Invictus

A Digitally Inclusive South Africa

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

A Digitally Inclusive South Africa

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Great software for a small business (or department)

Preview of new version

Standard Bank major incident

Following on the the major incident at FNB, today I heard on Radio 702 about issues at Standard Bank.

How Complex Systems Fail

The IT Skeptic writes in Great paper on failure of complex systems: "It is not often you read something that completely changes the way you look at IT. This paper How Complex Systems Fail rocked me."

The paper is indeed brilliant and a worthy read.  The author Richard Cook is a medical doctor and his other papers are available here.

Serial GSM Gateway

My mate Jason, has designed and developed a Serial GSM Gateway.  Jason has previously starred on this blog with his home management system.

The device is perfect to use as a fail-safe in a crisis!

Borderless (or brainless)

I had an hour to kill before taking Gomama to St Peter's by the Lake. So instead of reading the Sunday paper as I would have done in the past, I was on Google Reader.

I picked up in my Google Reader, from my old diary farmer friend, that Cisco has released a new set of routers (or wood working devices in this part of the world)

I felt proud of my prediction of a single code versioning. I wonder if the survivors of the Nortantic are smirking?  The jbots also have a view. However, what cracked me up was Cisco's viral video. Far from being borderless it was brainless!  Not unlike, 100% Julias!

The viral video was a real hoot:

• Future shopping in a normal store? - if everything was virtual why is the store still packed to the rafters with normal merchandise?
• Cisco's fashion sense is worse that the blourokkies and would not have been out of place in a George Orwell movie.  The hottest offering of the season? I don't think so!
  
• The worst part of the video?  The total lack of security.  The proposed method of  purchase is totally open to fraud and abuse (no chip and pin).  I would assume a serious information security company like Cisco would be more prudent.
• If this stuff runs on a router then I'll eat my shoe!
  

This video was about as dumb as the telepresence relief aid video.

Top content on TPM - October 2009

Here is a review of the top content on this blog for the year: 

1. SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) Template

2. Checklist for standby generator

3. Best Practice Network Design

4. ITIL implementation checklist

5. ITIL process checklists

6. Lessons from Apollo 13 - working the problem

7. The major incident process - (Magnum MIP) 

8. Checklist for HVAC

9. Kepner-Tregoe: Houston, we have a problem!

10. Checklist of Active Directory tasks

11. Checklist for AHU (Air handling units) installation.

12. Major incident tsunami

13. Henry Ford (My Life and Work) at Project Gutenberg

14. Major Incident Draft Template and Consequence Analysis Report

15. Checklist for problem solving

16. Network troubleshooting checklist

17. Checklist of IT Metrics

18. The Leaky VLANs myth?

19. Microsoft's checklist for Infrastructure maturity

20. Checklist for network architecture documentation

Apple photograph competition

Apple has a great stand in the fountain court at Sandton.  It is about a photo competition (http://www.a2zofza.co.za/)  The content is great as it displays South Africanism, like Jean Pant.

Credit card problems

Personal security with personal computers has always been a problem. From Code Red and Meliisa to today's constant barrage.  We have learnt to live with it and implement countermeasures.  However, the problems around security stretch beyond just computers. Here are other security issues:

• phones lines - not only is the copper stolen but people can patch a connection onto your line and run up your bill
• online banking fraud - your banking details are mined and used
• spam - people attempt to con you with elaborate stories on email

I was introduced to another personal security issue when I attended a bloggers' briefing from FNB on credit card security issues. It was part of their Card Security week and it is commendable how FNB uses social networks in their brand. Blogging is like the old letters to the editor but on steroids.  Many opinions and breaking news stories now originate from blogs before going mainstream, e.g. the Caster debacle.

At this briefing, I was amazed at the level of sophistication used by belligerants to commit fraud using credit cards.  My patterns of using a credit card at retailers and ATM will defintely change!

Some countermeasures to credit card fraud:

• Make sure you have a chip and pin card and avoid retails who don't support it
• Use the SMS notification feature such as InContact (I would love to have notification as a direct message on twitter as an alternative - maybe soon?)
  

How to castrate your data centre

Dave Hitz writes in Why Is NetApp's New Data Center So Efficient? Big Fans and Hot Air on the How to Castrate a Bull blog: "It didn’t take exotic technology to achieve this result. The design and airflow are unusual, but we used ordinary air conditioning units, heat exchangers, and so on. In fact, we reduced the cooling capacity by about 20% so this technique is not only cheaper to run but also cheaper to build. If you want to learn more, we welcome visitors."

Can data centres be built cheaply with solar powered coolers, whirly birds and effective insulation?

What we always knew about the American game

the award for the most ugliest world cup vehicle goes to...

1 billion and a half viewers

The Madge experience

Pap en wors

Website bugs

Mybroadband reports: "Neotel launches new website with improved functionality fresh look, but Firefox and Safari bugs spoil the launch"

The ostrich principle

MyBroadband reports: "Telkom decided to capitalized on the ASA’s long standing principle “that where an advertiser provides an unequivocal undertaking to withdraw or amend its advertising in a manner that addresses the concerns raised, that undertaking is accepted without considering the merits of the matter.”"

This is a classic ostrich principle.  Putting a person's head in the sand instead of dealing with the issue at hand.

Major incident at FNB

MyBroadband reports that First National Bank (FNB) Online Banking has experienced extensive downtime since early on Sunday morning.
I wonder what methodology is being used to resolve the major incident.  Note the little message above on their home page about the load on the call centre.

Update: RT @Radio702: FNB says has resolved on-line banking problems, but some users will still battle because they are regulating number of users.

Update: RT @Rbjacobs: Happy to advise that #FNB Online Banking is now available and that our customers have full logon capability.

Is experience the correct measure?

Darci Riesenhuber writes on Tom Peter's blog: "Isn't it possible that someone who has no experience leading a virtual team can be great at it? Perhaps even better than someone who has?"

I'll state a different question: Can someone who hasn't solved a certain type of problem before, solve a current problem of a similar nature?
The answer would be no, and as an exception maybe (if lucky).  The first recourse of solving problems is social.  A team of people and their interactions in solving a problem have a better chance at resolution than a single individual ever would.
Thus the answer to the question on Tom peter's blog would be dependent on whether this someone has the ability to drive and lead team collaboration.

The Apollo 13 comic

Read the Apollo 13 comic book.

To the moon and back

Read the special edition of Life magazine's Apollo 11 report, here.

Service management downloads

Desktop Auditing has a great set of service management downloads available here.

Wexham Springs (Madge Networks)

The good olde days of Netware and DOS.  Perform3 - brings a tear to this oupa.

The mind of the oppressed.

This video starts and ends with a very relevant quote: "The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." // Steven Biko

ITIL YouTube videos

This video is on the concept of good practice. You can review all the YouTube ITIL videos here.

Token-ring thingy majigy

Kate Godfrey writes in an email: "As I was recently rummaging through the lab for a token ring type 1 cable for some industrial art I decided to make we had a ''fascinating conversation'' for which we had no conclusion.

Do you remember a sort of square box which had around 4 type 1 connections and one in the middle to stack to another one of the boxes. So you could sort of chain together a TR network without a hub. Any idea what that was called?"

Anyone recall what the thingy majigy was called.   I think it might have been something like a four-port hub???