Planet Xdroop

xdroop: isn't sure he can face another day of HP/UX

2010-03-19T12:27:55+00:00

xdroop: isn't sure he can face another day of HP/UX

Home Energy – Greenyness (or cheapness)

2010-03-19T02:45:19+00:00

A year and a half ago I went on a wall wart power measuring exercise. I concluded that going around unplugging wall warts (8 lbs CO₂/yr) wasn’t going to save the planet. If you want to save the planet, you’ll have to do hard things, like hang your clothes out on the line (.3 tons CO₂/yr), drive your car half as much (3 tons CO₂/yr), or turn off your geeky home server (.3 ton CO₂/yr).

For me, saving energy is nothing new. We grew up getting yelled at for leaving the fridge door open, we set our thermostat back before set-back thermostats were fashionable, and in winter we left the water in the bath tub until it had cooled so the heat from the tub water would warm the house instead of the drain (I ain’t paying to heat the $#*&$^ drain!). My dad super-insulated our house before the 1973 oil crisis. We weren’t saving energy to be green though, we were just cheap.

So how about backing up my perception of myself as a ~~cheap~~ energy efficient citizen with some actual data? Hmmm… I just happen to have nearly thirty years of electric and gas bills. All I need to do is add them up and make some pretty charts.

Here goes.

Chart 1: Electricity consumption by my household, 1986-2009, in kilowatt-hours per year.

I added a trend line to the Excel chart. I’m not sure what it means, but it looks cool, so I left it. Also - I didn’t have energy bills for half of 1996, so I’ve left that year out.

Electric energy use ranged from a high of 12,000kwh (1989) to a low of 3500kwh(2009). I’ll blame the ‘88-‘89 peak on air conditioning, electric hot water, and a household member who took really long hot showers with the air conditioning on. The dip in 1997 probably is a combination of a new house and no satellite receiver/computers/electronics running full time. I can’t think of what else might have caused low electric use around that time.

From 1998 to 2003 the increased load might be because I’ve had a server running 24/7 and I had a satellite receiver running most of the time (that thing was hot when it ran). In 2008 I turned off the receiver and in 2009 I switched the home server out for a lower power model. The 2008 decline might also be related to CFL’s, or it might be that we got used to being left in the dark. The difference between the years around 2003 and 2008-2009 is a couple thousand kilowatt-hours, or about a 200 watt continuous draw. That decline could easily be technology or light bulb related.

Electricity is only half of the home energy equation. We’ll need to consider heat too.

Chart 2: Therms per year, natural gas – 1986-2009 in therms per year.

A therm is 100,000 btu, or about 100 cubic feet of natural gas (methane). There’s a hole at 1996 (new house, no energy bills for half the year). Prior to 1996 I lived in an un-insulated house. It lost heat pretty easily, so I compensated with a 97% efficient gas furnace. It still used a lot of energy. In 1997/1998 I re-insulated parts of the new house. Since then it’s been nearly constant.

Natural gas use is mostly related to the weather, so therms per year alone doesn’t tell me much. I don’t know if I used more or less energy because of the weather or because of something I did or didn’t do. Fortunately there is a handy-dandy measurement called a ‘Heating Degree Day’ that is proportional to the daily average temperature. More HDD’s means colder weather. If I care about efficiency, then I need to compare coldness to energy use. Which brings us to…

Chart 3: Therms per Heating Degree Day, 1986-2009.

Once again, there is a hole at 1996, and I’ve faked in a trend line using Excel’s trend function. The discontinuity at 1996 shows how much less efficient the old house was compared to the new house. I’m not sure what the minor variations are from 1999 on, other than we may have adjusted the thermostat or left the windows open.

All this matters, of course, because I’m ~~cheap~~ green, so the next obvious thing to do is to translate this to CO₂ equivalents.

Chart 4: Carbon Dioxide emissions per year due to home energy use, 1986-2009.

I didn’t put a trend line on this chart, ‘cause Excel grays out that menu item on stacked bar charts & I didn’t feel like figuring out how to calculate one manually. The CO₂ values assume 1.2lbs CO₂ per kwh and 12lbs CO₂ per therm. Of course if your region has lots of nuclear power or is willing to dam the Colorado River and suck out all its potential energy, you’ll have different carbon/kwh ratios. (No big deal really. If you’ve already sucked all the water out of the Colorado, you might as well have the energy too, it’s not like Mexico has any use for it).

So I know how much carbon I’m releasing to energize my house. Now what?

Carbon offsets can be purchased at anywhere from $2.75 to $99 per ton. The Nature Conservancy sells offsets for $20/ton, but their offsets (tree planting) take up to 70 years to realize. I pollute today, I pay today, the pollution accumulates and warms the planet, and 70 years from now when the trees grow up my offsets get realized? Sounds like to little, to late. I can’t image falling for that ~~scam~~ plan.

Reducing usage sounds like a better idea.

Speaking of Heating Degree Days, the University of Minnesota happens to have records that go back a hundred-odd years, from 1891-present.

Chart 5: Heating Degree Days, Minneapolis MN, 1891-2008

Because HDD’s are a measure of coldness, less HDD’s indicates warmer weather. To make it more dramatic I skewed the visual effect by shaving off the bottom of the chart. I suspect that climatologists would use something fancier than a linear trend line to indicate long term temperature change, but excel doesn’t have a hockey stick trend line, so linear will have to do.

And, because charts are cheap:

Chart 6: Cooling Degree Days, Minneapolis MN, 1891-2009

I’ll throw in Cooling Degree Days too. In a warm climate, electricity use per cooling degree day would be an interesting indicator of the efficiency of an air conditioner and home insulation. I’m not in a warm climate, so it’s not an interesting number for me.

I’m pretty sure that households could make a significant impact on energy use by paying attention to home servers, gaming consoles, and other home technologies.

---

Thursday Wasted

2010-03-19T00:24:07+00:00

No, really, why did I give my Thursday night to watch that?

It didn't start out bad, really. The predictably terrible officiating -- the first penalty to Ottawa for tripping really should have been accompanied by one to Atlanta for diving -- and the predictable error leading to the opening Atlanta goal, those I can live with. That's part of being a Senators fan. But Ottawa spent a good deal of time in the offensive zone applying good pressure and getting good chances. "Keep trying boys," I told the TV, "they'll come."

But then the officials really got going. Three of the first seven penalties assigned to Ottawa were either iffy or flat out not penalties. At one point, we were five-to-one behind in terms of power plays. That's not clean play, that's poor officiating. And Sutton's two minutes for "elbowing" on a perfectly clean and legal check -- not to the head, not from behind, not away from the play -- THAT was PURE GARBAGE. Even someone like ME, who isn't keen on all the hitting and such that goes on, can see THAT.

Let's be fair. Neil's goal in the second should have been called back due to Kelly's presence in the crease. But with this kind of officiating, who the hell knows what you are going to get.

Through the end of two the Senators played well, getting most of the shots and the vast majority of the quality chances. And then the third started. The Senators just crumbled and gave up stupid goals due to poor coverage or running around in their own end. Again. Leaving Elliot hanging out there on his own, going the wrong way on the play because nobody's covering the guy sliding through the slot. Again.

Spezza getting that break. And. Not. Burying. It. Again. Dammit.

I don't blame Elliot for this. You can't, really. But for a(n allegedly) playoff-bound team, we shouldn't be talking about these kinds of miscues and collapses and all around bad hockey with the frequency that we are.

Saturday is an afternoon game, but fortunately for me I have something else scheduled so will be unable to watch it.

This isn't fun any more. I want my evening back.

xdroop: @PsychoI3oy your VAX doesn't suck enough: http://tinyurl.com/y9qylgy

2010-03-18T17:33:50+00:00

xdroop: @PsychoI3oy your VAX doesn't suck enough: http://tinyurl.com/y9qylgy

xdroop: Password Security #Fail -- every two weeks I get locked out of this website and can't think of a new password. Every two weeks.

2010-03-18T17:27:02+00:00

xdroop: Password Security #Fail -- every two weeks I get locked out of this website and can't think of a new password. Every two weeks.

xdroop: @Flakeloaf That stuff's so old it predated the rocks we bang together for AIX.

2010-03-18T14:49:06+00:00

xdroop: @Flakeloaf That stuff's so old it predated the rocks we bang together for AIX.

xdroop: Wow -- first HP/UX, now I'm dealing with AIX for the first time in a decade. Who's going to call wanting Compaq Digital Unix installed?

2010-03-18T14:40:31+00:00

xdroop: Wow -- first HP/UX, now I'm dealing with AIX for the first time in a decade. Who's going to call wanting Compaq Digital Unix installed?

Installing technology levels and service packs for AIX

2010-03-18T13:55:42+00:00

xdroop: Survived Monday. Wait, today is Wednesday.

2010-03-17T22:24:15+00:00

xdroop: Survived Monday. Wait, today is Wednesday.

Back To Reality

2010-03-17T00:00:26+00:00

Well, that was awful, wasn't it? Hopefully this kick in the nuts will clear the dreams of Stanley Cup glory from anyone's eyes. It's over, ok? Just... over.

What is there to say? One of the worst teams in hockey comes to town against allegedly one of the better ones and we can't beat them. Bluntly the Leafs were just plain better, and the bounces didn't go Ottawa's way. Again. Several good chances; several failures to seal the deal.

At least Carkner kept his brains enough to avoid getting pounded again. I don't understand why he does it -- Ottawa loses every time.

And it is pathetic that the rink sounded more like Maple Leaf Gardens than the home of the Ottawa Senators. Not that the Senators did much worth cheering for tonight, but the crowd was definitely behind Toronto.

FACEBOOK

2010-03-16T22:00:23+00:00

FACEBOOK
I just don’t understand it.
Submitted by: dunno source via deMotivational Builder

MORE FACEBOOK FAILS @ FAILBOOKING.

An Aerodynamicist's solution: Reduce Mechanical Grip

2010-03-16T19:58:55+00:00

James Allen has an article where aerodynamicist Frank Dernie makes the case for reducing mechanical grip, not aerodynamic grip.

His view of the problem:

[...] that the “overtaking problem in F1″ is not the aero, but the mechanical grip from the tyres and the lack of mistakes made by drivers on gearshifts due to semi automatic gearboxes.

His ideas as a solution:

Manual gearboxes. If you miss a change, the car behind gets a chance.
Rock-hard, spec, no-change tires. If the tire is required to do a full race distance, it will have to be rock hard. It won't degrade as much, but since it has to last it won't be as grippy either. This has a knock-on effect that since the tires are not degrading, fewer marbles are getting created and there's less rubber bedded in to the racing line. Both effects reduce the penalty for driving off-line.
Less effective brakes. Longer braking zones give drivers more chances to get in front and more chances to make mistakes.
Single lap qualifying (my hero!). Drivers get one chance to set a qualifying time. Naturally, some will make mistakes, meaning you'll have "faster" cars mixed in with "slower" cars, a situation which can lead to passing opportunities.

Interesting ideas.

xdroop: 'Useless laws weaken necessary laws.' -- Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

2010-03-16T15:01:20+00:00

xdroop: 'Useless laws weaken necessary laws.' -- Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

xdroop: and both sons have strep throat. Boo.

2010-03-16T02:28:08+00:00

xdroop: and both sons have strep throat. Boo.

xdroop: survived another weekend of being sick. Tomorrow I get to decide if I go to work or fall down dead... assuming I can find a difference.

2010-03-15T01:27:29+00:00

xdroop: survived another weekend of being sick. Tomorrow I get to decide if I go to work or fall down dead... assuming I can find a difference.

Desert Racing Extra Dry

2010-03-14T21:55:30+00:00

Back in August of last year I said I was worried about the racing in 2010. The fact of the matter is that the cars just are not built to follow each other closely enough to effect passes -- witness Hamilton's efforts to pass Rosberg, despite having a car capable of going a half- to a full second faster per lap than the Mercedes, he couldn't get on terms to make the pass and had to do the business in the pits. The combination of the double-diffuser development with the intricate changes made to the front wings on the cars mean the following car just isn't as efficient as the car in front is.

I also noticed that there seemed to be a lot more flip-ups and aerodynamic "things" hanging on the cars than there were last year.

Even the "extra" action brought on by the new teams retiring at an increased rate did little to improve the show, although Senna's HRT car made it almost half way through the event, which is a decent enough amount for what was effectively its third day of running.

And while Ferrari had an almost perfect weekend -- missing out only on the pole position as an accomplishment -- one is left to wonder if their slow reeling in of Vettel was due to Ferrari pace or Red Bull exhaust issues slowly manifesting themselves.

I also have to comment on the graphics shown through the event -- a lot of the time it was difficult for me to understand what they were trying to tell me. I guess putting everything in stylishly slanted boxes is the coming thing.

One race is not enough to condemn an entire season, even if there are rumors about hastily amending the rules to make a second pit stop mandatory. Artificially trying to manufacturer more "show" is always going to result in silliness.

One just hopes that the FIA resists the urge to continue the silliness that was a hallmark of the Mosley years.

xdroop: is steaming slightly. Oh wait, thats the fever. Never mind then. Look: rabbits!

2010-03-12T22:28:45+00:00

xdroop: is steaming slightly. Oh wait, thats the fever. Never mind then. Look: rabbits!

xdroop: Just got a login prompt. But I am out of time for today.

2010-03-12T19:22:46+00:00

xdroop: Just got a login prompt. But I am out of time for today.

xdroop: 2 hours in: first boot! Now the software configuration stage. Starting to regret not bringing a lunch.

2010-03-12T18:45:58+00:00

xdroop: 2 hours in: first boot! Now the software configuration stage. Starting to regret not bringing a lunch.

rands: The phrase “I don’t have time for” should never be said: http://j.mp/cSEOGM

2010-03-12T18:13:20+00:00

rands: The phrase “I don’t have time for” should never be said: http://j.mp/cSEOGM

xdroop: .s/tall/sert/

2010-03-12T18:10:14+00:00

xdroop: .s/tall/sert/

xdroop: 90 minutes later, it is time to install disk 2!

2010-03-12T18:09:55+00:00

xdroop: 90 minutes later, it is time to install disk 2!

xdroop: is watching a HP/UX 11iv23 install. This is so slow it brings back bad memories. Welcome to 1996! Faster please!

2010-03-12T17:31:26+00:00

xdroop: is watching a HP/UX 11iv23 install. This is so slow it brings back bad memories. Welcome to 1996! Faster please!

Unteachable Disaster Recovery

2010-03-12T15:45:53+00:00

I’ve got another column up at Simple Talk: Sysadmin today. It’s called Unteachable Disaster Recovery Techniques.

This is a true story, and it happened last week. I felt so strongly about it that I wrote the entire entry in one sitting.

Please give it a read through, and remember to rate it using the stars! Thanks!

GPG: Formula 1 Stats

2010-03-12T14:16:40+00:00

xdroop: Welcome to Firedrill Friday!

2010-03-12T13:26:27+00:00

xdroop: Welcome to Firedrill Friday!

NHL Rule Book Is Flawed

2010-03-12T10:17:33+00:00

(Still sick. You don't care. I know. Moving on.)

I have to admit I don't care much about the current controversy of head-shots in checking. I think there should be some kind of reasonable protection, but since physical contact is part of the game, any rule must take that into account.

But as a side effect of this discussion, Quisp at SBNation pointed out something interesting: there is already a rule which covers this situation.

43.1 Charging - A minor or major penalty shall be imposed on a player or goalkeeper who skates or jumps into, or charges an opponent in any manner.

Charging shall mean the actions of a player or goalkeeper who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check an opponent in any manner. A "charge" may be the result of a check into the boards, into the goal frame or in open ice.

Quisp rightly points out that this makes absolutely no sense, because any check, and most physical contact, would be covered by this rule. And that's why it isn't called.

(It also begs the question -- when charging is called, exactly what is it that is being called? Is this the two-step rule?)

So finally I start to understand why the officials, both on-ice and off, "interpret" the rule book rather than just calling it: the rule book is inconsistent with the game, both as-played and as we would want it played.

I don't think that rules should be written around injury; Quisp's suggested replacement rule for 54.1 imposes penalties on plays which result in injury. This is a game for big boys, and it is fast. Guys will get hurt on some of them, that's the nature of game. I think the rules should be written around intent. That is, if someone intentionally attempts to injure another player, successful or not, that's at least a double-minor and a rapidly escalating number of games suspended.

If you don't like head-shots, then write the rule that says head-shots are not permitted the same way that knee-on-knee hits are not permitted.

But the bottom line is that the NHL rule book obviously needs more than a little tuning; this can't be the only rule which if called as-written would totally change the way the game is played.

xdroop: is at that point in the sickness where reality's texture is different.

2010-03-12T03:31:34+00:00

xdroop: is at that point in the sickness where reality's texture is different.

Day 5: Still Not Well

2010-03-11T14:29:27+00:00

It's Thursday, and I'm still get up, coming down with the sickness. So no thoughtful essays from moi.

However, I must stress to every one of my artist-style pals that this is perhaps one of the finest articles I wish I'd ever written. I think the overall premise ("I think The Karate Kid ruined the modern world") is a little off, but the sentiment here? Perfectly spot-on for most of us mundane people struggling to be beautiful. (And it's done by the author of "John Dies At The End," which I've been meaning to read for months now.)

So read this today: Fuck the Karate Kid.

The De-Stinkers

2010-03-10T04:45:36+00:00

Ottawa’s Green Bin program is, if not exactly in full swing, then at least in semi-swing. There have been a few problems:

The city suddenly realized that it was going to have problems meeting their contracted targets with OrgaWorld Canada. One of the issues seemed to be that the bins are too small to collect the 80,000 tonnes a year necessary.
A lot of homeowners are miffed about the entire program; some refuse to use it; some have their own composters; some think the bins are too small; some just like to complain about everything the City does. But then there are other people who love their Green Bins a lot.
Meanwhile, OrgaWorld, it seems, is not even operational enough yet to process the waste that has been collected so far. They have until April 1^st or the City can cancel the whole contract. I wonder what will happen then?
There was some significant hue and cry about the extra $68 per year the city will be charging each household in taxes in order to pay for the bins.
And, as the warm weather slowly creeps over Ottawa, people are starting to worry about what this means for their Green Bins. Maggots will move in to enjoy the goodies. The bins full of compost will start to smell; which in turn will attract rodents. As the weeks go by the bins will get kind of gross and people will become more and more reluctant to use their Green Bins.

Well lo and behold, some smart cookies are capitalizing on this last issue and have formed a Green Bin cleaning company called Bin Aces Inc. They’ll come to your house or business with their magical cleaning truck and clean and disinfect your green bins, recycling bins and even garbage bins for a modest fee and on whatever schedule suits you best.

The coolest part of this company is that they are able to process and recycle the water they use for cleaning so that they can clean 200 bins using the same amount of water a regular joe would use to clean just two bins. They use only environmentally-friendly detergents and none of their waste water will contaminate our rivers, lakes or streams.

All cities with green bin programs have spawned these bin cleaning companies – not all of them are environmentally friendly and not all of their prices are this reasonable.

In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that while I’m not getting any benefits whatsoever from mentioning this company on my blog, the owners of Bin Aces are related to a co-worker of mine, which is how I heard about them.

I wanted to acknowledge them because I like to mention local, small business-owners – especially when they’re first starting out and they’re doing something interesting. Also, I don’t want to see the already beleaguered Green Bin program fizzle out because people will start to turn against their Green Bins when they’re no longer shiny-new and daisy-fresh…..which is likely to happen in the next six months.

So, while I know this is a very boring post for non-Ottawans, I’m hoping you’ll at least be amused over the fact that the capital city of Canada just recently got on board with a composting program – a good decade behind most other cities. Or, that you might be amused over the fact that Ottawa had about a thousand other cities from which to model a green bin program, and yet still managed to get so much of it screwed up.

Or, if you’re still bored, we can just talk about Paris some more.

Tagged: Bin Aces, compost, maggots, Ottawa Green Bins, rodents, smelly bins, waiting waste

News flash

2010-03-10T02:52:00+00:00

A popular blog truncated its RSS feeds to boost site pageviews. It’s like last week, when The Atlantic changed to partial-content RSS feeds. And that was like every other week, when some publisher did something that some readers didn’t like to make a few more cents.

I dislike the intrusive advertising on Salon, so I don’t read Salon. I dislike Michael Arrington, so I never read anything on TechCrunch (even when they write about me or my products) and have taken technical measures to ensure that I never even land there accidentally and give them whatever tiny profit that one pageview is worth. I don’t like the timebombed, Unicode-breaking Clickability print-friendly view for New York Magazine, since I like reading NYMag-length pieces in Instapaper and Clickability doesn’t work well in it, so I just don’t read NYMag’s articles. I don’t like Ars Technica’s paginated articles, but since I don’t want to pay for a subscription, I just read every page separately, give them all of their separate-page ad views, and save each page to Instapaper if I want to read them that way.

One reaction I’ve never had is to think that I deserve anything from these publishers.

Valid point: [Publisher] should consider doing it some other way because this will alienate some readers.
Invalid point: [Publisher] should do it my way because all content deserves to be free/ad-free/full-RSS/single-page.

I see a staggering amount of entitlement every day in the form of arguments and blog posts like the latter.

We don’t deserve anything. Publishers can do whatever they want. If you don’t like it, don’t send them nasty emails or browse their sites with ad-blockers: just don’t support them. Don’t read their content, don’t link to them, and don’t talk about them. Since money’s not usually involved, vote with your attention and read elsewhere.

xdroop: Why does #scanpst willfully create .pst files that nothing can deal with? #microsoft #fail #rhetorical

2010-03-09T20:26:20+00:00

xdroop: Why does #scanpst willfully create .pst files that nothing can deal with? #microsoft #fail #rhetorical

xdroop: TRON go: http://tinyurl.com/y9vvxah

2010-03-09T19:26:15+00:00

xdroop: TRON go: http://tinyurl.com/y9vvxah

xdroop: @ajventer Ah, that's alright then.

2010-03-09T17:52:45+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer Ah, that's alright then.

xdroop: @ajventer Conceded. But the question is: why would I run Linux?

2010-03-09T17:47:03+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer Conceded. But the question is: why would I run Linux?

xdroop: @ajventer I'm a unix admin, and Windows doesn't get in my way. You asked why I use it.

2010-03-09T17:29:55+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer I'm a unix admin, and Windows doesn't get in my way. You asked why *I* use it.

xdroop: @ajventer this is probably an essay question. :)

2010-03-09T17:26:41+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer this is probably an essay question. :)

xdroop: @ajventer Fiddling while Rome burns. What about the two big items: why do it, and fiddle-time-isn't-billable-time?

2010-03-09T17:26:06+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer Fiddling while Rome burns. What about the two big items: why do it, and fiddle-time-isn't-billable-time?

xdroop: @ajventer @s1zwe http://tinyurl.com/yhyotl6 -- it is from 2008, but if you change Vista to Win7-64 it is still fundamentally true.

2010-03-09T17:18:52+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer @s1zwe http://tinyurl.com/yhyotl6 -- it is from 2008, but if you change Vista to Win7-64 it is still fundamentally true.

xdroop: @ajventer could be worse -- he could like 32-bit Vista. (BTW, I run Win7-64 on both my main systems.)

2010-03-09T17:13:50+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer could be worse -- he could like 32-bit Vista. (BTW, I run Win7-64 on both my main systems.)

xdroop: RT @rands: Two intriguing ideas I found today that I don't know what to do with: "Information Laundering" and "Sustainable Vintage"

2010-03-09T14:07:17+00:00

xdroop: RT @rands: Two intriguing ideas I found today that I don't know what to do with: "Information Laundering" and "Sustainable Vintage"

NDAs don’t suck, but most of their uses do

2010-03-08T20:23:26+00:00

I want to start this article by saying that I’m bound by NDAs all over the place. The company that I work for, being partners with a variety of companies, has NDAs in place for each vendor that results in me being under an NDA as well. Thus, I’m not going to:

Break any NDAs
Advocate violating NDAs

I’m bound by those NDAs in what I write on this blog – I attend partner briefing con-calls/presentations etc., periodically, and get told about upcoming features or more generally roadmaps going up to 2 years out. I’m involved in beta testing – version and feature – and I so I get to see things before a lot of other people. I also get to talk directly to product management at vendors too. So to any vendor reading this, I hope they’ll understand that I’ll still follow all your NDA processes.

Just because I’m bound by NDAs doesn’t mean I can’t talk about where I think they’re wrong.

There’s a growing chorus of “NDAs suck” at the moment, and I’m not laying claim to the idea of blogging about the suck-value of NDAs on my own. I’ve reached the point of wanting to blog about it based on the previous efforts of Grumpy Storage in “Show me the Money (Information)“, and more recently in Matthew Yeager’s “First, execute with urgency. The rest is commentary“. (Incidentally, that’s two people you really should be following on Twitter – ianhf and mpyeager respectively.)

Over at Grumpy Storage, Ian, as an end-customer, wrote:

I need electronic copies of any & all materials discussed or presented – no exceptions, without this I can’t use it as reference material in my internal strategy planning. If you hide behind “it’s beyond NDA”, or “NDA prohibits” then I’ll interpret that as “you don’t trust me personally or respect me professionally” and the relationship will be difficult from then on.

This is a pretty damning comment on Ian’s part, and realistically represents how a lot of customers feel about NDAs – and this may be the surprising part – how a lot of suppliers and system integrators feel about them too. (I think he’s wrong about where the trust issue lays, and I’ll get to that soon.)

Matthew drew up an excellent summary of how NDAs protect intent over execution, and some possible solutions to this, and I’d suggest you consider reading both Ian’s and Matthew’s articles in full before continuing with what I’m going to say.

My argument is that NDAs themselves don’t suck. However, I do feel that in the vast majority of instances in which NDAs are applied do, indeed suck.

Trusted partners/suppliers are often “piggy in the middle” when it comes to NDAs. Where we frequently add value is by being closely aligned to our customers (who we prefer to also call partners), working at understanding their business requirements and delivering solutions and information that are tailored to suit those requirements. We recognise that time is precious, attention is a currency, and that the work of IT managers and staff isn’t to be sold to by a business, but to deliver to the business. By having the time to work directly with businesses, we offer a value-add that bungee-vendor sales rarely if ever can. That’s why a lot of companies choose to work with integrators and suppliers rather than vendors directly. As such, perhaps more than end-customers, as an integrator I can look at the various information I know that are locked away under NDA and really, really regret that I can’t readily tell my customers to help them with their forward planning.

So in that sense, NDAs are a constant case of “Here’s some really good information! But. You. Can’t. Tell. Anyone.”

Now, my beef with NDAs is not that they exist – I’m a fierce proponent of intellectual property protection. My beef is in where NDAs are applied. Or perhaps to be more succinct – in the frequency with which NDAs are applied. It’s too often. It’s across the board on a range of things where it logically makes no sense, and it’s often for the wrong reasons.

Ian at Grumpy Storage sees NDAs as a trust issue. I agree, but I think he’s (understandably) missing where the trust-issue really exists. You see, in big companies – and most vendors fall into this category, few people have “authority”. In this case, by authority, I’m talking about authority to discuss information on unreleased products or features with non-employees. This goes to the heart of corporate secrecy, and if companies should understand anything by now it’s that social networking is eroding this. So it’s trust alright, but the trust issue is in companies mistrusting their staff to make sensible judgment calls, or mistrusting the market to such a degree that the wrong disclosure decisions are made.

Recently, a senior vendor employee told me the following in relation to consulting:

“giving away info” is exactly what consultants need to do — controversial, but effective

Here’s the rub: the same applies to most situations where NDAs are pulled out. That is, in places where information is currently bartered (“I’ll tell you, but only if you sign this document that says I can sue you if you tell anyone else”), it should be flowing freely. (Call it the next step in the Cluetrain Manifesto if you will.) This is something that’s imperative to turn around. It’s already important with this generation, but just think of how important it’s going to be in a business environment saturated with Gen-Y’ers, all whom thrive on interchange and connectivity. (I’ve not said it so succinctly before, but I think Gen-Y is going to cause one of the biggest upheavals ever experienced in business communications, practices and procedures.)

I’d wager that the following two reasons sum up most of the times that NDAs are waved around:

Vendor employees are insufficiently empowered as to be able to make a judgment call that the people they are speaking to can be trusted. Lacking this empowerment, they must take the safe approach. (Hey, they need jobs too.)
Vendor management and legal frequently resort to the knee jerk reaction (sometimes due to a lack of empowerment themselves) of trying to hide as much information as possible.

These, of course, are on top of the actual valid reasons why we have NDAs – to protect key components of intellectual property. However, those valid reasons are definitely in the minority. If a picture helps, I’d suggest the following breakdown is fairly indicative of why vendors ask people to sign NDAs:

The net result is that within the IT industry overall we’re awash with NDAs. It reminds me of the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, from my favourite book, Catch-22:

Almost overnight the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was in full flower, and Captain Black was enraptured to discover himself spearheading it. He had really hit on something. All the enlisted men and officers on combat duty had to sign a loyalty oath to get their map cases from the intelligence tent, a second loyalty oath to receive their flak suits and parachutes from the parachute tent, a third loyalty oath for Lieutenant Balkington, the motor vehicle officer, to be allowed to ride from the squadron to the airfield in one of the trucks. Every time they turned around there was another loyalty oath to be signed. They signed a loyalty oath to get their pay from the finance officer, to obtain their PX supplies, to have their hair cut by the Italian barbers. To Captain Black, every officer who supported his Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade was a competitor, and he planned and plotted twenty-four hours a day to keep one step ahead. He would stand second to none in his devotion to country. When other officers had followed his urging and introduced loyalty oaths of their own, he went them one better by making every son of a bitch who came to his intelligence tent sign two loyalty oaths, then three, then four; then he introduced the pledge of allegiance, and after that “The Star-Spangled Banner,” one chorus, two choruses, three choruses, four choruses. Each time Captain Black forged ahead of his competitors, he swung upon them scornfully for their failure to follow his example. Each time they followed his example, he retreated with concern and racked his brain for some new stratagem that would enable him to turn upon them scornfully again.

Sometimes it seems we’re stuck in the middle of a Great NDA Crusade, and just like in Catch-22, we need a Major –– de Coverley, who can say:

“Gimme eat.”

Instead of eat, Corporal Snark gave Major –– de Coverley a loyalty oath to sign. Major –– de Coverley swept it away with mighty displeasure the moment he recognized what it was, his good eye flaring up blindingly with fiery disdain and his enormous old corrugated face darkening in mountainous wrath.

“Gimme eat, I said,” he ordered loudly in harsh tones that rumbled ominously through the silent tent like claps of distant thunder.

Corporal Snark turned pale and began to tremble. He glanced toward Milo pleadingly for guidance. For several terrible seconds there was not a sound. Then Milo nodded.

“Give him eat,” he said.

Corporal Snark began giving Major –– de Coverley eat. Major –– de Coverley turned from the counter with his tray full and came to a stop. His eyes fell on the groups of other officers gazing at him in mute appeal, and, with righteous belligerence, he roared:

“Give everybody eat!”

“Give everybody eat!” Milo echoed with joyful relief, and the Glorious Loyalty Oath Crusade came to an end.

(Catch-22, ISBN 978-0-999-47046-5, Joseph Heller, First Published in Great Britain in 1962. Thanks also to The Sheila Variations website, that saved me from retyping those sections by having already quoted them.)

I want a vendor who will be the Major –– de Coverley of the industry. A vendor who will stand up and say “enough is enough” to frivolous NDAs that do nothing more than stifle discussion.

I’m not calling for an end to NDAs. There are some NDAs that should be preserved. For instance, I’d never argue for the cessation of NDAs when it comes to alpha/beta testing. I’d also suggest that long term forecasts should fall under the realm of NDAs too. (That’s two examples of where the “20%” or so that I estimate of NDAs that are valid come from.)

But what’s long term? That’s a year out, at least. Within that time frame? You should be confident enough in your development programme that you can talk about it to everyone, not just people under NDA. Hell, even if you want to bring this back to only six months, there should be a “forward looking” period that vendors are comfortable talking about without NDA shields. After all, let’s face it: everything published under an NDA still starts with various comments such as:

The items discussed in this document contain forward-looking statements that reflect … blah blah blah … it is our aim to get there … blah blah blah … but don’t hold us to anything if we don’t get there.

So it’s not as if the information discussed in NDAs is so rock solid that you can take bets on it anyway! So then … make those same caveats then pull out the useful information about upcoming features!

For information about features and products that are going to come out within 6-12 months, there’s no point for that to be under NDA. In fact, it does more harm than good, especially when you’re talking to a company that wants to buy something, but needs to know where it’s heading. It leads to situations where products are say, disqualified for consideration because they don’t have a feature yet, but because it’s so tightly bound up in an NDA, even though it will be available by the time the purchase decision is made, the message doesn’t get heard.

I know there’s the argument that new features, or perhaps more importantly, upcoming features, need to be protected from competitors. Does anyone seriously think NDAs shield anyone from this? Employees routinely shift from vendor to vendor, and while they’re usually under non-compete clauses, and clauses that restrain them from discussing products and features they were working on, those clauses only last so long – in most cases seemingly limited to 12 weeks or so. In short – if vendor A wants to know what vendor B is up to, they poach staff, or watch who they’re purchasing and make educated guesses.

Not only that, every vendor that has a clue has fairly heavily populated product development strategies ranging from 6 months to 2 years out, and just hearing that someone is going to implement some technology doesn’t mean that a competitor can instantly slot in development resources immediately on it in order to ape that functionality too. (Assuming they don’t already have the technology – it can be a case of “catch up” sometimes.)

So, would much change under reduced disclosure via NDAs? It seems bloody unlikely.

“Ah“, some would say, “It’s not just the competitors. It’s also the risk of being sued by a company if they purchase X on the basis of us implementing some feature A that we’ve talked about, but for some reason we don’t get around to it in the specified timeframe.”

“Um, so what?” would be my response to this. There’s two very important rejoinders to the above arguments:

Make forward looking statements with the standard caveats that are already heavily applied to NDAs anyway; i.e., it works for an NDA situation, so why won’t it work for an ordinary situation?
Only talk about things that are well within development scope – again, we’re talking about that period of up to 6 or 12 months out from now. That should be things that you’re reasonably confident of achieving.

“Ah“, some would say, “Then there’s stymieing by proxy – even if competitors don’t intend to implement the same thing we’re doing, they’ll just talk about doing it to convince people to stick with them, or buy them instead.”

To this I would say: Companies that repeatedly talk about products or features they then don’t go on to release in time (or at all) quickly get a reputation for vaporware. So don’t get too hung up about that – the market usually deals with vaporware vendors very efficiently.

“Ah“, some would say, “But what about the Osbourne Effect?” To this I’d say that particularly with mature product ranges, there shouldn’t regularly be an upcoming update that’s so earth shattering that it would cause someone to hold off buying until that is released. If someone needs a backup product now, or an array now, or a tape library now, they won’t keep on indefinitely putting it off just because there’s bigger and better things around the corner. Guess what? We’re all in IT here –– we all know that products have a fairly defined ride between superiority, regularity and obsolescence. Or as the old saying goes: if you keep waiting for the best computer to be released before you buy, you’ll never buy a computer.

In situations where there’s potential upheaval, have a clear upgrade strategy that clearly states and amortizes the cost appropriately – most companies will thank you. On the other hand, what they won’t thank you for is a situation where they buy a product from you that gets end of lifed or shelved shortly thereafter without any advance warning or clear roadmap of a way forward. I’ve seen multiple instances where vendors have permanently soured relationships with managers at customer sites. This makes the technical person at the site that recommended the purchase look bad, or worry about looking bad. And it also makes the manager who authorised the purchase worry that they “look bad”. Such issues don’t remain at that customer site – unresolved failures in customer satisfaction roll forward into every site that a person moves on to. Trust me – I’ve seen it, I know managers who refuse to buy products from vendor X for exactly that reason, and they’ve carried it through as policy on sites they’ve moved on to.

Being upfront on the other hand encourages customers to believe you have their best interest at heart. For instance, companies are still happily buying LTO-4 tape libraries, particularly from vendors offering free LTO-5 drive swap-ins, or even in situations where they know there’ll be a (relatively) small fee.

What we need is for the vendors to start to frankly evaluate where they’re slapping NDAs about. Sometimes it’s like navigating through a sea of pamphlet wielders at a train station – or a voting booth.

Come on vendors – reappraise where and how frequently you’re throwing NDAs around and prove to us that you actually live in the same information-rich world that you want to supply products to. Tone the NDAs down and use them appropriately, and use them sparingly. If you want another analogy – it’s becoming a bit too “boy who cried wolf”, quite frankly.

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2010-03-08T16:41:32+00:00

xdroop: Oh Monday, thou art a scornful, terrible mistress.

2010-03-08T13:09:24+00:00

xdroop: Oh Monday, thou art a scornful, terrible mistress.

The most fascinating article on Scurvy that you will read this week.

2010-03-08T07:43:28+00:00

Scott and Scurvy

I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician James Lind proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be mixed in with sailors' grog, and scurvy ceased to be a problem on long ocean voyages.
But here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. Scott left a base abundantly stocked with fresh meat, fruits, apples, and lime juice, and headed out on the ice for five months with no protection against scurvy, all the while confident he was not at risk. What happened? [...]
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The story of how this happened is a striking demonstration of the problem of induction, and how progress in one field of study can lead to unintended steps backward in another.
An unfortunate series of accidents conspired with advances in technology to discredit the cure for scurvy. What had been a simple dietary deficiency became a subtle and unpredictable disease that could strike without warning. Over the course of fifty years, scurvy would return to torment not just Polar explorers, but thousands of infants born into wealthy European and American homes. And it would only be through blind luck that the actual cause of scurvy would be rediscovered, and vitamin C finally isolated, in 1932.

xdroop: "I won’t make it any more broken than it is now." http://tinyurl.com/y8wpz2d

2010-03-08T02:54:25+00:00

xdroop: "I won’t make it any more broken than it is now." http://tinyurl.com/y8wpz2d

5K on ServerFault

2010-03-07T21:24:02+00:00

Hooray. Broke 5K on ServerFault today.

(Previously.)

Healthy Leafs Barely Beat Sick Senators

2010-03-07T13:43:27+00:00

...or something. I didn't watch -- I was sick.

But really, the first two games back from the Olympic break have had the terrible dialed up to "10" here. I was watching the New York game, and the color guy was talking about the New York coach's decision to call a time out after an icing call to rest his guys... he says: "this is a smart decision, he knows this game could break out either way any time now."

And I said, are you and I watching the same game? Yes, the Senators are pressing, but it is a disorganized pressure -- the Rangers are playing smart, simple, steady hockey in their end. And when the pressure starts to go the other way, the Rangers are still playing smart, steady hockey, while the Senators are running around in their own end. And the Rangers then get rewarded with what, two or three quick goals?

I watched LeClaire's return two nights later, all seven minutes of it before he got the hook. I didn't blame LeClaire on either of those goals, they were clearly the fault of the guys ahead of him on the ice. Unfortunately for LeClaire, Clouston can't hook the rest of the team... Elliot played well in relief, but showed what kind of night it was when he left his net for the sixth attacker late in the third and the empty net goal goes in before Elliot even gets off the ice. (Was Karlsson laughing or crying at that?) Add in both Alfredsson and Spezza being unable to convert on a break, and it just wasn't the Senators' night.

I still can't believe that Murray thinks this team is set for a deep playoff run.

“Just in Case” Versus “Just in Time” Learning. Or Why Am I Learning This Useless Crud !?

2010-03-06T20:20:46+00:00

You need to learn what you don't know to succeed in Networking. Understanding "Just in Case" instead of "Just in Time" learning might help you to understand why.

xdroop: Time Lapse in NYC: http://vimeo.com/9679622

2010-03-06T04:08:28+00:00

xdroop: Time Lapse in NYC: http://vimeo.com/9679622

Secret agents: Make SNMP work for you | Network Administrator | TechRepublic.com

2010-03-06T04:01:14+00:00

Learning From The Olympics

2010-03-05T23:27:30+00:00

StayClassy discusses how the NHL could learn from the Olympics. I'm going to cherry-pick his list:

4-on-4 overtime: I like this idea. I've always liked 4-on-4, because even in the "gritty" NHL the players can't piss around hitting each other when it is 4-on-4. Also usually when you get to overtime in the regular season both teams want the win, so they put in the effort. I consider this a compromise between the there shouldn't be any difference between playoff OT and playoff regulation except sudden ~~death~~ victory camp and the dude just do the penalty shots and give me my winner now camp.
Less is more: Again I approve. Instead of sending 16 teams to the playoffs, just send 8. And drop the stupid division-leaders seeding, let's get the teams which can do the business to do the business. The hockey will be better and we'll start our summer two weeks earlier. This will never fly because the playoffs are not about hockey, the playoffs are about revenue.
Shorter broadcasts: I like the reduced TV time-outs and the general flow of the play. Again, this won't happen because of the lost revenue that fewer TV time-outs would cost. If I had a choice between fewer TV time-outs and shorter breaks between periods, I'd take the fewer TV time-outs because I can always go to the fridge while Don Cherry is on. Lets face it -- the talking heads talk during the intermissions because there's nothing else to do. What would you prefer -- a live shot of the lineup to use the can?

Overall I didn't care about the olympics. I think I watched the gold medal game more from withdrawal than any other factor. That said, it was a pretty good game.

xdroop: @ajventer google is your teacher.

2010-03-05T22:42:19+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer google is your teacher.

rands: Take the egg and Canadian bacon from the Egg McMuffin and put it on the McDouble: http://j.mp/aBX3DO

2010-03-05T22:03:26+00:00

rands: Take the egg and Canadian bacon from the Egg McMuffin and put it on the McDouble: http://j.mp/aBX3DO

xdroop: Cde -- it isn't dead yet!

2010-03-05T21:21:22+00:00

xdroop: Cde -- it isn't dead yet!

xdroop: @ajventer You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house / You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife

2010-03-05T16:57:39+00:00

xdroop: @ajventer You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house / You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife

If Nerds Can Learn Linux, Why Can't They Learn Not To Interrupt People?

2010-03-05T16:04:14+00:00

After my rant on The Big Bang's nerdy ol' Sheldon Cooper yesterday, a couple of people wondered: If nerds can master such arbitrarily complex things as the Linux operating and the complete rules of D&D, why can't they learn the rules of social norms?

Let me try and give you the answer from a nerd's perspective.

Imagine, if you will, you have just joined a company where showing your fingernails to someone was a grave offense. Like most polite societies, acquaintances usually wouldn't tell you that you'd just done the equivalent of walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper on your heels - they'd just snigger, and think less of you.

When told, you'd probably nod at first and go, "Oh, yeah, got it." But it's unnatural to walk around with your hands bunched in fists all the time, pressed against your chest. The amount of time you'd spend orchestrating how to reach for your soda during a meeting without flashing those impolite nails would seem unreal to you. And you'd have years of habit where you'd just reach out to type something without hunching over to hide it, and wham. People are insulted.

You'd probably forget a lot, because - as noted - only your good friends would tell you when you'd screwed up. You could nail-flash nine times out of ten and have people just quietly walk away, shaking their heads. You don't have a consistent mechanism to punish failure.

Furthermore, it seems so arbitrary. You'd look at your fingernails for hours, thinking, this? This is what people are mad about? That's so tiny a thing, it can't be. It would slide off your mind because it just makes no sense. You might think that there were other things you could do to make up for it, or conclude that the people who told you about the nails had to be overreacting to the seriousness of it.

But no. It's nails. It makes no sense, but they fuckin' hate fingernails here. And internalizing that would take years, if you just didn't decide that the whole thing was stupid and you just didn't want to play.

That's what it's like for nerds. I mean, it's crazy to me that people will think you're less intelligent if you have a stain on your shirt. In a sane world, I think, people would listen to what's coming out of your mouth and decide based on that, because cleanliness and grooming habits are a very separate thing from intelligence. But poor dress marks you as a yokel to many.

Likewise, to cite a more recent and subtler example, I'm continually amazed by how much better people react if I remember to arbitrarily throw "I think" before I state an opinion. I mean, it's coming out of my mouth, and it's not like there's some external arbiter of which sitcom is funniest, so of course it's an "I think." That's assumed. But, apparently, if I go out of my way to remind people that it's my opinion with a marker that makes little sense to me, they relax. So I do it.

Society makes no logical sense. And nerds? Nerds crave logical sense, to the point where they seek out hobbies that they can fuck up with their logical sense. If nerds become the dominant consumer of any given entertainment, it's fucking doomed.

Nerds want every question answered with a reason, even if that question shouldn't have one. Why is Superman strong? He gets his powers from the sun. Why does he get powers from the sun? Because his skin is a solar battery. Well, why is he still strong at night? Well, he's charged up for years as an adolescent, he has a lot of stored power. Ah ha! Well, in issue #626, the Parasite drained him of all energy before Batman saved him - shouldn't he be back to zero and weak by dawn? No, they say, because of...

Nerds want a Unifying Theory to everything. If Mulder said he grew up in Albany in one episode and in Long Island in another, it just won't do to say, "Well, it's a continuity error." Nerds will spend hours in forums, devising an some elaborate explanation to explain the Albany/Long Island error - an explanation so complex that it puts JFK assassination theorists to shame.

Once nerds infiltrate the creating sector of entertainment, they will destroy it by writing episodes that a) answer every question ever posed, and b) are so incomprehensible and dense that outsiders have no chance of enjoying it, ever.

There's no Unifying Theory to society. "Why is messy hair considered unsightly?" "Well, because it looks messy." "But... that model's hair is also uncombed, and yet you think he looks hot." "That's a styled messiness. That works on him." "Is there a rule that explains why some tousled hairs are messy and others are sexy?" "Not really. But you can memorize it, I guess."

So nerds? It often takes them years to fathom that a complex, inconsistent, and arbitrary system is in fact the way the world works. They'll often spend years trying out other hypotheses, certain that there's some other hidden mechanism that really makes things tick. And some, frustrated by the lack of coherency, will default to the "do unto others" rule - and be a royal pain in the ass, because many nerds actually like being interrupted in mid-sentence when they're wrong.

Which is not to say that there aren't a lot of nerds who have learned to read people correctly. You just don't notice them, because they have successfully passed in your world. I suspect a lot of the readers of this journal have internalized these crazy rules, even if they don't understand them, and as such you may not mark them as a terminal case.

Deep down, though, even though you may think of them as "normal," they're secretly baffled and often irritated by the way things are. Yet unlike the lost nerd segments, they've shrugged and knuckled under as a necessity. Then they go to favorite forums or cons, where they can, for a weekend or an evening, interact in the way that they feel is sane.

TechRepublic Network Administrator: Secret agents: Make SNMP work for you

2010-03-05T14:00:43+00:00

Blogger Mark Underwood lays out the ways you can use SNMP agents to monitor network devices, and even set it up to send software alerts as well.

—————————————————————————————

Out there, working for you, are agents. Feed them a little port UDP/161,162 and they’ll deliver a dossier on many network devices, in the form of a Management Information Base (MIB).

Just got hired after the last network administrator got promoted to CIO? Grab a free network management tool that has an SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) agent listener (SpiceWorks, Net-SNMP, NetXMS, Nagios, Zenoss and many more), then head over to the local Wi-Fi-enabled coffee establishment. Chances are good you’ll have charts and diagrams to visualize what you’ve gotten yourself into.

SNMP considerations

Here’s a list of pros and cons for using SNMP agents, which I’ll discuss in more detail below.

Pros

Intrusion tripwires
Quick network overview
Indispensible for switches representing single point of failure
Proactive warnings for failing hardware
Enable performance monitoring
Detect software failures and anomalies
Best practice for industry standard, interoperable device descriptions with ontologies

Cons

False Positives
Log management
Too much information; can’t see the forest
Complex monitoring environment
Configuration Management
Agent authentication and default public settings
Multiple agent message formats

SNMP basics

The basic notion of SNMP is that of an agent-based notification system. Each device, even many low level switches and printers, is equipped with an agent ready to do your bidding. The notification, or “trap,” can be generated by an agent developed by the device manufacturer, or listener software can monitor systems for specific events, such as particular items of interest in an event log, and send traps to an SNMP trap handler or other network management tool.

SNMP can be thought of as one framework within a number of overlapping frameworks that include Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Web Based Enterprise Management (WEBM) and the Common Information Model (CIM). CIM has evolved into an entire object model that DMTF describes using graphical language taken from the Unified Modeling Language (UML).

SNMP does Windows or Linux

Microsoft has fully embraced the CIM model in WMI. For example, open a command window on many Vista, Windows 7, or Server 2008 machines and type:

winrm enumerate wmicimv2/Win32_ComputerSystem

The tool will list a machine’s basic hardware information such as the motherboard manufacturer, but also Domain membership, status of the administrative password, server roles, current user name, machine name, boot options, and more. Using WMI, you can deck out the walls of your cubicle with ample justification for upgrading the server farm. Figure A shows such SNMP-enabled charts. Similar monitoring capabilities are available for Linux. For instance, the free WebNMS product implements an SNMP agent but also offers management through HTTP.

Figure A

Click to enlarge.

Windows Graphs from SNMPBOY.MSFT.NET

Worth the effort and cost?

The hurried and harried network administrator would be right to question how much effort to put into studying SNMP and related topics. The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), primary custodian of knowledge about SNMP and related topics, insists that its tutorial documents are suitable for “management application developers, instrumentation developers, information technology managers and system administrators.” That may be over-reaching. Scott Neumann of the CIM Road Map Task Force describes CIM as “the most developed and widely accepted model for describing an electrical network.” That said, the subject is as deep and as complex as big or heterogeneous networks can get.

SNMP for software?

Here’s where the fun begins. SNMP agents are not only for physical gadgetry. For instance, Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) can be tweaked to respond to alerts from Oracle VM, Oracle Database, or Fusion Middleware. The use case Oracle offers is its Contact Center Anywhere (CCA) application. Oracle walks prospective SNMP users through useful telephony-related traps, but also straightforward problems such as software license failures, “Malicious Call Trace,” Automated Call Distribution Voice Mail, etc. These examples show how an application could be engineered to help managers understand its performance, to automatically escalate certain conditions, or to implement enterprise-specific workflow. These could result in exciting improvements in the way software is designed.

Be advised that there is risk in this Spy-vs-Spy world. SNMP’s original designers were a trusting lot, and security seemed to have taken a back seat to disclosure. SNMP “community strings” function as passwords between the manager and the agent. The community string appears in every packet sent between them. Don’t risk having your SNMP agents become double agents. Don’t accept the default values of “public” or “private” for community strings. “Private” is especially problematic as it may permit an attacker to modify a device’s configuration. When it makes sense to do so, and when the device allows it, limit which IP’s are permitted to access SNMP agents. While not all network devices support it, SNMP Version 3 features improved agent encryption, which reduces the risk of man-in the-middle network attacks that could not only discover how to get out of your DMZ but could potentially reconfigure devices.

Buyer beware tips

A comprehensive buying guide is beyond the scope of this brief post, but here are a few important tips to get you started:

Keep in mind that even a small network will have hundreds, even thousands of “devices.” If pricing is based on a device count, round up. Way up.
“Automatic Network discovery” is great in principle, but it assumes everything is going your way - i.e., that both agent and manager can see one another.
There are hosted as well as internally managed solutions for SNMP monitoring.
Your time investment will add up. It won’t necessarily be all in one sitting. Prepare to invest serious time in making use of SNMP alerts. If you’re on a project schedule, the community / commercial options can be a way to get help without a big investment.

Recommended readings

Whemsolutions.com tutorial on the DTMF Common Information Model.
SNMP Penetration Testing Technical Note from SANS Institute.
TCP/IP Guide’s entry on SNMP Version 3 (SNMPv3).
Cisco’s Guide to SNMP.

xdroop: Look out, #TigerWoods -- your caddy is mad at you http://tinyurl.com/yfz625e ...and this is what passes for news in this country?

2010-03-05T03:27:52+00:00

xdroop: Look out, #TigerWoods -- your caddy is mad at you http://tinyurl.com/yfz625e ...and this is what passes for news in this country?

xdroop: is about to commit the biggest firewall change set we've ever done. Hold on to your butts. #jurassicpark

2010-03-04T20:05:06+00:00

xdroop: is about to commit the biggest firewall change set we've ever done. Hold on to your butts. #jurassicpark