Month: February 2017

Controlled Obsolescence

One of the promises of the new electronic age was that reliability and product life would be improved.  While a transistor can live longer than an electromechanical relay for the purposes of switching or controlling, it may not meet the promise of reliability purported years ago.

The enemies of all electronic devices are heat and uncontrolled currents and voltages.  Modern electronics run on five and twelve volts.  All devices used in the home and business desktop tend to use this by way of power supplies which convert the power from the outlets in the wall to something usable by the electronics of the device.

Troubleshooting those devices requires a complete set of documents that detail the schematic design as well as the expected outputs from large scale integrated devices used within the device.  In some instances test points are available and documented well by the manufacturer so technicians can service the device once it is in use.

Because the actual cost to manufacture these devices is so incredibly cheap compared to the old methods, things like the radio, phone, television, and home appliance are only made today using this new technology.

Unfortunately the economies in manufacture are not always passed along. While it is true that a modern smart phone can run circles around the supercomputers of yore, they burn up on the dash of your car in Arizona and cannot survive a short fall unless somehow “armored” with an accessory surround.

To make matters worse manufacturers and marketeers have prevented the distribution of complete manuals for owners as a nuisance and unnecessary cost for the products.  Citing that users are not concerned with such minutia, the obfuscation of operation, care, and maintenance information is lost and or unavailable.  The Internet forums are testament to how rampant that is.

What is really unsettling is the engineered death of the device.  An example I love to cite is how the microcontroller on your self-cleaning oven, which approaches one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, is located immediately above the oven and in the exhaust stream from the oven.  It stands little chance of survival in the long run.

Then there is the abuse of the customer by way of grossly overpricing the replacement parts and service technician costs.   Electronic controls on that same oven cost half of the price of a new oven for an electronic controller that was manufactured for a few dollars.

Early unexpected device death is easily taken care of by replacing the device.  That is why people buy new products. They want a warranty to cover defects in materials and workmanship.  The entire package is replaced.  The defective device is then often returned to the manufacturer and shredded for recycling or refurbished for discounted resale.

So what the oven example shows is that twenty dollars of decorated sheet metal with exotic features provided by a microcontroller and a few switches plus a few fans and heating elements will sell new for six hundred to several thousand dollars and become unusable or unreliable within a designed period of time.

To further the need to replace the oven, the cost of problem diagnostics and replacement of the parts becomes prohibitively expensive.  A fresh customer is born.

What do you think about the “Kleenex” age of modern technology?

BearTracks RCPM

In the last of the seventies and first part of the eighties bulletin boards were the means for file sharing and messaging.  In searching the Internet today I have found that I was a pioneer.

In 1980, after building a few S100 bus systems and microprocessor based machine controls, I put an Osborne computer online for dial-up access.  I stored files useful to CPM (Control Program for Microcomputer) users.

At the time Gary Kildahl’s CP/M from his Digital Research company was the going thing.  While programs were being packaged with and for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Osborne, there were many more to come by way of BBS sharing and contributions from the early users and developers.

Famous works like Ward Christensen’s Xmodem made file transfers on analog telephone line feasible.  In the very early days we used “glass teletypes” to copy texts of assembly language files which we could in turn compile on our own systems.  Ward’s work made that much easier. Read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Christensen

The first BearTracks RCPM (Remote Control Program for Microcomputer) used an assembly code version of a program called BYE.  It ran in the 48 kilobyte transient program area of the early machines while delivering, directory services, file transfer services, and messaging services.   At a point in the mid eighties I switched to a Pascal program called ROS by Steve Fox.

Xmodem and subsequent versions with variable length transmission packet sizing allowed a user to move a considerable amount of data reliably over poor quality POTS analog lines.

Remember that an analog phone line had a limited usable bandwidth. Poor transmission quality could easily reduce data transfer rates.  First systems used acoustically coupled modem devices and use 110 baud and 300 baud as the maximum speed.  Advances in modems made progress in steps of 1200, 2400, 9600,19,200, 28,800, and 33,600 baud.  Compression and noise cancellation advances over that same time made realized data rates of as high as 115,000 kilobits per second.  You can read more about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

The BearTracks RCPM used Hayes and US Robotics modems throughout the operating years 1981 through 1990.  The computers were Osborne I, Kaypro II, and Kaypro 10.

IBM did not come into the market with the IBM Personal Computer until 1981.  Around that time Digital Research’s CP/M had an installed base of some three hundred thousand systems worldwide.  The early offerings from IBM were meager and because IBM chose not to pursue litigation against copying of the BIOS design of the systems a clone industry was born.  IBM PC Compatibles outsold their offerings and usually were much less expensive.

With the growth of the PCDOS and MSDOS operating system user base the BearTracks RCPM began offering CPM and DOS files.  The CPM users were generally more technical, sought code, and were very helpful in debugging and extending code offerings.  The DOS users were much less willing to perform in that manner and contributed little to the software offerings.  The BBS days of free and open exchange were over by the end of the eighties.

While most efforts on the part of BBS users were a balance of uploading and downloading with freely offered assistance to those seeking help, the benevolent and altruistic mood of the new DOS users and developers approached mercenary in their nature.  Over the decade intellectual property theft, copyright infringement, and blatant disregard for the original contributors to a software or code page caused me to ultimately shut down the BearTracks RCPM as it became a thankless pursuit.

In retrospect I would not have done anything differently.  I learned at a fantastic rate and made good money doing BBS work.  I marketed my software electronically before there was any such thing as Internet ecommerce.  The BBS activity prepared me for the next step of Internet based services offerings that I would make.  That Internet experience feeds me well today.

In the early seventies I stood in the Palo Alto Research Center looking at Alto and listened to Bob Metcalfe talk about this new thing called Ethernet.  I never imagined how much change I would then see in my lifetime.

– Bernard Lambert February 15, 2017 (forty plus years later)

Hitler Is At Work

Read or watch these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler’s_rise_to_power

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Hitler-come-to-power

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm

Adolf Hitler

 

After you digest this, would you not agree tht DJ is emulating Hitler? Please post your comments!

Mismanagement

A former colleague sent me an email about how the latest manager of their department quit after just one week on the job.  This was in the wake of the dismissal of the former boss, a twenty plus years veteran of the corporation, and the retirement of their second, another twenty plus years veteran, shortly thereafter.  Months would pass before a new manager would be hired.

I had just left the corporation as my contract was not extended after seventeen months. In the last of the months I was assigned to a “NOC” which was really only a relabeling of the “Integrated Command Center”; an administrative group which notifies team leads when corporate systems run afoul.

While the room is filled with displays, few deliver meaniful information and are too small to read.  In my tenure I identified the lack of complete monitoring of all the one hundred and forty applications, the lack of integration of the toolsets in use, and the failure of any of the displays to provide proactive capabilities for the “NOC” team.

This situation was exacerbated by the total lack of training, nonexistent documentation of processes or procedures, dire staffing shortages, and unfinished monitoring tools of every ilk.  Further the team skillsets were groomed for responding by starting a bridge call or alert paging of a subject matter expert.  No direct intervention and remediation was allowed.

There were manual health checks going on while completion of automated health checks went unfinished.  This consumed hours of work effort daily and prevented work on remediations.  This vestigial practice also required hourly updates to upper management.

Emergency change control processes in the corporation were requiring three day prior approvals by a team of executives without any comprehensive understanding of the complex interrelationships among the technology pieces.  Their preoccupation seemed to be to prevent priority one events which adversely affected their bonuses.

I was sure the new manager had a grip on this and all the other issues within the ICC.  He was well informed as to the needs of a “NOC” and quickly became aware of the problems facing him.  Within the first week his findings and interactions with higher management caused him to rethink the “opportunity” to which he had just committed.  He promptly left the corporation.

Now I really liked the folks I worked with at that corporation’s ICC and the network teams.  I tried my best to make the work easier for them and help take up some of the load where it was possible.  When I heard of the new manager quitting just one week after arriving I sent this response to an ICC team member:

< name deleted to protect from retaliation>,
I’m afraid I may have informed the man too well. I think that the financial issues are substantial. Because everyone avoids talking money except at the very high levels, then it’s a surprise to everyone when they get down to the actual nut cutting.

The same thing is happening in places like the build area for networking where impossible expectations are raised and no resources are provided or no means are provided to accomplish the desired outcomes. Wishing in one hand and craping in the other.

Don’t despair however because cash is flowing into your pocket and they can demand their ass off but the human being can only do so much and you are not accountable for anything more than what you can do in your time. Long gone are the days where basic human respect are part and parcel of the job.

Young managements, and this company has some very young management, cannot possibly raise a reasonable expectation and carry with it the respect of those individuals actually producing the work. It is beyond them! It is far beyond them.

The old structure of corporate management hierarchy used to involve a board of directors that trusted the executives that executed upon the corporate policies and the corporate direction. Today there is no trust between the board members, the stockholders, the middle management, the chief executives, or any of those nonproducing ranks.

The modern problem is that there are very often 10 to 20 management types who don’t actually “Hands-On” make anything involved in the chain of processes that make a product or deliver a service.  They have no experience creating or making anything.  They definitely do not have the coping skills necessary for the work.

None of them is truthful about their cost to the organization nor are they willing to admit to how much of a burden they are financially upon the operation. You will even find that their cost is not even accumulated anywhere or is obscured among many other costs.

So it gets to the bottom line and when they’re trying to cook the books as they are this time of the year and address issues like the performance of the machinery that makes money, they have hidden so much and mistated so much they cannot determine how to get themselves out of the quagmire.

It is at that point they realize they do not know what actually goes on and what the cost of continuing to operate that way is going to be. They reassess what the expectation is and generally back off the amount of the expectation so that it can be accomplished with the reduced resources and the hidden liability of not knowing what anything costs.

Concurrently other middle managers raise their expectation of all of those around them and in the chain of command their demands are supported as it is necessary to the operation of the machinery or the processes. Thus the expectation grows for the actual producers in the organization while the available resources to accomplish that are reduced in order to meet financial expectations.

Good management today is measured by how well you can transfer the responsibility for something to somewhere or something else. All of this comes to roost when you finally have consumed all of your resources, all of your people, and all of your time. That is the point to which the corporation has arrived.

Fortunately you work in an area that assures that cash flows from someplace else into the corporation’s coffers. When this fails you are charged with contacting the “responsible” parties so that cash will return to the proper flow rate. This work effort will never be satisfactory in the eyes of the dysfunctional management.

If you were to accumulate metrics and telemetry to show how you are working effectively and efficiently they would dismiss it as untrustworthy information. They’re actually so dumb that they would argue with you that the sun has come up or not when they’re sitting in a different time zone.

Don’t despair however because they’re so inept they can’t even find a replacement for you. So long as you show up, put in your time, and make your effort they’ll pay you and bitch, moan, piss, and complain the entire time.

They can only withhold love and honor if it matters; does it matter to you what the **** they think?

Sadly in my experience this is prevalent everywhere. If you were to seek out other opportunities you would run into the same problem. You’ll have to work on your self-esteem through some other means than employment. You see the poor bastards you work for don’t have any self-esteem so why should you?

Do not dispare that you are somehow an enabler for these inept and incompetent pricks. They eat their young, they eat their seed, they eat all of the food and leave nothing to invest with. They can only clear-cut the forest and they have no idea about replanting it.

Other than that I’m fine. I’m sitting at home fielding phone calls for new job opportunities. It’s actually an excellent time to get all my garden ready for the summer and spring. I got all the apple trees and peach trees trimmed and already have blooms on the apple trees. I will very soon have that pickup truck that I’ve been working on so long ready to go and drive down the street. I even went so far as to remove the blackout curtains from my bedroom because I no longer need to sleep in the daytime having worked all night to keep things running there.

Tell everyone I’m thinking about them. I hope the best for them. Please keep me posted. Pass around my contact information please. I have managed to misplace my cell phone yesterday so I’ll be finding that then I can be reached by phone 480-382-6720. It is a Google voice number and it will ring all of my phones and take voice mail.

Bernie