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Balloonist Michio Kanda missing

According to CNN.com, the US Coast Guard is searching for balloonist Michio Kanda after he failed to check in by satellite phone. Kanda was attempting a solo crossing of the Pacific by hot air balloon, and went missing off the coast of Alaska.

Read said two Coast Guard C130 Hercules planes conducted searches Thursday 435 miles south of Adak, Alaska, the balloonist’s last known position. The searches continued Friday and are ongoing, Read said.

(CNN.com)

He carried supplies and survival gear, but it certainly sounds bad. Hopefully, it’s just a problem with the radio.

Update (Feb. 4): On the assumption that Kanda would have ditched in the ocean, Coast Guard continues to search for his capsule.

They are using computer-aided drift simulation to estimate the current position of the capsule. Based on these computer simulations and weather observations, they are explanding tomorrow to the Northeast to encompass a larger area.

A 378 foot Coast Guard cutter is on its way – estimated arrival 7 or 8 February. They have a helicopter on board, which they will use if weather allows.

(Link: kandaupdate.wordpress.com: “Report from US Coastguard in Juneau“)

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Terra hot air balloon used to train real life balloonist… to speak English

Edmund of Social Minds sent me a fascinating link today. Apparently the real-life balloonist, Michio Kanda, will attempt a hot air balloon crossing from Japan to North America. The catch: Kanda needs a crash course in English in order to speak to North American air traffic control.

Enter Australian Aviation English specialist Mike Smith, who uses Second Life and a Terra Wind Rider hot air balloon to teach Kanda some basic English skills.

We mocked up Kanda-san’s balloon in Second Life and built a simulation, along with the instruments that he would need to control based on instructions from the control tower: A transponder to adjust the the frequency on which he would talk to the tower, and an altimeter on which he would base the his reports to the ground.

(LINK: “Social Minds: Aviation English for a trans-Pacific balloonist“).

Michio Kanda is an accomplished balloonist with a long list of impressive feats, including the world’s longest balloon flight (50 hours, 38 minutes) in January 1997, according to the Féderation Aéronautique Internationale.

Update: CNN.com: Record-holding Japanese balloonist missing

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Tear up the track in a Terra Tachyon (this Saturday)

In Wilder West, at 740m, Niki Wilder hosts an air race track, which I visited for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and was instantly hooked. You can hop into a plane and tear around the track at high-speed, bumping and dodging others as you jockey for position in the turns. Seriously, this is so addictive, that I dropped everything to return to a plane that I abandoned months ago in favour of helicopters.

My new racer, Terra Tachyon, is shaping up to be a powerful little thing. With a top speed of about 110 knots (or around 200 km/h), it can lap the course seconds faster than the competition.

Of course, speed isn’t everything. And I wouldn’t want to make racing easy, so I threw in a couple of twists. First, you have limited fuel. This means in an endurance race, you need to time your pit-stops carefully, or you’ll find your engine sputtering out with another plane on your tail. On top of that, it has an optional damage mode, in which collisions will damage various parts of your plane. So watch your turns around the pylon — a wing-strike will shear the wing right off. (And no, you can’t fly with one wing.)

For novice pilots, or those who like to fly stunts or fly tours over SL, I added easier, optional flight models. Click a button, and the plane becomes slow and forgiving in turns.

As Socrates once said, “But wait! There’s more!” Half the fun with racers is the cool paint: racing lines, checkers, and numbers. The Tachyon’s paint menu lets you not only choose from five paint schemes, but also add your own. If you have a knack for Photoshop, pick up the templates from my support page, and paint your Tachyon.

It’s been a blast working on this one. If all goes well, the Tachyon will be available at Abbotts Aerodrome this Saturday (Dec. 22). Bring it to Wilder West to tear up the track. See if you can beat Niki’s top laptime of just under 14 seconds.

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LL pushes flawed “age verification”

On the official Second Life blog, Linden Lab announced that they have pushed their “IDV” scheme — often referred to as “age verification” — into a live beta-version SL client. This means that you can download the IDV version of SL and try out the verification features (“Age verification enters Grid-wide beta“).

In short, Linden Lab will ask residents to pay them a fee to get “verified” status for their avatar. In the verification process, residents are asked to provide their real name, plus some ID, such as SSN, driver’s license number, passport number, among others. This information is sent to a US data-mining company called Integrity (whose sister company Aristotle, sells data…hmm), who sends back a “verified” or “unverified” response.

According to Linden Lab, landowners will be able to block unverified visitors from entering their land, and will be legally responsible for preventing minors from seeing anything objectionable should any happen to sneak into their land.

Reaction is sharp and overwhelming: residents hate the scheme, which they say may be illegal and possibly untrustworthy, among other objections. Despite months since the plan was revealed, Linden Lab fails to address these legitimate objections:

  • In many countries, it’s illegal to require someone to submit ID numbers, like SSN, SIN, driver’s license, or passport to a website (or in some cases through any medium).
  • Many feel that this isn’t information verification, but information gathering by Integrity, a data miner. I will not willingly provide my ID to a US data-miner, myself.
  • Of those who provide their ID data despite the legal question, the accuracy of the Integrity verification is questionable. Many are verified with incorrect information, and other are not verified with correct information. Some report that Canadian residents can’t verify, even with correct information.
  • Many residents don’t have any of the ID numbers required. If you’re a UK resident, who doesn’t drive and hasn’t travelled outside the country, there is no way to verify — banned from large portions of SL, perpetually suspected of being underage.
  • Many estate owners are faced with a conundrum: If they want to allow their tenants to possess content above kids-level fare, they will be faced with legal liability if they don’t block unverified accounts. That would mean losing a great many paying tenants who are undoubtedly adult, though unable or unwilling to use the verification process. It also means estate owners are faced with giving away their ID to Integrity (if the process even works for them) or losing access to their own estate.
  • Finally, any kid who wants to sneak into SL can just borrow a parent’s info. Even ignoring all of the above issues, the process can be thwarted by any child with half a brain.

I have to ask — why is Linden Lab pushing to implement an identity verification system that can’t possibly verify identity? All this will accomplish is to add yet another barrier to new residents and drive away existing residents.

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