Its not often I talk about work, as my clients and their clients identities need to be respected and confidentiality kept to, but I can't really help discussing the problems of the models we have come to know and love.
Many companies now, in terms of IT support, follow either the broad ISO20000/ITIL model or some form of similar models. Whats really critical, however, is not your model, but that what you use and pay for not only covers your needs and your customers needs, but has sufficient and appropriate support, whether you provide it through your own staff or buy the services elsewhere. Training and education is also very important, and I cannot stress enough the criticality of managing your estate in realtime, with full, up-to-date support contracts, proper cover for critical applications and services, and that your staff, contractors and external providers are kept informed on these and any changes.
Its not difficult to implement a proper change control process. Many years ago I worked for one of the biggest engineering firms in the world. For our UK IT divisions internal IT support we had a full team doing change control. And despite our size, we didn't use fancy tools or software: we used a simple spreadsheet but implemted controls through a careful network of trust, meetings, communications and monitoring. It worked. From an audit perspective, of course, nowadays such a system would not be considered ideal. But there are many reasonably simple control systems and record keeping systems for managing systems and users. Sharepoint is an excellent way to implement a simple system as it can manage versions and get sign offs from users. Remedy is a very popular tool but there are many now which are not difficult to implement or use.
Either way, there is no excuse for slipshod controls and decaying services. What seems like an easy out can turn into a very expensive mistake. Take the example of a former client who milked their employees by under-staffing to a point that all of their staff left, leaving little in terms of meaningful documentation and a degraded, broken and decaying infrastructure which is going to cost huge amounts now because the only option was to outsource entirely and hope they could get a reasonable deal. That client ended up paying 100 euro plus VAT an hour just to get an onsite engineer for "emergency" support. And naturally, even the smartest of hands on tech experts couldn't have covered the boundless of scope of what their old staff had been expected to do. They ended up paying a prorata rate of nearly 200k a year which would have paid for full salaries for 4 full time permanent staff. Their "savings" programme of driving out their brightest and best ending up costing them enormous amounts just to tick over.
How (not) to make savings that end up costing you a fortune
1. Not replacing obsolete software and hardware
Hardware outfits give you 3 years warranty for a simple reason: after this time, the odds of hardware failure starts to rise. But not only that, the cost of trying to source old parts rises exponentially after about 5 years from product launch, so many of the more saavy hardware houses no longer sell warranty once a product reaches 5 years. While many servers and PCs are actually quite good, there is a real risk that critical components may be very difficult to find once a product goes end of life. The best solution is to refresh your hardware on a 5 year cycle, and keep waranty in place for the full 5 years.
2. Allowing hardware to run out of warranty
This seems like a saving but in fact it is not. HP for example, have a policy whereby if you bring a device back into warranty in order to get a repair, they bill the cycle from the end of the warranty expiration. So if you wait a year after warranty expires, and then renew for 3 years, its backdated by 1 year so you basically are penalised. If your hardware is out of warranty, don't use it for production.
3. Using OEM versions of software
A lot of hardware comes with OEM, cut down versions of good software, and sometimes hardware houses sell "deals" that roll software in with big hardware sales. Don't be fooled by this: if its being given away cheaply, question where the cuts are being made to facilitiate this. You also don't get proper support and it may have a very limited timespan. Some versions also are only cutback versions of the full packages and don't fully cover your needs.
4. Overrelying on key staff
Staff who are overworked and undervalued will get pissed off and leave, simple as that. Worse still, they may cut corners, or put in place workarounds to avoid getting caught up in major issues. My boss has a great description of one of these guys on a client site: they have one guy looking after a huge estate by himself for several months. My boss says, what he was actually going was holding the wardrobe doors shut when all the crap was inside waiting to burst out. Which it did, when the guy left before they'd even signed a support deal with an outsourcer who was left with a total nightmare.
5. Poor management
There are two obvious ones here. Don't use promotion as a tool to get somebody out of the way or as a pedestal to put somebody on. IT can be complex and expensive and so needs great managers with fine skills in negotiation, cost control and people management. They need to be great communicators and have a real commitment to service provision. Putting somebody into these positions to shove them out of another role is a major recipe for disaster. Do not, at the peril of disaster, hire local GAA players, no matter how much you want to play up your "local team player" image. IT needs sophistication and sharp modern business skills, not the small team mindset of local amateur sports. Failed captains of once great counties are obvious no-nos and should be avoided at all costs: if your county took 5 years to recover after your knuckle dragging moron ruined their might, you certainly don't want this retard wrecking your IT services.
6. Training and documentation
You can't really have the former without the latter. The bottom line is this: know what you've got, what skills you need to support it, buy in what you cannot do to the level you require and keep records of gaps and try to upskill existing staff who at least know your customers. Update all documentation at least annually and get it signed off by senior staff members. Most importantly, incorporate your change records into your main documentation body so troubleshooters can fix problems that might have occured as a result of a prior change.
7. Grant minimum security levels
This is usually fussed about when allocating 3rd parties permissions but generally, they tend to forget what they have and can do. The ones you need to watch are your own staff. This goes to all levels - from access to data suites to admin access on servers. Most guidelines recommend using security groups to control individual rights and never using local accounts to grant administrative permissions. Always remove leavers and movers from their old groups when roles change - you don't want them meddling with other peoples work.
8. Force users to "own" their own data
This especially applies to mass file shares. Don't just keep increasing limits to accomodate lazy uesrs: you'll just quickly run out of space. Archive as much as possible.
9. Always keep a good backup
There is just no excuse for poor backup policy. Use a managed solution if you have more than 20 servers and check that your policies on retention and freuquency match your business needs. Label and store media carefully and use a reputable offsite provider if you can. Don't rely on their trust either: a former client of mine had their entire end of year set lost by a careless offsite provider.
10. Retire old stuff properly
Have a proper decommissioning process. Don't just power stuff off and leave it there. Destroy or securely wipe old disks, derack and remove old hardware, label if available for reuse and remove it from DNS, AD, and your backup set. Take a full good backup before you go and manually expire unneeded backups (Commvault in particular sets automated retention policies that will keep the last 10 days of backups on retired servers unless you manually remove them). Note what licenses are in place as some can be reused. Recover good hardware such as HBAs and disk arrays.
The main things I would focus on are keeping a proper register of hardware, including location, serials, warranty status, support information, ILO/DRAC details and software license information. Know who "owns" the service provided and keep this up to date. Minimise root and admin access. Monitor and document all changes. Don't leave broken stuff in a degraded state. Finally, make sure your staff are valued and rewarded because they are the ones who will get the work done.
Shoegirl - the blog
Thoughts and ramblings
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Friday, December 30, 2011
2012
It's interesting to see how 2011 has panned out and although I don't buy into the myth that the market will find its own balance and taxes are the big evil, I was rather surprised to see that tourism has picked up quite a lot over the last year.
Surprised because I do find that for a log of the sector, prices have gravitated back towards the extortionate prices of 5 years ago, for everything from room prices to food. Even the lowliest bnb now charges 10 euro minimum for breakfast, which makes that 45 buck room look decidedly more pricey. Similarly, free parking is thing of the past and other things have rapidly crept back while service is poorer than ever.
One laughable feature is gentrification through price. Food and quality doesn't change but a marketing uplift creates an illusion that quality is up to match a new higher price, which in fact hasn't changed! One of the dirty tricks of the Celtic tiger.
Another one that's come back with a bang is leaving the 17 year old to manage your business while you spend your day on a golf course. Not long ago an old schoolmate closed his shop after 4 generations. Totally unsurprising since he didn't actually ever appear in it. Yet it's still common for some to see self employment as a means to get others to run your business should you get rich quick. This is the real problem with entrepreneurship in Ireland, not the governments lack of support but a set of myths persisting that self employment is an easy ride. Far from it. There reality of self employment is that to make it work, you can't stop at 40 hours a week. Unless you do something that earns large sums.
Anyway here's my wishes for 2012
1 a fairer environment for employment - and an end to the sustained attack on the rights of lower paid workers
2 real opportunities, no more white
elephants like fas and the ces
schemes
3 something to be done to tackle unfair commercial rent regimes
4 a fair property tax system that might reduce reliance on punitive rates
5 clarity of temp work directive
6 a bit of reality on vat as this will cripple Ireland
Surprised because I do find that for a log of the sector, prices have gravitated back towards the extortionate prices of 5 years ago, for everything from room prices to food. Even the lowliest bnb now charges 10 euro minimum for breakfast, which makes that 45 buck room look decidedly more pricey. Similarly, free parking is thing of the past and other things have rapidly crept back while service is poorer than ever.
One laughable feature is gentrification through price. Food and quality doesn't change but a marketing uplift creates an illusion that quality is up to match a new higher price, which in fact hasn't changed! One of the dirty tricks of the Celtic tiger.
Another one that's come back with a bang is leaving the 17 year old to manage your business while you spend your day on a golf course. Not long ago an old schoolmate closed his shop after 4 generations. Totally unsurprising since he didn't actually ever appear in it. Yet it's still common for some to see self employment as a means to get others to run your business should you get rich quick. This is the real problem with entrepreneurship in Ireland, not the governments lack of support but a set of myths persisting that self employment is an easy ride. Far from it. There reality of self employment is that to make it work, you can't stop at 40 hours a week. Unless you do something that earns large sums.
Anyway here's my wishes for 2012
1 a fairer environment for employment - and an end to the sustained attack on the rights of lower paid workers
2 real opportunities, no more white
elephants like fas and the ces
schemes
3 something to be done to tackle unfair commercial rent regimes
4 a fair property tax system that might reduce reliance on punitive rates
5 clarity of temp work directive
6 a bit of reality on vat as this will cripple Ireland
Friday, November 25, 2011
Priory Hall, the apartment crash, Daft hypes again, and all that
2 interesting ones from Daft.ie this month:
First, Daft.ie have come up with yet another celebrity economist love-in, the usual blatant manipulation of statistics for the usual covert attempts to reignite the fear and panic so typical of the height of the boom. Early in the summer it was using UCD students to strike terror into the heart of 17 year old kids and their parents coming to college (curious, isn't it, when you consider the massive cut to students living up to 30 miles away who now presumably cannot even dare to think about living in Dublin or another university town, never mind paying the pretend increases which I doubt really materialised?) This time it was the usual about increases in rent. 0.1% to be precise. I was going to add a point to the usual celebrity economists blog that 0.1% of 800 a month is 80c, but I decided not to bother. On the flip side, rents in Dublin and Cork are indeed on the way back up - although thankfully not as bad as it was in early 2007 when there was literally nothing in Cork under 750 euro a month that didn't resemble Dachau. I wonder how much of this is in anticipation of the upcoming reviews of Rent Allowance which looks increasingly to be a hot target for welfare cuts. With even Labour ministers suggesting they want to move it back to its original intent as a short term measure, I would imagine that either rates will be cut dramatically or eligibility will be harshly cut.
At the same time, I do think its a good thing to force local authorities to taken responsibility for housing low income people, while at the same time, the problem does remain especially in Dublin and Cork, that social housing remains woefully underprovisioned, especially for single people and anybody who actually works, notably low earners. Its dreadfully unfair to think that differential rent will be introduced for those currently on rent subsidy schemes while so many low earners are at the mercy of the market (I often point out that in 2002, I was paying nearly 38% of my take home pay in rent for a place that was declared substandard - no running hot water, poor ventilation and no heating - despite earning about 2/3 of an average wage).
But I don't think that justifies the scandal that is Priory Hall. The council essentially has abdicated itself over time of forcing landlords to pay for essential services and urgent repairs. As a result, we know that many tenants live in places without complete hot running water, adequate light or ventilation. What is not pointed out is that even with the above, the vast majority of rented properties do not have effective and cost effective heating (which plunges even average earning tenants into either unbearable cold or huge energy bills), inadequate light and space, and Grannies 40 year old broken furniture. I think I've only ever lived in one place where the furniture was not either broken or just of such poor quality it actually hurt to sit or lie on seats or beds. Ironically, the one decent place was the one and only place where the landlady didn't register for PRTB or declare her tax income! Ironically, her husband was the letting agent!! Its interesting to note that none of my tax compliant landlords rented me a decent place at a fair place that was not a hovel.
And so there is the provision in law that the council should inspect homes and refer rogue landlords to court. But of course, very few councils do. Why? Because if they did, landlords simply wouldn't comply, and housing those tenants would fall to the councils.
And then there was Priory Hall.
This is the mother and father of all housing scandals. For 2 reasons. Firstly, it does seem that the plight of private tenants was simply of no interest to either media or state and that these lowly serfs simply don't deserve to be reported on. There was a little silent jeering at the rent allowance private tenants who were fortunate enough to get deposits from the council and in some cases, extra help, albeit at the courts forcing, should they be unable to get a place for the same price.
In contrast, it seems that private tenats just had to piss off. I believe that where rent was already paid for the month, it was not returned, nor were deposits. Let them eat cake. The total silence regarding private tenants paying their own way was typical of the biased and manipulated debate in the Irish media: private tenants are perceived as being rich, privliged and "lucky" to have not participated in ruinuous proroperty purchase. Nobody points out that the self paying private tenant is the true funder of NAMA, and paying twice: first through extortionate rents to the landlord class and secondly through taxation to subsidise banks, purchasers of tax discounted properties (including FTBs and section 23 owners). Nobody points out that the reason most rent is because they couldn't afford to buy. Nobody points out that even now, the average rental in Dublin now rents for nearly 3 times the typical mortgage cost over 25 years for an identical property in the same development. And ironically, its actually worse outside of the Dublin area, thanks to rent allowance.
It is however, thankfully, pointed out that rent allowance has a huge impact on job mobility for many on welfare. It doesn't end there, however, tenants who have had cuts in wages are forgotten while the media cries over RA cuts: the outcome is identical.
A lot of the problem is to do with perceptions regarding living with the Ma. I have a friend who managed to get herself social housing and now pontificates to me about living with Mum. In the last year, I've managed to pay off 3500 euro of loans, nearly 2400 of course fees, and at the same time, managed to save 7,000 euros. I contributed at home to the tune of about 60% of my previous rent, while on an income mostly 600-700 a month more. If you tot up the loans and savings alone, its interesting to note that figure including rent to my parents comes to about 18,000. Previously, I paid the loans, fees plus about 7500 a year in rent. I've since been able to increase my savings to about 10k a year. I simply couldn't countenance that while renting. But ironically, the gap between my savings and the CASH price of the lower end of the market is rapidly declining. I'm seriously wondering should I just wait another year or two and then put down what could be then be a 25% deposit? It may well be worth it!
You would like to think that at such a time those previously gouged by the system would at last have their day, but in fact we are simply being gouged even more, paying the real price for others greed while reaping none of the benefits.
Anyway this wasn't my point. My point is this: how can the city council get away with making nearly 187 families homeless while supposedly acting in their interest? How can they then have the audacity to walk away from their responsibility to both owners and tenants alike? Why is it that if the council successfully brings a case over a developer and landlord, it is the purchaser or tenant who ends up out on the street and out of pocket?
The question I have is how the same council granted planning permission and did not stop these homes being occupied in the first place. They say back for years while these places were sold and moved into. This is why I feel that the only answer to the problem of poor quality rented housing can only be solved by both licensing the landlord to remove bad characters from land lording, and there should be a certificate per unit judged on the basis of condition, limits placed on size per person to stop overcharging and overcrowding.
But hardly likely to happen in an environment where even paying PRSI brings the cry babies put.
First, Daft.ie have come up with yet another celebrity economist love-in, the usual blatant manipulation of statistics for the usual covert attempts to reignite the fear and panic so typical of the height of the boom. Early in the summer it was using UCD students to strike terror into the heart of 17 year old kids and their parents coming to college (curious, isn't it, when you consider the massive cut to students living up to 30 miles away who now presumably cannot even dare to think about living in Dublin or another university town, never mind paying the pretend increases which I doubt really materialised?) This time it was the usual about increases in rent. 0.1% to be precise. I was going to add a point to the usual celebrity economists blog that 0.1% of 800 a month is 80c, but I decided not to bother. On the flip side, rents in Dublin and Cork are indeed on the way back up - although thankfully not as bad as it was in early 2007 when there was literally nothing in Cork under 750 euro a month that didn't resemble Dachau. I wonder how much of this is in anticipation of the upcoming reviews of Rent Allowance which looks increasingly to be a hot target for welfare cuts. With even Labour ministers suggesting they want to move it back to its original intent as a short term measure, I would imagine that either rates will be cut dramatically or eligibility will be harshly cut.
At the same time, I do think its a good thing to force local authorities to taken responsibility for housing low income people, while at the same time, the problem does remain especially in Dublin and Cork, that social housing remains woefully underprovisioned, especially for single people and anybody who actually works, notably low earners. Its dreadfully unfair to think that differential rent will be introduced for those currently on rent subsidy schemes while so many low earners are at the mercy of the market (I often point out that in 2002, I was paying nearly 38% of my take home pay in rent for a place that was declared substandard - no running hot water, poor ventilation and no heating - despite earning about 2/3 of an average wage).
But I don't think that justifies the scandal that is Priory Hall. The council essentially has abdicated itself over time of forcing landlords to pay for essential services and urgent repairs. As a result, we know that many tenants live in places without complete hot running water, adequate light or ventilation. What is not pointed out is that even with the above, the vast majority of rented properties do not have effective and cost effective heating (which plunges even average earning tenants into either unbearable cold or huge energy bills), inadequate light and space, and Grannies 40 year old broken furniture. I think I've only ever lived in one place where the furniture was not either broken or just of such poor quality it actually hurt to sit or lie on seats or beds. Ironically, the one decent place was the one and only place where the landlady didn't register for PRTB or declare her tax income! Ironically, her husband was the letting agent!! Its interesting to note that none of my tax compliant landlords rented me a decent place at a fair place that was not a hovel.
And so there is the provision in law that the council should inspect homes and refer rogue landlords to court. But of course, very few councils do. Why? Because if they did, landlords simply wouldn't comply, and housing those tenants would fall to the councils.
And then there was Priory Hall.
This is the mother and father of all housing scandals. For 2 reasons. Firstly, it does seem that the plight of private tenants was simply of no interest to either media or state and that these lowly serfs simply don't deserve to be reported on. There was a little silent jeering at the rent allowance private tenants who were fortunate enough to get deposits from the council and in some cases, extra help, albeit at the courts forcing, should they be unable to get a place for the same price.
In contrast, it seems that private tenats just had to piss off. I believe that where rent was already paid for the month, it was not returned, nor were deposits. Let them eat cake. The total silence regarding private tenants paying their own way was typical of the biased and manipulated debate in the Irish media: private tenants are perceived as being rich, privliged and "lucky" to have not participated in ruinuous proroperty purchase. Nobody points out that the self paying private tenant is the true funder of NAMA, and paying twice: first through extortionate rents to the landlord class and secondly through taxation to subsidise banks, purchasers of tax discounted properties (including FTBs and section 23 owners). Nobody points out that the reason most rent is because they couldn't afford to buy. Nobody points out that even now, the average rental in Dublin now rents for nearly 3 times the typical mortgage cost over 25 years for an identical property in the same development. And ironically, its actually worse outside of the Dublin area, thanks to rent allowance.
It is however, thankfully, pointed out that rent allowance has a huge impact on job mobility for many on welfare. It doesn't end there, however, tenants who have had cuts in wages are forgotten while the media cries over RA cuts: the outcome is identical.
A lot of the problem is to do with perceptions regarding living with the Ma. I have a friend who managed to get herself social housing and now pontificates to me about living with Mum. In the last year, I've managed to pay off 3500 euro of loans, nearly 2400 of course fees, and at the same time, managed to save 7,000 euros. I contributed at home to the tune of about 60% of my previous rent, while on an income mostly 600-700 a month more. If you tot up the loans and savings alone, its interesting to note that figure including rent to my parents comes to about 18,000. Previously, I paid the loans, fees plus about 7500 a year in rent. I've since been able to increase my savings to about 10k a year. I simply couldn't countenance that while renting. But ironically, the gap between my savings and the CASH price of the lower end of the market is rapidly declining. I'm seriously wondering should I just wait another year or two and then put down what could be then be a 25% deposit? It may well be worth it!
You would like to think that at such a time those previously gouged by the system would at last have their day, but in fact we are simply being gouged even more, paying the real price for others greed while reaping none of the benefits.
Anyway this wasn't my point. My point is this: how can the city council get away with making nearly 187 families homeless while supposedly acting in their interest? How can they then have the audacity to walk away from their responsibility to both owners and tenants alike? Why is it that if the council successfully brings a case over a developer and landlord, it is the purchaser or tenant who ends up out on the street and out of pocket?
The question I have is how the same council granted planning permission and did not stop these homes being occupied in the first place. They say back for years while these places were sold and moved into. This is why I feel that the only answer to the problem of poor quality rented housing can only be solved by both licensing the landlord to remove bad characters from land lording, and there should be a certificate per unit judged on the basis of condition, limits placed on size per person to stop overcharging and overcrowding.
But hardly likely to happen in an environment where even paying PRSI brings the cry babies put.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Why "great employer" reports are a sham
One of the things I've got to see as a contractor is how shitty some workplaces actually are. You get to experience first hand places that have gone to the point that they are no longer allowed to hire permanent staff, and naturally, such a move is a foreboding one that hardly reflects intelligent or practical business or HR practice. Hiring freezes are fine if you are genuinely downsizing, but its now quite common in places where aggressive growth is still occuring. The gap is filled by the usual suspects: outsourcing, offshoring, and the dirtiest of dirty words: contractors. Some are so bad that they even set limits on the length of time contractors can work on continuous assignment, so of course, those workers cannot qualify for the normal protections of equality legislation.
Of course sometimes these workers get paid more, sometimes far more, than the ghost employees they replace. For example, my client sends me out on assignment for a rate almost 3 times my daily rate. So the end client could have 3 of me for the same price. And that is my Dublin rate: in fact, those client could potentially have up to 4 contractors for the same price!!
No wonder, then, contract staff are sometimes treated as little more than slaves. Resentful employees often refuse to cooperate for fear of losing their own roles. The same dirty players it seems also managed to offload their own permanent staff by basically driving them out by wholesale bullying, unthinkable workloads and persistent obstacles put in their way.
Imagine how stunned I am to see all of these companies gracing the list of "great place to work", a consultancy which feeds the Fortune best in class list. Thing is, you have to actually APPLY to be on this list, so its not an objective study of all companies, its basically the best of the few hundred or so who actually applied. And you'd think that those who apply would realistically feel they had something to show off.
Well, actually, no they don't. What I notice is how the great place to work system systematically excludes those very workers most likely to be disgruntled, such as temps, contractors, etc. So a 350 plus workforce like one place I worked managed to get a great score by interviewing only the 260 or so that were permies: the rest, who could paint a very different story altogether, were simply excluded. Likewise in a pareticularly nasty company, one so bad and so unethical I find it stunning the barefaced cheek they have in boasting a committment to employees and being "good guys." This one is currently running a PR exercise as part of a hostile takeover that is sure to explode anytime soon, which I think will tell consumers the truth about this nasty crowd and trigger a proper boycott.
Another good one is that one of the companies who is behind the legal initiative to shoot down weekend premia for low waged catering workers is in there: so they claim to be a great workplace yet they will go to the high court to stop paying their workers more?
Our Irish media are often just so limp wristed when it comes to telling the truth. David Norris was lambasted for his past opinions and actions, yet nobody bothered to look behind the stories and question what really happened and what it means. Its time we all woke up and started questioning the propoganda put in front of us as truth.
Of course sometimes these workers get paid more, sometimes far more, than the ghost employees they replace. For example, my client sends me out on assignment for a rate almost 3 times my daily rate. So the end client could have 3 of me for the same price. And that is my Dublin rate: in fact, those client could potentially have up to 4 contractors for the same price!!
No wonder, then, contract staff are sometimes treated as little more than slaves. Resentful employees often refuse to cooperate for fear of losing their own roles. The same dirty players it seems also managed to offload their own permanent staff by basically driving them out by wholesale bullying, unthinkable workloads and persistent obstacles put in their way.
Imagine how stunned I am to see all of these companies gracing the list of "great place to work", a consultancy which feeds the Fortune best in class list. Thing is, you have to actually APPLY to be on this list, so its not an objective study of all companies, its basically the best of the few hundred or so who actually applied. And you'd think that those who apply would realistically feel they had something to show off.
Well, actually, no they don't. What I notice is how the great place to work system systematically excludes those very workers most likely to be disgruntled, such as temps, contractors, etc. So a 350 plus workforce like one place I worked managed to get a great score by interviewing only the 260 or so that were permies: the rest, who could paint a very different story altogether, were simply excluded. Likewise in a pareticularly nasty company, one so bad and so unethical I find it stunning the barefaced cheek they have in boasting a committment to employees and being "good guys." This one is currently running a PR exercise as part of a hostile takeover that is sure to explode anytime soon, which I think will tell consumers the truth about this nasty crowd and trigger a proper boycott.
Another good one is that one of the companies who is behind the legal initiative to shoot down weekend premia for low waged catering workers is in there: so they claim to be a great workplace yet they will go to the high court to stop paying their workers more?
Our Irish media are often just so limp wristed when it comes to telling the truth. David Norris was lambasted for his past opinions and actions, yet nobody bothered to look behind the stories and question what really happened and what it means. Its time we all woke up and started questioning the propoganda put in front of us as truth.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Xtreamer Ultra review
I subscribe to iBood and ever since I got my grubby paws on a fabulous iomega iStor with 4TB for under 300 euro, I've found it difficult to resist their bargains. My most recent purchase was a South Korean designed HTPC, the Xtreamer Ultra. You can buy these direct, and take the hit from the An Post tax gougers (I really love how they charge you for collecting your taxes and duties!) or buy from a European reseller.
Anyway, the package is attractive, even if you consider the flaws which I will describe later on. The hardware is nVidia ion based with Intel 525 cpu, and it comes with a very generous 4GB of ram installed. There are 6 usb slots, onboard DVI and hdmi sockets (and a vga converter kindly included), a MCE remote control, a very interesting remote control mini keyboard with touchpad, and finally, a 8GB usb key with a Ubunutu based distro, dedicated startup profiles configured for XMBC and Boxee, and finally, a simple Nas distro. Drivers and a few extra apps are included for the more recent Windows versions.
However this is the first and very major flaw: there is no Windows version installed. While yes, this lowers the cost, it complicates the system in such a way as to make it almost unusable for all but a very technically expert user.
Let me quickly run over the machine otherwise. Basically, you boot up from the included USB key, and you can access your other devices over the network, connect a USB device, or else buy and install an internal disk. Supported formats include SSD (they will sell you one for 40 euros, although 16gb is a little small for meaty operating systems such as Windows 7), or you can add a 2.5 inch SATA drive, which is compatible with many laptops since about 2007.
There is an onboard NIc, which is good, but you can also buy for an addition 20 euros, a USB wifi stick. Its quite probable that you could also get any Ubuntu compatbile 3g keu to work, though I was unable to get O2 prepay working on mine.
The first problem is that by default, ubuntu password protects wireless profiles, so unless you know how to disable this, you will be prompted for a password even when using the supposedly foolproof Boxee and XBMC profiles.
But this basically exposes the real problem with this device: its simply a nightmare to get up and running. While I was able to get wifi enabled and installed an internal SATA disk, I was unable to configure via the GUI to get XBMC or Boxee to mount it automatically. Within 2 weeks of buying the device the mini keyboard simply stopped working and it took a serious trawl of the website to find a fix which thankfully worked. At another point, the MCE remote simply stopped functioning. I followed the "fix" on the forums, but it didn't work: thankfully, removing the batteries and replacing them bizarrely worked.
This wasn't my main issue though: this was with the included USB key. No matter what I did, within 2 to 3 days of use, the filesystem seemed to corrupt, eventually refusing to boot, or mounting volumes as read-only, and the only fix was to completely reimage the USB key - not just once, but at least once a week since I bought the device. This meant reconfiguring all of the wireless and sound settings again: sound over hdmi also proved tricky to configure and VGA on my TV monitor was impossible to use for nont graphical screens unless I used the DVI/vga cable rather than hdmi which overscanned it, even on the bios screen.
This was painful enough, but even simple configurations were frequently buggy and complex and general use poor. I found, for example, that none of the website instructions included imaging the internal HDD with the basic USB image unless you connected it as an external USB, requiring a SATA to USB cable. I had a caddy for my laptop and was adding it as a 2nd drive, so I had to trawl the net to find a suitable application that successfully was able to image the HDD with the USB image: this failed for at least 3 simple mainstream disk imaging and backup software packages, only a very obscure tool worked. I also have a spare Vista license and was hoping to install my recovery DVD on my laptop and then move to the Xtreamer, but Windows wasn't having it, and crashed every time, even in safe mode. At some point I might consider installing Windows 7 but not right now.
Finally, it had many usage issues. Sound was not great for a supposedly "high end" device, sounding more like the cheap basic sound cards of the early 1990s. The USB wifi was not sensitive and so network connections were slow unless in the vicinity of the router. Video playback was very high quality, and after some initial issues getting sound to work, the playback was fine as long as you didn't pause or try to fast forward: do that and the picture vanished.
I did attempt to play a DVD from an external DVD rewriter but no joy: various errors indicated that I probably need to locate some suitable decoders and software playback packages. It does say it will play bluray, but only with a commercial Windows package so this isn't promising (Linux Journal had a piece on currently available blu ray decoders a while back so guessing this will change).
The verdict? Its a hard device and good hardware, a brilliant concept but fails utterly in execution. It is simple too difficult to configure and the accessories too flaky in software terms to be worthwhile for any but very techie users. And the last thing I want to do after a week of troubleshooting complex Citrix application issues is to come home and start troubleshooting Linux. It is entertaining, but I suspect this device is really only useful for Windows 7 users.
One final note, I did manage to install Windows 2008 R2 on this and it worked fine. I don't have a home server license to test, but I suspect this could work well with Vortexbox and reports suggest that OpenElec is excellent on this device: there is even a custom build which is a mean install. The only problem of course with the full install is how to get it to always pick up the internal drive. Great, but really only of interest to enthusiasts.
Anyway, the package is attractive, even if you consider the flaws which I will describe later on. The hardware is nVidia ion based with Intel 525 cpu, and it comes with a very generous 4GB of ram installed. There are 6 usb slots, onboard DVI and hdmi sockets (and a vga converter kindly included), a MCE remote control, a very interesting remote control mini keyboard with touchpad, and finally, a 8GB usb key with a Ubunutu based distro, dedicated startup profiles configured for XMBC and Boxee, and finally, a simple Nas distro. Drivers and a few extra apps are included for the more recent Windows versions.
However this is the first and very major flaw: there is no Windows version installed. While yes, this lowers the cost, it complicates the system in such a way as to make it almost unusable for all but a very technically expert user.
Let me quickly run over the machine otherwise. Basically, you boot up from the included USB key, and you can access your other devices over the network, connect a USB device, or else buy and install an internal disk. Supported formats include SSD (they will sell you one for 40 euros, although 16gb is a little small for meaty operating systems such as Windows 7), or you can add a 2.5 inch SATA drive, which is compatible with many laptops since about 2007.
There is an onboard NIc, which is good, but you can also buy for an addition 20 euros, a USB wifi stick. Its quite probable that you could also get any Ubuntu compatbile 3g keu to work, though I was unable to get O2 prepay working on mine.
The first problem is that by default, ubuntu password protects wireless profiles, so unless you know how to disable this, you will be prompted for a password even when using the supposedly foolproof Boxee and XBMC profiles.
But this basically exposes the real problem with this device: its simply a nightmare to get up and running. While I was able to get wifi enabled and installed an internal SATA disk, I was unable to configure via the GUI to get XBMC or Boxee to mount it automatically. Within 2 weeks of buying the device the mini keyboard simply stopped working and it took a serious trawl of the website to find a fix which thankfully worked. At another point, the MCE remote simply stopped functioning. I followed the "fix" on the forums, but it didn't work: thankfully, removing the batteries and replacing them bizarrely worked.
This wasn't my main issue though: this was with the included USB key. No matter what I did, within 2 to 3 days of use, the filesystem seemed to corrupt, eventually refusing to boot, or mounting volumes as read-only, and the only fix was to completely reimage the USB key - not just once, but at least once a week since I bought the device. This meant reconfiguring all of the wireless and sound settings again: sound over hdmi also proved tricky to configure and VGA on my TV monitor was impossible to use for nont graphical screens unless I used the DVI/vga cable rather than hdmi which overscanned it, even on the bios screen.
This was painful enough, but even simple configurations were frequently buggy and complex and general use poor. I found, for example, that none of the website instructions included imaging the internal HDD with the basic USB image unless you connected it as an external USB, requiring a SATA to USB cable. I had a caddy for my laptop and was adding it as a 2nd drive, so I had to trawl the net to find a suitable application that successfully was able to image the HDD with the USB image: this failed for at least 3 simple mainstream disk imaging and backup software packages, only a very obscure tool worked. I also have a spare Vista license and was hoping to install my recovery DVD on my laptop and then move to the Xtreamer, but Windows wasn't having it, and crashed every time, even in safe mode. At some point I might consider installing Windows 7 but not right now.
Finally, it had many usage issues. Sound was not great for a supposedly "high end" device, sounding more like the cheap basic sound cards of the early 1990s. The USB wifi was not sensitive and so network connections were slow unless in the vicinity of the router. Video playback was very high quality, and after some initial issues getting sound to work, the playback was fine as long as you didn't pause or try to fast forward: do that and the picture vanished.
I did attempt to play a DVD from an external DVD rewriter but no joy: various errors indicated that I probably need to locate some suitable decoders and software playback packages. It does say it will play bluray, but only with a commercial Windows package so this isn't promising (Linux Journal had a piece on currently available blu ray decoders a while back so guessing this will change).
The verdict? Its a hard device and good hardware, a brilliant concept but fails utterly in execution. It is simple too difficult to configure and the accessories too flaky in software terms to be worthwhile for any but very techie users. And the last thing I want to do after a week of troubleshooting complex Citrix application issues is to come home and start troubleshooting Linux. It is entertaining, but I suspect this device is really only useful for Windows 7 users.
One final note, I did manage to install Windows 2008 R2 on this and it worked fine. I don't have a home server license to test, but I suspect this could work well with Vortexbox and reports suggest that OpenElec is excellent on this device: there is even a custom build which is a mean install. The only problem of course with the full install is how to get it to always pick up the internal drive. Great, but really only of interest to enthusiasts.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Bailing out wealthy homeowners: the uncomfortable truth
The startling article from the Guardian published in June 2011 went almost unnoticed and unheeded in Ireland. It was a little article which entirely tore apart the myth that Ireland's hotels are the cheapest in Europe, forced to reduce prices by hostile receivers in predatory bailed out banks. Nobody in Ireland reported this Eurostat report. Conor Pope's Pricewatch column remains, aside from a small number of radio shows, the only newspost to persistently monitor the state of consumer prices in Ireland. Ineeded there is regular reporting on the impacts of mortgage interest rate changes in various media outlets, but information is based on guesswork, anecdotal evidence and sometimes downright spin.
For example there is no central, reliable source of information on the exact borrowings and financial status of mortgage holders in Ireland, aside from that held by the banks themselves. This effectively means that there are no independent reliable sources of assessment on the impact of interest changes that can be relied upon to get a solid picture of the true impact. As a result, bad policy decisions have been made which unfairly redistribute scarce tax resources to those who do not need them. A good example of this is the extension of tax reliefs for those who purchased homes between 2004 and 2007. The assumption is that such buyers were overpriced and thus bought at prices that would now leave them with unmanageable "jumbo" mortgages.
But in fact, this may not be the case.
And in reality, we really don't know.
For a start tax based reliefs only apply to those who earn enough to pay income tax. And the maximum levels of relief go to those who earn the most. In other words, those who are still in well paid employment get the largest relief, those who have suffered pay cuts, were lowered salaried to start with get less, and those who have lost their jobs get nothing at all.
So in other words, instead of focusing reliefs on the hardest hit, the government has passed the vast majority of the relief to those who need it least, while giving nothing at all to the hardest hit.
And there isn't a single statistic that would show this problem in its full extent.
For many years, it has been strongly criticised that generous tax reliefs are given to pension savers, again almost all of it going to upper rate tax paters: i.e. again, the highest earners, who need it least. It was rarely pointed out that the pension coverage levels of private sector workers largely mirrored their sectoral and institutional coverage levels. Those who worked in low paid jobs with no pension assistance from an employer are very unlikely to contribute to any kind of pension, because in order to provide any sort of real coverage would cost so much it would drain an already modest income. On the other hand, low earners working in businesses that provide generous employer contributions to pensions are more likely to save for their old age, but nowhere near the scale at which you find in earners in the 50k+ earnings bracket, where pensions are as much a tax relief tool.
What is most worrying, however, is the concept that because of statistical absence, misunderstanding or perceptions, scare tax resources are being diverted away from those who are hardest hit by the recession and simply passed on as windfalls to well to do, high earners. There is a dangerous perception still present as a legacy from the 1970s that self employed people are all high earning tax dodgers and that PAYE workers are the put-upon victims of the capitalist world. In fact the opposite is true: 80% of self employed are worse off than they would be in a job, vast numbers of vulnerable unemployed are being bullied into self employment by "advisors", media hacks and other vested interests, not to mention the scourge of forced umbrella contracting in sectors such as IT, which leaves those on fixed term contracts no option other than to "choose" self-employment to stay working. Not only that but it is no longer possible to get a mortgage as a self employed person, even on rolling contracts, and ordinary "real" self employed are more likely than any other group to have debt or mortgage arrears issues.
Unfortunately this perception is backed up by the yuppies of IBEC, terrified of the truth being told about self employment, and union hacks who know no better. As a result, the inequality of tiger Ireland is becoming much worse in recession.
For example there is no central, reliable source of information on the exact borrowings and financial status of mortgage holders in Ireland, aside from that held by the banks themselves. This effectively means that there are no independent reliable sources of assessment on the impact of interest changes that can be relied upon to get a solid picture of the true impact. As a result, bad policy decisions have been made which unfairly redistribute scarce tax resources to those who do not need them. A good example of this is the extension of tax reliefs for those who purchased homes between 2004 and 2007. The assumption is that such buyers were overpriced and thus bought at prices that would now leave them with unmanageable "jumbo" mortgages.
But in fact, this may not be the case.
And in reality, we really don't know.
For a start tax based reliefs only apply to those who earn enough to pay income tax. And the maximum levels of relief go to those who earn the most. In other words, those who are still in well paid employment get the largest relief, those who have suffered pay cuts, were lowered salaried to start with get less, and those who have lost their jobs get nothing at all.
So in other words, instead of focusing reliefs on the hardest hit, the government has passed the vast majority of the relief to those who need it least, while giving nothing at all to the hardest hit.
And there isn't a single statistic that would show this problem in its full extent.
For many years, it has been strongly criticised that generous tax reliefs are given to pension savers, again almost all of it going to upper rate tax paters: i.e. again, the highest earners, who need it least. It was rarely pointed out that the pension coverage levels of private sector workers largely mirrored their sectoral and institutional coverage levels. Those who worked in low paid jobs with no pension assistance from an employer are very unlikely to contribute to any kind of pension, because in order to provide any sort of real coverage would cost so much it would drain an already modest income. On the other hand, low earners working in businesses that provide generous employer contributions to pensions are more likely to save for their old age, but nowhere near the scale at which you find in earners in the 50k+ earnings bracket, where pensions are as much a tax relief tool.
What is most worrying, however, is the concept that because of statistical absence, misunderstanding or perceptions, scare tax resources are being diverted away from those who are hardest hit by the recession and simply passed on as windfalls to well to do, high earners. There is a dangerous perception still present as a legacy from the 1970s that self employed people are all high earning tax dodgers and that PAYE workers are the put-upon victims of the capitalist world. In fact the opposite is true: 80% of self employed are worse off than they would be in a job, vast numbers of vulnerable unemployed are being bullied into self employment by "advisors", media hacks and other vested interests, not to mention the scourge of forced umbrella contracting in sectors such as IT, which leaves those on fixed term contracts no option other than to "choose" self-employment to stay working. Not only that but it is no longer possible to get a mortgage as a self employed person, even on rolling contracts, and ordinary "real" self employed are more likely than any other group to have debt or mortgage arrears issues.
Unfortunately this perception is backed up by the yuppies of IBEC, terrified of the truth being told about self employment, and union hacks who know no better. As a result, the inequality of tiger Ireland is becoming much worse in recession.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
When homophobic sins come back to haunt . . .
I was shocked last week to discover that somebody is organising a womens night in the Turks Head. I even discovered that they had a night in May, from here. From similar posts on boards.ie and the style I recognise from somebody who is a real menace on the scene. A self appointed "expert" who pushes a vision of identitity which to be honest is a blinkered ideology that could be quite harmful to people in that position, who really has no credentials aside from life experience, but this is dangerous as this is a highly sensitive issue that needs deep care when dicsussing.
The sad reality is that anybody can appoint themselves as an activist and get into organisations to push talks, seminars, presentations etc. People really don't know better and a lot of harm can be done. It does seem that a couple of organisations have been willing to block this kind of pushy activism and its unfortunate that its crawled into the social scene with little resistance.
The facts on the Turks Head are this:
It was the Parliment and was sold in the early 90s. It was done up and reopened around 1997 or so. The old gay clientele were refused entry or forcibly ejected, often with a lot of verbal and physical abuse.
In 1997 a group of girls who called themselves the lesbian avengers held a "kiss in" on the premises. They were thrown out. It acted as one of the prime movers for the equality legislation that was passed into law in 2000. This is why the gay clientele moved to the Front Lounge.
The hostility and agression didn't end in 2000 however and a cool welcome continued for a few years after. They also made a point in the early years of heavy migration in excluding visible foreigners. Since then they have been more compliant with the law but really this isn't a place which is warmly welcoming to LGBTQ folk and I don't think we should spend our pink pounds there simply because they want us now that their "regulars" are broke. They should have done this in 1997.
Secondly there were lots of pubs which held events - the Castle Inn, Mother Redcaps, some of the pubs and clubs around the quays. These should be getting the business from us long before we turn to the nearest convenient club to the FL.
As for the use of capitals on the queerid website, its clear that this person has the brain capacity of a baboon and the sensitivity of an oaf. It would be better for the LGBT community in Dublin if such people were not organising club nights out and infesting the community.
The sad reality is that anybody can appoint themselves as an activist and get into organisations to push talks, seminars, presentations etc. People really don't know better and a lot of harm can be done. It does seem that a couple of organisations have been willing to block this kind of pushy activism and its unfortunate that its crawled into the social scene with little resistance.
The facts on the Turks Head are this:
It was the Parliment and was sold in the early 90s. It was done up and reopened around 1997 or so. The old gay clientele were refused entry or forcibly ejected, often with a lot of verbal and physical abuse.
In 1997 a group of girls who called themselves the lesbian avengers held a "kiss in" on the premises. They were thrown out. It acted as one of the prime movers for the equality legislation that was passed into law in 2000. This is why the gay clientele moved to the Front Lounge.
The hostility and agression didn't end in 2000 however and a cool welcome continued for a few years after. They also made a point in the early years of heavy migration in excluding visible foreigners. Since then they have been more compliant with the law but really this isn't a place which is warmly welcoming to LGBTQ folk and I don't think we should spend our pink pounds there simply because they want us now that their "regulars" are broke. They should have done this in 1997.
Secondly there were lots of pubs which held events - the Castle Inn, Mother Redcaps, some of the pubs and clubs around the quays. These should be getting the business from us long before we turn to the nearest convenient club to the FL.
As for the use of capitals on the queerid website, its clear that this person has the brain capacity of a baboon and the sensitivity of an oaf. It would be better for the LGBT community in Dublin if such people were not organising club nights out and infesting the community.
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