January 21st, 2010 Beardy
By guestblogger Beardy:
From the “No *expletive* Sherlock !!!” department….
For the better part of a quarter century we’ve been fed a complicated and more importantly self-serving lie… that ITIL was the IT Holy Grail that would bring the equivalent of the manufacturing industry’s QA to ITSM, felling in one swoop all the ills of IT…. sorry, wrong.
Even the most quality-conscious engineer will tell you that “QA” only aims to deliver a consistent level of output. Not premium quality. No iterative improvement in quality. Most importantly, no guarantee that the resulting output is always zero-defect. The aim is consistency, not quality. If your base quality is good, then you will deliver a quality product consistently by applying QA. Sadly, if your base quality is poor, then guess what…. QA will only ensure you deliver that consistently….. whoops..
Enter a bunch of British government braniacs… now you KNOW that will result in a quality outcome ! *choke*
So it came to pass that these bureaucrats came up with *drum-roll*…. a bureaucratic, documentation-heavy “solution” to implement an IT-oriented QA system with levels of qualification, individual certifications, etc, etc, etc…. how NOT surprising for a bunch of bureaucrats….
Now it is packaged and sold to businesses globally as “ITIL”, which is now in its 3rd iteration of trying to get it right…. so…. v1.0 must have been typical software “quality” (we ALL know better than to buy into v1.0 !)…
So, like so many other certification systems, the cost for certification is horrendous. It almost makes the software systems that are meant to support these “best practices” look cheap….
So with billions of dollars expended globally on making businesses “ITIL aligned”, you would expect that ITSM was now pretty mature and safe for non-aligned businesses to adopt…. wrong…. if a certain tier-1 OEM’s “best of breed” software for managing ITSM and implementing business practices that a business can leverage to make themselves “ITIL aligned” is anything to go by….. well, let’s just say, that business better have deep pockets and VERY patient staff and customers…..
If it is such a pain; so problematic to implement; so expensive, etc.. then why do businesses persist ? Well as I see it (yes, brace for soap box time…), the reality is that the CIOs, CTOs are all so indoctrinated by the “Institute of Management” spiel and government agencies are SO risk-averse, that it is now an almost unavoidable necessity for most medium to large enterprises if they want to do business at the “big end of town”. Meanwhile SMEs will struggle to justify the cost….
Which leads on to the quote near the end of the article…. can you say “self serving” ?
Whose idea was this, anyway?
Where did the standard model come from in the first place? The answer is both ironic and deeply suspicious: It came from the IT outsourcing industry, which has a vested interest in encouraging internal IT to eliminate everything that makes it more attractive than outside service providers.
“Everything you’ve been told is wrong: What IT should do instead”
http://infoworld.com/print/108477
Ref:
http://www.itilsurvival.com/itilhistory.html
Posted in ICT Management | 1 Comment »
December 30th, 2009 Pete
The following information was sourced from an Australian ANZ customer.
WARNING: Anyone who holds any ANZ credit cards with automatic payment set up.
Review your December statement very carefully. Apparently ANZ had a problem with automatic payments in December which has impacted multiple customers.
The only hint my source received was a “late payment fee” on a card that is setup for automatic payment within the ANZ system.
ANZ are apparently aware of the problem, but don’t appear to be interested in fixing it proactively, only when customers point it out to them for their particular accounts.
At the time of writing, there is nothing on the front page of the ANZ site to suggest they are communicating the December glitch to customers or the public via their site.
Send this information to any ANZ customers you might know, we need to put pressure on big banks who’ve all made profits during the economic downturn at the expense of the general public and small businesses. If they are charging late payment fees for faults in their own systems, then this is just another way they profit from our inaction.
Keep the bastards honest.
UPDATE: My source further reveals the following:
The call centre operator in credit card solutions said that they were able to resolve the problem quickly because they (ANZ) are aware of the problem as it impacted a number of other customers as well.
My source:
1 – Saw unexpected “late payment fee” (auto payment was up to 40+ iterations on monthly cycle, so it has been there a long time…)
2 – Phoned bank to ask (a) why the payment was not processed, and (b) why the fee should be paid if they did nothing different, ie: the auto-payment is not the responsibility of ANZ customers.
3 – Got put through to credit card solutions after initial complaint about scenario
4 – Credit card solutions person was very helpful and advised on how to correct the problem. Apparently the problem impacts OLD / long-standing auto-payments.
5 – Got put back to telephone banking staff to setup a new auto-payment.
6 – Noticed that the new auto-payment has (a) different structure for ID from old one, and (b) has different terminology to old one. New payment IDs are much longer and alphanumeric versus simple 4-digit numeric. Old description read as balance due whereas new description says “FULL balance”, which may or may not be the same dollar figure… still waiting to see what happens in January…
So, the short answers are;
1. yes, they confirmed that the problem was with the old auto-payments
2. yes, they advised that more than just my source’s account was impacted
Posted in Economic Downturn | No Comments »
December 9th, 2009 Pete
It’s been a while since I had offroad tread on my bikes. I used to go exploring trails and find great places to get away from it all on my mountain bike. Well I’ve been watching maybe too many MTB videos lately and I want to get back into it. I started looking at new mountain bikes and saw that I could get a totally insane bike for around $800-$1000 or thereabouts. Then I remembered that my backup commuting bike IS a mountain bike, albeit a really friggen old one.
I got my Mongoose Switchback around 1994. It’s been a tough bastard and has help up quite well over the years. Anything plastic is deteriorating though and some bits probably need replacing.
Today I was putting my regular commuter bike/touring bike in for a service and I decided to impulse buy some Michelin fattie knobble tread tyres for the old Mongoose dirt devil. After I switched out my road slicks, gave the breaks a tune, oiled the chain and polished some of the grime off the frame and wheels, the old Mongoose showed me that it was ready for any mountain anytime. I think it was even daring me to find a huge hill and thrash down it…
Posted in Cycling | Comments Off
November 12th, 2009 Pete
Firstly, this guy’s views on cycling are beyond terminally stupid.
Secondly, how this guy was ever put in charge of anything let alone
planning and design of a city and it’s transportation systems is a
wonder of the modern world.
Sydney Morning Herald “article” about containing the cycling epidemic
by disgraced former NSW minister is torn to shreds by
Copenhagenize.com:
http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/11/meet-carl-scully-mr-headwind.html
The SMH “article” in question:
Carl Scully (former NSW minister who was ejected from parliment for
lying to the Australian people…TWICE!) talks about his crusade to
ban bicycles and keep them out of cities:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/cyclists-do-not-have-the-same-rights-as-motorists-on-roads-20091111-i7wf.html
How citizens on twitter have reacted to the anti-cycling holy war of this ex-transport minister:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=Carl%20Scully
A refresher on the amazing “achievements” of Carl Scully on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Scully
Although Scully publicly blamed the party machine for working against
him, it was reported that some Labor MPs feared his record as
Transport Minister during the Waterfall train disaster and other
problems would have worked against the Labor Party at the next State
election if he was Leader. Carl Scully was sacked as NSW Police
minister on 25 October 2006 by Morris Iemma, after having misled
parliament twice in two weeks[3] over the consequences of the 2005
Cronulla riots in December 2005. He had misled parliament when he had
said he had not seen a report on the incident. Then-Opposition Leader
Peter Debnam had repeatedly called for Scully’s resignation.
and
“Carl Scully was the NSW State Minister for Roads during the 2008-09
widely unpopular implementation of a cashless tollway system of Sydney
roads dubbed the “$100m e-tag swindle”. It initially included a $24
administration fee for Interlink accounts not used more than 24 times
per quarter – which he said the Government would not prevent – and a
$40 bond to purchase the essentially compulsory tags. Due to
widespread complaints these decisions were reversed however, the final
cost to commuters is currently unknown.”
It’s like somehow Carl Scully has never travelled or learned about any
other country in the world. Or is it something more sinister…?
Follow the money.
What we can work out about him is that he’s very friendly with the right corporations (motoring companies and also engineering/infrastructure companies who’ve “won” tenders while he was in office) to make any Australian citizen wonder if his real motivations have anything to do with the people of Australia:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1897261.htm
—
Cities that are well designed for cycling, pedestrians and motor vehicles to
perfectly co-exist have been quite successfully created and improved
by many countries all around the world for decades.
The technology is available.
The design is available.
It’s sustainable.
What we are sorely missing in Australia is the right leadership.
-GeekPete
Posted in Cycling | Comments Off
September 1st, 2009 Beardy
by guestblogger Beardy…
—
When I saw this, the FIRST thing I did was check the date… 1-Sept, not 1-Apr…. ok, so it’s not a bad joke… well not that sort anyway…
I *think* I understand the US view on this in this post-911 era (as alluded to by the author), but somehow I have my doubts as to how effective such a plan would be…. Sure, all the tier-1 or root servers for DNS, ICANN and many of the core routers around the globe are directly or indirectly (ie: owned by US govt, US businesses or with parent companies that are US businesses under US govt jurisdiction) controlled assets that the US govt *could* conceivably order around:
(1)…plan that encompasses all aspects of national security, including the participation of the private sector, including critical infrastructure operators and managers;
(2) in the event of an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network…
Given that the US gov has successfully forced nations (UK, Oz, CA, etc…) with ties through WTO to write into Law even the most draconian legislation (eg: the DMCA complete with the anti-circumvention and anti-reverse-engineering clauses), in theory they may even be able to create so-called “cooperative Acts” passed by the same countries thereby extending the reach of this bill if it passes into Law…. IANAL, but history has shown some disturbing anti-rights scenarios played out against common sense, common decency and even Common Law.
The real questions are;
(1) would any telco infrastructure or ISP be exempt?
(2) if any telcos would be outside the scope of the likely flow-on Laws, could the independent backbones and ISPs provide sufficient of the meat of the Internet to keep it going under what would amount to martial law?
“Americans continue plans to switch off the internet” – The Inquirer
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1531879/americans-continue-plans-switch-internet
“Bill would give president emergency control of Internet” — CNet
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html
Ref: (excerpt from proposed bill)
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/rockefeller.revised.cybersecurity.draft.082709.pdf
Posted in Copyright and Fair Use | 1 Comment »
