Hotel de Selves - visit to Sarlat

Pros: Very friendly and helpful staff. Nice grounds, good heated pool. Excellently located on the edge of town (5 minutes walk from town centre).

Cons: Noisy rooms, uncomfortable beds.

Well worth the upgrade to go next door to the sister hotel Clos La Boetie.

in reference to: → HOTEL DE SELVES SARLAT - CHARMING HOTEL PERIGORD - OFFICIAL WEB SITE - HOTEL SARLAT 3 STAR DORDOGNE (view on Google Sidewiki)

Clos La Boetie: venue for visit to Sarlat

Superb Boutique Hotel, friendly staff, comfortable beds. Situated on the edge of town (but within 5 minutes walk of the town centre).
Rooms are spacious and quiet and well equipped (including wi-fi). Nice heated swimming pool.

in reference to: → HOTEL CLOS LA BOETIE SARLAT - HOTEL CHARME PERIGORD - OFFICIAL WEB SITE - CLOS LA BOETIE LUXE DORDOGNE (view on Google Sidewiki)

Pullman Paris Bercy: venue for Paris visit

This hotel is excellent for a Paris visit. Rooms are spacious, beds are very comfortable. Local Bercy village has many nice restaurants if a visit to the city centre is out of the question. Metro station Saint Emillion (line 14) is 5 minutes walk from the foyer. This is primarily a business hotel - small gym, no pool or spa. Restaurant is over priced.

in reference to: Welcome to the Pullman Paris Bercy, deluxe hotel for business trips and meetings. (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Past, The Present & The Future

The Past (The Good)

• Low national debt
• Full employment
• Export lead growth
• Meaningful Social partnership
• Great EU Presidency

The Past (The Bad)

• Rezoning irregularities
• Excuse banks for "off-shore bank" account scandal 
• Illegal payments / gifts to politicians
• Tax breaks for small minorities
• Tax breaks for developers
• Ignore property bubble warning in 2001
• An €8bn tax surplus to a €20bn tax shortfall in a couple of years
• Collapse of Banking System
• Rocketing National Debt (again)
• Light / Non-existent financial regulation (let the markets decide)
• Millions frittered away in a bloated health service
• Millions wasted on e-voting machines
• Millions blown in consultancy fees for inoperable computer systems

The Present (The Ugly)

• Guarantee all bank deposits
• Guarantee all bond holders
• Banks can't (won't) lend to businesses
• Nationalise Anglo Irish Bank
• Set up NAMA 

The Future (Scenario 1 - The Bad)

1. Pay the banks between 40-50% more for their toxic loans than they're currently worth
2. Pay a fee to the banks to administer these bad loans that the tax payer now owns
3. Don't tell the tax payer how much you are going to pay the bankers due to "commercial sensitivities".
4. Don't charge interest to property developers until they can afford to pay.
5. Cleaned up Irish banks get flogged off to foreign investors, shareholders get a nice carpet bagging payoff and the Irish Tax Payer gets left holding worthless junk.
6. No time-scale for NAMA... 
7. Generations of Irish Tax Payers will get to pay for this arrangement
8. This arrangement is unfair because the risk is loaded onto the tax payer and removed entirely from the banks, and shareholders.

The Future (Scenario 2 - The Better)

1. Nationalise the banks
2. No need to hire administrators to look after the bad debts because the nationalised banks will do this for us at no extra cost.
3. No need to hire Arthur Cox & PriceWaterhouseCoopers and no need for them to construct "chinese walls" in order for them to manage any conflicts of interest.
4. Tax payer pays the actual value of the loans...let the markets decide (remember that one?)
5. What the tax payer pays he gets in back in return when the property markets return to sane levels...let the markets decide 
6. Property developers who go bust go bust, those that survive - great...let the markets decide.
7. Tax payer will receive a return on their investment when the banks are refloated. 
8. This arrangement is fair to all stakeholders - banks, developers, shareholders, and tax payers.

NAMA as currently proposed benefits:

• The Bankers
• Their shareholders & bondholders
• The property developers (because NAMA will probably keep them afloat on interest free holidays rather than call in the loans)
• Foreign investors who get to snap up clean banks

NAMA as currently proposed shafts:

• The tax payer
• The tax payer's children
• The tax payer's grandchildren

Information Overload

A recent blog entry by Stephen Fry fretting over the amount of emails and other media he had to sift and respond to before he could get on with his day reminded me of the time when email was first introduced to the office.

It was late 1995 or early 1996 that email was introduced into the office for internal communication. In fact we all received an internal paper memo on our desks confirming that all future internal communication would be done via email. About 6 months later we got our smtp email addresses and all of a sudden we were able to email clients rather than posting them a letter. This was brilliant, or so I thought.

In fact what happened was in the times before email, everyone thought and chose carefully what would be communicated via regular mail. Email lead to virtual brain dumps, and even worse task "pass the electronic parcel" where rather than dealing with issue simply move it along to someone else. The amount of superflous communication grew exponentially. And that even before the advent of Spam.

Now there are a multitude of communication channels - Instant Messaging, Twitter, Feeds. However, the information overload is the same - with Google Reader the new social networking features have turned a steady stream of information into a torrent. Another new application - Lazyfeed - updates feeds based on tags in realtime - the torrent is becoming stronger. I think I need help to the river bank. Any suggestions?

NAMA

I was trying (not very hard) to come up with a clever acronym for NAMA, but I can't. Maybe it's just as well because I'm deeply suspicious of this Agency.

For those of you outside the Banana Republic of Ireland the National Asset Management Agency is being set up by the government to buy the dead wood assets off our banks, so that it will vastly improve their balance sheets and the risk from the banks' bad loans will pass from the shareholders to the Irish Taxpayer. The amount that will be paid by NAMA for these bad loans will be "somewhere" between 70-75% of the original high market value. However the actual price paid will not be disclosed "due to market sensitivities". An ongoing court case involving one of these bad debts has revealed that the approximate current market value of these bad assets is closer to 25% of the original high market value.

So, what we know is:

1. The total potential level of bad debts in Irish banks is €90bn (Irish annual expenditure is approximately €60bn!).
2. The Irish taxpayer will pay between 45-50% more than the asset is worth.
3. But we won't actually be told how much we are paying for the assets even though it's our tax money

Conclusion: NAMA = Sweet heart deal between politicians, bankers, shareholders and developers (who are currently on an interest free holiday on their outstanding debt).

PS. I have another question. Who is NAMA going to employ to manage the administration of the debt purchased?

Is there anymore water in the sky?

The scientists and climatologists have got it wrong. There is no such thing as Global Warming - fact. It is actually called Global Wetting. Global Wetting occurs when the entire contents of the Atlantic Ocean fall on the island of Ireland.

The good news is that this process should be finished by September - by that stage there will be no more water left in the sky (or in the sea for that matter).

Just thought you'd like to know.

5-month forecast - 100% chance of rain

Does The Operating System Let You Get On With Things?

What do we want our PC to do? More precisely, what do we expect from an Operating System? With Microsoft's latest offering - Vista on the horizon I have to wonder is there any real tangible benefit to the home user for this latest version of Windows. It appears if I want to avail of everything Vista has to offer I will need to at least upgrade my current notebook if not replace it. But why would I go to all this additional expense when I wont be doing anything new? I will reserve judgement until I have had a chance to use it myself. However, I do question the need for creating a resource hungry beast for the sake of it. PCs are seriously powerful these days, but why the hell does the bulk of that power need to be consumed by the OS? Realistically, we should use the PC for the applications not for the operating system. After all, you don't go to a recital to hear the conductor - he may be one of the most important components but the music and the musician are the reasons for your attendance.

PC Tasks

In my opinion it should be the same with the PC. The OS is a means to an ends. The OS should be a help not an obstacle. For an average Family PC, you would like your PC to be able to carry out the following functionality:

1. Email
2. Web Browsing
3. Instant Messaging
4. Word Processing
5. Simple Spreadsheet functionality
6. Calendar Scheduling
7. Photo Editing
8. Music Editing
9. CD/DVD Ripping & Burning
10. Simple Gaming

So there you have it my personal top ten list of the most common PC activities. For me the interesting thing about this list is that email, web browsing, Instant Messaging, Word processing, spreadsheets, scheduling can all be done on line. These are technically known as "thin client" installs. In other words very little (if anything) needs to be installed on your PC (the client). With less being installed on your PC less resources consumed (e.g. processor power, memory, storage capacity). Of course you will need a broadband connection, but this is fast becoming the norm for computer users anyway.

Editing (photos & music), ripping and burning, and gaming can require substantial resources - but nothing a 4-5 year old PC on average cannot handle. Therefore, why on earth do we need an OS that is designed to do so many tasks that are unnecessary for the average user? A system that consumes so much power that we have to upgrade just get the PC to do the tasks it was already doing before?

Windows

As Windows has evolved from 3.1 to XP Microsoft have improved their operating system each time (with the exception of Windows ME). XP is a very good OS. Yes it has its flaws - security equivalent to Swiss cheese. From and end-user point of view the major break-through was that it was stable! No reboot required whilst writing a letter. The OS that doesn't get in the user's way is a winner. On the positive side XP looked good and was stable. On the down-side it needs more space, memory and processor power to operate (i.e. more money). But does it do anything more than its predecessors? You may say that you can play the latest games etc. However, this is thanks primarily to the hardware in your PC not the OS. I bet the things you did on your Windows 98 PC are the same as those you carry out on your Windows XP machine. The only difference is that you don't have to reboot several times just to complete the task!

So is stability the holy grail for home users? No not quite. Another characteristic of all versions of Windows (including XP) is the way it slows down after a few months of use. Now I'm pretty good at carrying out regular maintenance on my PC - defragging the hard drive, clearing out the temp files, cleaning the cache. However, none of this returns XP to its state when it was installed. The only way to get back to this state is to format the hard drive and re-install Windows - not something to be undertaken lightly! Why does this happen with Windows? The answer is a little blurry in that no one seems to have a definitive answer. The installation and subsequent removal of additional software always leaves remnants behind no matter how careful you are. Windows XML code gets bloated over time clogging up the system. Perhaps Vista will prove to be different - only time will tell.

Linux

Linux users will tell you that their OS already meets this criteria. To date Linux hasn't been ready to be unleashed onto the Home user because too much configuration is required to get it to work properly. To be embraced by the masses the transition from Windows to Linux needs to be seamless (or a close as possible to seamless). I read great things about Ubuntu and SUSE. However, I can't get them to run on my Dell Notebook. I would consider myself to be technically "handy", not a guru but handy. Therefore, if I can't get an Operating System to work on one of the most common makes of computer hardware then that OS is not yet ready to be unleashed on the masses. There are umpteen versions of Linux, the vast majority of which are still in the domain of the computer geek. There are a few - Linspire , Xandros and Mandriva which have set themselves up as a credible alternative to Windows.

The interface on each is very similar to Windows, the application suite offered ticks all the boxes I've listed above. It is much more secure than Windows, it is very stable, and my understanding is that it doesn't slow down overtime. (I haven't dipped my toe into Linux long enough to give a definitive answer one way or another). The one area where Linux still needs to make up ground is in relation to hardware recognition. When you install Linux it may recognise and work with some of your PC's hardware but maybe not all of it.

As Microsoft cut their ties in July 2006 with Windows 98, 98SE, and ME, Xandros offered these users a helping hand. They've offered US and Canadian users of Windows 98 and ME a chance to purchase Xandros Linux at half price . So users of these machines have a chance to get a brand new operating system packed with Bells and Whistles, which is fully supported, stable, secure and doesn't require an upgrade of their hardware. What a smart move by Xandros. If the installation is as straight forward as Xandros claim then these Windows users who switch will have added a new lease of life to their old PCs.

The requirements for a family PC should be:

• Start quickly
• Look fresh
• Surf securily
• Run feature-light applications
• Shut down quickly

Mac users may read this and say that Apple have been providing this service for years. That may well be the case, but my bone of contention is the PC. Let's optimise the family PC and let it stay optimised irrespective of usage because the processor is fast enough, there is already enough memory and sufficient storage space to allow you to achieve this.