Wasn't Me!

The latest from DoT head is that it wasn't him, it was Congress last night, today it was a contractor, some poor schlub screwed up a router.

Also, just to be clear, TDM, time division multiplexing, is digital not analog, and it is over copper, usually through a Class 5 switch. So to correct DoT, it was not an analog issue it was an old digital system and over copper. Copper does not really degrade.  

One should not pretend to be smart, especially if one isn't. 

The problem is a lot deeper than this. I wonder how deep? 

Just an historical note. In the late 1990s I founded and ran an international IP based company with locations in about 20 countries. We had a Nortel Class 5 TDM switch which we interface with Motorola IP converters, then through hundreds of Cisco routers and connected in Central and Eastern Europe with fiber often run along Gasprom lines. So I am personally familiar with these networks. I have seen issues interfacing between the US, Poland, Russia, Czech Republic, Korea etc. Thus I have a basis to question many of the statements. 

Plan B

 In all the business I have had I always worried about a good Plan B. Namely what could go wrong and how would I deal with it. For example in one company we had a hub in New Jersey. I had battery back up but one nigh JCP&L, as it would do ever so more frequently, went down. For hours. I scrambled for a motor generator and just in time got it to work. Next day we got a complete back up system and then I moved it to Prague since the US grid was unreliable. 

Another case was a system where the connectors installed were slightly miss-matched.  It took a few weeks of just tweaking to see the problem and then fixed in a day.

One must always consider the catastrophic failure and plan for restoral. When using a vendor, check them out in detail.  It seems clear that the current DoT and FAA mess was one of no Plan B. No understanding of failure mode. I did some work in the nuclear weapons space, and we had to provide a full fault tree analysis. Then it was Red Teamed to see what we missed. I would love to see how the current mess up at the FAA was handled. Top management must have the competence and experience to oversee and insure success. Pure politicians are useless.

The FAA and the Clown Cars

 In the early 70s when at MIT I spent three years working a bit on the upgrade to the Air Traffic Control System. The FAA was a bit of an anachronism not having than any leading edge tech. But many suggestions were made and few were implemented. The simplest was back up to the communications system. Now in today's world there should be no issue with communications, but alas the FAA and DoT's management have demonstrated endless incompetence. I gather the regional centers cannot communicate and thus handoff is impossible.

The solution is simple. First fire the Secretary, replace him with some technically competent Gunny from the Marine Corps. Second, the Regional Centers should just connect over cell phones. Then paper maps with small chips from a poker game for each aircraft. Have a single shouter in each Regional Center should out commands and then they can talk to their incoming and out going traffic and via cell phones to each other. 

These aircraft must land. The big problem is the NYC hub. Control goes from Halifax to Boston, and perhaps they can still talk, I assume the Canadians are not full up on clowns, so just start landing in Logan, Portsmouth, Manchester and Hanscom. 

Just some thought. 

Afterthought: I was amazed by the response by the DoT head. It was not the slightest bit informative or apologetic. It was "we need more money". It also seemed to confuse switches with routers. One wonders if anyone has a clue as to what is going on. 

New Recommendation?

 

Some fifteen years ago there were two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine. In my opinion at the time they were fatally flawed. They were regarding PSA tests for prostate cancer. The basis of the flaw in my opinion was that there are two types of PCa, indolent and aggressive. That frankly is my classification based upon some forty years of observation. I have written extensively on the topic so I believe I bring some knowledge to the table. Frankly we do not know yet how to distinguish indolent from aggressive. Yet the best we can do is PSA and %Free tests with time based statistics. 

I have examined such statistics for patients taken over 30+ years. They provide some insight but not dispositive.

The flaws in the older reports was the PSA tests were given every 4 years! The aggressive version can only be determined with tests every 6 months! That is how fast things change. If you only do the former you miss the latter.  It was a plain and simple time sampling error. Recently it was corrected.

The NY Times now notes:

The previous A.C.S. guideline essentially left it up to men, starting at age 50, to make an informed decision with their doctors about whether to undergo a P.S.A. test, which is done with a blood draw. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government advisory panel that also makes screening recommendations, gave the same advice for men ages 55 to 69. In 2023, less than 40 percent of men in that age group received a P.S.A. test. In explaining the decision to recommend screening every two years, Robert Smith, senior vice president of early cancer detection science at the A.C.S., cited a new follow-up study on a randomized controlled trial of prostate cancer screening in Europe. After 23 years, the risk of death from prostate cancer was 13 percent lower among men who were screened regularly compared with those who were not screened — meaning that about two deaths from prostate cancer were averted per 1,000 men screened. 

 One wonders how many men died due to this in my opinion obvious flaw. 

Amazon's Endless Loop

 I am seeing this incompetent processing almost daily from Amazon. The following is the tracking for a small item, hand held magnifying glass, no big deal but it should be a concern:

8:53 PM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Kearny, US

8:47 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

7:00 PM

Package delayed in transit

2:47 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

2:40 PM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Kearny, US

2:30 PM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Kearny, US

1:25 PM

A carrier delay has occurred.

Kearny, US

10:10 AM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

7:05 AM

Package arrived at a carrier facility.

Kearny, US

5:30 AM

Package being processed at carrier facility.

Package left the shipper facility

 

I wonder if it will ever get here! 

 

Evil Returns

Yes it is the second Tuesday of the month, the day the Ultimate Evil makes its return. This is Update Tuesday, Microsoft in all its malevolence arrives to take control of my W11 systems. One wonders why they have to make these horrible updates, taking control of my systems, blocking my ability to function, as they install and update. 

I would not want to be anyone from Microsoft in greeting Saint Peter! They most likely be sent instantly across the burning river with the howling dog and spend eternity updating and updating on W-infinity! For I have just spent another day, lost watching my system devoured by downloading and updating!