Know Enough to be Different

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Brian

I was in the hotel this morning, and noticed the high-speed Ethernet connection to the internet. Instructions for use say “turn off your computer, connect cable, turn on computer, open web browse”. What they don’t say is that Microsoft Windows is assumed, you have to have Internet Explorer, computer is to be DHCP-enabled, and network drivers need to be installed.

I wondered if I booted with my Knoppix Linux CD-ROM, whether or not I’d be smart enough to work through the protocols and issues to successfully use their service. Did I know enough to be different from the crowd?

And then an NPR news story came on the radio reporting that Maxime Faget, a pioneering NASA engineer, died at the age of 83. A CNN report quoted Christopher Kraft, a former NASA Johnson Space Center directory: “Max Faget was truly a legend of the manned space flight program. There is no one in space flight history in this or any other country who has had a larger impact on man’s quest in space exploration.”

He stands out in the memory of professional peers as the small wiry designer of the Mercury space capsule used in our nation’s early space program. As early as 1958, against conventional wisdom, he successfully advocated a high-drag design for punching back into the atmosphere, rather than a needle-nosed design which seemed intuitively obvious. It was the bravado to be different that built his reputation.

If you don’t know much about the path on which you walk, you better stay with the norm. For most hotel visitors, Microsoft Windows built for the populace, is an appropriate tool. As for me, I wanted more. I lived with CP/M until 1989, and then was fed successive models of Windows until 1993. I dabbled in Linux, but was distracted by life and took the convenient upgrade to Windows 3.1.

In the year 2004, I took it upon myself to become fluent in a modern Linux distribution. It wasn’t because Linux was better, but because I wanted to be better. I wanted to know both, and be able to intelligently choose alternatives. The effort was not for free. It cost a good number of evenings and weekends, and reality is that the project will never end. But the pay-back is that I don’t have to accept capability that is fed to me. I think differently, and see data/computing problems differently. I’m able to come up with solutions others don’t see.

The attitude adjustment applies beyond computer operating systems. Whether you’re building Mercury space capsules, or running Knoppix over the hotel internet link, there’s room to be better. Exercise your skills by being different. Learn enough to do so.

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Conjugate Attacks (008)

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Brian

The internet and information technology is accelerating the rate at which feedback loops of society stabilize on final values. The short time domain proximity of related events is highlighting a new type of phenomena.  People wish to attack us, and we can stop almost anything as a nation.  But doing so burdens us in ways that accomplish something equivalent to the original intended attack.

The vagueness of the issue requires a few examples. Look for the common thread running among these examples:

  • Yahoo’s example of beaconing ads, shut off only by allowing cookies.
  • MyPay access, where service is cut off and all notification and processes to fix the problem use the services I’ve lost.
  • Telephone repair, “Call me if you have any more trouble.”
  • My government IT computer, preventing hacker attacks, performs a software upgrade DoS attack at least once a week for about 1.5 hours — in order to prevent other malware from affecting my computer.
  • Router based authentication where you can stop man-in-the-middle only by causing a DoS to yourself because of the huge overhead.
  • We button down National travel privileges and courtesies because we need to protect from a second version of the 911 tragedy.
  • Democracy works until the majority decide to vote the minority into financial servanthood.

What is the theme here?  The intent of a third party is implemented by our action inflicted on ourselves.  If we develop a conjugate response, tailored for the attack, it burdens us in other ways that accomplish essentially the same goal. In other words, the attacks are avoidable, but the effects of the attacks are not.  We have always had asymmetric conflict, where the methods of each party are different.  Attacking us in a way that causes us to finish the attack ourselves is a sub-set of asymmetric attack.  They are conjugate attacks, implying that our eventual battle damage is not caused by their strength, but by our own.

There are ways to mitigate losses of conjugate attacks. [this section not yet complete]

  1. Keep feedback loose. Example of industrial control network through satellites. Bit flip on each end, and monitor the status. Implement half-life behavior to our “fixes”.
  2. Expire taxes a little bit after their purpose.  New government agencies auto-expire.
  3. Control the PR channels. Strategic communication is your friend, to prevent other “helpful” people from boxing you in to an overreaction.  Witness TSA.
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Acquisition Speak – “Reducing Risk” (006)

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Brian

I periodically get frustrated with the Acquisition Speak language that swirls around my job. It’s as if, when something is repeated often enough, it garners respect as truth. Every once in a while, it’s probably good to re-assess the language we use. I’ve heard others say, “If you can’t summarize what you want to say on the back of a business card, you aren’t ready to talk. If you can’t explain it to a 12-year old, you don’t know what you want to say.” That attitude is whence this opinion paper comes.

I read in the May 3rd edition of an acquisition organization digest that some big program intends to fly with less than a full complement of working subsystems. In particular, Beam Control logic without the attendant laser. This “reduces risk” because otherwise flight test would have been with two unknowns.

Outside the Acquisitions world, “reducing risk” means taking better care of the situation in order to accomplish the same goal. For example, a rock climber buys better pitons. Only in the acquisition world does “reducing risk” mean “we want an easier target”. Reducing risk means we want to do less, probably for the same amount of money in the same amount of time. An analogy would be an archer reducing risk by using larger targets. This is in the realm of being safer by never getting out of bed!

I sense there is no absolute standard. Ability to acquire a fixed goal is no longer a valued contractor capability. Or the government has made it so difficult that anybody is destined to fail. It seems that safely generating metrics is the activity of choice, rewarded much more than accomplishing anything.

And schedules. Enough already! A “high risk” schedule means “I’m pulling wool over your eyes and I know it”. What happened to the engineer who was good, knew what skills were at hand, and could accurately predict how long it would take to do a job?

Place value on, and reward, individuals and companies that can predict the future accurately. By this, I mean an ability to forecast the (cost*time) integral, and then deliver within that claim.

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Equalized Stupidity (005)

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Brian

Sorry for the offensive title. I know it’s probably an overstatement.
I just read of the Navy’s Shipwide Electronic Maintenance Aid (SWMA). This is a tablet PC type device that lets the maintainer or servicing person do the job with little or no experience because they can call back to some central knowledge repository. Less people, and less embedded human knowledge requires this technology answer.

I give them credit for answering a need. In other cases, the push of technology and “ease of use” has caused degeneration of human intellect and capability. Two examples come to mind: 1) automatic car transmissions’ birth from a world of tractors and manual shift vehicles, and 2) Windows domination of what used to be a CP/M and Unix computer world.

Convenience and simplicity cost something. What is it? The “I’m okay, you’re okay” mentality is no longer an aberration or a moral or political agenda, but a recognition of reality. Everybody is okay because nothing is asked of them! Personally, I’d rather be an expert in something worth being an expert in, and I like to be surrounding by other experts who are really good in what I’m not.

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Safety Balance (003)

Posted on November 4, 2005 by Brian

Each individual must choose to be as safe as possible, but we also need to choose a culture that does not destroy progress. One example is Rick Fleeter, at Aero-astro, his company that builds micro satellites. Another is Burt Rutan, building composite prototypes such as Spaceship One.

I watched space shuttle Challenger blow up when I was in graduate school. Later, I listened to the news reports of Columbia, knowing a friend had been on board. All the safety processes and directives of NASA had failed to catch what only could have been done by an invidual. More problematic is the culture and bureaucracy that silenced people who were trying to be safe.

I wrote an article for Nuts & Volts magazine about the Space Ship One launches for the X-Prize that discussed these safety issues in greater detail.

Culture is a global optimization. Safety programs are a local minima.

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