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an idea for saving (or adapting) print media

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

If you’re reading this, you’re part of the “problem” – well, kind of. The problem here is that traditional media outlets like print newspapers, cable news programs, and other “captive audience” forms of media publications are suffering because the accessibility of information has changed. In recent public spats between Google and The New York Times over an argument about paying for all access to this media (or rather the costs of creating it). Of course this problem is also linked to the failure of traditional advertising schemes and or the equivalent of these advertising misses on television with TiVO and MythTV (DVR) based solutions.

Looking at print media specifically and one of the ways that I interface with news, several audio reports about adaptations of papers for ultra-local blogs and the criticisms of structural mismanagement. While these criticisms are logically well-thought, they mostly refer to problems in the past, not solutions to the future (excuse my temporary exclusion of hyper-local reporting). So, one simple idea is to look to one on a traditional cliche and heed its advice: “if you can’t beat them, join ‘em” — cue web spam here, here, and even here.

So here it is: express the charge of modern reporters through modern media. Feel free to grab the PNG or PDF, just give me a shout or link back if you do.

idea for saving publications
  • This proposal uses a number of online opportunities to involve users (i.e. readers), opportunistically delay search engines from being the end-all aggregators, and increasing exposure of “user-important” content within a publication.
  • Of course, it also moves in the direction of facilitating the online printing and release of all publications — the key difference is to get people interested in an investigative topic early and keep them interested by valuing their suggestions and commentary.
  • While changes proposed with this form of publication will require some changes (i.e. releasing preliminary materials, gathering more A/V source material and releasing it), these changes will be welcoming in the aggregation and processing of media that is in store for us in the future.
  • Also, assuming the burden of information management can be removed from the technical staff at a publication (i.e. the back-office can be pushed to online databases and data management clouds), then costs for the production,  development, and even psychological exposure of new articles can be reduced. Simultaneously, financial support will stay where it’s needed: with the journalists, writers, and editors.
  • Public edification and education should really be the target of any publication.  In academic environments, there is now a strong push for open access of publications.  While this market is still going strong (recessions can not effect the need for cutting-edge, peer-reviewed research applications), the online availability of content and needs of those without infinite financial support will erode the sometimes excessive fees of classic journal and conference publications (both to have something printed and to read something you had printed).

Update:

Recently, another article was published and commented on at slashdot that suggests the binding news and entertainment more closely.  This is another example embracing new-media that may push traditional media into the hands of a new audience.  Of course, all of these changes need to be considered in an even-handed manner to avoid the shortfalls of the popular critique of blog-reporters versus traditional reporters.

“As traditional news media struggles to find a new method and business model for dissemination over the internet, some are suggesting that news-related games could be an avenue worth pursuing. Rather than using such games solely as entertainment, journalists could make some of their reports more educative and interactive, allowing readers to choose which threads of a story they would like to follow. Georgia Tech is currently running a research blog to better understand how games and journalism can interact.”

Filed in Freeform, response ideas | Comments (0)

Eliminating the Need for a 4th NYC Area Airport with Collaborative Communications Technology

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Eliminating the Need for a 4th NYC Area Airport with Collaborative Communications Technology

  • Speaker: Ted Willke
  • Abstract – Presently, aircraft separation and runway usage are controlled manually, primarily through voice communications between Air Traffic Control and pilots. With existing procedures, the air system is suffering from limited runway capacity and airports, such as John F. Kennedy International in New York, and authorities are contemplating construction of an additional airport. Capacity aside, safety remains of paramount concern and yet runway incursion rates have increased steadily over the past two decades. We apply a broadcast protocol, called MRBP, to air-air communications to increase peak capacity by up to 65% for one runway and 49% for intersecting runways. The increases result from aircraft tightly coordinating their movements through shared clearances and other announcements. This shared communication also permits onboard computers to quickly detect aircraft deviations, controller errors, and communication faults. We assess the runway capacity benefits, demonstrate the protocol’s safety mechanisms, and discuss how the protocol can bring the safety benefits of controlled airspace to traffic at smaller regional airports.

background

  • worst airport delays in the county
    • jfk: 811/hr (100/r desired), lga: 71, 80, EWR (81 vs 100)
  • how do we fix it?
    • either new airport or new technology
    • new runways does little, better surveillance didn’t help, capacity 233 to 280+ is desired
    • propose: wireless communication allowing ATC to be offloaded and decentralized – benefit all 3 NTSB challenges
  • systems today
    • networks: ground, approach, departure, tower – departure/approach has independent runways
      • enter queue for different types and handled by FIFO
    • centralized control of points impacts runway – efficiency (timeline decisions and delays), safety (miscommunication, disorientation, non-compliance)
    • responsibility: approach, handoff, spacing, sequencing, traffic routing, runway interference, compliance monitoring, instruction/clearance delivery, runway configuration
      • often don’t deliver message to aircraft until right before because of other jobs

proposed system — collaborative communications

  • delegate routine decisions to aircraft to inboard flight systems
    • cohorts maintain a shared view of traffic, requires communication supporting data consistency, with proper inputs distributed will agree on actions in fail-safe
    • several different groups
    • ATC refocuses on system management – queue count, management
  • responsibility
    • offloaded – spacing execution, runway sequencing, clearance and instruction execution, handoffs, compliance monitoring
    • system management – queue management, sequencing management, traffic routing, runway reconfiguring, exception handling

broadcast protocol (framework)

  • mobile reliable broadcast protocol – wireless medium is weakest link and requires new safeguards
    • data consistency – cohorts use same data, two aircraft will use same data in same order
      • message transmit – ACK or retry
      • if majority does not receive, throw away message wait for received – need some safe exit state
      • if majority does receive, consensus on use of data
      • aircraft can discover message was sent but doesn’t have it so can go into safe state for recovery (all others want to use message)
    • deterministic reliability – messages are retried and acknowledged, sources and recipients know when they are at risk of not getting a message

token ring (protocol)

  • take a slot in the token ring and own it at a time, that aircraft is responsible for ACK’ing messages at any time
    • earliest site to ACK a message determines its location in ordered list (ACK assigns sequence number)
  • any receiver may retry an ACK or message k times
  • tokens transmitted after certain time (accounting for network delay) or retry count list the token as received or not [identify equipment failure]
    • future tokens form a vote on whether to include the ACK’d messages in the length
    • vote ends after n tokens are passed
  • timeline: message from source -> other sites ACK -> votes shared and agreed upon (vote out of group) -> survivor ACK transmitted
    • create frames of collaboration and it can change over time
    • L1 provides probabilistic reliability exceeding ADS-B
    • L2 provides new data consistency and determinism guarantees
  • example 1: aircraft message doesn’t go to ATC, but cohort sends to ATC that one was missing; group accepts or reject based on voting
  • example 2: message and ACK loss due to equipment failure; aircraft either recovers with protocol or knows there is a failure because of no messages sent here

applications to capacity

  • today: interval starts when A reaches T and ends when D rolls away from T; D is cleared after wake passes and A is assured to exit, release of D from
    • runway occupancy time = ROTA_A + d_t + d_{acq} ( d{ts} * 2 * \frac{1}{1-p} -1 ) \geq 70
  • today: departure arrival – A may arrive too early from G, ATC must ensure A does not overrun D to make sure runway is utilized, D must commit to take off before A commits
    • capacity_{0.96} = \frac{2*3600}{t_{DA}+t_{AD}} \leq 46.3 aircraft/hour
  • what can be done:
    • capacity_{0.96} = \frac{2*3600}{ \epsilon + MAX(W, ROT_D) + MAX(W, ROT_A) + d_i + d_{acq, max} + 3*d_{tx, max} }
    • 70′s – high speed ramps to reduce ROT, 9′s model prediction of W, 00′s – decrease \epsilon due to improved ATC surveillance tech
    • remains – reduce inter aircraft arrival time, improve time line of clearances
  • arrival occupancy model – try to get about 60s for arrivals (observations show that often empty runways)
    • ROT (runway occupancy time) will fluctuate – variations in dynamics, weather, multiple exits
    • solution should provide fine grain control of capacity, reduce ATC workload, increase time for reaction

examples

  • simplest method – aircraft following
    • ATC sets following policy, follower motion based on predecessor ADS-B, similar to automated cruise control for road vehicles
    • simulation: tell aircraft to follow, then perturb aircraft at front (for arrival time) speed changes too much
    • simulation: tell aircraft to follow with look-ahead spacing grows more; more stable sequence
  • MRBP’s role in approach following
    • establishes group membership, ensures cohorts change leader in concert (synchronous), detect and deal with failures (detect failure, group partitions or falls back to safe)

clearance offload

  • today: ATC manually or automatically establishes right-of-way order
    • future: ATC gives policy (management of queue) and cohorts manage actual group operations; reduce workload
  • take-off of aircraft can send trigger to cohorts instead of waiting for ATC reaction
  • studies have shown that second “crossing” runway does not increase capacity
  • lessons – 280+ hurdle will avoid 4th airport
    • JFK – red or blue 100+/hr, LGA – (single — 76.3/hr), EWR blue (100+/hr)

safety improvements

  • requires best of bad situation – failure cases are aircraft violates clearance or ATC sends wrong clearance
  • micro-flight plan proposed…
    • finer granularity and extend to ground operations
    • reflect performance characteristics of aircraft
    • include machine-generated extrapolation and ETA
    • include annotations of clearance status
  • consistency check
    • ATC – clearance != current, detect ATC clearance error, message enabled clearance
    • movement != current clearance or micro-FP – aircraft clearance violation or crew deviation (deviation), message uses clearances, ADS-B, micro-FP
    • revised micro-FP != ATC instructions ….
  • summary – collaborative MRBP vs. CPDLC (control-pilot data link communication)
    • makes sure it’s consistent, appropriate, and properly understood
    • performance – make a timely decision, communicate without delay and reliably (already in CPDLC)
    • capacity and safety benefits of new tech are underestimated, stronger communication guarantees new opportunity, ATC distribution imp

questions

  • assumption is that runways aren’t used efficiently largely to communication delays, but when allowing aircraft to take-off right after landing, how can this be more quickly communicated?

    • w.r.t. turbulence, can use LIDAR to determine air-patterns and improve detection of weight turbulence and wind-shear; could automate it once sensors are deployed
    • sometimes you can’t see the aircraft, but not counting on crew of waiting operation, counting on aircraft that is doing the action, which should know dynamically and mechanically
    • even save 10-20 seconds for each aircraft will add up over many different operators

  • what about deliberate mis-communication by rouge aircraft? (are there fail-safes from other aircraft?)

    • by mandate it’s too severe to interfere with this signal, could add digital signatures and security not really addressed
  • what are similar methods deployed at other airports that are comparable? you mentioned international airports as example
    • new technology like “hold-short” lights to prevent violation or collision, new surveillance technology is getting better but still unreliable and gets lost
    • loss is that european airports allow multiple aircraft entering runway
  • talked about micro-FP to solve runway problem, would variation of TCAS help to solve this too?
    • info: TCAS (terrain/traffic collision avoidance system) – if two aircraft realize too close then can enter into conflict negotiation between peers…..
    • could, but focused on just that problem (just collision) — could add and use TCAS but part of the problem is that it’s own between two parties, but this lagged-paired reaction could have some critical error
  • pointed out that policy might help loss of ATC policy vs. aircraft trying to manage it themselves (i.e. paying attention to ABORT operations)
    • FAA changed definition only recently to define incursion as *possible* problem because of error in decision

interesting links and commentary

Filed in Lectures, research | Comments (0)

sharing seminars and notes

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Recently, the number of technical posts has been a little low, but I have continued to attend the many interesting talks and seminars available at Columbia. Sharing educational materials for others who are curious or are genuinely unable to access these talks in person (i.e. international scholars) seems to be a growing trend demonstrated by recent talks and seminars, several online blogs or lawsuits and even the number of higher education institutions adding education video channels like Columbia.

Although these notes are almost verbatim of the author’s slides or presentation, where possible, other links in the area and definitions of relevant acronyms will be included. Hopefully, this will allow these posts to be uniquely informative and interesting instead of a mere regurgitation of the original author’s insight. Of course, if you are one of these authors and object to the posting of your material, just send me a quick note and I’ll be happy to take it down.

Enjoy or tell me how you could…

Filed in Course Notes, Freeform, Seminars | Comments (2)

Digital Publishing and Intellectual Property Rights

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Digital Publishing and Intellectual Property Rights

  • Abstract: A discussion of how scholars and researchers can take full advantage of opportunities afforded by digital technology in today’s legal environment, and advocate for positive change.This panel is part of the series Research without Borders: The Changing World of Scholarly Communication.
  • Location: Intercultural Resource Center (IRC), 2nd Floor, 552 West 114th Street, MC 5755
  • Speakers
    • Kenneth Crews, Director of Columbia’s Copyright Advisory Office
    • Michael Carroll, Visiting Professor of Law at American University’s Washington College of Law, a founding member of the Board of Directors of Creative Commons
    • Heather Joseph, Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition(SPARC) and spokesperson for the Alliance for Taxpayer Access

Who really owns your scholarly work… (Kenneth Crews)

  • who cares —
    • you do (advancement of good work, future of scholarship),
    • publishers (economic models of publishing, growth and survival)
    • libraries (escalating costs, mission of information access)
  • why now – new opportunities for dissemination, control, confusion; new formats, multidirectional communication
    • new players – library as publisher, reader as author, public as investor, google;
    • changing copyright control and importance of contracts – increased copyright protection
  • copy right law – legal scene
    • protects nearly everything – original works, fixed in a tangible medium
    • automatic protection – no requirement of formalities, protection for long term (life of author + 70 years) and broad scope of rights
    • author is copyright owner, joint authorship
      • alternatives – work for hire, transfer of copyright, divisibility of copyrights
    • benefits of agreement – clarification of rights, sharing of rights, avoid copyright as monolith
  • good agreements
    • identification of author and third-party materials
    • confirm status – whose name, public domain, creative commons?
    • license to publisher – why not transfer (what does publisher need? license, etc?)
      • rights retained by author – into repository, obligations of open access, future scholarship and teaching

Open Access and Author Control of Copyright (Michael Carroll)

  • context of information environment – compare percent of people recycling content
  • changes in physical environment require action to avoid threat and instead go to more opportunity
  • who’s in charge? the authors – automatic since 1710 for author’s rights
    • standard story is researchers write or impact no for money
      • publisher needs to have an impact, publisher’s brand name becomes a symbol of impact
    • trade copyright for a share in publisher’s trademark – no longer in author’s interest
  • scholarly communication – terms of trade fair are not fair
    • ‘unethical’ to not read agreement and just sign
  • new methods and output forums – “open access”
    • internet now allows dissemination – material available for free on the internet == “open access”
    • not a specific model that embodies this – just allow people to access a file
      • delayed access – those with membership get it first, eventually all get it; sustainable because inside wall need to be on cutting edge
    • five audiences: serendipitous reader (not searching for specific), under-resourced readers (can’t afford inside costs), interdisciplinary (marginal discipline readers), international (no longer US centric), machine readers (science information is blocked/limited)
  • what’s there ? OA Journals
    • fee based OA journals – assumed to be only kind, but a minority
    • PLoS – public library of science is an example; humanities ([[philsophersinprint.org]])

  • need to read the copyrights and make open access a possibility

    Contributed Discussion

  • Acronyms
  • Interesting links
  • Event links
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six word memoirs

Friday, February 27, 2009

Inspired by a radio spot on NPR (in New York, it’s WYNC), I think that a six-word memoir a day might be a fun thing to do.  While I must give credit to smithmag, wired, or more appropriately, Hemingway,  being a bit of a technology advocate myself, I thought I could add my own spin on it.  This ranges from ways to capture my own input (via text message, website, etc) to a few other things like a statistical frequency analysis by time, word, etc, and fun having to do with plotting and visualization.  Check back here or on the projects page but I think this would be an interesting project to pursue over time.

Also, let me know if you’re interested in having your own memoirs that can be submitted via the web/text message.

Here’s the first example, perhaps as a true memoir…

“intrigued, investigating, non-stop. knowledge and life.”

Filed in Freeform, waste of time | Comments (0)