A Technologist Speaks on Security

I’ve always been intrigued by titles and set expectations for my career based on these terms. As a youngster, my goal was to be a scientist. I ended up an engineer … I guess that’s pretty close. In fact, at one time, at IBM, my formal titles was Senior Associate Engineer / Scientist. So, in that regard, I made it.

I’ve been an electronics engineer, a programmer, a software engineer, an instructor / course developer as well as an adjunct professor. I’ve been a project manager and even a senior technical staff member … the strangest title of all.

But, as I’ve collected my thoughts and tried to merge all those titles into a single, meaningful term, I’ve arrived at this: I’m a technologist. That fits. It sort of encompasses all the engineering and programming and teaching stuff into a single title.

One thing noticed in this modern age is how well young people adapt to technology. Of course, even senior citizens use email and surf the web, but the ease with which the young mind seems to grasp technology is often noted by about everyone that notices.

I’m an exception. I’m an old guy that gets technology. Now I doubt I understand it as well as a twenty-something that lives and breaths computers and web sites and RSS, etc. But I’m pretty well versed in the technology of the times. There’s always something new and I’m not a Silicon Valley guru, more of a Colorado guru. But I do get along with this stuff pretty well, although … sometimes … I’m as stumped as anyone.

I was recently delving into HTML as I tried to clean up a mess that an automatic HTML tool had made. One “feature,” if you can call it that of these simple editors that automatically create HTML from plain text is that the various commands to create specific fonts and formats, etc. are repeated for each paragraph. Lots of </span> to identify the individual sections of text. The tool didn’t even recognize where to use <div>.

Being somewhat compulsive, I was deep into the HTML source, editing the commands manually and cleaning up what was a giant mess of automatic programming. That got me to thinking about HTML and browsers and security … security is always on my mind as I concern myself with how easy it would be for hackers to access and bring down our utility grids and power plants … but that’s for another note at another time.

This time I was thinking about privacy and all the ways our information is released as we surf the web. Most of you know that it is dangerous to download a program to your computer unless your pretty sure it is not a dangerous program or malware that would compromise your computer and all the information on it.

Well, do you know how a web page appears in your browser? As I said, I’m a technologist. I can tell you how. You download a program to your computer. The program is written in HTML, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and JavaScript, and possibly several other languages, and it is downloaded to your browser for display.

We all know how complex web pages can be and how they can provide services and views for the user with powerful features like changing part of the page when your mouse hovers over it or showing videos and playing music.

What you may not realize is how those same browsers can give out all kinds of private information to the web site that knows how to ask. The Internet was designed to deliver information, and you might be surprised just how much personal information may be provided due to security flaws that no one seems to be in a hurry to fix. I think that, if the general public knew just how much personal information they unwittingly provide anytime they connect to a web site, they would be a lot more careful in their browsing. If they click just one time on a suspicious web site, even more personal information including their name, hometown, school, marital status, lists of friends, photos, what other websites they are logged into, their bank, credit union are all provided to the web site, and they even open up access behind their companies firewalls and private networks.

Today’s popular browsers, from Internet Explorer to Firefox to Chrome to Safari all have flaws that open up that information to any web site contacted. Several new security features have been added to browsers over recent years, including automatic updating and protection from malware, yet these basic attacks still are not blocked. It will take some changes in browsers and Internet standards to close all these open doors … open to the next burglar that walks by.

Let me give some examples. These attacks use normal web page commands, so they are not immediately identified as an assault on your personal information. They take advantage of features of the Internet intended to make web pages easier to use.

Here is one example. HTML allows a web site to provide graphics and pictures actually loaded from another web site. For example, you may be connected to www.friendly-web-site.com and it may contain HTML code such as this:

<img src= "http://some-other-web-site/image.png”>

This instructs the visiting browser to send a web request to this other website automatically to load the image. The developer may add some JavaScript to verify that the image loaded successfully or if there was an error:

<img src= "http://some-other-web-site/image.png"

onload= “successful()” onerror= “error()”>

If the image loaded correctly, the successful() subroutine is executed. If there was an error, then the error code is run. This is a perfectly normal practice and quite useful.

But suppose the image file is only available if the user is logged onto the website. For example, the image could be loaded from Facebook or Twitter or a local bank web site. That would inform the original website of the existence of the login.

In fact, loading a possibly bogus image is not necessary. This code is even more direct:

<img src= "http://some-other-web-site/loggedin.png"

onload= “loggedIn()” onerror= “notLoggedIn()”>

This can be used to discover what social websites, email sites, and basically any other web site the user is logged into. A series of similar instructions in the web page being viewed could probe all the possible sites that the user might be … well … using.

Now let's assume the malicious website owner might want to go one step further and determine the name of the person visiting the site. Assume that the visitor is logged into a social site such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. It is possible to create an invisible frame that is located under the cursor using the iframe command and then, when the visitor clicks anywhere on the web page, the invisible frame will execute an FB "Like" or a Google+ "+1" command. This is called "clickjacking." After tricking the user into taking this action, they can check on Twitter or Facebook to see "User X Followed you" or "User X liked Page Y." Now the unscrupulous web site knows the name of "User X."

There’s a lot more that can be determined from this and similar attacks. It is the use of social websites which users are often continuously logged into that allows all kinds of information to be mined from an unsuspecting user. As I described, the seemingly innocuous “Like” in Facebook can be activated by unscrupulous web site designers to determine all kinds of personal information.

Setting high privacy limits on social web sites helps, but is not a guarantee. Things on the web are always in flux and most people treat social websites as big parties and share all kinds of personal information, little suspecting just how many illegitimate uses can be made of that information.

Remember, when you browse a web site, any website, you are allowing that code to be run on your computer and due to weaknesses and rather dubious features of web browsers, the web site can determine a lot of personal information from some simple and clever programming.

Interestingly, the young people of today, those that I started by saying that they had an intuitive grasp of technology, they don’t seem to be concerned about this leakage of private information to surreptitious web sites. They seem perfectly happy with releasing all this private information to “who knows whom.” Maybe they do understand the technology.

I could write another long article why no one seems to be interested in closing these security holes in popular browsers. I could also go on and on about more exploits that open up your private information from the misuses of the iframe command to problems with old versions of the Secure Socket Layer protocol.

I guess in a day and age where people are willing to put their confidential information up into the cloud, believing all the assurances of the vendors that nothing can go wrong … go wrong ……go wrong … go wrong …

Sorry about that. The next release will fix that bug.

What really worries me is when the criminals start targeting the banking logins of users out there. Bad news. They already have. First they get your name. Then they find out what bank you use. If your secret password is the names of your children, they’ll soon find that out when they gain access to your Facebook account. Name of your pet; mother’s maiden name; first school you attended; here’s my favorite: birthday! Think of all the people that post their birthday on Facebook of Google +.

We now live in a technological society, a technical neighborhood. I see all these people leaving their technological doors, not just unlocked, but wide open. It’s a good time for burglars.

Maybe my next career will be as a computer security consultant. I think that business will be booming soon.

Slim Jim

Aunt Margie had passed away, so the family all returned to the plains of Kansas for the memorial. She was the last of granddad’s siblings and was nearly 100. I hadn’t seen her for over thirty years. It was good to see the family, and one of the younger folks had just gotten married and had their first child. The baby was only five months old.

After the service someone suggested we drive out to the old homestead and see what was left. Now realize that the little town, population 27, where the service was held was literally in the middle of nowhere. Now we drove 18 miles out of town to where the old farm had been. We were now way beyond nowhere. It was a hot day in July and the sun was bright in the sky and heat waves were rising from the plowed ground. The couple with the new baby didn’t want to get the tiny child out of the car and into the heat, so they left the motor and the air conditioning running and left the baby in the car.

It was some new, fancy car. I think a Volvo or a Saab — something foreign, although these days, I think it was made by General Motors. Anyway, they left the engine running and the keys in the ignition. However, out of habit, they locked the doors, and didn’t realize it until it was too late.

… Just a second. Got to take a break. The dog is bugging me to go out. I’ll be right back.

OK, I’m back. Now, as I was saying …

We all sat around staring at the locked car with the baby sleeping unconcerned in the back seat. Various ideas were batted around. Someone suggested using a rock to break a window, but the mother didn’t want to take any chance of flying glass and the new dad was a little too concerned about the car itself.

I asked the wife if she had keys. She said yes, in her purse, right there on the front seat.

Someone asked if the car had “OnStar,” that fancy support function. The dad said it did with a sudden awakening, and he grabbed his cell phone to call OnStar. They could unlock the car by remote control, just like those ads you see on TV.

Now, did I mention that we were 18 miles from the middle of nowhere? Did you think that a cell phone was going to work way out here in the boonies?? No, no coverage, not even roaming.

… Hang on. Another potty trip. Can’t ignore the dog. Be right back.

OK, back …

After a lot of talking and a little thinking, someone suggested they drive back up the road to a farmhouse. They should have a phone, and we could call OnStar and ask them to unlock the car. I started up my old pickup and the new poppa jumped in with me. We headed back down the dirt road and about a mile or so came upon a farmhouse.

We knocked on the door and a nice, gray haired lady let us in. We asked to use her phone, and she warned us it was a party line and be sure that Mrs. Glotagulp was not all ready talking. Fortunately Glotagulp was not on the line, and as the young dad dialed the number on his little plastic card for the OnStar operator, I gladly accepted the cold glass of lemonade offered by the thoughtful host.

Soon he had the OnStar person on the phone and was giving her the 36-digit code number on his card, as well as answering all the secret questions. (I didn’t know that his dad’s middle name was Milton. Not that I’d ever tease him about that … Milt …)

So, soon the operator was sending the magic message to his electronic car directing the doors to unlock. Didn’t work! She said it must be out of range. Out of range of what? Oh, I didn’t realize that OnStar used cell phone technology. Guess we weren't just out of range, but out of luck too.

Now real worry set in. What if the car ran out of gas? How quickly would the temperature inside climb to a dangerous level? Would his wife ever forgive him for locking the baby in the car? The rock through the window was starting to become a good idea.

… Hang on a sec. The dog again. Be right back …

OK. That didn't take too long …

About then our gracious host offered the advice that we should call the County Sheriff. Seems they would know how to get in the locked car. So we took her suggestion and soon the Sheriff’s office had promised one of the best men would be right out to deal with our predicament.

We headed back to tell the rest of the family that help was on the way. Not long after we got back, we saw the cloud of dust as the sheriff’s deputy made his way to our location. His name was “Wade” and he was proof that the police really do favor donuts. We explained the situation, and he said we didn’t have to worry. Seems he had a “slim jim.” That’s a thin piece of metal with a notch cut on the end. The car burglar simply slides the thin metal down the door next to the window and catches the internal lock … errr … thingy, and then pops the lock up.

It seemed a simple solution, although, after fifteen minutes of fishing, the deputy had yet to catch the little … errr … catch.

About that time another cloud of dust appeared up the road, and we were soon joined by the Sheriff himself. Seems it was a slow crime day in this rural region. After observing our predicament and the failure of his best — and I suspect stoutest — deputy to catch the catch, he headed back to his car. He said he had a new “slim jim,” and it was even slimmer. Apparently slimness is something to be desired in the “jim,” although neither the deputy, or, in reality, the sheriff either, could be referred to by the same adjective.

… Sorry. This should be the last time. The dog drank a lot of water.

OK. I think we’re finished. It was a number 5. Three 1’s and a 2. Now, where was I …

Well, a slimmer slim jim did appear to be just what was needed, because the sheriff soon had the car unlocked and the trapped baby was now the center of hugs and tears. Even the sheriff and his deputy had to remark how peaceful the baby was. Peaceful, the baby had slept through the whole thing.

So, as the caravan headed back to the city, well the town, or the village, or the wide spot in the road … you take your pick, I thought about technology: from cell phones to party lines. But it appears that nothing can beat a “slim jim.”

Oh, did I mention that my name is James? Coincidence? I think not.

The Cost of (Bad) Quality

I’ve written before (over, and over, and over, …) about what I did for a living before retirement. The condensed version would have only two words: teach, quality. Think how many “blog bytes” I could have saved if I had just pared my writing down to those two words. It really is the essence of what I did in the U.S.N, at A.R.F. Products, and E.T.I., and for almost my entire career at I.B.M.

(Ever notice that I had some kind of affinity for companies with initials. In all fairness, the US Navy was the more common term, but the other three companies that I worked at after the Navy were all about initials. Heck, even as a kid I worked at my dad’s store, the B&H, and at the B.L.M. I did work at the Dash-Inn – my first job. That was before I discovered “initials”!)

In the Navy I worked in a Calibration Lab … doing what? Testing and calibrating electronic test equipment. That’s a sort of quality control job. At A.R.F. I was a test technician. I tested receivers and other electronic equipment by shaking and baking. That is, I tested these devices at 150 degrees C, way over boiling and at -40 C, way under freezing. I also gave them vibration tests. Aerospace was all about lots of testing to assure quality.

(Not that you can test quality into a product … a common misconception. Quality must be built in. Testing just assures that the process is working and provides feedback to correct failures.)

While still working at A.R.F., I began at E.T.I. where I taught. I also taught at Metro, which is called M.S.U.D., at least these days. The “University” and the “Denver” were both added after I left. At I.B.M., I started out testing Series III Copiers. From there I became a manufacturing engineer responsible for the diskette drive testing on the manufacturing line.

Then I joined IBM Technical Education. Although I started out teaching about programming, I was soon teaching testing and software inspection techniques, which is “quality.” I had several other assignments, but ended up the last part of my career as the “Quality Technical Leader” or the “Technical Quality Leader.” (Never sure just what order to put that in.)

My reputation around Printing Systems (PSD) and most of the corporation was as a “Testing Guru.” In fact, that was actually a formal title when I worked with the “Software Testing Interdivisional Technical Liaison” organization. (That’s a mouth full.) That organization eventually became the “Software Engineering Quality Group,” and I represented PSD (more initials) on that group. I’ll save the details about my work on that IBM inter-divisional task group for another note.

My final promotion at IBM was to “Senior Technical Staff Member,” an odd sounding title. Part of an STSM’s job was to evaluate and report on technical directions and help set the technical course of the organization. My focus was quality, and I was sometimes asked to write a detailed report on quality issues. In most cases those were internal quality issues, but one time I was asked to provide an analysis of the quality problems at Toyota. IBM wanted to learn what mistakes Toyota made that led to the difficulties with Camry’s suddenly accelerating.

So I spent several weeks exploring the reports and data available on the issue, how Toyota responded, and what changes they made to their manufacturing and service operations to resolve this serious quality issue. Seemed like Toyota had one of the best quality reputations in the automobile business, and IBM wanted to learn how they had responded to such a serious quality gaff.

Let’s start with Ford Motor Company. Another topic I’ve written about repeatedly is my experience with my Ford Flex. It has been a most positive experience. I bought the vehicle with specific uses in mind. This was my high capacity, creature comfort, road trippin’ vehicle. It’s not a car, but it’s way too nice for a truck. So I just call it the Blue Bus.

One interesting feature of the Blue Bus is the Microsoft Sync system built in. I connected a high capacity iPod to the Bus, and now I’ve got voice command, music on the go with the thousands of songs from my personal library ready, literally at my command: “Play artists The Beatles.” “Yes Master.” The system has worked very well for me, although there is a bug, not fixed, even though I’ve applied a couple of downloaded updates. I can be playing a selection type, like an artist or a genre or a playlist. If I shut off the Bus, then, when I turn it back on, the Sync system just plays the last song over and over. Or, sometimes, the last album, over and over.

There is one more update available, but it requires the dealer install it, and I’ve not done that, what is likely expensive, visit to the shop.

The Ford Motor Company began adding touch-screen control systems to some of its most popular models two years ago as a way to stand out from the rest of the industry and draw in new customers. “MyFord Touch” replaces many of the traditional knobs and buttons in a vehicle with touch screens, steering wheel-mounted controls, and spoken commands.

But after many buyers grew frustrated with flaws in the system, developed with Microsoft, Ford's quality ratings plunged, and a feature meant to increase loyalty instead damaged perceptions of the company.

Now Ford has issued a major upgrade that redesigns much of what customers see on the screen and tries to resolve complaints about the system crashing or rebooting while the vehicle is being driven. Fonts and buttons on the screen have been enlarged, and the layouts of more than 1,000 screens have been revamped.

Ford is taking the unusual step of sending the upgrade directly to customers, who can install the new software in about an hour by plugging in a USB flash drive.

Now my older vehicle does not have the touch screen of the “MyFord,” so this issue didn’t affect me personally. However, according to Consumer Reports, this problem is a major reason that Ford dropped from fifth place in their “Automaker Report Card” to tenth. Ford dropped ten places in the publication's predicted reliability survey last year and plummeted to 23rd place, from 5th, in the most recent initial quality survey by J. D. Power & Associates. Both surveys showed poor scores for models with “MyFord Touch.”

Ford has been among the industry's leaders in introducing communication and entertainment technology in recent years. Rivals like General Motors, Chrysler, and Toyota have been adding similar features, though they are generally less complex and have not generated as much negative feedback.

Ford's system incorporates the car's climate controls, hands-free communication, navigation, and entertainment into one screen on the console and has another customizable display where the speedometer and other gauges are usually located.

Ford insists it is committed to the touch-screen approach and that customers love it, aside from the issues targeted by the new upgrade. It said “MyFord Touch” and its underlying software, were an important part of the purchase decision for 56 percent of Ford buyers, and that 77 percent of owners now used voice commands to control their vehicle's audio and information system.

Many of the issues were with the user interface. One problem is that the interface was just too complicated for a mobile environment. That makes me wonder about safety issues by distracted drivers trying to adjust their heater. On the positive side, Ford has taken concerted actions to correct this problem. A better response than the one they had when they learned that Pinto gas tanks exploded when the car was struck from behind. Ford seems to have finally learned the quality lesson. Certainly I’m happy with the quality of my Ford product, and that includes how I’m treated at the dealership.

I suspect that IBM was not the only company studying the success of Toyota’s quality focus. Let’s move on to a company well known for their quality as well as their easy to use interface: Apple.

I think no company has made more money from creating quality products that are sold at premium prices than Apple … well, maybe Mercedes Benz or Rolls Royce too. But my personal experience with Apple, both as a user and as a developer, is that their focus on quality of experience, quality of design, and quality of manufacturing is top notch.

I have some serious issues with their products’ maintainability. That’s how easy they are to fix. But, if they never fail, then that’s not an issue. (They do fail, occasionally, however, so this is a concern of mine.) Sometimes it is a tradeoff where higher battery life can be obtained from a soft packaged battery, but then the battery must be glued into the device making replacement very difficult. In other cases it is the esthetic goal of super thinness that leads to iMacs that are almost impossible to open up for repairs.

But when it comes to quality in general, Apple leads the entire personal computer industry, and is well rewarded, specifically for that quality and ease-of-use, by its adoring fans.

This Apple focus on quality came top-down, from the founder and CEO, Steve Jobs. Sadly, he is no longer here to provide that quality focus. From the Apple Store to the lowliest Apple product to the top of the line machines and software, Apple is well known for “fit and finish” and products that “just work.”

Not that there haven’t been some hiccups, even when Jobs was in charge. Who remembers the “MobileMe” fiasco? Apple had updated from DotMac to a new Internet connected service called MobileMe. Following the trouble filled roll out of the new service, users found they could not access their data, their contact list, their email. Apple eventually fixed the mess, and Jobs chewed out the entire team for embarrassing Apple. Heads rolled. (That means executives were fired.)

More recent problems are the poor initial performance of Siri that even led to YouTube parodies and the latest problems with the new Apple Maps App on mobile devices. Again, heads rolled.

Apple fired Scott Forstall, the long time Apple executive and head of iOS development last year. Many assume it was due to the failures of Siri and Apple Maps.

John Browett, recently hired to lead the Apple Stores, was also let go after only one year on the job. One of the issues was mismanagement at their stores, the cutting back of cleaning staff, tighter Genius Bar bookings, and other cost-cutting, revenue-boosting measures. Usually, cost savings gets you promoted in corporate America. This is a happy exception … at least happy to me, the Quality Guru and Apple Fan-boy. Customer response and quality trump budget cutting at Apple.

It has been my experience that a focus on quality must always exceed the desire to ship the latest function on time. For too many development organizations, “schedule is king.” As I’ve said many times, and I didn’t invent this, “The bitterness of poor quality lasts long after the sweetness of meeting schedule is forgotten.” I know there is tremendous pressure to ship a product on schedule, and there are good business reasons to make a planned date, but quality must come first.

Even a first-rate company like Apple seems to require relearning of that lesson on occasion. The good news is that Apple did learn and made changes as needed. That’s why I’ll keep buying their products.

As a software development project manager, I insisted that all functions be fully tested, and I would remove a poor function rather than ship it, even if it was considered critical. If it wasn’t ready for prime time, or, possibly due to last minute changes, it had not been thoroughly tested, then it was not included. Quality was more important. As the Quality Technical Leader, I made that the rule for the entire division.

(We had the benefit of the ability to add the function later in an update. Since our big systems were multi-million dollar installations, and our service staff visited all our customers every month, these updates were not as big of a problem to implement as updating code in an automobile. That helped me hold the line on “not ready for prime time features.”)

I implemented a Final Quality Review process and insisted that the development leader convince me (and the Vice-President of Quality) that the product was ready, rather than requiring the test leader convince us it wasn’t. One part of that process was a form that required a signature by the development manager, test manager, and quality manager before the product could ship. Something about the personal touch of a signature tends to get people’s focus. What was funny is that the form was actually a PowerPoint presentation and so the signature page was always printed off and signed. It was then scanned into the permanent computer records of the project. The old-fashioned “John Hancock” approach raises the stakes of approval in a subtle way, and was both very successful and participants noted how it made them be much more certain in their decision.

The result was a continual improvement in product quality measured by defects found in the field. The much more important result was the high level of customer satisfaction and lower maintenance costs that were the result of this focus. Note that it wasn’t the final quality review that improved quality. It was all the preparation for that final review and the knowledge that the final review would be required. It literally changed the development culture to focus more on quality. And I wasn’t even the CEO??

These are lessons that corporations ready for the twenty-first century have not just learned, but made part of their DNA. No one knows exactly why the dinosaurs became extinct. My personal view is that it was from poor quality and customer complaints.

Let me close with these thoughts. This is how I see the future. This would be my advice to IBM, or Toyota, or Ford, and Apple. Quality matters more than everything else: Customer satisfaction stems from quality; Manufacturing efficiency comes from quality; Budget management improves with good quality ... all these positive results come from a focus on quality.

Imagine a Company that did not think of Quality as an attribute of a Product or a Process, but as an attribute of the Company itself. That the Company provided Products and Services that their Customers could rely on as Quality Products and Quality Services.

Assume that the Company itself saw this as an overall goal for continuous internal improvement. One would think that having such a goal and achieving the same would have an intrinsic benefit and a long-term competitive advantage.

Now, imagine the reverse where Companies compete based purely on the minimum effort and cost to deliver a given Product or Service to the marketplace regardless to how the Product or Service is perceived.

One would think that the simplistic application of the laws of Economics, especially in difficult times, would tend to favor the latter strategy rather than the former. In other words, low cost would be the deciding factor.Yet Apple prospers in good times and bad.

Of course, some companies try to have both. Be the low cost, high quality producer. The problem is that “quality” quickly becomes the victim of the low cost. You have to have a long-term view to realize that great quality actually saves money.

One issue I have with the stock market and investors in general is too much focus on the short-term and too little focus on the long-term. Successful companies know better. By a long-term focus, the short-term takes care of itself. Is our short-term focus preventing us from realizing the long-term advantages of QUALITY? How can other businesses ignore the lessons of Apple and other companies that put quality and customer experience first? It’s a mystery to me!?!

Some Sad News

I’m about the luckiest guy in the world. I’m truly blessed. My life has been all up, up, up with so few downs; I was raised by loving parents, in an idyllic town, and a beautiful state. I didn’t suffer any trauma, disease, or losses … at least nothing that was too serious. I was in a deadly car crash with a close friend and I lost both my maternal grandparents when I was 19, but tragedy didn’t touch me often.

I found and married a wonderful girl, we raised a wonderful family, and everyone is healthy and loving. I don’t think it can get much better than that.

However, into every life, a little sadness must eventually come. This last week has had some downs. The most serious is the loss of our loving little kitty we’ve had for almost twenty years. Her name was Tiger and she had more personality than a late night talk show host.

Look at that face. See those symmetrical "L" shaped markings on the nose?

 She first entered our lives when Mike and his wife Jackie lived with us shortly after their wedding. They were expecting the birth of our first grandchild when Mike brought home this young kitten. She had climbed into his car while he was working up in Ft. Collins, and she’s been our cat ever since.

Mike had her most of the time, but eventually, about eight or so years ago, he moved into a “no pets” apartment. So we took Tiger in. She lived with us for several years before moving in with our other son, Mark.

Little white tummy. Don't try to rub it. Remember those razor sharp claws.

 She was a good companion to him, although no upholstered furniture was safe anywhere near her razor sharp claws. She would let me pick her up and hold her, but only for about 15 seconds. Then she would tell me to put her down … or else.

Well, our granddaughter is now almost 19, so Tiger was nearly old enough to buy beer or go to a bar. Her health recently began to fail, and we had to take her to the veterinary. The doctor thought her kidneys were failing. It might be possible to bring her back to health, but it would require a hospital stay and no guarantee. As we looked at her tiny body lying on the floor, it was apparent to all of us that she was ready to leave this life.

The doctor was very kind. They have a special room that you can retire to with a loved pet and be with them for last moments. Her death was peaceful and we have a little claw print memento of our friend for almost twenty years. We loved you Tiger and love you still. I don’t know if cats go to heaven. If they do, then I’m sure Linda’s mom was glad to see that pretty little calico.

After that loss, anything else would be anticlimactic. It seems almost prescience that Joel gave us a lovely picture of Tiger and our dog Louie as a Christmas present. I’ve put that picture at the top of this blog.

Tiger would not have wanted this picture posted on Facebook.

Louie is also up in years, nearly 15. She is also has failing health. She’s loosing strength in her back legs and we take her to the vet to help diagnose a recent malady that is causing her to drink an inordinate amount of water. We just hope and pray we can have her for a little while longer. She is also our oldest son’s original pet. Linda’s parents took Louie in when Mike could no longer have her. We got her when Linda’s dad moved in with us after Bea’s death. When Bob left, Louie remained. She is the sweetest and most beautiful dog you can imagine, and Linda and I don’t know what we’ll do without her. We are enjoying every day that we can with her. She's obedient, never barks, only wants to be with us, and does enjoy eating.

What else has gone wrong? Well, the dishwasher isn’t up to snuff. Doesn’t clean like it did over twenty years ago when we got it. I actually joined Consumer Reports to get an idea of a replacement. Looks like it will be one of those German Bosch models. According to CR they can’t be beat. They’re sort of like the Apple of dishwashers, including the premium price. Still, the cheap often turns out expensive, so it will be our choice.

Finally, speaking of expensive, while we were at the Rib House yesterday, someone came around the corner too fast and slid into our pick-up truck. They hit it right on the rear left corner and destroyed the bumper, bent up the rear quarter panel, and even damaged the tail gate. Fortunately they left a note on the windshield. When I came out and saw the damage, my first thought was that it was a hit and run. Fortunately the driver took responsibility, and I will get a call from an insurance adjuster on Monday or Tuesday. My biggest concern is that they will want to total the truck.

It’s a cherry 1993 Toyota T-100 with only 78,000 miles. It is the only vehicle we’ll let Louie ride in because she sheds hair worse than me. So let’s hope the insurance company will want to fix the damage.

  

Linda and I are OK. These little difficulties are just part of life, and we have learned to take them in stride. These are small difficulties in the overall picture of life, and I don’t mean to complain. So, how has your week been?

Energy for an Interconnected World ... or Small is Beautiful

The world is so complicated. Things are all interconnected. Unintended consequences lurk at every policy decision. We can’t even agree on such obvious facts that the earth is warming up. And even those that grudgingly accept the warming premise are quick to state that it is just a natural cycle and humankind really has nothing to do with it.

I’ve been an environmentalist all my life. Sure I hug trees. I love those tall guys. Did you know that they actually produce the air we breathe? … them and some plankton somewhere in the middle of the ocean. By stating that I’m an environmentalist, I simply mean that I love nature. Now I love the city too, but nature has this ability to refresh and re-awaken me. I don’t get that from the nearest coffee shop, even with Starbuck’s strong brew.

The early morning sun glistening on the white-capped mountains, the roar of the ocean, and the tweet of the birds. These are things I feel so deep in my soul it turns me inside-out to just experience the beauty and solitude that is nature. But we’re really screwing it up … that’s my opinion.

First is overpopulation and urban sprawl. And that’s just in the US. Wait until all the Chinese want to fill their three car garages in their suburban homes that they want to build ... just like us! You’ll be able to cut the air with a knife. That’s what it is like in Beijing right now. The burning eyes and coughing are just signs that the developing world wants their piece of the pie.

You can blame a lot of things about modern living: transportation, industry, or construction. But at the core, the issue is most often ENERGY. That’s where it all starts. As we look to the sources of energy: oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, wood burning, the wind and water, the sun; there are issues of renewability, greenhouse gas production, air and water pollution, spoiling wildlife habitat, and economic and regulatory issues, and many more I haven't even thought of yet. Even the scenery is at issue … Baker City, Oregon, residents objected to windmills that affected the mountain views and the people in Martha’s Vineyard did not want to see windmills in the ocean.

Which of these issues are most significant to you as an individual varies, possibly depending on where you live. But I’m a citizen of the west. I was born and raised and lived my life in the wide-open spaces of the American West. Sure it’s a little crowded around here in Colorado or California, but it isn’t like the city filled and  crowded Midwest or East Coast.

As with most complex issues, energy and sources of energy is a balance. Key is the relationship between supply and demand. No one wants their lights to go out at 8:00 PM or for there to be long lines at the gas pumps, but we also are suspicious of expansion of any source of energy from windmills to fracking. We often attempt to influence and adjust energy production with government policy and laws.

Last year California made headlines by signing into law an ambitious mandate that requires the state obtain one-third of its electricity from renewable energy sources like sunlight and wind by 2020. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now have renewable electricity mandates. The city of Boulder, Colorado, is in the process of taking responsibility for electric power production away from the local utility. One key reason for that attempt is to expand the percentage of renewable energy requirement beyond the already high level set by Colorado law.

President Obama and several members of Congress have supported one at the federal level. Polls routinely show strong support among voters for renewable energy projects – as long as they don't cost too much, or possibly in their own back yards.

But there is a downside … while energy sources like sunlight and wind are free and naturally replenished, converting them into large quantities of electricity requires vast amounts of natural resources – most notably, land. Even a brief look at these costs exposes the contradictions in the renewable energy movement.

Consider California's new mandate. The state's peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require (if you oversimplify a bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. Let's assume that California will get half of that capacity from solar and half from wind. Most of its large-scale solar electricity production will presumably come from projects like the $2 billion Ivanpah solar plant, which is now under construction in the Mojave Desert in southern California. When completed, Ivanpah, which aims to provide 370 megawatts of solar generation capacity, will cover 3,600 acres - about five and a half square miles.

The math is simple. To have 8,500 megawatts of solar capacity, California would need at least 23 projects the size of Ivanpah, covering about 129 square miles, an area more than five times as large as Manhattan. While there's plenty of land in the Mojave, projects as big as Ivanpah raise environmental concerns. The federal Bureau of Land Management ordered a halt to construction on part of the facility out of concern for the desert tortoise, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Wind energy projects require even more land. The Roscoe wind farm in Texas, which has a capacity of 781.5 megawatts, covers about 154 square miles. Again, the math is straightforward. To have 8,500 megawatts of wind generation capacity, California would likely need to set aside an area equivalent to more than 70 Manhattans. Apart from the impact on the environment itself, few if any people could live on the land because of the noise (and the infrasound, which is inaudible to most humans but potentially harmful) produced by the turbines.

Industrial solar and wind projects also require long swaths of land for power lines. Despite opposition from environmental groups, San Diego Gas & Electric started construction on the 117-mile Sunrise Powerlink, which will carry electricity from solar, wind and geothermal projects located in Imperial County, Calif., to customers in and around San Diego. Soon, environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the $1.9 billion line from cutting through a nearby national forest.

Not all environmentalists ignore renewable energy's land requirements. The Nature Conservancy has coined the term "energy sprawl" to describe it. Unfortunately, energy sprawl is only one of the ways that renewable energy makes heavy demands on natural resources.

Consider the massive quantities of steel required for wind projects. The production and transportation of steel are both expensive and energy-intensive, and installing a single wind turbine requires about 200 tons of it. Many turbines have capacities of 3 or 4 megawatts, so you can assume that each megawatt of wind capacity requires roughly 50 tons of steel. By contrast, a typical natural gas turbine can produce nearly 43 megawatts while weighing only 9 tons. Thus, each megawatt of capacity requires less than a quarter of a ton of steel.

Obviously these are ballpark calculations, but however you crunch the numbers, the lesson is the same: the amount of steel needed to generate a given amount of electricity from a wind turbine is greater by several orders of magnitude.

Such profligate use of resources is the antithesis of the environmental ideal. Nearly four decades ago, the economist E. F. Schumacher distilled the essence of environmental protection down to three words: "Small is beautiful." In the rush to do something – anything – to deal with the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental groups and policy makers have determined that renewable energy is the answer. But in doing so they've tossed Schumacher's adage into the ditch.

All energy and power systems exact a toll. If we are to take Schumacher's phrase to heart while also reducing the rate of growth of greenhouse gas emissions, we must exploit the low-carbon energy sources – natural gas and, yes, nuclear – that have smaller footprints.

There are several other reasons that I support these less attractive alternatives and my support is provisional on the solution to some of the nasty side effects from these power production methods. But, as you can tell from this article, I also have objections to the energy sources considered greener.

As a conversationalist, my real focus is on conservation. There is so much that can be done reducing our need for energy. Overpopulation, of course, is a key factor. But even with the existing number of people on this globe, we could preserve energy with conservation. Things as simple as building insulation and good windows, as well as complex solutions such as computer controlled heating and air conditioning must be implemented. It is as simple as turning off lights and television sets when not in use to complex appliance and device designs that save power. It will take a consorted effort and a conscious will of the people to convert our energy wasting society to one willing to conserve and save.

The ultimate solutions must be balanced on both sides of the scales. All human activity that uses energy and that generates energy must be considered and the most cost-effective and efficient methods to generate and use power must be used, while assuring that the impact on the environment is minimized. We need to be aware of the consequences of all our actions in both generating and using power. We must redesign both the buildings in our city, and even the designs of our cities in general to be more energy-cost-effective. Solutions such as public transportation must be considered with regard to population densities and real need. Let’s not just build a light rail because it is the “green” thing to do, let’s build a light rail because that’s the “right” thing to do.

That is the way to the future. There are choices and trade-offs to be made, and we need to be aware of the impact of any decision, even one that seems very “green.” To an engineer and a conservationist, such as myself, I’m inclined toward solutions that preserve our environment … all aspects of our environment. Windmills and solar are part of the solution. But, they are not the whole solution. Think big! Think deep!! Think how your behavior affects the world around you!!!

Teamwork Tips and Leadership Lessons

After over twenty years of work at IBM, I was certified as a Senior Project Manager. The process of certification at IBM was very rigorous. You started by obtaining a Project Manager (PM) certification from the Project Management Institute. That required several classes, weeks of study of the Project Management Body of Knowledge, and the completion of an extensive résumé describing your background and experience with project management. There were several minimum requirements for experience.

Upon successful completion of a four-hour exam, I received my PMI certification. But that was just the start. I then completed another, larger package of information on my project management experience. I documented several successful projects including leading the ISO 9000 qualification of IBM Printing Systems and several large software development projects. You had to provide details like management recommendations and project statistics. Finally, after obtaining approval for the package from my senior management, I was scheduled for a personal interview by a board of Project Managers. With their approval and leaping all those hurdles, I obtained my IBM Certified Project Manager certificate in May 2002.

Part of my experience came from when I was on the faculty at IBM’s Global Services Institute in Armonk, New York, and acted as a troubleshooter for IBM projects that were in difficulty. The work involved a lot of travel, and would focus my time in getting a misguided project back on track.

IBM provided many resources to assist project teams, project managers, and other assistance to get the job done for IBM and its clients. I attended special training at Harvard Business School and found the lessons key to the success of my teams and teams I consulted with and assisted.

Teamwork and collaboration are critical to achieving the mission in any organization that has to respond to changing circumstances quickly. My time as a Senior Project Manager and team leader has affirmed that idea. When I was asked to assist on a troubled project, I would look for the primary problem that the team was dealing with and suggest alternatives.

Following are a number of issues I encountered and my response to the team to produce productive collaboration. When assisting teams, I did have the dubious advantage of “I’m from Corporate, I’m here to help.” (Most will recognize that statement as one of the three biggest lies. The other two are “The check is in the mail” and “I’ll love you forever.”) They, at least, considered my input as useful advice. Didn’t always follow it, but they did listen. Here is some of what I would suggest.

In the first place, some seem to think that teamwork is magical. All you had to do to harvest its many benefits is to gather up some really talented people and tell them in general terms what is needed — the team will work out the details.

This is rarely the case. It takes careful thought and no small amount of preparation to achieve success. The best leaders I know provide a clear statement of just what the team is to accomplish, and they make sure that the team has all the resources and supports it will need to succeed. Although it may take some political maneuvering to get what is needed for effective collaboration from the larger organization, it is well worth the effort.

A mistake often made at IBM was to think that bigger is better. We used to tell our customers that, if there were a problem, we would “darken the sky with three piece suits.” (That’s a reference to the IBM uniform of long ago.) After all, don’t larger groups have more resources to apply to the problem? Plus, including representatives of all relevant stakeholders increases the chances that whatever is done will be accepted and used. Right?

Well, actually, not right! I learned that excessive team size is one of the most common — and also one of the worst — impediments to effective collaboration for the larger the group, the higher the likelihood of social loafing or free loading.

This lesson was taught to me early in my career when I was a member of a large project team. There was one engineer that did nothing for almost a year. (Projects were long in those days.) It was not obvious to the team leader because there were so many on the team. The larger the team, the more effort it takes to keep members' activities coordinated. Small teams are much more efficient — and far less frustrating to everyone involved. I operated by the guidance of “The magic number seven — give or take two.” That little phrase will have to be the subject of another note at another time.

A project manager on one team sought for the ultimate in harmony. Smooth interaction among collaborators avoids time-wasting debates about how best to proceed. Meetings are all “happy talk” and the PM would bring cookies … I’m not kidding.

Now snacks at a meeting are not wrong in and of itself, but my experience is the opposite. The team needs a dynamic where decisions are discussed and groupthink is avoided. Conflict, when well managed and focused on a team's objectives, can generate more creative solutions than one sees in conflict-free groups. So long as it is about the work itself, disagreements can be good for a team. Of course, too much conflict can be a problem too, but the willingness of the team to listen to conflicting voices is really the best. Some degree of “storming” is essential to good team dynamics.

In this modern, Internet connected, video-filled world, face-to-face interaction is unnecessary. Now that we have powerful electronic technologies for communication and coordination, teams, and especially management, think they can do their work much more efficiently … and a lot more inexpensively … at a distance.

No, no, no. This was my biggest argument with management. Teams working remotely are at a considerable disadvantage. There really are benefits to meeting up with your teammates face-to-face. If an organizations must rely heavily on distributed teams, it is best to spend the time and expense to get members together, at a minimum, when the team is launched, again around the midpoint of the team's work, and again when the work has been completed. The human and informal contact at even this limited number of meetings and get-togethers will aid the interaction that occurs at a distance.

One long project that I assisted had a constant turnover of personnel. No one seemed concerned about this and thought that new members bring energy and fresh ideas to a team. They assumed that otherwise the members would become complacent, inattentive to changes in the environment, and too forgiving of fellow members’ misbehavior.

The truth is that the longer members stay together as an intact group, the better they do. This is a lesson I’ve observed all my life; whether it is a football team or a rock band, teams that stay together longer operate more efficiently. An experienced team … experienced with each other … is the classical “well oiled machine.”

Often the Project Manager was blamed for all the issues. Management would tell me that, “If they only had a better leader,” or “Couldn’t I just take over the team and complete the project.” Even the members of the team often told me that it all depends on the leader.

But that was not my experience. Certainly the activities of group leaders do make a difference. But the most powerful thing a leader can do to foster effective collaboration is to create conditions that help members competently manage themselves. One of the best project managers I worked for spent a lot of time making sure the tasks were assigned to the correct team members and that each knew his or her responsibility. After that he spent most of his time in his office making sure our work was backed up regularly. That allowed us the freedom to try different approaches and truly solve problems creatively. We knew that, if we made a mistake, we could always go back to a previous version of our work and try again. His careful and frequent backup of the work progress served as permission for us to follow our own direction without fear of recrimination.

The key is to launch the team well. Make sure everyone knows their assignments and how their part of the work fits with the overall project. This will automatically cause the team to focus on delivery schedules and how their part of the work fits with other team member’s effort and how it all has to fit together.

Finally, a good leader provides teaching and coaching after the work is underway. Research at Harvard Business School suggests that initial condition setting accounts for about 60% of the variation in how well a team eventually performs; that the quality of the team launch accounts for another 30%; and that coaching accounts for only about 10%. Leaders are indeed important in collaborative work, but not in the ways we usually think.

I was at a serious disadvantage when I visited troubled projects because I had missed the first 90% of the most important part of the team building. All that was left to me was the 10% of real-time coaching. Still I had a positive effect. I tried to listen a lot more than talk, and that often was the solution. I spent more time suggesting changes in behavior of management and stakeholders than I did suggesting changes in the project team. I often acted as a buffer and a communication channel between the various organizations. I considered myself more like a tow truck driver. I was there to get the car out of the ditch rather than give drivers education or rebuild the road. I just didn’t have time for that. Still I thought I had a positive effect and many projects gave me credit for my assistance and appreciated my efforts … although not everyone was happy to see me. But then, at least, they were happy to see me leave.

It is often said that the School of Hard Knocks has high tuition. I spent a lot of years in the trenches learning the rules of the game (and about mixed metaphors). I was happy to share my knowledge with others … that is probably why I love teaching … and writing … so much. I never came to a troubled project with an attitude that I had all the answers. I was only there for a short time, and they had months if not years of experience with the project at hand. My goal was to help them focus more on the trees … especially the one’s in their path … when all they saw was a forest. I was there to remind them that the goal was to drain the swamp when they became too distracted by fighting the alligators. Most of the people I worked with seemed to acknowledge and appreciate my background and experience and took my advice and input gracefully and with some amount of gratitude.

While I enjoyed my time in the field providing help and advice, I was always hopping the next plane to another trouble spot, and missed the satisfaction of bringing the project to a successful conclusion. Ultimately it was all the travel and issues related to travel that forced my next career change. In 2007, when my IBM Project Manager recertification was due, I was onto a new job as the technical quality leader of an IBM division. This was a very large team and it was often like the job of herding cats, but I did get to see the final results of my efforts … or, more accurately … the final results of the team efforts.

Thanks for the Memories ... Part Deux

I described the evolution of memory and external storage and set the stage for the introduction of "Solid State Drives" in my previous article. You can read this earlier note by clicking here.

Now I would like to explain more about these new combinations of memory and external storage and how they are specified.

It is a fact that disk drives have shrunken from 12 inch platters to 5.25 inch to 3 inch and even as small as 2 inch drives. But these are still not small enough to fit in a typical cell phone. These disadvantages, coupled with advances in memory designs, have changed the balance between memory and storage. We know that non-volatile memory chips now exist. We see them every day in use in cameras and smart phones. They have been attached to USB plugs to create “memory keys” or “plug-in drives” or “USB drives” or several other names.

The result is that hard disk external storage is being replaced by solid state memory producing the SSD or “Solid State Drive.” These fast, non-mechanical drives are starting to appear in computers, especially small, light, mobile computers – laptops. The Apple MacBook Air is famous for it’s SSD as are the Windows laptops that coped the Air’s design – the so-called “Ultrabooks.” Most of the new Chrome Books also have SSD drives.

I’ve got a lot of computers. Counting little things like my Raspberry Pi and laptops, as well as my larger desktop systems and servers, I have over a dozen computers here at home. Four of them use SSD drives. The first thing you notice with an SSD is a much faster booting time. My MacBook Air boots in 12 seconds and my Chrome Book boots in 10 seconds. Of course the small size and the resultant longer battery life are obvious advantages too. But one thing funny about SSDs is they have reversed the simple math that we use to calculate  and advertise storage capacity.

For maximum efficiency, all things digital are based on the powers of 2. Now if you raise 2 to the 10th power, you get 1024. That’s pretty close to one thousand, or as engineers say, a kilo or “k.” Computer data is often organized into 8-bit packages called “bytes.” A byte can store a single character like the letter ‘a’ or a capital ‘T’ or the pound sign ‘#.’ A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Continuing with this combination of decimal math terms and binary or powers of two we get a megabyte with is 1024 kilobytes or 1,048,576 bytes. Notice that number is called a megabyte, but it is quite a bit more than that.

So when you buy a 500 megabyte storage drive, you actually get quite a bit more than 500 million bytes. Of course, these days you would get gigabytes or even terabytes, but the math expansion is the same. You get more than the name implies. Sort of like a continual 10% off sale down at the local clothing store or buying a 12 oz. latte and getting 16 oz. for the price.

Now there is some overhead in drive design. Not all the storage space is used for storing your data. Some of the space on a disk drive is used to store information about where things are stored. In the early days of hard disks, IBM invented the term VTOC or Virtual Table of Contents. I actually worked for the engineer that had invented that term -- a little bit of history for folks from the fifties. 

The original PC DOS used a system called FAT for File Allocation Table. There is a directory area plus two FAT areas (an extra for redundancy). But the customer still gets well over the advertised storage with the numeric advantage of the power of two calculations.

I won’t get into details, but comparing the directory and FAT to a table of contents is a good analogy. Just as you would refer to a table of contents to determine what page a particular topic is located, so an area on the disk is reserved to store the locations where specific files are stored. Still, even with this overhead, a gigabyte disk usually has more than a billion bytes capacity. You continue to get more than paid for, or – at least – advertised. Not so with SSDs. They are “over-provisioned.”

The over-provisioning of NAND flash memory in solid state drives (SSDs) and flash memory-based accelerator cards (called a cache) is a required practice in the storage industry owing to the need for a controller to manage the NAND flash memory. This is true for all segments of the computer industry—from Ultrabooks and tablets to enterprise systems and cloud servers.

Essentially, over-provisioning allocates a portion of the total flash memory available to the flash storage processor, which it needs to perform various memory management functions. This leaves less usable capacity, of course, but results in superior performance and endurance. More sophisticated applications require more over-provisioning, but the benefits inevitably outweigh the reduction in usable capacity.

NAND flash memory is unlike both RAM (random access memory) and magnetic media, including hard disk drives, in one fundamental way: there is no ability to overwrite existing content. Instead, entire blocks of flash memory must first be erased before any new pages can be written.

With a hard disk drive (HDD), for example, that act of “deleting” files affects only the metadata (VTOC) in the directory. No data is actually deleted on the drive; the sectors used previously are merely made available as “free space” for storing new data. This is the reason “deleted” files can be recovered (or “undeleted”) from HDDs, and why it is necessary to actually erase sensitive data to fully secure a drive.

With NAND flash memory, by contrast, free space can only be created by actually deleting or erasing the data that previously occupied any block of memory. The process of reclaiming blocks of flash memory that no longer contains valid data is called “garbage collection.” Only when the blocks, and the pages they contain, have been cleared in this fashion are they then able to store new data during a write operation.

(Note the distinction. Magnetic media can be “overwritten.” That means you can write over the old data, effectively erasing what was there before. NAND flash memory must be erased before it is overwritten. That is one reason it is suggested you not delete individual pictures off a camera storage card. Instead, after copying the pictures to your computer, you should just reformat the memory card, thereby erasing everything in one operation. That is both more reliable and will make the memory card last longer.)

The flash storage processor (FSP) is responsible for managing the pages and blocks of memory, and also provides the interface with the operating system’s file subsystem. This need to manage individual cells, pages and blocks of flash memory requires some overhead, and that in turn, means that the full amount of memory is not available to the user. To provide a specified amount of user capacity it is therefore necessary to over-provision the amount of flash memory.

The portion of total NAND flash memory capacity held in reserve (unavailable to the user) for use by the FSP is used for garbage collection (the major use); FSP firmware (a small percentage); spare blocks (another small percentage); and optionally, enhanced data protection beyond the basic error correction (space requirement varies). These are all “overhead” functions that require space to operate efficiently, but are not used for direct storage.

Even though there is a loss in user capacity with over-provisioning, the user does receive two important benefits: better performance and greater endurance. (Endurance is how many times the drive can be written to before failure. There is an intrinsic limit to how many erase cycles a solid state memory can perform before failure.) The former is one of the reasons for using flash memory, including in solid state drives (SSDs), while the latter addresses an inherent limitation in flash memory. 

(Note that, although HDDs are mechanical devices which do wear out and have a mean-time to failure, SSDs also have a sort of electronic "wear" and a similar failure statistic. But, rather than time it is number of erasures.)

The equation for calculating the percentage of over-provisioning is rather straightforward:

Percentage Over-provisioning =

 Total Capacity – Available Storage Capacity / Available Storage Capacity

For example, in a configuration consisting of 128 Gigabytes (GB) of flash memory total, 120 GB of which is available to the user for storage, the system is over-provisioned by 6.7 percent, which is typically rounded up to 7 percent:

128 GB – 120 GB / 120 GB = 0.067 or 6.7%

As SSD capacity increases, this loss of useful storage will be less significant. For now, it does provide a disadvantage when compared to an HDD in sizes like 64 and 128 GB. With 256 GB and larger SSDs, this will matter less.