SERVICES: Who’s coming to rescue you?

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/American-crew-members-tell-the-story-of-their-rescue-off-West-Cork-coast-127930473.html

American crew members tell the story of their rescue off West Cork coast
U.S. owned Rambler 100 yacht is towed ashore after Fastnet Race horror
By CATHAL DERVAN, IrishCentral.com Staff Writer
Published Wednesday, August 17, 2011, 8:52 AM
Updated Wednesday, August 17, 2011, 8:52 AM

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“I was awoken by a loud bang,” said Hislop. “I could feel the boat tipping over. I just went into survival mode; I was the last out of the boat. There were four of us sleeping below deck with minimal protective clothing.“The hull fell fast. There was no chance of even cutting the life rafts free.

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Lot of lessons in this story:

(1) What will you have on you when you’re tossed into a survival situation?

(2) Experienced sailors caught short. Preparedness mindset? Could be fatal.

(3) In a group willing to help, but can’t be seen. Flare pens in an always worn suvival vest.

(4) Rescued by Gooferment forces standing by. Who pays for that, and all the other, rescues?

(5) What happens when those forces are not standing around waiting?

(6) What happens when you are where those forces are?

(7) I don’t boat, but this convinces me to get one of those seat belt cutting window smashing tool for each of my cars. Maybe I’ll give them as Christmas gifts.

miss any lessons?

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HARDWARE: Cars become hotspots

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

http://www.wservernews.com/

Vol. 16, #33 – August 22, 2011 – Issue #842
Tech Support For My Car?

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T-Mobile provides the connectivity, and we tried to hack into the system just for fun. The mobile hotspot is protected with WEP, WPA, and WPA2 with the last being the default. But the hotspot reached about 40 feet around the car, and when we looked at the logs, we could see the IP address that we tracked down to a fleet management company. Hm.

But you can see where this goes, right? Cars are loaded with high-tech features and consumers are going to need tech support for all this, and of course all this stuff can be hacked into. Think for a moment about all the code that this requires, and the industry standard of one bug per 1000 lines of code. I can already see it, Patch Tuesday for my car, where they plug in the patch and pray all systems will come back up after the reboot. Hey, it starts! LOL.

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The internet of things is now moving to cars?

In a nation of blinking clocks, one has to question the over computerization of stuff.

Do we know look forward to an ISP bill for each car, each person, each appliance, each … ?

Where does it end?

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HARDWARE: HP betrays its Customer

Friday, August 19, 2011

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/hp-punts-on-webos-discontinues-touchpad-cuts-outlook/55386?tag=nl.e019

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HP’s move to shed the PC business as well as discontinue the TouchPad has its risks. For starters, HP will take a reputation hit for launching a TouchPad and then killing it.

*** end quote ***

Trust your hardware vendor to “vote you off the island”.

Argh!

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SOFTWARE: My first FORTRAN primer was his

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/some-thoughts-on-the-passing-o.php

Some Thoughts on the Passing of Dan McCracken (1930 – 2011)
By Scott M. Fulton, III / August 15, 2011 2:03 PM / 0 Comments

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What Daniel D. McCracken managed to accomplish as early as 1957 was to give a knowledgeable layperson a strong, sensible foundation for understanding the terribly foreign concept of describing business processes with procedural mathematics. As a young author decades ago, I studied McCracken’s methods and I attempted to take his lessons to heart. In some of my first books on Visual Basic, I was inspired by McCracken to demonstrate a relatively simple concept using a substantively more complex tool: I demonstrated program control using sort algorithms.

*** end quote ***

Sadly, I never knew the fellow, but he’s responsible for me knowing anything about FORTRAN.

As the typical fat old white guy injineer nerd I could make that language sing. All do to him.

For better or worse.

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TECHNOLOGY: Toy Truck; not so toy

Friday, August 12, 2011

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/remote-controlled-truck-soldier-afghanistan-saves-soldiers-lives/story?id=14225434

Afghanistan War: Hobbyists’ Toy Truck Saves 6 Soldiers’ Lives
By NED POTTER (@NedPotterABC)
Aug. 4, 2011

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Staff Sgt. Christopher Fessenden is on duty in Afghanistan now after tours with the Army in Iraq. He has traveled with standard-issue equipment — weapons, helmet, uniform, boots and so forth — plus a radio-controlled model truck his brother Ernie sent.

*** end quote ***

Like the body armor!

(When a young man I know went to the sandbox, I volunteered to buy him a dragon. The Army was woefully unprepared; I wasn’t. I studied ballistic armor. Six months later, towns were having fund raising to properly equip their children. Argh!)

Like the Civil War, the Generals fought using tactics developed in the English and French wars a century before. With bloody consequences.

We need to be like Switzerland. Defend our borders and MYOB!

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HARDWARE: Human Factors and training have to compensate for hardware failure

Thursday, August 11, 2011

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Final-words-of-Air-France-crash-pilot-I-cant-control-the-plane-127332423.html

Final words of Air France crash pilot ‘I can’t control the plane’
Black box reveals secrets of crash the killed 228 passengers including three Irish doctors
By KATE HICKEY, IrishCentral.com Editor

*** begin quote ***

Posted by colkelley on Aug 10, 2011, 10:08 AM EDT

This is a great example of why you do not want to fly with commercial pilots who do not have military aviation experience. Here we have an entire flight crew that could not recognize that they had stalled the aircraft and just kept cutting power and pulling the nose higher and higher – never realizing that their airspeed indicator was wrong because of icing. When I was a Navy Airborne Electronic Warfare Officer we practiced aircraft emergencies and responses at least once on every flight. In my last three years flying jets in the Navy I had three fires in flight, seven emergency field-arrested (cable) landings, and 13 other declared airborne emergencies – and one of them was EXACTLY the same problem with icing and incorrect airspeed. I survived them all because we PRACTICED emergencies incessantly. Air France has a fatal flaw with both hiring pilots and training them…and 228 people died as a result of their failure.

*** end quote ***

How do we know that hardware has failed?

And, what do we do to recognize it.

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TECHNOLOGY: Outsourcing maybe coming “home”?

Thursday, August 11, 2011

http://www.economist.com/node/21524822

Schumpeter
The trouble with outsourcing
Outsourcing is sometimes more hassle than it is worth
Jul 30th 2011

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Companies are rethinking outsourcing, rather than jettisoning it. They are dumping huge long-term deals in favour of smaller, less rigid ones. The annualised value of “mega-relationships” worth $100m or more a year fell by 62% this year compared with last. Companies are forming relationships with several outsourcers, rather than putting all their eggs in few baskets. They are signing shorter contracts, too. But still, they need to think harder about what is their core business, and what is peripheral. And above all, newspaper editors need to say no to the temptation to outsource business columns to cheaper, hungrier writers.

*** end quote ***

Having seen some of the disasters from bad outsourcing deals, it’s not always a winner for everyone.

Clearly, to be competitive, USA industry and “We, The Sheeple” have to be razor sharp.

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TECHNOLOGY: Lost manual control

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_bfd1cc1c-089b-5682-9465-955bcab1fbea.html

Home / News / Local / Metro
Officials say mummified Jennings woman thought dead for years was receiving benefits
BY MARLON A. WALKER • mwalker@post-dispatch.com > 314-340-8104 | Posted: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 12:07 am |

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JENNINGS • A woman whose mummified remains were found earlier this year in the Jennings home she had shared with her daughter had been receiving Social Security benefits, the agency confirmed Monday.

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Remember when some genius eliminated mailing Social Security checks saving a lot of administrative expense?

Well, here’s the collateral damage.

Making old folks show up at the bank with their check at least ensured that they were alive and hence being properly paid.

It may be a good trade off but there should be a compensating control.

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TECHNOLOGY: Edge Walk

Sunday, August 7, 2011

http://picocool.com/travel/edge-walk–cn-tower-toronto-1

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Edge Walk | Cn Tower Toronto

EdgeWalk at the CN Tower, has become Toronto’s most extreme attraction. Thrill lovers will walk on the edge of one of the world’s tallest buildings, 356m/1168ft (116 storeys) above the ground. Visitors will walk in groups of six, while attached to an overhead safety rail via a trolley and harness system.

*** end quote ***

This is one of those pictures that will make you wonder if they have lost their minds.

It’s one of those that makes me sick!

I’d need more than a safety harness.

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TECHNOLOGY: TED is interesting thinking

Sunday, August 7, 2011

http://blog.ted.com/2011/08/02/ted-books-hit-apples-ibookstore

TED Books hit Apple’s iBookstore

*** begin quote ***

Great news: TED Books are now available on Apple’s iBookstore. It’s an exciting time for publishing, and we’re glad to work with Apple to make TED Books available to as many readers as possible. TED Books, which launched earlier this year, are an imprint of short nonfiction works designed for digital distribution. Shorter than traditional books, TED Books run fewer than 20,000 words each–long enough to explain a powerful idea, but short enough to be read in a single sitting. They are $2.99.

{Extraneous Deleted}

The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being by Nic Marks; Weekday Vegetarian: Finally, a Palatable Solution by Graham Hill with Alex Estes; Media Makeover: Improving the News One Click at a Time by Alisa Miller; Beware Dangerism! Why We Worry About the Wrong Things and What It’s Doing to Our Kids by Gever Tulley; Make Love Not Porn: Technology’s Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior by Cindy Gallop; Homo Evolutis: Please Meet the Next Human Species by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans; and Aftercrimes, Geoslavery, and Thermogeddon: Thought-Provoking Words from a Lexicographer’s Notebook by Erin McKean.

*** end quote ***

TED is interesting thinking about technology.

Three bucks is cheap!

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