Sunday, February 09, 2003

Fixing Airspace. I went running this morning and put on my problem-solving hat... I guess the idea behind the 6am monday morning transponder codes is that somehow the controllers will be able to sort through them all and determine if the aircraft with the code is actually doing what it said it would do. I don't think they will be able to do this; it's going to be too hard. Wouldn't it make more sense to set aside a series of transponder codes and have VFR pilots use them? Assign each airport a code -- 125x - HEF 126x - JYO 127x - VKX 131x - FDK Then use the following, x = 0 - outbound to north 1 - inbound from noth 2 - outbound to east 3 - inbound from east 4 - outbound to south 5 - inbound from south 6 - outbound to west 7 - inbound from west 8 - pattern work (stay at airport) etc...evens are outbounds and odds are inbounds. For example: 1254 - outbound from HEF to the south 1255 - inbound to HEF from the south 1266 - outbound from JYO to the west 1267 - inbound to JYO from the west 1261 - inbound to JYO from the north 1311 - inbound to FDK from the north 1318 - pattern work at FDK The controller can tell at a glance what the aircraft's intentions are, and software can easily be written that can track it and note deviations. Airport to airport conveyance (dc3) would still require flight plan, I guess. Note that the existing TFR needs to be retained under this scheme, although entry and exit is much easier. You still "need" that buffer zone. The advantage of this scheme is that by simply setting a transponder code the VFR pilot communicates his/her intentions to ATC, and ATC has a _vastly_ simpler job of tracking it all. They can do a FAR more accurate job as well, because they'll know exactly what to look for! Note that a VFR pilot must still _monitor_ an appropriate ATC frequency, in case controllers want to talk. 12:00:56 PM

Huh? The movie "The Recruit" is awesome. [graham glass: what's next?] Dear Graham.  You are a badass coder but a highly questionable movie reviewer.  Awesome?  Did we see the same movie?  Maybe I just don't like Colin Farrell all that much.  I liked even the cheesy Spy Game considerably more.  I fell asleep during Solaris.  Of course I was pretty tired.  I can't believe I liked How to lose a guy in 10 days.  It's exactly the kind of movie that I don't like (I like "serious" films).  But I couldn't stop laughing.  Plus I had the secondary screen of my friend Christina's face, watching her laugh her ass off!  I did see a few guilty looks on the faces of women in the theater...hah! 9:32:28 AM

Power. PermissionGrabber. Yesterday I vowed to turn on SecurityManager all the time, and figure out the necessary policy files for Java applications that I use. Ross mused that it would be cool if the Java runtime provided a flag to generate this information automatically. What a great idea! And, who needs help from the runtime? PermissionGrabber is a simple Java app that will execute some other Java app, figure out what permissions it needs to run, and generate an appropriate policy file. All you have to do is java PermissionGrabber SomeApp I just threw this together and can think of a few dozen little enhancements already. Let me know if this is cool and what you would like to see added. [Ockham's Flashlight] My power is growing exponentially.  Muahaha.  Cool trick!  And a major step in the right direction for permission policy files! 2:05:55 AM