Entries from May 2007 ↓

I’ve not posted much for the last few days. Actually nothing as I’ve been doing a few other things so I thought I’d do a little bit of a round up of events/issues.

On Tuesday the Penguin household braved the border patrols and sneaked into the Sandwell Borough to attend the launch of the Jon Cruddas Deputy Leadership campaign. Bob Piper did a good summing up of the event and in truly photographic genius style, managed to get the backs of the whole Penguin household in the frame. I learned one thing from that; I need a hair cut.

On the serious side it was refreshing to see Cruddas talk about issues that seem to have not got the attention they deserve in recent years, primarily that of social housing. The problems have been brewing for a generation but even if the debate is finally up there where it belongs, then perhaps we can start address an issue that affects many on lower incomes.

Following on from that, and it does beg the question: “where do we get these people from”, the comments made by Margaret Hodge. Short of making a play for the Leadership of the BNP, it makes you wonder how some people get to where they are on the basis of such awful political nouse. Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination but her comments have been rightfully condemned by many as they should. If she is concerned about the gains made by the BNP in her own constituency, not helped of course by her own last rash of daft comments then she should learn at least one thing of which I would have thought someone who has got the position of being an MP should already know.

You cannot win on the basis of using the argument of the opposition. Especially when that opposition are the horrid bunch of toe-rags that the BNP are. You cannot appropriate the blame for a lack of social housing by accepting the arguments from the far-right that it’s all these naughty East Europeans invading the country. She should know, unless Barking is a very strange place indeed that migrants rarely end up in council houses. The vast majority end up in low quality private sector accommodation or the equivalent of shared dorms of workers. They’re not holed up in nice 3 and 4 bedroom council semi’s because although if they are in the UK, earning and paying tax then they should be entitled, there’s a shitload more people ahead of them on the waiting lists who’ve been there for years and short of a very exceptional circumstance, they ain’t going to be able to jump the queues.

She would have been far more productive in addressing the reasons for this lack of housing and it’s underlying causes, rather than effectively writing the BNP’s next leaflet campaign in Barking for them.

I spotted this during the week too. I just have a few thoughts on this, none of them complimentary towards Microsoft as regular readers will have probably guessed. So here’s the scenario, Microsoft want there to be a professional body for IT people in the UK because there’s too many out there doing dodgy fixes or bodged jobs on systems.

First point being that this is a bit rich given the output of Microsoft in terms of ‘good’ programming is laughable. They release software with bugs in them, highly unsecure systems and quite frankly are not the people to lecture others about high levels of competence.

Secondly, they’ve helpfully inferred that their own Microsoft accreditation programme would be very useful in assessing and registering IT ‘professionals’. Well, no it woudn’t, it would tell people that they know how to use one of a myriad of different systems available, and the poorest of those to boot. Are they seriously thinking that the UK Government would fall for what is patently an attempt to sew up the market by being supplier and effective registrar of those who work in the industry. Come on, no Government Minister is going to fall for that one. On the other hand this is IT so it’s always possible, but thankfully it appears the Government is very cool to this idea of a professional body anyway.

Thirdly, and finally, I’ll admit it, I’m a bodger. Not so much these days but in a past life of being surrounded by Microsoft’s products at work. There’s two reasons you have to bodge around with systems. It has nothing to do with your level of expertise and everything to do with Microsoft. Apart from the software they produce being unstable and a complete security nightmare at times (yes I do remember manually having to hack a rather pernicious virus of computers across the UK via remote access and manually having to do every machines registry system because none of the tools that were supposed to work did, or they allowed the machines to re-infect each other before you could isolate them) but as with everything with Microsoft, you never 100% know what you’re dealing with. I can happily mess about the registry of a system, that thing they tell you never to touch because a character in the wrong place can happily kill a machine but despite this knowledge, I still don’t know exactly how Windows works. Why? Well, because they don’t release the code, it’s all secret so at best you’re dealing with educated guesswork or previous experience. You can never know exactly what’s going on because it doesn’t get outside of a building in Redmond.

I think that’s pretty much it for the weekly review. Apart from Mrs Penguin has nicked my ‘good’ computer, I’ve spent a lot of time enjoying watching my son learn to run and I’m looking forward to my first trip to the cinema to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 since I went to see Star Wars – Revenge of the Sith, from which you can deduce I don’t go to the cinema very often. I’ve also took advantage of the brief bit of good weather to do some of the jobs I haven’t been able to do outside or that require sunshine. Sadly this opportunity seems short-lived as it’s decidedly pissing it down again. Good night to one and all.

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No politics tonight and something to bore the pants off those of a non-techie nature, however there is a bit of a moral to the tale so bear with me.

Mrs Penguin’s laptop is a bit knackered of late. To be fair it’s a Pentium 3 with only 128Mb of ram and slowly struggling along with Windows XP. It also had a rather unfortunate encounter with a pint of coke and I mean a whole pint about 6 months ago.

Now a new laptop is not financially an option at the moment but I thought I’d indulge myself and have a bit of a shop around the main vendors. What struck me the most was that all new computers now seem to come with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system which I really don’t like. Admittedly Dell are doing machines with XP but you’re going to have to pay an extra

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Trudy Bowen was made Mayor of Wolverhampton last Wednesday and she’s started a blog. Primarily to cover her Mayoral work and to give a bit of an insight into what Mayors get up to.

Trudy Bowen’s site is here so feel free to drop by and have a gander. It’s not a bas site, but I would say that given that I built it.

I was also planning on a weekend away from the computer screen, however such as things are, events dictated otherwise. Anyway, apart from spending a lot of time burning DVD’s, before anyone reports me, we’re not talking the dodgy ones of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 which no doubt are available in pubs across the West Midlands already. We’re talking about nice ones of videos of Little Penguin for the family.

I also managed to set something else up last night which for primarily hardware reasons had been alluding me for a while. More on that later, as in tomorrow, or at least sometime soon.

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Been thinking a bit about technology of late. More in the broader field than anything specific and in the context of attitudes towards it and particular brands.

It’s been a long-held gripe in IT about what has at times been referred to as the ‘Evil Empire’ of Microsoft and not necessarily without justification regarding some of their practices. However I’ve often found that some of these people turn into avid Mac users as a means of, for the lack of a better phrase, rebellion against Microsoft. I’ve got plenty of friends who are Mac users and most seem to love their machines, particularly that it’s not Microsoft but I’ve been pondering on this ‘Mac’ culture and why its brand has seemed to adopt a near trendy rebellious non-conformist persona.

I can only conclude that it’s simply a case of “it’s not Microsoft” so therefore it’s good. A bit of the old “two legs bad, four legs good” and just like that analogy from George Orwell, the actual case isn’t necessarily so.

We all know Microsoft has a preeminent position in the marketplace, for software anyway. It guards its secrets well and isn’t adverse to resorting to legal action against those it is in competition with. It’s a corporate entity, a massive company with vested interests in maintaining its position.

However, is Apple really any different? I’ll just run through a few examples.

First up, a computer. Now in the case of Apple, they actually make the machines themselves, which means to use their software, you’ve already had to buy into their hardware which to be frank is overpriced for what you actually get. It also has the problem of there being no inter-changeable aspect in that within a PC, if said card or drive breaks, it’s a quick nip to the shops to pick up a fresh one to replace it. You can’t do that with a Mac, the component structure is designed to exclude the user from tinkering meaning no home fixes or upgrades, it will all have to be done by a certified Apple person.

Microsoft don’t really do hardware so in their case, the software, lets stick to operating systems for a moment, will pretty much run on any PC which you can purchase from a massive array of vendors or build yourself out of various components. (Note, before some uber techie picks up on it, yes there are a myriad of issue regarding hardware exclusivity drivers and code but we’re trying to keep it simple here).

On software, well despite Microsoft’s best efforts to control and dominate the software that runs on their machines, many other companies provide it and there’s also lots of open source free stuff available. On Macs there’s a lot less choice straight off and even though the software for Windows machines can be pricey, those for Macs can be even worse. So pretty much there’s not a lot to choose between them.

On to peripherals and we’ll use MP3 players as the example because both Microsoft do the Zune and Apple the iPod. Both are stacked with DRM but in Apple’s case with their iTunes site, not only are we talking about restriction of copyright infringement to protect artists/music companies, take you pick, but Apple specifically designed their downloads so that they could only be used on their iPod players precluding their use or transfer to another branded player. So basically if you’ve spent you money downloading songs from their site then you are automatically in a position where you would be disinclined to buy another brand of player because you’ll lose all your music. (Note: I think they’re stopping this but it does show their approach). That doesn’t sound like some cutting edge anti-establishment company, in fact it’s a lot worse than even some of the extents that Microsoft go to.

Yes, Apple’s look good, they’ve got the whole style thing well done that makes them look funky but behind it is equally, if not in some cases a worse corporate control mentality than Microsoft. I’m just bemused why Apple users who openly take the position that they choose Macs because they don’t like Microsoft and its practices don’t spot that.

Anyway, for me, I don’t want an iLife, or to become a corporate branded iPerson. I’m quite happy to enjoy the far greater freedom and control I have over the digital aspects of my life. Takes maybe a little more perseverance and time but I have this strange desire not to have aspects of my life under the control of American Corporations of whom I have no power over whatsoever.

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I was out and about today on the trusty public transport system and picked up a copy of the Metro.

While idly flicking through I spotted this advertisement by the DWP.

Now I haven’t mentioned it before but just for the record, I’m an atheist. I don’t try and shove my own beliefs about spirituality down other people’s throats, but equally I do not appreciate it when others seek to do so from their own religious perspective. I believe strongly that we should live in a society where everyone is free to believe spiritually in what they wish as long as it is not to the detriment of those who choose to believe in something else, or equally choose not to believe in anything remotely spiritual at all. From that perspective I’m a fairly liberal person. I believe in the separation of religious institutions from the state and the abolition of faith based schools on the basis that the state cannot achieve a position whereby it is able to either equitably or be seen to be equitable to all faiths. Some will always bemoan that favouritism is being bestowed on one against the other and the only solution is the separation of religion from the workings of the state and its institutions.

Equally by their very nature, faith based organisations always come from a particular moral and ethical perspective which when given power over individuals will seek to exercise that power for the furtherance of their own particular moral or ethical perspective. We saw this recently over Catholic adoption agencies opposing the rights for gay people to adopt. By which terms they are not seeking to do the job of an adoption agency and placing children with loving and caring parents, moreover because they take a particular view towards the issue of homosexuality they seek to deny gay couples of the right to adopt purely because that certain group in society do not conform to their own moral position.

So that made me wonder about why exactly the DWP would seem to be so keen to engage with faith based groups for what is termed loosely as getting people back to work. Obviously one can only guess at to what role faith based groups would play within helping Jobseekers get back to work and I don’t discount the role that third sector partners may be able to play in this area but why it seems there is such an emphasis on encouraging faith based groups. There has been experience of using faith based groups in what could loosely be termed the social welfare system in Australia with some rather worrying results for those who choose not be affiliated to a certain religion. I would be very wary of going down the same path here, especially when there seems to be no justifiable reason.

Faith based groups can offer nothing more than any other third party organisation seeking to perform a function for society, they are no more efficient, better run or motivated to achieve the goals set them than any other group so I do not see the point. What they do however, is introduce ethics and morals into the system whereby those ethics and morals may not be accepted by or even be completely opposed to that of the person who is engaging with the organisation.

This is not a problem in wider society, if I choose not to engage in going to church, the temple or the mosque then I don’t have to. However if I am made redundant and end up on a New Deal scheme run by a faith group that may not be my own if I were to be religious or any faith given my own atheism then that poses issues that simply do not need to be there in the first place.

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