Yesterday I was somewhat disapointed at the number of Creationist, or creationist-supporter, blogs which were out there attacking Richard Dawkins.

Today I look at technorati and see the balance is returning. It is not yet complete though, as these were the top three:

Sub Ratione Dei. A theology student who feels that, as a theology student he is more placed to talk about God than Dawkins. This is interesting as the God delusion is not about the Christian deity per se, but about the implications belief in a divine being have on humanity and the biological evidence which contradicts those beliefs. Maybe the author of Sub Ratione Dei feels that as a theology student they are more placed to discuss evolution and creationism than Dawkins. This is a quote from the Sub Ratione Dei web page: (all typos etc are as in the original)

By the grace of God as I was browsing the Politics section pondering whether to by the Griffin book there were what appeared to be a kindly elderly couple hunching over the popular science section discussing which of the three Dawkins books was the one he has just written that was causing all the fuss. Mustering up every ounce of self-restraint I pointed out which was the text in question and it is here they I deem the mysterious hand of divine providence to be at work. “Have you read it, is it good?” asked the moment. Ah ha! thought I, an opportunity to save a soul from the ramblings of a grumpy old man who doesn’t really know the subject he is talking about. Needless to say I with utmost respect for the man’s scientific qualifications considered his writing as perceptive on religion as an MI5 report on the existence of WMD in Iraq. After explaining that as a theology student I know a little bit about religion (and hence a little bit more than Dawkins) I suggested that they may want to try a Polkinghorne book I saw in the same section (not read the book but I took an educated guess it would be good). By the infinite mercies of God they agreed to take this book as well the Dawkins one. Not quite the outcome I was hoping for but at least if they are reading both they may have something reading Dawkins alone would be lacking, balance.

Godfight: now this is an odd blog and there isn’t much I can say about it, other than to link to it: http://freaktochic.typepad.com/ godfight/ 2006/ 12/ welcome_to_the_.html. You really do have to see it to understand what I mean.

The last of the top three – “X: Something to Ponder” – is different all together. It is not really a blog “about” Dawkins but mentions him in passing regarding a strange question the author is pondering. This quote is from http://www.sarwark.org /writings/ 2006/ 12/ something-to-ponder.html:

Question: If a Muslim father makes one a Muslim (a claim falsely made by Debbie Schlussel to smear Barack Obama) and a Jewish mother makes one a Jew, if a Muslim man marries a Jewish woman and they have a kid, is the child both Muslim and Jewish?
If so, can we fix the whole Middle Eastern situation through intermarriage?
Richard Dawkins would argue against the frame of the question. In his latest book, The God Delusion, he posits that children can’t truly hold religious beliefs, so a child is a “child of Jewish parents” rather than a “Jewish child.”
UPDATE: As I thought, being a Muslim requires one to submit to Allah. So much for that idea.

Still, these few days have possibly convinced me looking over technorati does indeed have some value.

You can tell the Christmas period is nearly over, the new crop of PC related magazines are all proclaiming (through front page blurbs) about how great Windows Vista is.

Now, before I rant, I have never used Vista and I am sure it is a great operating system.

For those of you who live under a rock, Vista is the latest version of Windows (ie it could also be called Windows XP2 or Windows 2007 depending on how you want to spin a name) and is supposedly an overhaul of the windows code from the ground up.

I have seen previews and read reviews on Vista and it looks like it will be a positive step for Windows, but XP is good. Why spend in the region of GBP160 to upgrade when in effect, you can already do everything it offers?

Now, if we use the cover of PCW as an example, it claims:

IT’S FASTER, MORE RELIABLE AND MORE SECURE
WHY YOU SHOULD UPGRADE AND WHICH VERSION TO CHOOSE

Now, call me old fashioned but I suspect a less than objective review is going to take place here. Sadly, this is nearly always the case when Microsoft churn out something significant and new. The MS PR machine seems to ensure that the PC press will generate page after page of rave reviews. Now I accept this does not happen all the time, but when was the last time you read a bad pre-launch review of either Windows or Microsoft Office?

Sadly, I can remember the run up to Windows ME being released and this was trumpeted (albeit not like Win 95 or Vista have been) about what a great upgrade it would be for the home user, how stable it would be and how secure it would be.

Then a few months later, reality hit and everyone realised what a dog WinME was….. 98 was “great” but only really took off after the service packs and so on. It is unlikely that Vista will be a really dencent operating system until after SP1 has been applied. None of the others have been.

Taking the three PCW points though, still leaves a big so what?

Vista is “faster” if you have a good processor, 1gb of RAM and a decent graphics card. Well, really. Who would have thought it. In the Winter 2006/2007 issue of PCW less than 50% of the PC systems (inc laptops) advertised would be able to run Vista properly. Shocking.

Vista is more reliable? Really? How do they know this? Have millions of users put it through it’s paces yet? Has it been running servers and workstations for months on end?

More secure? Possibly true as general windows security is abysmal. However it is like saying putting a rope in a door way is more secure than leaving it open. I’d rather have a door myself.

Now, is there any point to this rant? Well sort of. You see there is already an operating system which does ALL the things Vista claims and has been on the user market for long enough that it’s reliability and security are proven.

Linux.

Now, I hate Ubuntu but you can get it for free, it will do everything PCW claims are selling points for Vista and will run fast and secure on things other than the top of the range PCs. If you get Vista / Office 2007 you will need to learn new user interfaces and ways of doing things, so why not save yourself a few hundred pounds and get Linux?