Why do people die?

It seems difficult to believe that it has only been a week since the attacks in Mumbai. Normally I keep up with the news, but I first found out something when I overheard some one talking about it. I find it ironic that with all the technology plain old eaves dropping can still be the breaking news source.
The final death toll is something like 175 people. This isn’t exact, but the real number isn’t important. Neither are the names of the people who died. What is important is who they were to other people, “father”, “daughter”, “friend”, “husband”. The dead are beyond caring, but the number of people morning the loss of someone dear to them is far greater, and cannot be quantified.
In the same week there have also been reports of more then 200 dead in “religious violence” in Nigeria and something like 500 dead of cholera in Zimbabwe.
I am contradicting my earlier comments that the numbers don’t matter, but why has India captured more news then the other two? Is it because it targeted westerners, people like us? Or because people are afraid it could happen elsewhere, and things like riots and water born disease aren’t relevant to us in the west?
Death is a part of life, but there is something tragic about these incidents. It is not only that they are preventable, but at least two of them involved deliberate acts of violence.
This marks a serious attempt by me to not only resume posting, but to do so regularly, probably once a fortnight. Sorry to resume on such a downer, but this is where I am this week.

The benefit of ITIL

The benefit

At the core ITIL sort of says there are 10 things that you should be doing, and goes into a lot of detail about what those things are. It goes a lot further then that, sub dividing all of those things again and again, but most places only need to look at that first list and figure out how many they do at all, and how many they do well. Most places do about 6 or 7 at all and only 2 or 3 well.

ITIL tells you what you should be doing, not how to do it.

The other large part of ITIL is the terminology, which also forces a way of thinking. An example of an incident is when the user rings to complain that something is working and you get the user up and going using typical help desk processes (reboot the server for example). The problem is that the system broke in the first place, which might be a more complicated and expensive fix.

While this may seem like trivial example or simply common sense it is a difficult concept for many people to grasp. The idea that when you fix an incident you still have to track the problem and try and resolve it, even when you have no users screaming at you is not in tune with most IT support organizations. Sure it happens on an ad-hoc basis (eg saying over lunch "you know, we really need to fix that firewall, its always crashing") extending this to something systematic is difficult.

ITIL is not just a way of managing IT organizations, maybe not even a way of managing IT organizations. Its just a set of ideas and guidelines. I think is a good thing to hold an IT department against to see how much of a job they are doing (how much, not how well). It is bloody hard work simply to try to "do a better job", no matter what guidebook you are following.

The most difficult part of implementing ITIL is getting it pushed down to those people who do the work. I agree that it is a waste of money sending everyone in the organization on a training course to learn the same thing, but no organization is going to improve simply if the management starts using a new set of terminology, it has to be pushed down to the people who actually do the work. They need see how the work they are doing fits into the higher level processes, and how these help deliver the IT service.

It puts peoples roles in perspective, they need to see what part they play in delivering service, but that every one around them is also playing a part. Sometimes people don't see the flow on effect of not doing a good job because they don't see how they fit in to the scheme of things, not other people think that they are so much more important then anyone else and don't realize that they can't deliver service just by themselves, other people form part of the chain.

Stupid banks

1. First I get a SMS claiming to be from my bank, asking me to call a number I have never heard of about my credit card.
   
2. So I check my account through internet banking, while calling my banks normal call center and supply my normal security details. They don't recognize the number I have been given but put me through to their credit card department.
3. I realize I have missed a credit card payment, so I pay off my entire balance. I should point out that I have many times my credit card limit in my other accounts.
4. I give up on the credit card department after several minutes on hold.
5. At home while cooking dinner I receive a call about my credit card from some one claiming to be from my bank. After asking for my by name, they then proceed to ask me for my customer number and password. *Click*, I hang up without responding (if you don't understand why, keep reading)
6. I call the main call center again, this time I do get put through through my credit card section. I answer my security questions, and they say that they have been trying to call me about an overdue credit card bill. I tell them I have just paid it and they check, apparently their autodialer is only updated overnight.
7. I complain that they called my and asked for confidential details when I have no way of knowing who is calling. They say that they have to comply with privacy, and if some one doesn't want to answer they give then a phone number for them to call back.
8. This number is not the mail bank call center number, and there is no easy way for a client to verify that they are calling the bank and not a scammer.
9. I say "thank you for reminding my why I don't want to stay with your bank in the future."
   

Bill Gates as a caddie?

I love this quote.

"When I wrote Solitaire for Microsoft, I unleashed a monster of unproductivity onto the world," Wes Cherry, author of Microsoft Windows Solitaire told Sophos. "I bet there are millions of bosses out there who hate me. If I had a penny for every hour that has been wasted playing Solitaire in the office, I could hire Bill Gates as my golf caddie."

This is the source. This is a news release from a security company who's virus scanning software now has the ability to block people from running windows games.

Isn't there a group policy that does this anyway?

This is bill gate's bio from the Microsoft site. According to Forbes, bill gates is worth $50 billion (as of 2006). Ouch. According to this site, he is exactly one year younger then the current president of Iran, Mahamoud (mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, and 12 years older then Julia Roberts. So much for star signs.

A new unit of measurement: September 11 massacres a week

"... more then one hundred Iraqis (in a country of 29 million people) are dying each day from internecine violence. In a country of America's population, the equivalent losses would be a little more then 1000 per day - or roughly two September 11 massacres a week."

Christian Caryl, The Australian Financial Review (AFR.com), Friday 19th January, 2007.