When demand dictates direction
Regarding Kevin Tolly’s column, “IPv6 enterprise outlook”: I agree with Tolly on the empirical evidence regarding the lack of uptake with IPv6 implementation. More than seven years ago, I started a company called Vsyxx (pronounced V6) with the aspiration of servicing the massive IPv6 changeover required. The company still exists on paper. However, I know that this is an “eat your vegetables, they’re good for you” scenario. Of course profit-driven organizations are not going to implement a technology unless it increases the bottom line or has Y2K implications. This is where government has to play the heavy and drive the technology market with the big stick. Although I’m not a big fan of government regulation, there is a place and time for it.
The current parallel is the comparatively low fuel efficiency standards for passenger cars in the U.S. By letting market demand dictate technical direction, the U.S. has found itself well behind most of the developed world in dealing with petroleum-fueled energy and transportation issues.
I hope those in the IT/telecom sector can look across the automotive aisle and see that large-scale technology changes rarely creep up slowly; they tend to have tipping points. So we can eat our vegetables and grow up big and strong, or routinely find ourselves last pick on the world’s fields of competition.
L. Scott Taylor
Telecom and network consultant
Vsyxx
Jacksonville, Fla.
The human factor
In his “BackSpin” column, “Collecting data for the wrong reasons”, Mark Gibbs hits on one of my pet peeves: companies and/or their managers who think they can control the bottom line by removing the humanity from their product or service. If that were possible, everything would be sold from a vending machine.
How many Web-building sites advise Web designers to make visitors aware of the human beings behind the business? Use “I” or “we” in the copy to make the site less sterile. Use the names of some of the staff and even include a picture or two. Try to let the visitor know that you aren’t a faceless corporation or a con artist hiding behind the Web’s anonymity.
The clubs and bars people tend to frequent are the ones where the bartender doctors the shots a bit. Plus, the quicker the customer gets a buzz, the more likely he is to spend more. There’s so much markup on the alcohol it’s ridiculous to be so stingy. How many people, after watching the bartender measure out a shot using calipers, wouldn’t lean over to their friend and say, “After this drink let’s go to a place I know where you can get a real drink”?
Another good example similar to a bar is the Subway sandwich shops in my area. The ones that are crowded are the ones where they toss a handful of whatever you ask for onto the sandwich without a thought to the amount. On the other hand I’ve gone to shops where the manager was actually standing over the servers in order to count the number of black olive slices they put on a sandwich. It was an unpleasant experience and the sandwich sucked. These shops are rarely busy. So for the cost of a few extra veggies, they pass up return business. The busiest shop I go to is either too busy to worry about what quantities they throw on the sandwich or they are busy because they don’t worry about it. I don’t know which, but I know they are always packed and I always feel that I got a good sandwich for the price.
This may seem like a little thing, but when you compare the cost of adding a little more sauce to a shot of bourbon or a few more peppers to a sandwich to the cost of advertising of any kind, where is the best ROI? Add in the cost of the RFID tags and the software or even the time the manager spends worrying about such drivel instead of hiring people he can trust to do the job and we’re talking poor management decisions compounded by more poor management decisions driving costs up and the business into the ground.
Gerald Lanning
Programmer/analyst
American Printing House for the Blind
Louisville, Ky.
While Mark Gibbs’ “BackSpin” column, “Collecting data for the wrong reasons” is entertaining, he provides poor advice to risk managers. Auditing a bartender’s activities in order to save costs is a far cry from an organization monitoring network traffic for dangerous, malicious, or careless employee activities. And while no employee (or insider) wants to feel as though Big Brother is watching, the simple truth is organizations have both the moral right and the legal need to proactively monitor insider behavior.
Contrary to what Gibbs states, monitoring does not incite disloyal or dysfunctional behavior — it actively discourages it. In his recent “Security Strategies” newsletter, “The eyes have it” (http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2006/0717sec2.html), M.E. Kabay discusses a study by biologists that proves that individuals behave better when they believe they are being watched. According to the study, “This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.”
Cameras for catching speeding drivers work. Closed circuit televisions curtail retail shoplifting. Like it or not, being watched makes us all act more decently and more lawfully. A private organization that monitors its own employees on its own networks — in order to avoid fraud, mistakes and data breaches — is simply doing the smart thing. After all, if business risk managers don’t take steps to protect the organization’s reputation and to shield it from liability, who will?
Sean Steele
Co-founder
infoLock Technologies
Arlington, Va.
IP-enabled appliances
Regarding the “NetBuzz” column, “Your washer’s calling and the dryer’s on IM”: I think the point of IP-enabled appliances is not just the user’s convenience of remote control, but also a safety net for America. If we start attaching some of our appliances to the Internet, it potentially gives our power suppliers the ability to shed load selectively without causing blackouts.
We have many types of appliances that might be connected and controlled from the Internet. An example is air conditioning: is it better to have it fall back to 80 degrees during a power shortage or to have blackouts and spoiled food in the refrigerator? Another example: do I really need the pool filter to run 24 hours a day, or can it be shut off for the afternoon if necessary? If the power company can tell some of my appliances to hold off an hour or step back to a lower consumption setting temporarily until the power grid is able to deal with the load and help prevent a blackout, that’s a benefit. I can see being offered a lower rate for electricity based on the number of appliances that you allow the utility to control.
As a nation we have several options regarding our electric consumption. In the past we have always added to capacity, but building new power plants is expensive and unpopular. We can conserve by replacing appliances with new and hopefully more efficient ones. Or, we can get creative with our consumption. This can help because during the day, power needs vary greatly; afternoons have the highest load and midnight to 6 a.m. the lowest. Some utilities do this now with commercial customers — lower rates for power with the condition that the plant may need to be shut down for a few hours occasionally. Rolling blackouts are this type of conservation being imposed on us.
Bob Mazzi
Franklinville, N.J.
