FAA Using Webcams to Aid Alaskan Pilots

Isthistakenyet? writes "CNN is running a story about a series of FAA webcams designed to give fliers in Alaska pictures of current weather conditions around the state. I can even get current conditions near where I used to live - check out the 'Clear Day Image' :)" Hopefully the slashdotting won't keep a legit pilot from checking conditions.

Comments

ironic editors...

[YellowSubRoutine]

Hopefully the slashdotting won't keep a legit pilot from checking conditions.

Just guess what happened right now? The editor knew that would happen, and yet he posted the article...

damn

[lingqi]

the next time i go with gf in to the wild to have a romantic weekend when noone is looking... it may not be so simple anymore. damn your FAA! i want my freedom of ... ... back!

Statistics

[af_robot]

Alaska averages an aviation accident a day and a fatal crash every 10 days.

So how many Alaska pilots * still * alive?

Re:Statistics

[martissimo]

you have to remember that Alaska (once you get north of Anchorage) is as close as it comes to the old west, their license plates don't say "last frontier" for nothing.

i remember working up there one summer and wanting to fly to a non-dry town for the weekend so i could get liquored up... the guy who flew me literally pulled his plane out of a barn for the flight. they don't even have real roads between many towns up there, bush planes are very common.

this ain't American Airlines they are reffering to with those stats, but it is pretty cool getting to sit up in the cockpit next to the pilot and learn a bit about flying (assuming you survive) ;)

Re:Statistics

[Cy Guy]

So how many Alaska pilots * still * alive?

In Alaska I would say its about as common to have a pilot's license as a motorcycle license in the rest of the country. If not more so. I ahve seen statisitcs that at one time 50% of the population had pilot licenses though I found that hard to believe. A more reliable source says "Aviation is a more common source of transportation here than anywhere in United States, with six times the average private pilot's licenses and 14 times as many private planes per capita." Another site says the figure is one out of 58 residents. And a file on the state's Dept. of Transportation website says the following:

It is estimated that Alaska has about six times as many private pilots per capita than the
rest of the United States. Approximately 1 in 50 Alaskans has an airplane pilot's license.
Currently 8,752 pilots reside in Alaska, and 3,776 of these have a private pilot certifi-
cate. Based on its population, the average Alaskan is sixteen times more likely to own an
aircraft than the average American citizen.

Bush planes that can be quipped with pontoons, wheels, or skis, can land on any horizontal surface - and so are a necessary mean to access remots areas such as native villages.

to make it faster (and avoid being slashdotted)

[jukal]

They could add some logic in there, which would automatically calculate whether the sun has already risen or not. There's not much point in sending gigabytes of data to just show and convince people that: 'Yes, it's black'. Or atleast they could optimize the image and save some bandwidth, a black-only image does not take many bytes, now it takes 7 kB. Well, I could mail this to them as well.

Re:to make it faster (and avoid being slashdotted)

[Jugalator]

But I guess they want to know more than if the sun has risen or not, like if it's clody, looks like it's going to be rain, etc.

If it only was for sun up/down, you can do that calculation in your head if you know the time zone.

Re:to make it faster (and avoid being slashdotted)

[jukal]

> But I guess they want to know more than if the sun has risen or not, like if it's clody, looks like it's going to be rain, etc.

Yes, but when the sun is down, the image is totally black. From that you cannot even quess any details. So you might just as well not take the picture at all when it is useless.

Re:to make it faster (and avoid being slashdotted)

[jukal]

> What if you want to see if some guy with a flashlight is hanging around near the camera?

well, if that guy is awfully tall, then it might be a problem, otherwise I don't believe it causes a high-priority danger to the pilots.

Seriously, that's why they should a light-sensor instead, as someone already wrote .)

Re:to make it faster (and avoid being slashdotted)

[captain_craptacular]

Actually that cam is on Level Island in Southeast Alaska, just north of Ketchikan. To get an idea of the climate/amount of light think Seattle - 10 degrees. The Light is a bit trickier. In the summer ad an hour, in the winter take one away. But either way it's not dark 6 months a year.

There are only days of complete darkness above the arctic circle which is approximately 100 miles north of Fairbanks...

WebCams have another side

[Chairboy]

When reading about the latest Mars in Antarctica mission at the Flashline Station, Robert Zubrin wrote that at one point a cargo plane scheduled to come and pick up the staff was told to reschedule by one of the scientists at the campsite. He asks why, and they point at their computer monitor and say that according to the webcams outside, it's very overcast.

He pokes his head out of the shelter and sees that the skies are clear, but the scientists INSIST that the webcam shows that they are very overcast.

The funniest part was that no matter what he did, he could not convince them to just look out a window or come outside because they were so certain about what the webcam was showing them that they saw no need.

Todays technology seems most effective when it supplements or enhances something, not when it absolutely replaces it.

? is where does the responsibility lie?

[puto]

Does the responsibility lie with the poster who submitted the story?

With the editor who let it pass?

Or the readers who know they will kill the box?

So I am saying we are all responsible for killing some box that is out there to help pilots. Not a Kewl view of the Alaskan landscape.

A little social responsibility is needed. You CAN be your brothers keeper by proxy.

Puto

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[flonker]

The editors waited until the dead of the night (in the US) to post this story. They did this because it will mitigate the slashdot effect to some degree.

They're not complete morons, you know.

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[sydneyfong]

And more importantly, nobody would expect to get anything from that camera at the darkness of night. The current images gives a single color: black. Wouldn't matter (as much) if it was slashdotted now.

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[quintessent]

Well said. I did my part by not visiting the site. Maybe someone will post a few sample images on a robust mirror site.

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[echucker]

The editors waited until the dead of the night (in the US) to post this story. They did this because it will mitigate the slashdot effect to some degree.

Frankly, unless you have some mind-reading skill that the rest of us don't, it's just as likely that the story was posted at that time by pure chance. It's also worth noting that as it is summer, there is a midnight sun effect which leaves some portions of the state without a sunset for months on end. Click on a webcam for a place like Barrow (no, don't click on it and /. it now, folks), and you'll likely see full blown daylight, which would make that cam useful to a pilot.

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[flonker]

I remember reading the editors mentioning it some time ago on another article. They said that they posted it early in the morning, so that the site wouldn't be /.ed. But I can't seem to find a reference for that now.

For some weird reason, it's rather difficult to get any meaningful results on a search for "slashdot effect" on slashdot.

Re:? is where does the responsibility lie?

[akb]

If this was an essential part of flight operations then the fault would be the FAA's for hooking it up to the Internet. I can't believe it is an essential part of operations so go ahead and look. I mean the FAA may be reliant on vacuum tubes but they aren't stupid.

Slashdotted?

[Peridriga]

If your slashdoted this is what I see: Image Capture

Does anyone else see this :-D?

I'm whore.. So Kill me...

Re:Slashdotted?

[laserjet]

That was quite possibly the supidest thing I have ever seen someone do on slashdot. You are like the kid in class that always wants everyone's attention and for everyone to tell them they did a good job.

well, you are a dork. wow.

Worth it? Doubt it.

[mumblestheclown]

My guess is that the 'webcam' method is an attempt to limit government liability.

Typically, automated weather comes from a series of ASOS and AWOS sensor stations typically located at airports. These probably cost in the area of a few tens of thousands of dollars each to install. Even many pilots dont know this, but it is even possible to phone many AWOSs/ASOSs directly, and hear their automated robot guy tell you about current conditions.

AWOSs/ASOSs are industrial-strength weather sensing. They occasionally get confused (especially when there are multiple cloud layers), but in general they're good to get a good picture of what is going on.

So, the question is: why doesn't the government just put ASOSs/AWOSs wherever in alaska they're setting up webcams?

Ok, the answer to that one is probably cost and intrusiveness. A webcam uses next to zero space.

But is there an inbetween alternative? Why not put together a thousand dollar sensor station that does things like compute windspeed and take a good guess at ceilings?

Ah--because even though that data would likely be better than the meager stuff that a webcam provides. What does a webcam do for weather? Possibly less than a weather rock.

If it takes pictures of the ground, I can't tell how deep the snow is. If it takespictures of teh air, I can't tell how high the clouds are. I dont know what the windspeed is. I dont know if the visibility is terrestrial radiation crud or something more substantial.

So why not a mini weather station? becuse the quantified, interpreted data provided by them is not reliable. webcams force the pilot to do the interpretation him/herself. Less liability.

Also, perhaps, less safety.

- FAA Certified Gold Seal Flight Instructor

Fucking irresponsible

[JimPooley]

As a pilot (well, a pilot in training) I'd just like to say how fucking irresponsible putting this on /. has been.
The article says:-
The agency is cautious in promoting the system because of the need to ensure reliability, said Joette Storm, an FAA spokeswoman in Alaska.
So please - DO NOT go to the FAA site looking for this because you think it's cool to look at the pictures or something. Leave the FAA site to the people who actually need it, OK?
At least CNN had more sense than to give a link through...

Re:Fucking irresponsible

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Well, I can give you about 10 different ways to restrict access to a site, and hell, if I had to present really important information on limited bandwidth, I'd be sure to allow only access to those people I could confirm really needed the info. So who's responsible here?

Re:Fucking irresponsible

[isorox]

Well screw you. If you dont want people visiting a website, dont put it on the internet, or at least shield it by having a seperate authentication server.

Re:Fucking irresponsible

[Jugalator]

Check HTTP referrers and block anything from slashdot.org then?

censor slashdot to protect pilots! gimme a break.

[commodoresloat]

This can *easily* be construed as a DOS attack.... This story should be pulled

Come on folks, it's not like slashdotting a picture of black sky in alaska is going to cause a freakin' plane crash! So many posters bitching about slashdot's responsibility for slashdotting servers, and now here's a post advocating censorship. First of all, web links were made to be clicked. And as much as many of us like to inflate our self-importance as we confidently click our mice, a slashdotting is hardly a DOS attack, any more than a link showing up on nytimes.com would be considered an attack. Also, "legitimate pilots" includes anyone with a pilot license; not just people actually in the process of flying a plane, or about to fly a plane. Finally, if someone actually flying a plane is relying on a freakin' webcam to land, we're all in trouble. Quit acting like this is some huge air safety issue; it's just a webserver ferchrissakes. Sometimes webservers have to reboot; life goes on.

Re:censor slashdot to protect pilots! gimme a brea

[DNS-and-BIND]

Well, I wouldn't be so quick. I recently testified in a federal case in which the defendant was accused of nothing more than sending email. The server he was sending mail to had an absolutely awful design, it crashed due to the small volume, and the defendant found himself in court accused of "accessing a remote system to do damage", a 5-year rap. It seems but a small step from sending email to sending hits.

click the damn link

[commodoresloat]

It's just a webserver. It's not the control tower at the airport. And as I pointed out below, it's only arrogance that makes us think a slashdotting is different from a link appearing on the New York Times website or salon.com. And there is no information on the webserver that a pilot wouldn't be able to learn by looking out the window or making a phone call. Don't act like planes are going to start blowing to pieces and careening out of control all over Alaska if the server goes down for a couple hours.

Re:censor slashdot to protect pilots! gimme a brea

[commodoresloat]

Was the defendant spamming the server? Did he actually serve time for this? That seems ridiculous to me; I'm certainly not going to let it stop me from sending email, and I don't think it should stop slashdot (or any other popular site) from posting links. I agree that a slashdotting could be interpreted as a DOS attack by a sleazy lawyer. "Up" could be interpreted as "down" by such people. I can see it now; Ashcroft goes after slashdot as terrorists for DOSing a federal air traffic-related website. There are few things that could make the US govt look substantially more ridiculous than it already has looked throughout the war on terrorism, but that would definitely be one of them.

Heh, all that said, I'd like to see them try it. What would be really interesting would be if the webserver actually was on the same computer as some other critical system, and the person who sent the link to slashdot actually had reason to know that fact; then you'd actually have a case that made a little bit of sense.

Pull this story.

[Perdo]

This is the first slashdotting that could cost lives.

Someday, a pilot that should have checked the cam will not because he belives the service is unreliable because it was down today.

Re:Pull this story.

[commodoresloat]

not to mention he could look out the fucking window! sheesh....

First of all...think about this:

[dbCooper0]

Sure, if some pilot actually relied on a webcam to be his/her eyes, then having this site /.ed would pose a problem. So would covering the windshield, etc. and using a CCTV to do visual navigation with. Go figger. The alarmist posts here are typical geek FUD.

But check this out from the article: Flying into bad weather is the leading cause of fatal accidents among Alaska's commuter airlines and air taxis. Alaska averages an aviation accident a day and a fatal crash every 10 days.

I can't be the only one who has a problem with this statistic; whatever happened to "seat of the pants" decisions - where the pilot (or driver or captain, depending on the craft they have control of) has to make the call to turn back and return to safety instead of flying (or driving or sailing) into bad weather?

IMHO, this is a good use of now-common technology to provide extra knowledge, but not meant to be a navigational aid.

Ummm..who cares about Slashdotting?

[jea6]

Last time I checked, cnn.com gets more traffic than Slashdot. And the article first appeared on CNN. Having survived both a partial Slashdotting (link off a +5 comment), and a CNNing (main link off a sub-section) I can tell you that a CNNing hurts more. So, even though getting "DoS"d by interested parties sucks, Slashdot does nothing worse in this case than CNN.

Re:/. DOS attacks FAA infrastructure. Story at 11.

[MADCOWbeserk]

The FAA released this to the Associated press, I don't think they care about a flood of traffic. Actually webcams are far less useful than detailed weather reports from weather stations, as the national weather service provides.

I used to use webcams to check the surf in the morning. here

All of them

[A nonymous Coward]

The dead ones aren't pilots any more...

Re:censor slashdot to protect pilots! gimme a brea

[DNS-and-BIND]

Here's the press release the FBI issued. As you would expect from the FBI, the release is riddled with inaccuracies. The company pulled the $350,000 number out of thin air...outages were extremely common. They also say he gained unauthorized access, which is a total lie. The case can be looked up at the usual places, for those interested in more.

Re:censor slashdot to protect pilots! gimme a brea

[commodoresloat]

Yeah it looks like this guy is getting screwed; and it looks like the company was just getting back at him for sending thousands of "disparaging" emails. Did the guy actually go to jail or is the trial still in progress? This definitely sucks but I'm not going to let it stop me from sending email and I don't think slashdot (or CNN) should let it stop them from posting news. But that trial is interesting and worth discussion in its own right since it's another example of how the fear of "hackers" has led to injustices that often make no sense whatsoever.