Cop Car's Beat

Syme

As most of my blog friends know, 1) I no longer belong to Facebook because I became concerned about their privacy policies a couple of years ago, and 2) I'm not in the business of promoting goods and services. That said, I was led by Slashdot.org to do a little (and I do mean little) checking on a service that is similar to Facebook. The service, out of Canada, is Syme.

Here is a link to, followed by excerpt from, one of the articles that I found on Syme - from PC World's website:

Encrypted social network vies for disgruntled WhatsApp, Facebook users

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

Nov 28, 2013 9:49 PM

................

It may be the just the right time for Syme, which is now open to all after an invite-only beta trial. The technology industry, shaken by former NSA contractor Edward J. Snowden’s revelations of large-scale surveillance efforts by the U.S. and U.K., is looking for better ways to shield user data from prying eyes.

Law enforcement agencies around the world are also increasingly filing requests for data to companies such as Facebook and Twitter, who are compelled by law to turn over data, sometimes without informing users.

Appropriate for a privacy-centered service, “Syme” is named after a character in 1984, George Orwell’s chilling novel describing total state control. In the book, Syme was “vaporized” for being a free-thinking individual.

Syme’s user interface is refreshingly free of clutter. A bell icon, which shows the number of unread notifications, and a cog icon, to adjust settings, are both very similar to Google Plus. It has a “Like” button, just like Facebook

................

People register Syme accounts using an email address, and Syme can see which users have communicated with each other. It also knows when posts were written, when someone connected to Syme and the size of transferred files or photos. Hershon cautions that Syme is undergoing peer review and should not relied on for the transmission of super-sensitive messages

Before I got too excited, I found that, "So far, Syme has built an extension for Google Chrome with ones for the Firefox and Safari browsers in the works, as well as mobile applications for iOS and Android...." Note that it does not now support IE8, which is what I use.

Syme's website is here.

Another Chuck Lorre Vanity Card

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #431

I'm concerned that the infrared beam which triggers public toilets to flush might cause cancer.

I'm considering getting a Twitter account so I can have a way to express my innermost thoughts to strangers.

I'm confused as to why a poorly designed web site means affordable health care is a bad idea.

I'm thinking of writing a children's story about a leaf on a tree who arrogantly insists he's a self-made, independent leaf. Then one day a fierce wind blows him off his branch and to the ground below. As his life slowly ebbs away, he looks up at the magnificent old tree that had been his home and realizes that he had never been on his own. His entire life he had been part of something bigger and more beautiful than anything he could have imagined. In a blinding flash, he awakens from the delusion of self. Then an arrogant, self-centered kid rakes him up and bags him.

I'm wondering if maybe I should stop writing these freakin' vanity cards.

<<

1st Aired: 21 Nov 2013

My hero

It seems that "hero" is applied to far too many people thses days.* However, this guy gets my vote as an authentic hero. From Slashdot.org:

Why Scott Adams Wished Death On His Dad729

Posted by timothyon Tuesday November 26, 2013 @10:50AM from the righteous-anger dept.

theodp writes " I hope my father dies soon," Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote Saturday in a frustrated, angry, and poignant blog post. 'My father, age 86, is on the final approach to the long dirt nap (to use his own phrase). His mind is 98% gone, and all he has left is hours or possibly months of hideous unpleasantness in a hospital bed. I'll spare you the details, but it's as close to a living Hell as you can get. If my dad were a cat, we would have put him to sleep long ago. And not once would we have looked back and thought too soon. Because it's not too soon. It's far too late. His smallish estate pays about $8,000 per month to keep him in this state of perpetual suffering. Rarely has money been so poorly spent. I'd like to proactively end his suffering and let him go out with some dignity. But my government says I can't make that decision. Neither can his doctors. So, for all practical purposes, the government is torturing my father until he dies.' Adams also had harsh words for those who would oppose assisted suicide, 'I don't want anyone to misconstrue this post as satire or exaggeration. So I'll reiterate. If you have acted, or plan to act, in a way that keeps doctor-assisted suicide illegal, I see you as an accomplice in torturing my father, and perhaps me as well someday. I want you to die a painful death, and soon. And I'd be happy to tell you the same thing to your face.'  His  father passed a few hours after Adams wrote his screed. Challenged later by the SF Chronicle's Debra J. Saunders, an opponent of assisted suicide, Adams stood firm on his earlier words. So, can Adams succeed in convincing the U.S. where Dr. Jack failed?"

________________

*  If you don't believe me, just Google "hero" and include my real first & last names.

Follow-up on the follow-up - for grins

In the comments section of this morning's The Wichita Eagle appear a few nuggets concerning the errant landing of the Dreamlifter, Thursday.

In their Excerpts from our Blog column, a couple of Tweets from Thursday's "Jabara Dreamlifter" Twitter account:

"Help, I've landed and I can't take off!"

"If this isn't an air force base, then why is it named after a colonel?"

Anonymous entries in the Opinion Line column:

A huge cargo plane landed at the wrong airport in Wichita. Was their Garmin broke [sic]? As much as mine chews my tail for a wrong turn, I can't even imagine what theirs had to say. Maybe "Recalculating, you're getting a new job."

I would like to thank the wayward pilots for landing at our little airport safely. They did not end up on [highway] K-96 [at the departure end of the runway]. From now on, Jabara will be known as the "little airport that could" -- handle a 747. Great job, guys. Visit again soon.

As to the naming of the Colonel James Jabara Airport:

Colonel James Jabara Airport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Colonel James Jabara Airport (ICAO: KAAO, FAA LID: AAO) is a public airport located nine miles (14 km) northeast of the central business district of Wichita, a city in Sedgwick County, Kansas, United States.^[1] It is named in honor of World War II and Korean War flying ace James Jabara, an American of Lebanese descent who has the distinction of being the first American jet ace.

Although most U.S. airports use the same three-letter location identifier for the FAA and IATA, Colonel James Jabara Airport is assigned AAO by the FAA but has no designation from the IATA (which assigned AAO to Anaco, Venezuela). The airport's ICAO identifier is KAAO. ^{[2] [3]}

What I had meant to post

The Dreamlifter incident intruded, so I did not get these photos of a deer in our back yard posted. Unusually, the deer appeared as I was eating lunch. They, of course, usually come at dusk or dawn. The deer was alone; but, as I noted no antlers, I assumed it to be female.  Imagine my surprise when I downloaded and enlarged the photos to find small antlers. (I wasn't looking for them but saw no genitalia.) Unfortunately, the photos in other "poses" were blurred.

Follow-up on "These things happen"

I love the headline of the article in this morning's local newspaper:

Wayward Dreamlifter captivates the Air Capital

• By Rick Plumlee and Molly McMillin
• The Wichita Eagle

Please follow the link to read the (to me) interesting, well-written article and see some videos, one of which is the above-embedded video that includes the audio of the exchange between McConnell tower and the Dreamlifter pilot. (Let me know if you have troubles with the link. As a subscriber to the paper, I may have access that you do not.) For anyone who is puzzled: Wichita is the Air Capital of the world - or - used to be when all of our aircraft plants were in full production!

An aside: I spent yesterday afternoon at the Sedgwick County Emergency Operations Center (SC EOC) for a meeting of the Local Emergency Planning Committee (which I usually attend six times/year). When I arrived, I logged into the online log (notification to all that I was in the SC EOC). I noted that the previous entry was official notification that the Dreamliner had safely left Jabara and that SC EOC was standing down from partial activation.

This is the "public" log entry from SC Emergency Management:

11-21-2013 13:17:31

EOC

SCEM 303

The jet has lifted without incident.  All roadways have been re-opened.  The EOC is standing down.

Addition of four hours later:

Here are a couple of approach plates that may be of interest. The first is the approach that the Dreamliner pilot was supposedly following. I should previously have explained to the bewildered (more bewildered?) that RNAV is "Area Navigation" which, until GPS, relied upon radio receivers that could identify position relative to radio omni-directional beacons. Certain intersections of signals from two radio omni-directional beacons are chosen as points (fixes) in airspace at which a pilot/navigator may identify their positions in talking with the air space controllers. Presumeably, GPS replaces the actual receipt of the radio omni-directional beacons with GPS-determined latitude/longitude values that correspond to the fix(es) of interest. (Feel free to correct me on this. It's been a while since I've used RNAV, and I've never used GPS.)

Here is the analogous approach into Jabara.

These things happen

From Boeing's website: "The Boeing Dreamlifter is a modified 747-400 passenger airplane that can haul more cargo by volume than any airplane in the world. It is the primary means of transporting major assemblies of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from suppliers around the world to the 787 final assembly site in Everett, Wash. This reduces delivery times to as little as one day from as many as 30 days today."

The photo, below, is from Wikipedia.

 

Just before leaving the house this morning to go swim, I checked my email and found one from Stu.

Subject: OOPS!!!

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/21/travel/kansas-cargo-plane-wrong-airport/

Stu

PS You going there to take a photo and blog about it?

How far is it from Derby?

My answer:

Sheesh! The Dreamlifter is supposed to use McConnell AFB’s 12,000-foot runways (also used by Boeing and Spirit which are on the western edge of the AFB). I had noticed, yesterday, that the Dreamlifter wasn’t parked at its usual spot at Boeing – about 300 meters from Oliver Street that I use several times per week (I’ll be going by it in about 15 minutes – to swim); but, that isn’t unusual. Obviously, this landing took place several hours later. (It did not make the 10:00pm, local, news.) Hard to imagine anyone’s mistaking Jabara for McConnell AFB. There are two other airfields between the two (see http://www.airnav.com/airport/KIAB and http://flightaware.com/resources/airport/KAAO/sectional) – a small one just north of the fence from McConnell that Cessna maintains, and a larger one farther north and east that Beechcraft maintains. McConnell’s ramps are surrounded by floodlighting! (Beechcraft has a bit of floodlighting; and I’m not sure of the night lighting that is maintained at Jabara.)

The East entry to McConnell AFB and the only [west - may not be "only"] entry to Jabara are both on Rock Road, (which is 1 mile east of Oliver) which is 1/3 mile west of our house (we use Rock Road to go anywhere!) The distance from where our street intersects with Rock Road to the entry to Jabara Airport is just under 15 miles. 

I used to use Jabara (previously, Comatara, and something else before that) back in my flying days. It has grown since then – but – not enough for a 747! 

Thanks for the tip!

[Cop Car]

P.S. I’ve a full day, today; but, when I get home this afternoon, I’ll see about blogging the event.

I failed to tell Stu that, "No", I had no interest in fighting the crowd that was undoubtedly already there to see the spectacle and take photos.

When I came home for lunch, I found a further reply from Stu. Some of the links that I sent him, and excerpts [with added bracketed clarifications that were not in my email to Stu] from my answer appear, below.

Here is the link to our local newspaper’s article that says they will take off this afternoon after off-loading fuel & stuff:  “The runways at Jabara and McConnell both run north and south. The pilot landed the wayward plane coming in from the north. That’s also the direction the pilot would have taken at McConnell because the winds were from the south.”

A couple of comments from various online postings:

1) “According @LiveATC the DreamLifter was 25mile from field at 9:12pm -- cleared for the ARNAV GPS approach to 19L at IAB”

2) I[t]does look as though the AAO [Jabara] final [approach] is almost directly underneath the IAB [McConnell AFB] final [approach].

At the 09:05 mark on the 0300-0300Z "KICT [Wichita Mid-Continent] Approach (East)" archive, you can hear the flight checking on with approach. They get cleared direct to WITBA [an airspace "fix" used by military - northeast of Wichita], then at around the 12:10 mark they are 25 miles from the airport and cleared for the RNV GPS approach to runway 19L with the restriction to cross WITBA at 4000 feet.

WITBA is directly on the approach course to runway 18 at KAAO around 6.6nm from the threshold. It's interesting to note that the 4000 foot restriction at WITBA puts them well below a standard 3 degree glidepath for runway 19L at KIAB, but would be very close to the correct glidepath to runway 18 at KAAO.

So as they turned final over WITBA at 4000 feet they would have seen a runway directly in front of them with a PAPI showing them very close to a correct vertical profile. Also if WITBA was coded or entered at 4000 in the FMS their vertical deviation indicator on the Primary Flight Display would have shown them on the correct profile at that point.

Once they landed on runway 18 it appears they stayed on the runway and it also looks like one plane landed (Cessna Conquest) and one plane (Beach Baron) took off on the same runway, apparently before they figured out the B747 was even there !? Note the comment to Tower about a light twin aircraft that had just flown over top of us. The airport was then closed shortly after causing a Starcheck flight to divert.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/11/21/3132439/dreamlifter-lands-at-jabara-airport.html##storylink=cpy. 

Here is a link to photos (same newspaper): http://www.kansas.com/2013/11/21/3132737/dreamlifter-lands-at-jabara-airport.html 

I would hate to be that poor pilot. It was a zoo, back in the day, when I routinely flew out of Cessna’s east field, the runway of which is offset only slightly from McConnell’s east runway.

CNN posted a video of the Dreamlifter taking off from Jabara at Cargo jet takes off from Wichita on short runway. I can vouch for its having arrived safely at McConnell. I drove by its normal parking place at Boeing on my way home. There it was, with its tail swung open. The only thing that looked unusual was that the aircraft was parked with its nose to the south. It usually sits with the nose to the west. Ho hum!

The photo, below, is from Wikipedia and shows the Dreamlifter with the tail swung open. (The photo appears to have been taken at Boeing Field in Seattle?)

 

Our back yard, Thursday (11/14/2013)

Yes, I know he is slightly out of focus; but, I barely had time to grab the camera. (BTW: This is an uncropped photo taken at extreme magnification with 30-110 lens.)

Graceful failure modes

I infer that Xtreme English  is bored with the banter on mathematics and I take the cue to move foreward. Thanks, XE, for saving us from ourselves!

In my professional years, no matter the system under discussion or development, one of our large concerns was to design in "graceful" failure modes. In some military systems, this meant designing such that loss of automated capabilities left feasible, manual work-arounds in place. In aircraft structures, it meant assuring that failures (tiny cracks) in critical structure could/should be detected before the failure became unstable and grew to catastrophic proportions. Thus, I was pleased to see the following item posted by Slashdot.org.

Man In Tesla Model S Fire Explains What Happened278

Posted by samzenpuson Sunday November 10, 2013 @10:58PM
from the burn-it-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The three recent Tesla fires have raised concerns with a lot of people. One person who isn't concertinaed however is, Juris Shibayama, the man whose model S burned in Tennessee. He says: 'I would buy another one in a heartbeat.' From the article: 'Shibayama said that he struck a three-pronged trailer hitch in the middle lane of the interstate. He continued: "About 30-45 seconds later, there was a warning on the dashboard display saying, 'Car needs service. Car may not restart.' I continued to drive, hoping to get home. About one minute later, the message on the dashboard display read, 'Please pull over safely. Car is shutting down.'" He said he had time to remove his possessions, even though, he said: "About 5-10 seconds after getting out of the car, smoke started to come from the front underbody of the car."'"

Arthur Benjamin: The magic of Fibonacci numbers

Just for semi-mathematical people (that rules out Stu; ) comes this bit of fun with mathematics. The video is a bit under six minutes.

Courtesy of TED Talks