Two sides of St Louis Police and Rams, interpretations of freedom of speech

Public perception is something that is so many times misunderstood and underestimated.  The recent Ferguson grand jury situation with a handful of St Louis Rams showing support has added more controversy.

To illustrate how there are two sides of a story, did you know there are two Darren Wilson's associated with St Louis Police?

Here is one who has the unfortunate same name, Darren Wilson (who is African American)

“Statement from our President, Darren R. Wilson
Greetings community members of St. Louis, MO and all those across the nation. The Ethical Society of Police has been closely following the events surrounding the unfortunate police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO.

As a result of public outcry and a demand for justice, the Ferguson police officer’s name was released and happens to be, Darren Wilson.

The first thing we would like to assure the world is that this is a horrific coincidence.
May I assure the world that this is not the President of the Ethical Society of Police’s Sergeant Darren R. Wilson who is African-American, and happens to be an 18 year veteran of the St. Louis Police Department.”
— http://www.esopinc.com/#!Statement-from-our-President-Darren-R-Wilson/c18ya/605670A5-CDCD-49BB-A5B9-6F18A4445F73

The other Darren Wilson (who is white) is who most know.

“Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot unarmed teen Michael Brown last month, testified before a grand jury convened to investigate the shooting on Wednesday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

”
— http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/darren-wilson-michael-brown-grand-jury_n_5837978.html

The action that drew attention is in this video.

Response from the St Louis Police Association.

“Roorda was incensed that the Rams and the NFL would tolerate such behavior and called it remarkably hypocritical. “All week long, the Rams and the NFL were on the phone with the St. Louis Police Department asking for assurances that the players and the fans would be kept safe from the violent protesters who had rioted, looted, and burned buildings in Ferguson. Our officers have been working 12 hour shifts for over a week, they had days off including Thanksgiving cancelled so that they could defend this community from those on the streets that perpetuate this myth that Michael Brown was executed by a brother police officer and then, as the players and their fans sit safely in their dome under the watchful protection of hundreds of St. Louis’s finest, they take to the turf to call a now-exonerated officer a murderer, that is way out-of-bounds, to put it in football parlance,” Roorda said.

”The SLPOA is calling for the players involved to be disciplined and for the Rams and the NFL to deliver a very public apology. Roorda said he planned to speak to the NFL and the Rams to voice his organization’s displeasure tomorrow. He also plans to reach out to other police organizations in St. Louis and around the country to enlist their input on what the appropriate response from law enforcement should be. Roorda warned, “I know that there are those that will say that these players are simply exercising their First Amendment rights. Well I’ve got news for people who think that way, cops have first amendment rights too, and we plan to exercise ours. I’d remind the NFL and their players that it is not the violent thugs burning down buildings that buy their advertiser’s products. It’s cops and the good people of St. Louis and other NFL towns that do. Somebody needs to throw a flag on this play. If it’s not the NFL and the Rams, then it’ll be cops and their supporters.””
— https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141202/06363629292/st-louis-police-claim-its-their-first-amendment-rights-not-to-protect-football-players-who-supported-protestors.shtml

Out of all these words, the first amendment is short and to the point.

“Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
— http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html

The Washington post does a good job of pointing out that the St Louis Police doesn't understand the First Amendment.

“Boy, the St. Louis police really know how to cool things down, don’t they? They’ve taken a controversial protest by a handful of football players, and mixed it with a whiff of bullying authority and a profound misunderstanding of the First Amendment, to create a bigger and more heated argument than it had to be. Sound familiar?”
— http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/st-louis-rams-dont-shoot-gesture-was-free-speech-and-the-police-should-know-it/2014/12/01/a55c2656-7995-11e4-9a27-6fdbc612bff8_story.html

Video of Amazon's Kiva Robots

I tried to contact Kiva Systems once and didn't hear anything back.  From what I read it looked like all resources are working on amazon.com warehouses.

The media repeats an AP article, but Time has an article with a video

“The robots are made by Kiva Systems, a company Amazon purchased for $775 million in 2012 to better handle the hundreds of worldwide orders Amazon customers make every second. Kiva’s robots bring shelves of goods out of storage and carry them to employees, allowing Amazon to retrieve more items for more customers simultaneously. Amazon began using these robots in July of this year, and there are now more than 15,000 of them in 10 of the company’s warehouses. They whir around like gears on a Swiss watch.”
— https://time.com/3605924/amazon-robots/

Here is a video that is part of the Time article.  What would be nice is a voice over instead of music.

Uptime's Tier Rating challenged by 7 layer Approach by Int'l DC Authority says "Tiers Officially Outdated"

SearchDatacenter has a post on a challenge by the International Data Center Authority (IDCA) of Uptime's Tier Rating.

““The existing [focus on just power and cooling] doesn’t reflect what we need today, and in the future,” said Mehdi Paryavi, president of the IDCA, a research and education organization headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The IDCA created a seven-layer pyramid of holistic data center operation: application, platform, compute, IT infrastructure, site facility infrastructure, the site’s space and topology. This model accounts for the interdependencies between IT and facilities that engender high-quality service delivery.

”We’re past the days of silos where people say, ‘I’m a database administrator. I don’t care about power.’ Everyone needs to know the impact of their choices,” Paryavi said.”

Going to the IDCA web site they say that

“Tiers Officially Outdated!”

I haven't studied IDCA.  Here is a video on the training program.


A difficult challenge for data center automation, availability of the control system

Part of the cloud is automation.  An example is PuppetLabs, and here is a blog post on the topic.

“Automation extends to the software layer, where complex systems can be configured once and then rolled out on the fly as needed, using cloud automation tools. Intelligent systems architecture can balance the load among compute, network or storage resources, bringing systems online or offline as demand dictates.

This infrastructure-as-code approach to the modern, increasingly complex data center requires advanced cloud management tools, and cloud automation answers that need. The same software-defined approach to managing private cloud architecture works equally well for managing public clouds. Bonus: By abstracting away the differences between clouds, sophisticated cloud automation software makes it easy to provision the resources the business needs at any given moment, without getting bogged down with where the servers actually sit.”
— http://puppetlabs.com/blog/what-cloud-automation-driving-force-data-center-automation

There are tons and tons of companies that have cloud automation tools.  But, how many people spend time addressing the availability of the automation control system.  ???  This may seem obvious, but a control system needs to have a higher availability than the services it is managing.  Otherwise the service will go down when the automation control system goes down.

And, this may mean you need a backup to the automation system when it goes down during an outage.

As Cloud environments get bigger and bigger, automation is a part of the solution, but have you thought about what happens when the automation system goes down.