Color photo inside today's Wall St Journal. Shows a small convoy of US fighting vehicles on the move in northern Syria. Five MRAPS and Strykers on wheels, and a white pickup truck bringing up the rear. All six vehicles mount flagstaffs with good sized American flags flying from them. Clearly the vehicle crews think letting every one know that they are Americans will assist in a friendly reception by the locals. If the crews thought the flags would draw fire, they would not fly them.
America, and what we stand for, still has friends in Syria.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
Stupid Party commits Hari-kari, in public
We voted for Republicans last year to get rid of Obamacare. Now, nearly a year later, the Stupid Party has been unable to get its act together and vote for anything. We are stuck with Obamacare, double and triple premiums, $6000 deductibles, 30 hour work weeks, less that 2% GNP growth. Guess where your Congressional majorities will go in 2018.
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Do Airbus and Boeing have competition in the airliner business?
Wall St Journal thinks so. They cite China's Comac C919, Canada's Bombardier CS300, and Russia's Irkut MC-21-300, all coming on line shortly. Very shortly, the Comac C919 and the Irkut
MC-21-300 just made their first flights in May this year. They both have at least one year, probably more, of flight testing and certification paperwork to do before they can sell them. Bombardier is farther along, their first flight was back in February of 2015, the flight testing and paperwork is done, and they are delivering them.
We are talking standard single aisle airliners, seating 160 to 200 passengers, selling for $100 million each, the bread and butter airliner. The bigger flashier planes 787, A380 and such don't sell nearly as many.
So what happens? Right now the Boeing and Airbus planes are a little more fuel efficient, have excellent reputations, and cost a tad more than the new comers. Reputation counts. Aeroflot was pleased to announce a few years ago, that all their international flights now used western built aircraft. They retired most, perhaps all, of their fleet of Russian built Ilyushins, mostly because they scared the passengers.
MC-21-300 just made their first flights in May this year. They both have at least one year, probably more, of flight testing and certification paperwork to do before they can sell them. Bombardier is farther along, their first flight was back in February of 2015, the flight testing and paperwork is done, and they are delivering them.
We are talking standard single aisle airliners, seating 160 to 200 passengers, selling for $100 million each, the bread and butter airliner. The bigger flashier planes 787, A380 and such don't sell nearly as many.
So what happens? Right now the Boeing and Airbus planes are a little more fuel efficient, have excellent reputations, and cost a tad more than the new comers. Reputation counts. Aeroflot was pleased to announce a few years ago, that all their international flights now used western built aircraft. They retired most, perhaps all, of their fleet of Russian built Ilyushins, mostly because they scared the passengers.
Sunday, July 16, 2017
NBC Beat the Press
Except for a 10 minute break to the Senate healthcare bill, Chuck Todd devoted his entire one hour TV show to talking about Russians and Trump. Not that he presented any new information, he just whined about the whole scene. In the 10 minutes about the Senate health care bill, all he talked about was its chances of passing, not a word about what is in it. So much for my weekly peek at the msm, now back to real news on Fox.
Saturday, July 15, 2017
Christmas in July
Hammacher Schlemmer catalog came in yesterday. This year they offer artificial Christmas trees, with built in lights. $379 for a small (4 1/2 foot) and up to $2000 for a big one. Merry Christmas.
A Jaguar SUV??
Jaguar?? SUV's? The XK120s XK150s and XKEs are rolling over in their graves. But I saw a TV ad selling a Jaguar SUV. Who wants a Jaguar SUV? Should I want an SUV I want a real SUV with a nameplate like GMC, Ford, Chevy, not Jaguar (or Cadillac or Lincoln). Jaguar means sports cars and luxury hotrod sedans. I owned a Jaguar 3.2 liter sedan once. Nice car, black, chrome wire wheels, leather seats, walnut dash, OHV straight 6 with an oil leak that would not quit. 4 speed with overdrive. Troubles it had, power brake booster quit, a wheel came off, the hood latch failed on the road letting the hood blow clean off, heater and defroster worthless in a Minnesota winter, wire wheels were not strong enough, corner the car hard and you could hear those little ping noises as spokes broke under strain.
So Jaguar stands for elegance, sportness, and flakiness. None of which I want in an SUV. SUV's want to be rugged and reliable.
Good luck Jaguar, or Tata who bought Jaguar off the Brits, selling SUVs under the Jag name.
So Jaguar stands for elegance, sportness, and flakiness. None of which I want in an SUV. SUV's want to be rugged and reliable.
Good luck Jaguar, or Tata who bought Jaguar off the Brits, selling SUVs under the Jag name.
Friday, July 14, 2017
A Federal Department of Cyber Security?
Op Ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal calls for creation of one. The writers want to consolidate some 11 existing cyber security agencies into one new cabinet level department. Like we did creating the Homeland Security Dept some 15 years ago. Sounds cool. I wonder what such a new bureaucracy would do, other than draw their pay. The writers by the way, both work for Sullivan and Cromwell, a law firm doing cyber security work. They probably figure that a big cyber security department could write bigger contracts that 11 smaller ones.
There are probably 300 million computers in the country, pretty much all of 'em running Windows, the world's most vulnerable operating system. Some fraction of these (1/10th? 1/4?, maybe even 1/2?) have critical data, voter registration, credit card data, phone bills, driver registrations, title deeds, stock ownership, bank accounts, and more. Destruction or even just tampering with any of this stuff would cause all sorts of havoc. Not to forget national security stuff , codes, ciphers, location and numbers of nuclear weapons, plans for warplanes, operational orders, size and strength of the armed forces, war plans, effectiveness of weapons, and more. And finally there is control of things like the electric power grid, nuclear power plants, the phone network, the Internet, even city traffic lights. Putting out the lights, even just fouling up the NYC traffic lights would be very very expensive.
Keeping all this stuff secure is low level work, the system administrator of each of how many million computers, has to insist on strong user passwords, disabling passwords of employees leaving the outfit, weekly backup, keeping each machine up-to-date on Microsoft patches, keeping critical machines in locked rooms, insisting on periodic password changes, searching for and eradicating malware, insisting that only one firewall machine be on the public internet all the rest go thru the firewall machine to get to the net. It's the unsung efforts of a vast number of low level workers that keeps us as secure as we are. I don't see how a high level cyber security department would help out here.
Users, commercial, military, and state, ought to come together and pressure Microsoft to close the many gaping holes in Windows security. Microsoft ought to disable autorun (we spread Stuxnet on the Iranians via autorun). Microsoft ought to remove the Basic language interpreters inside Word, Excel, and probably other stuff. The Basic capability is never used by real users, and allows damaging malware to be hidden inside harmless looking documents, sent as e-mail attachments to infect victim computers. And there are dozens of other Windows loopholes that anyone versed in Windows internals can tell you about. Concerted pressure from all users might shape the Microsofties up.
As for the controlling of things, electric power generators, transfomers, trains, rolling mills, air traffic, etc. One simple rule will do a lot of good. Never pass control or monitoring signals over the public internet or the public telephone network. Run your own dedicated line, preferable fiber optic, preferably on your own poles. Make it so hackers would have to climb a pole and tap a line to gain control. Fiber optic is much harder to tap than traditional copper pairs.
We have a huge army of under employed lawyers in this country. Tell the affected companies that we will sic those lawyers on them should they equipment fail because some hacker gained control over the internet. Keep it off the internet and we will be much safer.
There are probably 300 million computers in the country, pretty much all of 'em running Windows, the world's most vulnerable operating system. Some fraction of these (1/10th? 1/4?, maybe even 1/2?) have critical data, voter registration, credit card data, phone bills, driver registrations, title deeds, stock ownership, bank accounts, and more. Destruction or even just tampering with any of this stuff would cause all sorts of havoc. Not to forget national security stuff , codes, ciphers, location and numbers of nuclear weapons, plans for warplanes, operational orders, size and strength of the armed forces, war plans, effectiveness of weapons, and more. And finally there is control of things like the electric power grid, nuclear power plants, the phone network, the Internet, even city traffic lights. Putting out the lights, even just fouling up the NYC traffic lights would be very very expensive.
Keeping all this stuff secure is low level work, the system administrator of each of how many million computers, has to insist on strong user passwords, disabling passwords of employees leaving the outfit, weekly backup, keeping each machine up-to-date on Microsoft patches, keeping critical machines in locked rooms, insisting on periodic password changes, searching for and eradicating malware, insisting that only one firewall machine be on the public internet all the rest go thru the firewall machine to get to the net. It's the unsung efforts of a vast number of low level workers that keeps us as secure as we are. I don't see how a high level cyber security department would help out here.
Users, commercial, military, and state, ought to come together and pressure Microsoft to close the many gaping holes in Windows security. Microsoft ought to disable autorun (we spread Stuxnet on the Iranians via autorun). Microsoft ought to remove the Basic language interpreters inside Word, Excel, and probably other stuff. The Basic capability is never used by real users, and allows damaging malware to be hidden inside harmless looking documents, sent as e-mail attachments to infect victim computers. And there are dozens of other Windows loopholes that anyone versed in Windows internals can tell you about. Concerted pressure from all users might shape the Microsofties up.
As for the controlling of things, electric power generators, transfomers, trains, rolling mills, air traffic, etc. One simple rule will do a lot of good. Never pass control or monitoring signals over the public internet or the public telephone network. Run your own dedicated line, preferable fiber optic, preferably on your own poles. Make it so hackers would have to climb a pole and tap a line to gain control. Fiber optic is much harder to tap than traditional copper pairs.
We have a huge army of under employed lawyers in this country. Tell the affected companies that we will sic those lawyers on them should they equipment fail because some hacker gained control over the internet. Keep it off the internet and we will be much safer.
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