Quick Update on the North American BCOP Efforts

Fri Oct 2 16:13:52 UTC 2015

On Thu, Oct 01, 2015 at 09:58:49AM -0500, Roland Dobbins wrote:
> So, educating folks to the point that they understand that the
> problem space exists is The Problem, writ large.

I strongly concur with this.  While there are some amazing experts out
there who provide exemplary models of how to run an X, for many values of
X, they're becoming increasingly rare as large entities engage in a race
to the bottom.  We now accept as "routine" problems (including massive,
systemic, persistent problems) that would have never been tolerated
by the community years ago, and in part we accept this because lots of
folks don't know that they shouldn't.

Today's example: http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings/amazon.com

At least they're not in the Top 10 worst spam-sourcing networks like
they were just a few weeks ago, but how can anyone at Amazon sleep
at night while this situation exists?  Do they not grasp how
unprofessional and unethical it is to allow this situation to persist?

The same can be said of many other operational issues, and I don't
mean the normal level of oops-that-was-wrong mistakes that we're all
prone to; we'll never get rid of all of those.  I mean the things
that are way wrong and stay wrong because folks are doing their best
to put their fingers in their ears and avoid hearing about them.
(I'm looking at you, Google.)

So yes, BCOP efforts are laudable and good and every other positive
thing; but unless we (for a large value of "we") start imposing
consequences for bad/wrong/stupid behavior, they will be ignored.
Their existence won't even be noted.   Their relevance won't be grasped. 

Bill Cole nailed it when he wrote:

	Current Peeve: The mindset that the Internet is some sort of
	school for novice sysadmins and that everyone *not* doing stupid
	dangerous things should act like patient teachers with the ones
	who are.

---rsk