Do you see who and what is behind the standards? If you did would you adopt them?

Standards are typically thought of as a good thing.  DCK just posted an AFCOM one on education, and it got me thinking do you really know the story behind a standard and if you did would it change the adoption of a standerd.  I've sat on many standard initiatives and gradually learned what is many times behind the scenes of something like an IEEE standard.

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WHAT ARE STANDARDS?

Standards are published documents that establish specifications and procedures designed to maximize the reliability of the materials, products, methods, and/or services people use every day. Standards address a range of issues, including but not limited to various protocols to help maximize product functionality and compatibility, facilitate interoperability and support consumer safety and public health.

The top players in the standards are those who have most to gain by a new standard or who have most to lose. 

Working on standards can be time consuming, especially when part of the game is to slow down the development of a standard to allow more time for companies to adapt.

Ultimately there is a scorecard each company keeps how does this standard affect my products and my company.  Does it help us or hurt us.  Does this standard help our competitors more than us.

Chris Crosby gets into this subject as well with his post.  Chris puts in some great points.

Unfortunately, when evaluating data center providers, customers often have to navigate between what is real and a vendor’s standard- inspired puffery.

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This pattern of devolution from industry standards places a greater burden on today’s data center customers. Failure to ask for, and receive, objective evidence of a provider’s adherence to the standards that underlie their performance claims places the customer in the position of having to make their decision based more on the sizzle rather than the steak. Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware) was the advice of the ancient Greek’s to wary prospective customers, in the world of data center standards compliance, it’s probably still good advice.

US Gov't Data Centers to focus on being Efficient after closing down the excess capacity

NextGov has a post on the next move by the US Federal Gov't to create new metrics to asses the efficiency of remaining data centers after closing many.

The Office of Management and Budget wants to focus less on simply closing federal data centers and more on making sure the government’s existing data center stock is operating as efficiently as possible, an OMB official said Thursday.

That’s why federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel’s office plans to roll its three-year-old data center consolidation initiative into a separate program called PortfolioStat, which audits agencies’ commodity information technology budgets to root out waste and inefficiencies, said OMB Portfolio Manager Scott Renda, who works in VanRoekel’s office.

The strategy is to focus on metrics.

“You’re going to see more focus on the right kind of metrics, efficiency metrics” Renda said. “[We’ll be] thinking about PUE [an energy measurement], thinking about storage, thinking about density measures that really talk to how efficient your infrastructure is. The goal with PortfolioStat is an efficient infrastructure that’s serving the mission of the agency. Consolidation is done to support that program and mission.”

This is a strategy that probably got the consensus of many of the IT decision makers and the vendors who do a lot of consulting for these people.  Don't ever think a big move like this is not done without a vendor helping to say "yeh this is a great way to make you more efficient."  Meanwhile they are figuring out the initiatives that will replace the legacy systems and upgrade them to the latest technology.

Notice the idea is focused on metrics to make a more efficient infrastructure. 

If it was up to me, I would focus on the supply chain of who are the best performing vendors and where are the quality issues that cause huge wastes.  Then determine the metrics that support the monitoring of quality of the system including the quality of the vendors.

But, I don't do any federal gov't work and my partners have no desire to slow ourselves down by adding federal as a market segment.

The problem with metrics is it can take you down the wrong path.  

Much like the work that John Boyd to fight the bureaucracy in Washington that was building faster fighter jets and he was telling people no, you want jets that are more maneuverable.  The ability to change direction, add speed, dump speed is what wins.  The trouble is there were no metrics for that.  And the vendors liked a nice easy if it goes faster with less fuel then it is better approach.

Doesn't it kind of make sense that you want a more maneuverable infrastructure vs. an efficient metric driven machine?

One vote from Wired, Tesla Data logs wins over NYTimes Reporter's notebook

NYtimes reporter John Broder wrote his rebuttal to Tesla's shared data logs.  John put his experience down as why we should believe him.

Since 2009, I have been the Washington bureau reporter responsible for coverage of energy, environment and climate change. I have written numerous articles about the auto industry and several vehicle reviews for the Automobiles pages. (In my 16 years at The Times I have served as White House correspondent, Washington editor, Los Angeles bureau chief and a political correspondent.)

Wired covers this rebuttal.

Times Reporter Disputes Tesla’s Claims, ‘Cannot Account’ for Data Conflict

  • …
I really like the cruise control explanation by the NYTimes reporter.

Musk disputes that Broder turned down the heat, but as Broder points out accurately, Tesla’s logs show that he did just that. But the logs also show that Broder never cruised as slow as 54 miles per hour, nor did he later slog along at 45 miles an hour in a desperate effort to reach a charging station. Broder’s response Thursday relies on his memory, and some shoulder-shrugging.

I do recall setting the cruise control to about 54 m.p.h., as I wrote. The log shows the car traveling about 60 m.p.h. for a nearly 100-mile stretch on the New Jersey Turnpike. I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires. That just might have impacted the recorded speed, range, rate of battery depletion or any number of other parameters.

Wired jumps on the cruised control issue.
That strains credulity a bit. Modern cruise control systems generally maintain vehicle speed even on downhill slopes. They aren’t prone to a 15 mile per hour speed boost.
And the Tesla tire issue?  Uh, check out the tires size. With the change of 45 to 35 aspect ratio.  The 19" wheel has 751 revs/mi.  the 21" wheel has 749 revs/mi.  No difference.  But, that makes no sense how can a 19" wheel and 21" wheel have the same speed?  Because aspect ratio of the tire.  The 19"/21" is the rim size, not the diameter of the tire. 
19" aluminum alloy wheels with all-season tires (Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 245/45R19). Note: optional 21" wheels come with Continental Extreme Contact DW 245/35R21 high-performance tires
 
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Wired closes with the point of the debate.
But what this grudge match is no longer about the Model S’s suitability for road trips. It’s about old school reporting, based on note-taking and memory, peppered with color and craft, versus the precision of numbers and data. And the Times is now obliged to address it on those terms. Because in the end, Broder either set his cruise control for 54 miles and hour, or he didn’t.
 
It will be interesting how reporting gets changed when data loggers are more accurate than a reporter.  This can make for dull uninteresting news.  But, data is going to most of the time be closer to the truth than a reporter who thinks cruise control varies by 15 MPH and 19" vs 21" wheels would explains errors in speed indicated.
BTW, I believe in data logging in the car.  I have data logger connected up to the OBD port on mine.  I use it for tracking mileage for business.  But, once my kids start driving I'll be able to see their speed, brake deceleration, acceleration, throttle position, RPM, distance driven.

Tesla Data Logging vs. NYTimes Journalist, who will win?

I got a chance to ride in a Tesla a couple of years ago with a salesman at an OSIsoft event.  OSIsoft is about data monitoring to show real time performance, so it felt natural to discuss the data logging feature of the Tesla.  It's a great feature to get data on how the car is performing and how it is being driven.  And, this feature is creating an interesting PR battle between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and NYTimes reporter John Broder.

The Public Editor's Journal just posted its investigation.

Conflicting Assertions Over an Electric Car Test Drive

By MARGARET SULLIVAN

2:53 p.m. | Updated Let me get this out of the way up front: This blog post will not be the definitive word on the contentious subject of a Times article in Sunday’s Automobiles section. It’s just an early effort to put some claims and counterclaims out there, while I continue to look into it.

I will keep reporting on this, and, for now, am simply telling readers what I know so far.

Elon Musk put his post out yesterday and they have learned from the creative reporting from Top Gear to always turn on data logging when loaning their cars out to the media.

After a negative experience several years ago with Top Gear, a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives. While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story. In the case ofTop Gear, they had literally written the script before they even received the car (we happened to find a copy of the script on a table while the car was being “tested”). Our car never even had a chance.

The logs show again that our Model S never had a chance with John Broder. In the case with Top Gear, their legal defense was that they never actually said it broke down, they just implied that it could and then filmed themselves pushing what viewers did not realize was a perfectly functional car. In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running.

The NYTimes is preparing a response.

I will be interviewing Mr. Broder later on Thursday. When I reached him earlier, he said that he and his editors were working on a point-by-point response to Mr. Musk’s blog that would appear on The Times’s Wheels blog.An earlier post on that blog made an initial response on the matter, but that predated Mr. Musk’s release of the logs. I’ll link to the new post when it’s available.

Mr. Musk has not returned my call, made at about noon on Thursday. I eventually intend to ask him to fully release and “open source” the driving logs, along with whatever other data might be necessary for better understanding and interpretation.

But, what data does the NYTimes have?  I am looking forward to see what the NYTimes come up with.  Does the NYTimes have a secret data logging feature on their journalists?  :-)

Google's Data Center Videos, 1 week 2.2mil views vs. 2 1/2 yrs 1.3 mil views

Google made a lot of news with its data center photography and video.

One way to look at how well the videos is to looking at the traffic.  The latest video exceeded the first video in less than a week vs. 2 1/2 years of steady views.

The Latest Video.

Video statistics

Views and discovery

2,228,718

Views
 

Key discovery events

A

First referral from: Google

Oct 11, 2012 - 76,628 views

B

First embedded on: wired.com

Oct 16, 2012 - 53,618 views

The first Container Data Center video in 2009. 

Video statistics

Views and discovery

1,315,216

Views
 

Key discovery events

A

First embedded on: www.google.com

Apr 7, 2009 - 14,171 views

B

First embedded on: blogoscoped.com

Apr 7, 2009 - 15,559 views