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From the August 2001 issue of MSDN Magazine
MSDN Magazine
Surfing in the Sky

It's currently the middle of June

here at One MSDN Towers. Even though it's technically still spring, the midsummer torpor has already set in. We're packing to go to Tech•Ed this week, so you know what that means. It's time for our annual "airplane complaint" column!
      Boeing will be working with three airlines—Delta, United, and American—to provide fast, satellite-based Internet access on their planes for a fee of about $20 per hour. This is a great idea, and long overdue. Imagine this. Even though your flight has an extra 90 minutes built into the schedule, you're still running two hours late to the coast. So you pop in your 20 Sacajaweas—you're trying to download a copy of the big presentation you're going to give when you get to L.A.—and suddenly the thing slows down to the speed you get with that 4800 baud modem you grabbed from the trash at work when they upgraded the testers' machines last month.
      And what's the big delay? Oh, of course. The guy who's sitting next to you—the one who's wearing a jacket and tie so he can look like he's important enough to claim 14 cubic feet of overhead space—is surfing, too! But is he working on his big presentation? No! He's working four different porn sites at once. He's set the download speed to T1. He's watching video feeds for cripessake! You're splitting a single line out, paying 20 bucks, and this�this guy is slowing you down for illicit purposes. And to make things worse, you're in the window seat, so you have to climb over him if you ever want to get to the lavatory.


"Why is he calling me from the plane now"

      So all in all, high-speed Internet access in the skies sounds like a great idea. Maybe this will lead to even more improvements in the travel industry. Maybe if this works out, they can actually not make us sit on the runway at LaGuardia for two hours at 7:00 A.M. because of congestion. Maybe they can use the Internet access to research how much leg room the average traveler needs to avoid getting deep-vein thrombosis on a six hour flight.
      Oh wait! We know! How about just dropping the meals completely? On our last flight, American Airlines decided to serve whip for dessert. That's right, a small tray with whip in it. Half white, half brown whip. In business class, they got chocolate curls atop their whip, so you can see why it's worth the extra $6000.
      Of course, there's a major advantage to this announced Internet service that will make it really worthwhile. Suppose you have Windows XP Professional installed on your laptop. You can just fire up Windows Messenger and call anyone on your contact list. You get clear, real-time audio using only your computer's microphone and speakers. You can even set up a video conference if you have one of those annoying little Webcams on your machine. Windows XP will actually pay for itself faster than any other program in the history of computing. (Maybe.) And the best part is, you'll be the one using the plane's bandwidth now.
      And speaking of Windows XP, did you know that Windows XP will feature several enhancements to COM+? We happen to know this because we took the liberty of reading this month's issue. We know that excitement over Windows XP is starting to build. The release date has been announced for November. There's lots of new stuff in the new operating system, and we'll be covering it in the months to come.
      We're also keeping up our leading coverage of the .NET Framework; this month we explain how you can make asynchronous calls with .NET, as well as how to build upon your existing COM-based components. .NET Interop will be soon be a hot topic, so you might as well find out how to do it now!
      If you're looking for real-world projects, we have that, too. We'll show you how to use XML to work with SQL Server stored procedures in an n-tier business app. Alas, we have no new columns this month (and we're waiting for name suggestions for the ASP Column!), but there's enough other stuff to keep you busy on the plane ride. At least until they get those broadband jacks installed.

© 2008 Microsoft Corporation and CMP Media, LLC. All rights reserved; reproduction in part or in whole without permission is prohibited.
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