Author Archives: Mike O'Connor

Browser add-ins — including spell-checking for web-based forms

I'm a terrible speller (although much better now that I get constant feedback from my word processor). I've become so dependent on the spell-checking that I find it bothersome when it's *not* available — as is the case when filling in web-based forms like this one that I'm using to compose this blog entry.

But my troubles are over. Thanks to Julio's recent post about extensions to Firefox and Internet Explorer I'm now happily spell-checking my blog entries with the IESpell spell-checking add-in to Explorer. It's free (for personal use anyway). Lots of other handy stuff out there too. Thanks for the pointer Julio!

Watch my posts become more erudite!

Applying lessons learned during Y2k, I rediscover Peter de Jager

I'm heading into a big project, and as part of preparing for it I revisited the site I maintained while participating in the Y2k preparations for my home town of St Paul, MN.

Just about every single Y2k link on that site is busted now, although one is selling some strange kind of medical nostrum that's not likely to live up to it's claims of Improving My Life In Every Way.

But one of the links led me to the new site run by Peter de Jager. For those of you who don't remember, Peter was considered by many to be the person who first voiced the Y2k problem in terms that were compelling enough to get people off the dime. Opinions vary — some think Peter was a nutcase, sounding the alarm for a non-problem — and I agree, Peter got a little shrill at times. But I also think he's a very good thinker and did us all a great service by sticking to his guns.

I'm glad to see that Peter is still thinking, writing and active. I recommend his publications pages if you are interested in large-scale change management projects (like I am).

Network Attached Storage (NAS) is for the masses now

Another instance of a huge price drop changing the nature of a market. I just bought a quarter of a terabyte of backup storage for the server that this weblog and my other web stuff runs on. How much do you think a quarter of a terabyte (250 gigabytes) in a network attached, standalone backup server cost me? Remember, not too long ago people were paying $50,000 for a terabyte…

Well, i just paid $350 ($300 with the rebate) for a Buffalo Linkstation.

Those of you who've messed around with NAS and SAN know that those things are often a pain in the neck to install too, right? Well, this one took longer to get out of the box than it did to get it up and configured on the network.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be NAS vendors. The world has changed. Oh, did I mention that it's a print server too? And that you can hang an additional quarter of a terabyte on there for another few hunnert bux?

Friends of mine at ETA Systems used to say “a supercomputer is defined as the fastest computer of the moment” and the same can be said of NAS and SAN. So I imagine a few of you will point out that this isn't a very big storage system these days. But it's big enough for a whole lot of folks that the EMC's of the world used to go after.

Pretty cool gizmo.

Philadelphia wireless project — I can't make the numbers work

Here's my daily dose of rants and puzzlements. Today's revolves around the recently-announced wireless project in Philadelphia. Like lots of folks, I'm hoping they'll make it go. Like lots of folks, I can't quite figure out how they're going to make the numbers work. Here's why.

Get an envelope out, we gonna do some figuring on the back of it. Let's see here, the Philly folks say they're going to light up the whole town for free Internet access. Ok, great. Presume all the geek problems away and let's say they get it lit. Now, if they really finally run with “free” they've basically replaced all the ISPs in town. Well, maybe that's ok. After all maybe this is an amenity that cities should do, like roads and sewers and stuff. Here's where the numbers get hard…

If residential Internet access is free, then most everybody will switch to it. Some significant percentage of 1,000,000 households. First “numbers” problem — how much is upstream access for all those folks going to cost??

Get your envelope out. Let's say we give everybody up to 3 mBits (kinda like cable). And let's assume that people aren't all going to use it at the same time. That's called “oversubscription” and everybody does it – ISPs, phone companies, you name it. What oversubscription ratio? For the sake of the envelope, say 30-times. So for every megabit of upstream access, we can sell 30 mBits of “downstream” or customer access. Or 10 customers (remember? 3 mBits/customer). So for every 10 customers, we need another megabit of upstream access for those peak times (after supper).

If most of our 1,000,000 households switch to our free service, we gonna need a *lot* of upstream access. Let's say 20% of the households sign up. 200,000 customers means we have to buy 20,000 MBits of upstream access. 20 GigaBits! Wow! A T1 line is 1.5 MBits, so that would be 13,000 T1's. That a lot. Ok, Internet access is overbuilt and getting really cheap, so maybe they've got a really good deal. Maybe $10/month per MBit (that's cheaper than anything I've heard of, but hey, benefit of the doubt that's my motto…). $200,000/month for upstream. $2,400,000 a year of taxpayer money…

Once the customers have signed up for Internet, any time anything goes wrong with their computer that they can't understand, who they gonna call? The ISP, that's who. So now Philly's got to provide help-desk support for 200,000 customers. Let's say each customer calls once a year with a hard question that takes an hour to answer. 200,000 hours a year. People work 2000 hours a year, so that's 100 people answering help-desk calls at, say $50,000/year. Hmm, $5,000,000/year…

See where this is heading? I could run through all the rest of the stuff that an ISP does — network maintenance, upgrades, fixing people's connections, paying the bills, etc. Roll all that up in a ball and it looks to me like you've got at least $10-15 million/year to keep it running.

On the one hand, that's a lot of money. On the other hand, compared to losing money on ballparks and stadiums and roads and sewers and economic incentives for people to move in, maybe it's not. I'd love to see the numbers for that project.

"IT doesn't matter" debate

I missed this rumpus when it first happened. Nick Carr wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2002 called “IT Doesn't Matter” which triggered a heck of a debate.

I ran into the debate yesterday when CNET published this summary and rebuttal on their site.

I like the premise — that IT is becoming a commodity and needs to be managed that way. Lots of interesting parallels to other industries — electricity, railroads and (a new one for me) machine tools. There's been a very healthy debate over the article, which Nick has collected on this page for your reading enjoyment.

This is another angle on my earlier rant about why tech startups are a dead end.

The notion of "enough money"

Marshall Goldsmith's got a good one in Fast Company this week… Here's the link to his article in which he says (correctly) that we should “stop obsessing about goals and focus on mission.”

I thought the whole piece was good, but the part that spoke the most for me was the personal side of the story. Here's a good sample Quote:

The canyons of Wall Street are littered with victims of goal obsession.

I asked one hard-driving deal maker, “Mike, why do you work all of the time?”

He replied, “Why do you think? Do you think I love this place? I am working so hard because I want to make a lot of money!”

I continued my inquiry, “Do you really need this much money?”

“I do now,” Mike grimaced. “I just got divorced for the third time. With three alimony checks every month, I am almost broke.”

“Why do you keep getting divorced?” I asked.

The answer came out as a sad sigh. “All three wives kept complaining that I worked all the time. They have no idea how hard it is to make this much money!”

I've always felt that it's important to know how much is “enough money.” Keeping that “enough is enough” notion in mind has kept me out of a lot of trouble over the years, and left me a lot more time to mess around with my family, friends and quirky sideline interests.

XP SP2, virus scanning and adware blocking software

Everybody's hyperventilating about how SP2 “breaks stuff” today — here's a typical article that ran last night. I wish they'd describe this in less dramatic terms. 'Turns out they're talking about the impact of having the firewall turned on by default, instead of turned off (which is the default up until now). So a better version of the headline would be “XP SP2 needs to be reconfigured if you use certain apps” or some such…

Which got me thinking — why doesn't Microsoft bundle anti virus and anti adware software in too? Sure, it'll annoy the companies that have made a business out of fixing MS flaws, but so what? 'Sure would make life easier…

Assuming this will never happen, here are the (free – well, donations-accepted) packages I currently use.

AVG Anti-Virus software

Spybot Search and Destroy – anti adware/spyware software.

I was pleased to see that Consumer Reports just gave Spybot the nod as a “good thing” in their latest issue.

RNC — a time of great innovation

Ok, I'm a Democrat. Might as well get that out of the way early. But if the tables were reversed and all these folks were aiming all this cool community technology at the DNC, I'd still be pumping out my engineer's victory salute.

Local Twin Cities Type Guy Paul Schmelzer has written up a great piece on his blog summarizing the technology that will be used by various demonstrators at the RNC in a few weeks.

I'm glad to see that the community-technology movement is still coming up with great new ideas to tweak the establishment and have some fun at the same time. Carry on, peepul!

Rhetorical (and visual) dishonesties, and their countermeasures

It's been kindof a slow week for the blog — I dunno, just nothing much catching my eye. But this piece is a great list of ways to lie — both words and pictures — as well as countermeasures.

Here's the sample (via Boing Boing) that caught my eye

(8) The argument that we should not make efforts against X which is admittedly evil because there is a worse evil Y against which our efforts should be directed (pp 50-52)

Dealt with by pointing out that this is a reason for making efforts to abolish Y, but no reason for not also making efforts to get rid of X.

(9) The recommendation of a position because it is a mean between two extremes (pp 52-54)

Dealt with by denying the usefulness of the principle as a method of discovering the truth. In practice, this can most easily be done by showing that our own view also can be represented as a mean between two extremes.

What if congress could vote electronically?

I woke up wondering what would change if legislators (at any level, local through international) could vote over the Internet. What’s the implication of that (inevitable, although maybe not in my lifetime) change in the way that representative government takes place?

Here are some initial thoughts before heading off to the farm this morning.

Legislators;

– would spend more time in their home district

– would be more influenced by the voices of the people they represent

– would be harder for lobbyists to reach

– wouldn’t need to be paid as much (since they would only need one residence)

– would spend less time on travel

I think there are some great quality, performance and cost enhancements possible here. I’ll keep editing this for a few days…