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Board » Flag Officers » Open letter to SRC.

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Posted by
JB


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2013-03-07 08:54:34
2016-08-01 15:14:05 - Open letter to SRC.
Post annotated by RainbowChaser :
This thread was moved from the category Sailonline Yacht Club.
AIS from the brainaid NMEA connection and the sailing robot.

Dear SRC,

If I recall correctly there is an option in the brainaid NMEA connection to uncheck the “AIS Filter/Send own ship”, which I understand as a mean to cut all your boat AIS infos to the “outside”.

But that option just doesn’t work.
Even with the “Send own ship” unchecked in the NMEA connection you still send/receive AIS information from your boat and the others in a race fleet.

In my opinion that is not correct at all, as the AIS should be turned on only by you, as IRL and not by default, in spite of the above mentioned (not working) option.
IRL it is also a skipper’s right.

If you want to, let’s say by safety reasons or to routing purposes, turn on the AIS, you do it then but, if you don’t want, you keep it shut down.
It is simple. It’s about data that should be kept private if/when you want it to be.

That AIS info can also be used in the routing programs (in my case, qTVlm) as a tactical aid where you get relevant data from the other boats.

The actual AIS abnormality associated with the fact that you can also get all the relevant data from all boats in a race, almost in real time (“60 seconds delay”), via the hmm’s site http://sol.hmm.iki.fi/sollog/races/ , is something that not only surpasses the real life sailing as also permits to completely robotize your boat for almost every SOL race.

In this particular chapter you are not anymore using your sailing skills for competing with the others and using the same assets as every normal skipper but, the programing ones, especially if you automate all the routing processes including a particular set of the top boats in a race for “real time” tactical purposes.
Is it fair? I don’t think so.

But more. It wasn’t/is not necessary to have any sound proof that this “auto reality” already happens in certain SOL races because, even the faint possibility of that happening was/is enough to level the odds, starting with the boat’s info that should be released and when.

In this respect the old formula for releasing boats log data - in 1 hour periods - was/is more than suitable and fair to the game.
The actual one, isn’t.

Dear SRC to finalize, two questions.

Are you willing to change the policies for the use of:

1 - AIS?
2 - Boat’s log data releasing?

Thank you.
Sail Fair.
Posted by
Schakel


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2008-12-19 09:19:00
2016-08-01 17:41:35 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
You misunderstand the option in the NMEA proxy; it is not intended to cutoff your boat to the outside world, but rather to control how much information the proxy receives. You have to realize that the NMEA proxy is only a nice wrapper around data that is available to anyone with basic TCP networking knowledge.
Posted by
JB


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2016-08-01 19:03:30 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
Dear Schakel,

Thank you for your aditional info on AIS but it dosen't change what I think the option should give to skippers,above all, only when they need/want to use it.
Not by default.
Sail Fair.
Posted by
Schakel


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2016-08-01 20:15:26 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
What you see as the AIS function of the NMEA proxy is really nothing more than one more way of receiving some of the very same information that the server sends to the race client over an unencrypted TCP connection. The NMEA proxy just delivers that information in a different format, namely in NMEA sentences.

Not everybody has to rely on the proxy to get to that data. So, as was intended, the NMEA proxy levels the playing field, more than anything, because now that information is available to all, and not just to those who know where to look.
Posted by
JB


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2016-08-02 09:04:22 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
Good morning Schakel.

Again, thank you for enlightenment on the discussion.

Under the AIS technicality I brought to discussion some basic principles I resume here:

- The right to use, or not, the AIS belongs to the skipper, and only to him;

- The info gathered by the AIS - private one, I recall - should not be sent to public knowledge, especially every “60 seconds”;
- SOL main purpose is to offer a sailing simulator, not a programing, and even less a route copy/paste contest;

- You don’t solve a problem that profits/or could profit a particular set of “cyber skippers” by democratizing the error in cause to all the fleet, mainly when we all know the fleet programming skills are everything but equal.
Sail Fair.
Posted by
hmm


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2011-11-03 13:35:22
2016-08-04 19:14:51 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
FYI, SRC has nothing to do with brainaid's NMEA proxy or my SOL data pages.
Posted by
sol


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2016-08-04 20:10:36 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
content deleted on request of Rainbowchaser

--- Last Edited by sol at 2016-08-17 18:28:20 ---
Posted by
kroppyer


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2016-08-04 21:55:23 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
(regarding <SOL>,<SOL-R>,<SOL-R-H>,<SOL-R-H-P> etc.) With this in mind I made flagpole. There is a SOTP flag for example, you can fly the flag if you don't use a router. There are more flags (I like the "sleepy pennant" as well: missing at least one wx by a couple of hours every day because you're sleeping). If you want a flag "I don't use hmm's sollog or similar", then by all means, create a flag for it, and hoist it on your boat. Convince others to hoist the flag too, and you have your own little "I don't use hmm's sollog or similar"-fleet with your own leaderboard.

When flagpole starts to be used much, we have an argument to create something official that serves the same purpose as the most popular flags on flagpole.

NB: Anonymous posts by "sol" have not really been causing trouble and if they did, the forum can be moderated much more easily than the sol chat.
I discourage posting as sol in the forum, even though it's still possible.

--- Last Edited by kroppyer at 2016-08-04 21:57:13 ---
Posted by
JB


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2016-08-08 09:55:38 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
Viva Markku,

Good morning.

Thank you for the info but, I already knew it.

The issue here is not who owns the servers (SOL, yours, brainaid, others) but, the disposal, exchange and public disclosure of boats real time race logs.

Please can you confirm if anybody asked me permission to disclose my boat real time race logs?

Thank you.
Sail Fair.
Posted by
JB


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2016-08-08 09:56:22 - Re: Open letter to SRC.
Viva Huib,

Good morning.

Good idea. The only problem I foresee is, in some boats, we don’t have enough rig and cables to dispose all the “I don’t/ use/have..” flags. At some point the flags area will be bigger than the sail one.

Anyhow, thank you.
Sail Fair.

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