Posts from — January 2009

There are reports that the Canadian Forces are developing a new replacement for their aging fleet of CU-161 Sparrowhawk UAVs.

The design specifications call for a totally autonomous flight system, automated production, the ability to use environmentally friendly propulsion and fuel, and multiple vehicle coordinated flights.

While insiders report that many problems have been resolved, the autonomous flight system seems to be a bit too autonomous [they go where they want], and there are problems with reporting system [all they do is honk].

Work on the CU-163, Goose, continues.

The BBC reports:

Dramatist and author Sir John Mortimer, who created enduring character Rumpole of the Bailey, has died aged 85 after a long illness.

If you have not read the Rumpole books, or seen the series, you have cheated yourself of a lot of joy, and a pretty good education in the British criminal justice system. Mortimer created dozens of characters that became real people if you stayed with the series, and they are a lot of fun. [I can’t hear a politician say “common sense” without thinking of Judge Bullingham]

Fortunately, they are still available, and the series with Leo McKern as Rumpole should be put on your list if want the short course.

Hard Freeze

It is so, comfortable!

[Editor: The Boys are hanging out with Dot in anticipation of tonight’s hard freeze [25°], but Excise has his own way of doing things.

Friday Ark

The IDF has taken a couple of hundred prisoners but discovered that only 15% of their captives have any association with Hamas. The prisoners are men, so that percentage probably holds for the Gaza population. A thousand Gazan have been killed, including 300 children and a hundred women, so you have 600 men, of whom 90 can be assumed to be associated with Hamas. Over 90% of those killed are “collateral damage”.

On the Israeli side 3 civilians and a member of the military have died as a result of the rocket attacks hitting outside of Gaza, leaving 9 IDF deaths in the assault. Of the 9, 3 to 5 died as a result of “friendly fire” incidents, meaning that Hamas has only inflicted a maximum of 6 deaths during the combat.

Every time the IDF has attacked a UN facility it has claimed it was receiving fire from Hamas fighters at the facility, but UN officials have denied that every time. The IDF has allowed no independent journalists in the area, so there is no way of independently confirming anything.

[Read more →]

CNN reports: Kellogg warns not to eat its peanut butter crackers

The products affected are Austin- and Keebler-branded:

— Toasted peanut butter sandwich crackers.
— Peanut butter and jelly sandwich crackers.
— Cheese and peanut butter sandwich crackers.
— Peanut butter-chocolate sandwich crackers.

The Michigan-based maker of cereals and snacks posted the recommendation in a statement on its Web site.

Peanut butter produced by Peanut Corporation of America, one of several peanut butter suppliers to the company, has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning that has affected at least 434 people in 43 states, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The King Nut peanut butter recall was for institutions, as the products are not sold through retail outlets. The bulk product is, however, sold to manufacturers, such as Kellogg, so it might be a good idea not to eat anything that features peanut butter unless it comes out of a jar at home.

A possible hero, Number Six, 80 and a great villain, Khan Noonien Singh, 88.

The BBC reports on the environmental disasters on Macquarie island.

Apparently ships deposited rabbits on the island, and cats, rats, and mice jumped ship there. The authorities removed the cats as a threat to the sea birds without properly reckoning what would happen if you removed the main predator. The result was entirely predictable to anyone who looks at systems, and not individual components – the rodent population soared and is destroying the island’s vegetation, as well as attacking eggs and young chicks.

So next they are going to work on the rodents.

I view the feral cats that I take care of as replacement for the snakes that were wiped out. Without the snakes the rodent population soared, and the cats keep them under control. I manage the predation of birds by feeding the cats, but they never lose their instinctive anti-rodent behavior. You have to balance the system. You can’t remove the predators without causing the prey population to spike. They needed to deal with predators and prey at the same time. I wonder if they considered chemical birth control instead of poisons. It would be a bit slower, but it would achieve the same result.

It’s another Emily Litella moment for the Count Floyd faction of the media.

As reported by McClatchy: About the risk from those Internet predators: Nevermind

The Internet Safety Technical Task Force examined the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that adults were using these popular Web sites to deceive and prey on children.

But the report cited research calling such fears a “moral panic,” and concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults.

“This shows that social networks are not these horribly bad neighborhoods on the Internet,” said John Cardillo, a member of the task force and chief executive of Sentinel Tech Holding, which maintains a sex offender database. “Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

[Read more →]

The Pensacola News Journal reports Missing pilot captured

An Indiana pilot who faked a distress call and bailed out of a plane over Alabama was found at a Gadsden County campground Tuesday night after slashing his wrist in a suicide attempt.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, was taken to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital by helicopter, the U.S. Marshals Service said.

Law enforcement learned of his location after he sent an e-mail Tuesday to a family friend from a computer at the KOA Campground outside Chattahoochee, according to the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office.

Gadsden deputies and the U.S. Marshals Service North Florida Fugitive Task Force found Schrenker in a pup tent at the campground before 9:30 p.m.

This is about 100 miles East of me. If he wasn’t going to be shipped back to Indiana, he would probably have spent significant time in that area as Chatahoochee is the location of the state’s secure mental health facility [AKA psychiatric prison]. Given the current economic conditions and a suicide attempt, a one-hour hearing on a Baker Act claim followed by immediate commitment would be much preferred by local officials than an extended criminal trial.

Daniel Gross wrote a “Newsweek Web Exclusive” titled, What’s the Best Fix?. He spends two web pages not giving you a clue.

The entire article is made up of people complaining about the various options without identifying anything as being a solution, only listing the opinions of people as to why each option will fail. Frankly there isn’t any clear explanation of what the problem is.

One of the more annoying things is that in the entire article only one person, Greg Mankiw, is even presented with any credentials. Reading it you would think that the opinion of Amity Shlaes has the weight of Paul Krugman.

It turns our that Timothy Geithner, the man chosen to be the new Secretary of the Treasury, has had tax problems.

We are supposed to ignore this because it was “an honest mistake”, not paying his unemployment taxes for three years while he worked for the International Monetary Fund. How was anyone to know that they had to pay their self-employment taxes after being told repeatedly by the IMF that they were responsible for them?

What the hell, just because he will be over the Internal Revenue Service, and can’t file an accurate 1040, Obama wants him to lead the recovery. I guess the fact that he makes “honest mistakes” on his tax returns is what endears him to Wall Street, and we all know how important it is to cater to Wall Street after all it has done for the nation.

The immigration status of his housekeeper is really a minor issue. She was legal when hired, and her re-certification was delayed.

This is the 40^th anniversary of the death of an aircraft, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S.

For a more complete version than I usually post on this day I have a separate page on flying off a “rock”.

The BBC has a report on the Dangerous coding errors revealed. This is a list of the top mistakes made in creating programs that result in their being hacked.

The top two on the list just are just mind blowing for a relic like me:

CWE-20: Improper Input Validation
CWE-116: Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output

“Garbage In – Garbage Out” is a mantra that was once drilled into people at school. Input validation and output verification were a constant drum beat.

Maybe the rapid expansion of memory resources has caused the downfall of these standards, but people don’t realize that the Y2K problem was a reflection of the need to save the space that would be taken up by a 4 digit versus a 2 digit year. In the old days 2 bytes per record was a big deal.

Maybe the fact that the financial and business sector no longer have the overwhelming control of computing resources as they have become more general, has led to the lack of concern.

Whatever the cause, the fact that people design systems that don’t limit input and validate output, is stunning.