Google Earth, and other thoughts

I was flipping through Google Earth today, looking at various things.  I remember reading about Chiba from William Gibson, but the images didn’t strike me as what I thought it would be.  I guess street view provides a way at looking at things far away that you normally wouldn’t ever see.  For some reason, Tokyo didn’t strike me as what I thought Tokyo would be.  I don’t know why. 

After not seeing what I wanted to see there, I went and looked at Hong Kong.  I think my mental picture of Japan has always been tied to Hong Kong and Kowloon Walled City.  I think that is what I expected to see.  I’ve been obsessed with urban density for a while, but I don’t think I’ve ever looked at Google Earth and examined areas that seem to be densely populated. 

It makes me think about old wives tales, and other things that we supposedly “know” but aren’t based on any sort of fact.  The tale this year said the winter was supposed to be a “hard” winter.  Thinking about the verbage, I don’t know what that even means.  Maybe a “hard” winter is a long, cold winter?  I don’t know.  It’s hard to describe.  But what we’ve experienced so far does not jive with conventional wisdom.  Short-sleeve weather in December just isn’t normal in this part of the country.  I really expected to be wearing my thermal underwear every day last week, but that wasn’t the case. 

The other thing that I think of is the effectiveness of predictions.  You can predict anything you want, but if you aren’t accurate, then your predictions are worthless. If the predictions don’t match reality, then there’s no point in the prediction.  I’ve often thought of that in regards to global warming, but then I’ve also never seen anyone check the efficacy of predictions made 5, 10, 15, and 20 years ago.  Surely people made predictions back then.  I’m inclined to think (based on the equations being chaotic equations) that 5 years is just about the upper maximum of accurate predictions.  But I have no scientific evidence to back that up. 

Jurassic Park talked about chaos theory a lot, without ever accurately defining it.  In chaos theory, the outputs of one equation become the inputs of the next equation.  Because of the nature of the inputs and the possibilities of slight variations, the outputs can vary widely.  For weather, it’s generally accurate to 5 days.  If the time period is any longer, variation causes the predictions to be negatively correlated to accuracy.  In layman’s terms, don’t believe a forecast more than 5 days out.  

Today's Post

I probably should have written this before 10:30 PM the night before.  But then there's that wants to relax and not do anything once I get home.  It's difficult fighting that mental part of oneself, though I'm pretty sure that 's an absolute to succeed in life.  I guess it becomes of a problem of fighting what you think everyone else is doing versus what you happen to be doing.  The underlying influence of media tells us that we should work 40 hours, and then go home and spend time with the kids.  After spending time with the kids, we should kick back, relax, and do nothing and watch TV.  

But that's not what many of the people who have been wildly successful have done.  You never hear the benefits of hard work and long hours.  It's always a race to the relaxation and to do as little as possible.

Which makes me wonder: what happened to the stories of people with ambitions?  Have they just been written off and stored away?

How is it in a land where opportunity abounds over every hill and through every door are people told "it can't be done"?

More things I should probably know: SNMPv1/2 and SNMPv3

In the category of more things I should know (AKA I hate printers).  

Printers are often built off Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).  SNMP could have been a great thing.  It allowed a lot of different things to be done remotely, and was great for the system administrator miles away from the site.

Then people realized that SNMP version 1 and 2 have no real way to be secured.  None.  There is no way to create secure SNMPv1/2.  So the only thing to do is turn it off on the printer.  After you turn off SNMP v1/2 on the printer, your printer goes offline and now you can't print.

The Windows troubleshooter tells you the printer is powered off.  You moan.  You groan.  You Google things.

Anyways, the answer is in turning off SNMP on the device.   Note this problem only applies to network printers.  USB printers don't have this issue because they have a direct connection.

In Windows 7, navigate to devices and printers.
Right click the offending printer.
Printer properties.
Ports tab
Find the check marked tab, and hit configure port.

See that lovely SNMP Status Enabled check mark?   Get rid of it.  

Ok until you are out of all the messages, and magically your offending printer spits out 85 sheets of paper because someone hit the print 30 times, thinking they hadn't hit the button.

Now that you've solved the Windows problem, it's back to the printer.

So, the printer companies occasionally make software to check on their printers and get meter readings.  Larger companies lease printers and charge monthly and for printing more than an allocated amount.  Or they charge by the page.  For those companies to make and collect their money, they have a tendency to use SNMP to get readings from each printer.  Compare the beginning from the ending, and you have pages used.  

Simple.

But SNMP v1/2 aren't secure so you have to find how to turn on SNMPv3 on the printer.  That's usually a matter of finding some sort of web interface and then setting up the read and read/write strings.  That usually varies by printer manufacturer.  

So what about Windows?  Windows doesn't support SNMPv3, and Microsoft is removing SNMP support in future versions of Windows.  If you really like SNMPv3, and can't live without it you have to find your own SNMP tool.

I find SNMP interesting, but the inability to secure it properly and the need to get 3rd party support to get it working properly tells me the easiest thing to do is turn it off and get rid of it.

FYI, SNMPv1/2 vulnerabilities are considered bad ones and will cause a failure in internal PCI compliance scans.

Changing passwords... and Eclipse

Want to figure out how much you know about a system? Change a password.  Sounds stupid, but automation is often setup under a single user account.  In a large company (I’m hoping) you find that only one password affects one process.  In a small company you will run into craziness.  But I would encourage you to change passwords, even ones where you don’t have a great deal of information on what happens when the password changes.

If anything, it becomes a good time to write documentation.  Let’s face it, you are supposed to have documentation on everything you do anyways.  Password changes are no different.  If you have built the infrastructure properly, then a password change should only effect one device or service.  That may seem like a lot of passwords.  It is.  But if you aren’t willing to put effort into security, you won’t have any.  

Moving on…

And Eclipsing we will go…  I took my final today, and I don’t have any site upgrades planned until January, so I think it’s time to get the mobile apps I have built in head tested and running.  That means breaking several things I would normally use at work.  But I suppose that will have to work.

The marshmallow study

My wife and I had a discussion while driving around looking at early Christmas lights yesterday.  I think it’s the same discussion we have every year.  We generally start in one of the more expensive neighborhoods, and then wander into other areas we know have lights.  The houses in the neighborhood start at about $500,000 and go up from there.  You can get a lot of house for $500,000 in my area. 

The discussion centered on the question “should I be ashamed to want a $500,000 house?”  The answer should be an emphatic no.  As long as you haven’t cheated anyone to get the money, you can buy whatever you want.  But the thought still persists.  I think it’s because of several underlying problems.

First, people preach the wrong form of Christianity.  They preach a form where Christians should never have any fun, enjoy life, and should be just barely surviving because they give everything they have away.   It’s hard to discuss how off and wrong this is, but it’s something that perseveres.  If you listen to the Bible, and really believe it, then you should really dig into the effects of sin versus a sinless life.  Jesus led a sinless life, so would have all the benefits of a sinless life.  The Old Testament has a lot of those.  Basic end result is this: Jesus wasn’t broke.  He was rich.  If Jesus really lived a sinless life, and you really believe the Bible is true, then Jesus was rich. 

The thought that Jesus was rich changes a lot of the dynamic of Christianity.  I could go farther on that one, but Larry Hutton does a better job at that discussion.

The 2^nd part of the discussion is what was taught in public schools.  Tying into that is how the media presents wealth.  I’ll start with public schools.  I was a child of the 1980s.  Even when things were booming at their best, there was no love lost of capitalism.  I would say it was boarder line socialism.  But the problem was it is a bunch of socialists trying to teach kids how to thrive in a capitalist society.  It just doesn’t work.  Schools never teach about honest businessmen and women sacrificing hours of their day to grow a business.  It’s always about the giant, evil corporation that is out to destroy the world.  The discussion of finance and money is always bad.  It’s always about how evil and greedy the rich are. 

On the path to becoming rich, I think rich people are quite possibly the most misunderstood group of humans in the world.  Quite possibly because they all think in a very distinct way.  And that distinct way is generally the same.  It narrows to down to live below your means, work hard, and then work some more, and sacrifice what doesn’t matter to get what does. 

But that is a message that is universally ignored, and never taught.   There was a marshmallow study of small children.  The child was given a marshmallow, and told if the marshmallow was still in the room when the person came back in 5 minutes, the child would get two marshmallows.  Those children that successfully waited 5 minutes and received their 2^nd marshmallow were statistically significantly better off than everyone else that took the marshmallow. 

So why do we always teach children to take the marshmallow?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

or...  slapsgiving...

Introduction to Networks (non-technical)

Rather than post my typical notes from a CCNA course, I figured I'd post a non-technical description of how networks "work".  I'm going to preface this by saying this is "allegory" of TCI/IP layer 3.  This is not intended to be definitive.  

So...

You have built a company.  It's a great company.  But no one can ever find your physical location.  You live on a drab, grey, boring street.  Did I mention grey? I meant every single building is nothing but grey concrete, and the streets are bleached grey.  It is grey as far as the eye can see.

So, being the great business leader you are, you go out and buy a bucket of purple paint.  Now, purple paint is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  And because it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, it costs an arm and a leg.  To get the shade of purple you want, you buy one can of paint.  It covers the outside of the door well, but nothing else.

So, from the outside your door looks purple.  But that paint is so darn expensive, you only paint the outside.  The inside of the door is still brown.

So, a customer comes to visit.

You tell him to drive down the grey street until you see a purple door.  He find your location in minutes.  It's easy.

Back in your office, you have a discussion, and he thinks he is going to buy from you.  But he needs to talk to a few people to determine how much he wants to buy.  And he forgot how to get out of the building.

"Oh, just go out the purple door", you tell your customer.

The man spends 45 minutes wandering your halls, and finally finds you.   He curses you out, cancelling all potential business.  You are at a complete loss.  The customer can't find the purple door.

The one thing you forgot is that doors have two sides.  One side that is visible from the street, and one side that is only visible from the inside of the building.  You painted your street door purple.  It's easy to find.  But your exit door on your building?  Still just as brown as it ever was.  So telling someone to go find a purple door is an exercise in futility.

You have to name the door based off which side  you happen to be looking at.

Even though both talk about the same thing, it's a matter of which side of the door you are on.  And you have to have your discussion based on which side of the door you can see.