[ngw] Google and Mcafee

Randy Grein randygrein at comcast.net
Fri Apr 23 16:00:49 UTC 2010 

Well, I'm a fan of the classics - and while I don't know your track  
record I find my predictions have been routinely ignored by customers  
and managers. As for Star Wars, while Lucas is a great film maker his  
plotting and writing skills leave a lot to be desired. Google Star  
Wars and David Brin, he explains it better than I can. (grin)

In large I agree with your views on cloud computing. We have all been  
around long enough to live through several waves of consolidation/ 
dispersal, this is just a twist on that and not even a new one. The  
move to PCs in the early 80s was a response to the lack of response by  
IT, networking brought connectivity which magnified the resulting  
benefits - and IT eventually enveloped the discipline, swallowing the  
budget as well as the responsibility. IT then pushed for a move to  
'all microsoft, all the time' which drove costs out of sight;  
virtualization was in part a response to this and (as far as I've  
seen) has not resulted in reduced costs, reduced complexity and only  
marginally increased reliability. In search of those advantages  
(mostly cost) we now have cloud computing - virtualization of the  
entire network. The cloud can be internal or external and the  
differences should not matter except for cost; if any difference is  
discernible then the cloud metaphor breaks down and we need to think  
of computing quanta in decision making.

To answer Richard's later post on the subject he too makes several  
solid points but fails at others. It's true that relatively few IT  
departments engage in the kind of disaster planning and testing they  
need to ensure continuous operations, but on the other hand neither do  
many 'cloud' suppliers. About 12 years ago a client lost most  
functionality in their Eugene, Or. office when the primary ISP  
providing bandwidth to the town abruptly closed. The entire area went  
from good bandwidth to crowding onto a single T1 connection. User  
login (netware) was still possible but moving files or remote access  
was not; the partial outage lasted for months. Or a couple years ago I  
was consulting part-time for a VOIP provider (cloud services if ever  
there was one). Shortsighted contract negotiations for bandwidth  
caused sporadic jitter problems that shot call quality all to hell;  
the problem took close to a year to resolve because the company had no  
control and next to no instrumentation.

Or there's the Northwest problem - last I checked our nexus here is  
housed in one building in downtown Seattle; a single terrorist attack  
or earthquake of sufficient magnitude to take down that building cuts  
off the Northwest from the rest of the world. The same building houses  
many cloud service providers. Are people worried about it? Sure. Are  
they doing anything to fix the problem? Probably not, it's 'someone  
else's problem by contract.

This is, of course a third part of the equation. Within Washington  
State I have certain specific rights for privacy as long as I deal  
instate, if OTOH I deal with a company based in another state my  
rights may be different, and enforcement will be complicated by  
interstate commerce. Worse, if an extranational is involved in  
practice my rights and recourse may be cut to near zero. One of the  
scariest things I heard about when working for an accounting firm 4  
years ago was the practice of offshoring tax returns. Processing was  
being done in areas where privacy rights were limited at best and  
international treaties made legal recourse impossible.

While it should be clear that an outside party specializing in  
security and reliability CAN do better in these areas than a smaller  
and generalized IT department it's a big, big step from can to does.  
(The current financial meltdown should be ample evidence of the  
falsity of economies of scale.) I will continue to be skeptical of  
'the next thing' and insist on some evidence before buying.

Randy Grein

On Apr 21, 2010, at 8:59 PM, Gregg A. Hinchman wrote:

> You know I prefer a different name than Cassandra -if you will.   
> LOL.  I think more along the lines of Qui-Gon Jin --maybe Yoda -but  
> really Yoda did not see the evil in front of him -yet Qui (assuming  
> you read Star Wars as I have been) had some thought on it.  I like  
> to base my thoughts in the 'Living Force' known as the 'here and  
> now' or reality...with just about a 5 min. glimpse at the future  
> Force.  Because to quote Yoda -"Always in motion the future is".
>
> People can say what they want, time will tell. But reality is -we  
> will move to cloud only to find that we will move back to self- 
> supported IT in the future much like the PC movement was away from  
> centralized computing and the VM movement is a move back to it.   
> Frankly I start to wonder if its the Emperor playing 2 sides against  
> the middle for increased revenue....ah...but that's just a bit more  
> Star Wars in reality than we all need.  LOL!!
>
> Oh and that reminds me -US travel adversary for India -New Delhi.   
> Apparently attacks are 'in the works' and Americans may be the  
> target.  Guess that's better than it happening in Bangalore.  Think  
> about that 'unthinkable' moment in US Tech Support and see where it  
> takes you.
>
> Take Care.
>
> Gregg A. Hinchman
> Consultant
> Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com
> www.HinchmanConsulting.com
> A Novell Consulting Partner
> 317.329.0288 Office
> 413.254.2819 eFax
>
> "Courage is doing what is right."
>
> "Do not be bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist  
> ones. All systems of thought are guiding means, not absolute  
> truth."  Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk.
>
> Book Travel @: www.booknewtravelnow.com
>
>
> >>>
> From:	Randy Grein<randygrein at comcast.net>
> To:	ngw at ngwlist.com
> Date:	4/21/2010 11:36 PM
> Subject:	Re: [ngw] Google and Mcafee
> Greg, you echo my thoughts exactly. Which unfortunately means you  
> are a Cassandra and will be ignored as irrelevant, foolish and  
> 'lacking in understanding of business matters'. That you're spot on  
> seems to have no bearing....
> Randy Grein
>
> On Apr 21, 2010, at 5:19 PM, Gregg A. Hinchman wrote:
>
>> I thought these were both interesting.
>>
>> First -Google and its continue non-protection of privacy.
>>
>> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7612988/Google-not-interested-in-privacy.html
>>
>> My opinion:
>> I am not a fan of the 'cloud' mentality because no one can protect  
>> a companies -let alone a persons data as well as the individual  
>> person or corporation -because they have 'skin' in the game.  And  
>> then there is the 'connection' issue.  When an organization jumps  
>> on the path to 'cloud' all data so they can eliminate IT -or much  
>> of it- they forget that in an outage of the Internet -they have  
>> lost all communication both to the outside world and between their  
>> own employees.  Now I know my opinion will sound like its old  
>> fashion but let me ask -have we ever had internet outages? Or,  
>> complete air traffic outages?  Thinking the unthinkable seems to be  
>> what takes place more often then not these days.  Consider back a  
>> few years when the Internet DNS servers had a 'hack' built into  
>> them that would have easily exposed us all. Or now - http://news.techworld.com/security/3218219/domain-registrars-lagging-behind-over-dnssec-security/?olo=rss 
>>  .
>>
>> Second -Mcafee -can you say 'Ooops!'
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100421/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_mcafee_antivirus_flaw 
>>  .
>>
>> Limited Opinion here: You need AV but yet a company should do  
>> better testing before releasing.  You cannot tell me this could not  
>> have been caught in the lab long before release.
>>
>> Just two interesting events.
>>
>>
>> Take Care.
>>
>> Gregg A. Hinchman
>> Consultant
>> Gregg at HinchmanConsulting.com
>> www.HinchmanConsulting.com
>> A Novell Consulting Partner
>> 317.329.0288 Office
>> 413.254.2819 eFax
>>
>> "Courage is doing what is right."
>>
>> "Do not be bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist  
>> ones. All systems of thought are guiding means, not absolute  
>> truth."  Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk.
>>
>> Book Travel @: www.booknewtravelnow.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> ngw mailing list
>> ngw at ngwlist.com
>> http://ngwlist.com/mailman/listinfo/ngw
>
> _______________________________________________
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