signal off.
Speaker 1: You know that satellite TV signals are a bit more directional. Well,
Speaker 1: you say, is there a little you know? Uh? William
Speaker 1: Shatner type guy out on the wing repositioning that side
Speaker 1: light dish. William Shatner was inside the plane. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: not sorry, shall I shall I restate there's not a
Speaker 1: little uh, you know, gremlin like William Shatner saw through
Speaker 1: the window of the plane. UM out there repositioning the
Speaker 1: satellite dish and actually uses for satellite TV on a plane.
Speaker 1: You actually have a specialized antenna that tracks the position
Speaker 1: of the satellite and automatically corrects itself so that it
Speaker 1: can maintain its line of sight to the satellite UM
Speaker 1: and continue to receive satellite TV signals. That's pretty it's
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, considering the cost of a
Speaker 1: regular dish they would put it on the side of
Speaker 1: your house. It's considerably more expensive than that. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much they are now. They used to
Speaker 1: range in thousands of dollars, of course, you know, compared
Speaker 1: to the cost of an entire plane. That's nothing, um,
Speaker 1: not literally peanuts. Those are actually cheaper well you know,
Speaker 1: and may cause allergies, um, making tain nuts right, UM.
Speaker 1: But you know that's kind of an interesting technology too,
Speaker 1: because it has to it can't just it's not like
Speaker 1: a you know, a terrestrial antenna where just you know,
Speaker 1: stick a thing on top of the car and it goes.
Speaker 1: You actually have to pay attention to where the satellite is. Um,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a neat little gimmick. Cool, Well, do
Speaker 1: you have anything else anymore airplane tech you want to
Speaker 1: talk about? You know? Not? Really? All right? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm actually I'm all tapped out. So, like we said,
Speaker 1: this is just another kind of overview because there's plenty
Speaker 1: more that we could talk about, but not not more
Speaker 1: that we're prepared to talk about. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: high level maybe thirty five thousand feet, Yeah, it's right
Speaker 1: around there. Turbulence. We'll we'll, we'll descend to maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: eight thousand if that happens. This has been a turbulent podcast.
Speaker 1: So with that, let's let's just go ahead and move
Speaker 1: on to a listener mail. And this listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Matt and Uh. I cut out a lot of
Speaker 1: Matt's email, but I've got the crux of it here,
Speaker 1: and Matt says, Hey, Chris and Jonathan, I was wondering
Speaker 1: what the differences between virus protection and internet security. Do
Speaker 1: I need internet security or just anti virus what makes
Speaker 1: internet security costs so much more. Some people also say
Speaker 1: that I should have a program specifically for spyware removal
Speaker 1: along with my virus protection or whatever. Is this true, sincerely, Matt. Now,
Speaker 1: what Matt was referring to were some specific products that
Speaker 1: are on the market for anti virus and internet security.
Speaker 1: Um So, Matt, here's kind of what all that means. Now.
Speaker 1: An anti virus program in general, specifically is designed to
Speaker 1: search out any signs of viruses on your computer and
Speaker 1: often other kinds of malware to trojan's that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, a malware detection program is what that is.
Speaker 1: And most anti virus, if it's if it just says
Speaker 1: anti virus, that's really what it does. It goes after malware, uh,
Speaker 1: anti spyware that's looking specifically for any sort of tracking
Speaker 1: software that's being put on your computer. Basically anything that's
Speaker 1: gonna phone home with information about you anywhere from your
Speaker 1: passwords and uh, you know, personal information like that, to
Speaker 1: you know, marketing type spyware where it's just saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's visiting two and three websites and these
Speaker 1: are what they are, right, he's really interested in shoes,
Speaker 1: so you should send him targeted marketing. Yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, that's not nearly as annoying as
Speaker 1: uh some of the other stuff, but it is annoying, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty irritating. And so again, if it just
Speaker 1: says anti spyware, that's pretty much all it's looking for. UH.
Speaker 1: Internet security packages tend to have all of that wrapped
Speaker 1: up into one UM product and often have a firewall
Speaker 1: and in their firewall as well, so you'll have a
Speaker 1: firewall which can protect against intrusions from from outside your
Speaker 1: your network. You'll have the antivirus who have the anti spyware.
Speaker 1: So that's why it's more expensive. It's because it's actually
Speaker 1: packaging together lots of stuff. Now, there are lots of
Speaker 1: UM lots of UH products on the market, some of
Speaker 1: them are actually free. So really what I suggest is
Speaker 1: research these different products, find the one that's right for you.
Speaker 1: We don't really review products, and uh we don't really
Speaker 1: feel feel comfortable making a recommendation UM, especially since we
Speaker 1: don't necessarily know what kind of machine you're running. UH.
Speaker 1: Some of the you've got to also keep in mind
Speaker 1: the anti spyware and anti virus technology while it is scanning.
Speaker 1: They tend to be really um well because they're tracking
Speaker 1: everything that's going on in an attempt to protect you,
Speaker 1: and that can slow your computer down. Yes, exactly. Their
Speaker 1: resource hogs is what they really are. UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're very important to have, but they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: slow your computer down while they're running. UM Now, they'll
Speaker 1: just run in order to scan, and once they've scanned,
Speaker 1: you should be all right. Now. A lot of them
Speaker 1: have kind of ongoing software that will continue to monitor
Speaker 1: traffic as you are using your computer. UM, Like it
Speaker 1: might check your email attachments as they're downloaded to your
Speaker 1: computer and going, hey, this one's not good, right, don't
Speaker 1: open that um So, but yeah, just keep in mind it. Well,
Speaker 1: these are very resource heavy. It's not something you don't
Speaker 1: want to constantly be scanning your computer. It's just gonna
Speaker 1: make take forever to do anything else. And uh also
Speaker 1: remember to keep it up to date. No matter what
Speaker 1: software you choose, UM make sure that you are. If
Speaker 1: it has an option to update automatically, I strongly suggest
Speaker 1: you activate it. Yeah, there's a new trend to um
Speaker 1: cloud security where basically the software is there's like a
Speaker 1: little client in your computer, and it's basically constantly updating
Speaker 1: with virus definitions from the cloud. The bulk of the
Speaker 1: software is actually in UM on a computer somewhere else
Speaker 1: on the Internet, which is kind of cool. UM, But
Speaker 1: you know, it's still very new, so I haven't heard
Speaker 1: a whole lot about how they're doing right now. Obviously
Speaker 1: that the reason why updating, of course is so important
Speaker 1: is that people hackers are always working on new kind
Speaker 1: of viruses and malware. Yeah, they take old viruses and
Speaker 1: add a twist to them so that the old virus
Speaker 1: protection software can't recognize them any right, So that's why
Speaker 1: you want to make sure you keep it up to date,
Speaker 1: because as the security firms find out about them, that
Speaker 1: they add definitions to their software so that it can
Speaker 1: be detected and prevented. So hopefully that answers your question.
Speaker 1: Matt Um, Thank you very much for writing in. I
Speaker 1: thought i'd tell our listeners there's an interesting new way
Speaker 1: you can you can catch our podcast now. Actually catch
Speaker 1: it from the house stuff works dot com website. So
Speaker 1: if you go to house stuff works dot com, you
Speaker 1: go to the little search baring type and tech stuff.
Speaker 1: It'll take you to the tech stuff podcast page, and
Speaker 1: we have a little player and individual player that you
Speaker 1: can listen to episodes right there if you want to.
Speaker 1: It also has nice options for sharing it via email
Speaker 1: or Twitter, Facebook. Um, it's got a little option where
Speaker 1: you can pop the player out of the web page
Speaker 1: and have it being a little independent player on on
Speaker 1: the side. A lot of neat features and uh so,
Speaker 1: I just want to let you guys be a you know,
Speaker 1: make you guys aware of that. In case you're ever
Speaker 1: on a different computer and you don't have your iTunes
Speaker 1: accounts set up or something like that. Um, you can
Speaker 1: still listen to us. Please please listen to us. We're lonely,
Speaker 1: and if you have anything you want to say to us,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email or addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. And you can learn
Speaker 1: all about airplanes and technology and computer viruses and security
Speaker 1: all at how stuff works dot com. Crispy and I
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