A lesson in data control

An odd, superficially unrelated, lesson from the current global credit crisis is the crazy ideas people have been having about online services.

Over the last few years, there has been a growing trend in technology and internet magazines to promote the idea of online office applications and “renting” software that is held on a main server. The holy grail of this has been along the lines of using a remotely hosted system to edit and store your data in the manner of Google Documents.

This has some fantastic advanages – it is operating system independant (so might draw an end to the Linux-Windows wars…), it saves on having to purchase local software licences and data storage, it allows mobile workers complete access, it removes the need to have in-house admin staff etc. These are powerful advantages and even I use Google Docs, Basecamp etc. They really do have their place.

However, the big problem is pretty big.

You have no real control over what happens to your data. You can have all the service level agreements in the world, but when the s*it hits the fan, you have no real say over the matter. You may be able to take legal action, but if the company has gone bankrupt what good will the do you? Equally, how water tight are the user agreements you signed up to when you took on the service? If they go down at a critical time for you does that fall foul of their overall 99.98% uptime?

Drawing on the Icesave farce as an example, if you store all your data with a big company – we’ll use troogle as a totally made up example – then it is great when everything works. But if, Thor forbid, Troogle has problems (financial, technical etc) then what real recourse do you have? Even if the company is in the same country as you, you may have less weight than you think – what value is there in suing a defunct company?

Fundamentally, giving your data / software to a third party company is a risk. We may have forgotten what that means in recent years, but it would be negligent to not take this on board now and refresh our mindsets. UK councils forgot that giving money to a bank to gain interest carried a risk because the risk had been (traditionally) so low. The ignored the fact that increased rate of return carried with it an implied increased risk and suffered as a consequence.

By all means use online storage, use online applications, etc. Just remember the risk is there and make sure you have considered it.

Terrorism in the 21st century

Go on home Osama Bin Laden, you are so last century in your, frankly pathetic, attempts to destroy western civilisation. For over five years now we have heard the mantra about how evil Islamic Terrorists want to destroy the decadent, freedom loving, west and how they will try to bomb us into submission.

Basically they are just impatient amateurs. If they wait long enough we do it to ourselves.

Lets look at the world of 2008:

In my job, I travel by air a lot (*) and as a result get constantly annoyed by the idiotic rules we suffer under the guise of “security.” I get monumentally annoyed by the fact that I have to check in hours before my flight, but should I want a drink during the inevitable two hour delay, I have to pay extortionate airport charges because 101mls of water is deadly (while 99mls isn’t). I get really annoyed at the obnoxious attitude most airport security staff have – although, in all fairness this is probably a reaction to suffering annoyed passengers day in, day out…

Outside work, I am a hobby photographer. I love taking pictures on my travels and feel that the cities and towns of my own country are on a par with anywhere else in the world. However in the new world of “Security” taking photos in public places of tourist landmarks results in a uniformed member of the public (**) coming up to me and asking me what I am doing. Thor forbid that a terrorist group be inexpert enough to need to overtly set up a large Digital SLR to take photographs rather than use a mobile phone or compact camera (the millions of people doing that get ignored…).

Travel around the UK and you will be recorded on CCTV along pretty much every urban street. Go into a shop and you will be recorded on CCTV. Drive along the road and you will be subjected to all manner of electronic surveillance – because, basically, you cant have any expectation of privacy in a public place (***). Despite the idea all people are innocent until proven guilty, the government have decided that Islamic Terrorists are different and the state should be able to imprison them for 42 days before it has to show enough evidence to make a charge, let alone convict. Thank the Lords this has been rejected (for now).

In the UK, religion has always been a minor part of public life and thank Odin, this is still pretty much the case. However, since the Evil Islamic Terrorists appeared, there has been a (so far minor) upsurge in people equating “Christian” with “British.” As such, an attack by Islam on Christianity is being sold as an attack on our fundamental “Britishness” to the point at which the tabloids and tacky local TV have people talking in all seriousness about how the United Kingdom is a “Christian nation” and “Britain was founded by Christians for Christians” – obviously these historically challenged dullards are watching too much American propaganda but that is another issue.

This is the non-religious, freedom loving, civilisation that is so threatened by Islamic terrorists. Hmm. Osama would love it here. Ironically, even our recent fear-inspired legislation wasn’t quite enough to smash western civilisation.

Trumping an army of Osama Bin Ladens, when it comes to smashing down western civilisation the real master is simple free market economics.

It is a sad state of affairs that we can pass laws regulating every aspect of your private life, but even in the face of an economic melt down the thought of regulating “The City” is beyond the pale. City traders can, effectively, lose millions of other peoples money with not even a hint of censure – still getting huge bonuses on the eve of begging the taxpayer for a fortune to cover their losses. The crazy irony of this sees us giving them money so they can give it back to us and tell us it is our own savings… Despite their monumental failings, and complete lack of anything resembling expertise, the banking sector still claims it “knows what it is doing” and should be allowed to function unregulated. Can you imagine catching a con-artist stealing your money, then giving them more money because they know how best to get your money back!!! Insane is an understatement.

The collapse of Iceland’s banks, and their governments apparent refusal to honour international agreements, has caused huge damage to the UK economy – on greater scale than any caused by terrorist attacks (if you ignore the cost of ensuing wars). If I deprived my next door neighbour of £100 I would expect to be arrested and probably jailed, however it seems if you add a few extra zeros everyone forgets about it. Iceland basically have held a gun to the governments head and taken our money. Wars have been fought over much, much less.

In an amazingly scary example of economic understanding, the Conservative shadow Chancellor said that the government should reimburse the councils that lost money to Iceland otherwise council tax would have to be increased to cover the loss. This seems sensible until you realise the effect would be to increase the tax burden on everyone to cover the mistakes made by a few. How would that be fair? Is this what we are to expect from a Conservative government?

I agree with the Government that the national banks and banking infrastructure is critical to the well being of the United Kingdom. I also accept the assertion that it is so important, spending £50,000,000,000 to shore up a system broken by greedy, selfish scumbags is in the public interest. I accept that this will mean other aspects of the national infrastructure will suffer and I accept that this is a necessary evil.

What I cant understand is:

  1. How can something so vital to the nation be outside complete government control? More importantly, how can something so vital be so heavily influenced by foreign nations which, when push comes to shove, have national self interest at stake? This really confuses me.
  2. Why is no one being punished for this? The bank failings are either malicious (in which case why don’t we invade a random country like we’ve done in the past) or negligent. Or both. The claim this is just the “market” is nonsense – the city traders claim to be financial wizards but abjectly failed to see this happening – either they are crap or they were played. Either way someone should be held accountable.
  3. Why the **** haven’t we enforced rock solid legislation to control such a critical asset? We’ve spent over £1000 per living person in the UK on them, why aren’t we having any say in them?
  4. How on Earth are the bankers getting away with claiming they “know best” on how to handle the current situation? (See 2) Blatantly they don’t or if they do, they are working against the national interest.
  5. Why are UK public bodies (Police and councils) allowed to invest money in foreign institutions? The quest for an extra percent of interest has meant public money is being sent to a foreign nation. Let me reword that – money paid by UK taxpayers has been given to a foreign country. Rather than invest in the UK economy dozens of UK public bodies chose to throw it down an Icelandic toilet and when they inevitable happened they cry to the government for more money….

I am going to have to stop here. The madness makes me want to scream. If anyone can explain this to me I would be very grateful.

* Apologies to environmentalists, but unless you are willing to pay me not to fly, my choices are limited.

** Sometimes referred to a “Police Community Support Officers” but that implies they are trained members of the law enforcement community, when in reality 75% of them are nothing more than jumped up busy bodies who get to wear a hat.

*** Well, this is true by definition. However there is a “spirit” of the law thing to consider. While you cant realisitically expect to be private walking down the street you can expect the state to not surveil your every movements. While it can be argued that the almost blanket CCTV coverage is not directed against you, the fact remains it is possible for someone to retrospectively search the databases and track your every movement. The fact the surveillance is directed against 65 million people doesn’t stop it being directed.

Traffic safety or surveillance?

Any road user in the UK will know about the hordes of traffic cameras all over the country. These wonderful things are supposed to be there to prevent people from speeding – basically they are set up to trigger if you go past at a speed that is above the limit for that stretch of road. If you speed past one, it takes your photo and you get fine & penalty points through the post.

I am not going to use this post to complain about how they don’t actually prevent speeding and are little more than income generation for the local council. That is a rant for another day.

This rant is about the nature of the cameras themselves.

The idea as sold to the population is that this is not “surveillance” of the public (Thor knows we have enough CCTV for that) and photographs of vehicles would only be taken if they exceeded a certain speed (generally the speed limit +10%). However, a comical item on the BBC seems to show a difference.

Leaving aside the whining, simpsonesque “wont anybody think of the children” rant, the concern I have is why on Earth did this camera take a picture of a vehicle that wasn’t speeding? Why was a speed camera recording images of a non-speeding vehicle so the police could dream up other charges?

Welcome to 1984… (again)

Agnosticism – rational or not?

I was reading an interesting post on the excellent “The Mary Blog,” titled “Agnostic Atheism.” In this post, Mary puts forward the argument that Atheism is not the most rational choice to make and requires an element of belief very similar to theism – in that the Atheist has to believe the non-existence of God without any evidence to support the idea.

Unusually, Mary also explains that Agnosticism is not entirely rational either and concludes that the rational position is about half way between Agnostic and Atheist. The whole post puts forward a reasonable argument for people seeking a middle ground between what is increasingly seen as “Militant” atheism and the “reasonable” agnosticism.

Sadly, while I consider myself a rational person, I have to disagree and, personally, I find the arguments for Agnosticism a bit “wet” (for want of a politer word). Before I go on, there is always the risk that this could simply be a case of semantics, so I think some definitions are required. To me, Atheist is not a religion and it certainly is not a dogmatic belief structure. My view of the term “Atheist” does not preclude the fact that if, tomorrow, Thor knocked on my door and introduced himself, I would believe he existed. In common parlance, Atheist is used to mean “doesn’t believe in the Christian God” but, personally, this is inaccurate.

Right, that said, I can explain why I feel Agnosticism is not rational and, often, seems to be a way people avoid any stigma associated with being called an “Atheist.” (Sorry if this seems to rehash some ground from a previous debate with Parabiodox over the terms 😀 ).

Often blogs claiming Atheism is irrational will use the argument that the Atheist believes God does not exist, while the Agnostic says “we don’t know if God exists or not.” In this form, the Agnostic view point does appear more rational but closer examination may change this.

Continue reading

I told you so?

Ironically, a mere ten minutes after I made my last post about the terrible service provided by Virgin Media, I got a phone call from Heather saying the Engineer had been round. Now, this is the second visit booked by Virgin Media (i.e. two days off work) and Virgin have had eight days to get things sorted out. You would think this visit was going to be little more than a formality to plug in a new cable modem.

You would be wrong.

The engineer brought the cable modem, but didn’t have the right power cable. Sheer brilliance. Now, not only is there no way of knowing if that is indeed the real fault, but Heather took her second day off work for no reason at all. A new visit has been booked for Tuesday (13 days after the fault was reported), and hopefully this time the engineer will bring everything they need to see if it works. If it turns out to not be the modem, Thor only knows what they will suggest (another visit a week later, maybe?).

For some odd reason, Heather seems reluctant to close her account with Virgin (attachment to email address / website I suspect), despite the fact she could pretty much get an ADSL contract up and running in less time than this has taken. At it’s longest, I have had ADSL set up in 10 days… Virgin have not been able to help an existing, long serving, customer in that time. I suspect this is an example of a company which spends too much of it’s money and time trying to attract new business, rather than maintaining it’s current customer base…

[tags]virgin, virgin-cable, Thor, virgin-media, virginmedia, cable-tv, cable, bad-service, bad-shops, rant, rants[/tags]

Science and Religion?

(*Update: it seems while I was writing this, the post I am discussing vanished from the Savvygeek site – it may have been posted in error, but I think the comments made in it were common enough that they can be addressed anyway*)

There seems some debate recently about reconciling science and religion (or even if some thing is possible). For the record, this is something I have no major issue over, religion is (to me) nonsense so if scientists want to be religious it is no different than if they think socks and sandals look cool. I also see no driving reason for science and religion to be “reconciled,” nor do I have any idea how such a thing can take place.

Today I came across a post on Savvygeek called “Religion Vs Science” which made some points which intrigued me. Broadly the post is saying: Continue reading

Wingnut Continues

I am somewhat saddened that I came across Dinesh D’Souza’s blog at a time when I have very little spare time to make my own posts. The things D’Souza says are stunning in the bigoted idiocy they demonstrate. If I didn’t know better I would have thought it was one big joke blog written by some teenagers laughing to themselves. Sadly, this wingnut appears to be a real person.

Looking over his blog today, I stumbled upon a post titled “Good Heavens, No More Limbo?” which is another fine example of his, erm, thinking. Basically, this is a post reporting that the Catholic Church has decided to do away with the concept of Limbo (where babies went if they died before being baptised) and from now on, all babies who die go to Heaven.

Seriously. Continue reading

Even More Wingnut Stupidity

Following on from the previous post, where it seemed the Archbishop of York was a strong contender for Idiot of the Year award, I have stumbled upon a post by Dinesh D’Souza (via Nullifidian’s blog once more) and Oh My Thor, if we don’t have an even stronger contender. Two wingnuts in one weekend. Loki must be having a field day!

In a post titled “Unbelief as a Form of Payback” Dinesh D’Souza rants on about Atheism (as he has done a few times previously, see Nullifidians blog for more links) and how it basically has nothing to offer the bereaved after an incident like the Virginia Tech shooting. He writes: Continue reading

Are All Atheists The Same?

I was browsing through the excellent posts on “The Atheist Jew” website recently and I came across one entitled “Atheism as a theory,” which is very interesting but posts some points I really do not agree with. The crux of them come from the Top 10 Atheist Myths website, so it is there I turn the rest of my attention.

, in my mind, is nothing more (or less) than the absence of any belief in any supernatural entity. You can call the entity Thor, Odin, Bahommet, Azura Madhra, Pluto, Set, Bast, Hermes, God, Allah, Vishnu or whatever. I still dont believe in it.

That pretty much sums up everything have in common. Other than that, they are “normal” people just like a theist. There are Atheists who do bad things, there are Atheists who do good things. There are Atheists who are irrational, just as there are ones who are rational. Atheism is an opinion about one aspect of your interaction with reality and, as such, cant really be used to determine any other aspects.

Ok, so there is “my” take on atheism. On the “Top 10 Myths” site, there are a list of the top ten (oddly enough…) so I will repeat them here:

  • Myth 1 : “Atheists are all the same”
  • Myth 2 : “Atheists have no morals, since they don’t believe in God”
  • Myth 3 : “Atheists believe in evolution, but that doesn’t answer as many questions as creationism”
  • Myth 4 : “Atheists cannot know there is no God, since you cannot prove he doesn’t exist”
  • Myth 5 : “Atheists seek to remove religion from society, and to force all people to be atheists”
  • Myth 6 : “Atheists are so closed-minded, they can’t see that miracles happen every day!”
  • Myth 7 : “Atheists are pushing a negative sentiment, and have a dreary life”
  • Myth 8 : ” If atheists are right, then religious people are wasting their time, but at least they’re happy. No harm in that! If religious people are right, then atheists are going to hell. It seems logical that atheists should become religious just to be safe.”
  • Myth 9 : “There are no such things as atheists” a.k.a. “There are no atheists in foxholes”
  • Myth 10 : “This country was founded by Christians, on Christian values, and should therefore be a Christian country”.

Now, it doesn’t take the most imagination in the world to see how these myths are, in fact, all flawed and Dave Silverman’s website does a good job of dismissing them (myth 10 is obviously very specific for the US so I will ignore it for now).

There is a common thread which runs through all the myths, and it is the theistic assumption that all Atheists think the same. This is the same lack of logical thought which leads people to assume is the “pope” of Atheism. As logical thought goes, it is more than wrong.

Sadly, despite Dave Silverman’s otherwise excellent commentary, he makes the same mistake himself a few times. For example, in response to Myth 2 he writes: (emphasis in original, underlining mine)

Humans have the idea of right and wrong imbedded in them by their own brains, as well as their upbringing and society. Atheists do good, not out of fear of reprisal, but because it’s the right thing to do. We value family, society, culture, and, of course, freedom. Many of us will – and have – defend these values with our lives.

While personally, I do think I value family, society, culture and freedom, I also think it is a stretch of reality to imply all Atheists do. There are atheists who are simply nasty people. Being an atheist does not mean you hold yourself to a higher standard and there is no Holy Book Of Atheism to tell people how to live their lives. Just like theists, atheists are a mixture of people. The main difference (in my opinion) is that Atheists are a LOT less hypocritical.

I may be out of order, but I get the suspicion that Dave Silverman is an ex-Christian/Jewish Atheist, which seems to come through in his comments. For example, in response to myth 8, he writes:

I like getting this question. I sense another list coming :

1) Drug addicts go through life happy, so would theists suggest we all use drugs and stay home? We would be happy, and not hurting anybody, so where’s the harm?
The harm is the same for believers. They go through life happy, but it’s a false, wasteful happiness. Atheists get happiness from family, contribution to society, charity, and truth.

2) Religious people should not be lumped into one category for this question. Remember, religions are also biased against each other (Jews vs. Catholics Vs. Protestants, etc), so no matter what religion the speaker follows, most of the world thinks they’re going to hell (or other punishment), just like atheists. Ask them which religion has the worst punishment, and whether they would convert to that religion on that one factor, just in case they’re right. When they tell you how absurd that question is, remind them that they asked it first.

3) To convert and practice a specific religion just to ingratiate yourself with God and avoid going to hell is pure, self-serving greed, which is one of the seven deadly
sins. Therefore, by their own thinking, even if they are right and I do convert, I’d go to hell anyway, along with everyone else in the flock whose actions are so motivated (possibly including the speaker).

All very much along the Abrahamic religions lines. In reality, this myth is a variation on Pascals Wager and can generally be dismissed in much simpler terms (and was mentioned here previously).

All in all, both sites are interesting and worth visiting, they just have a different view on Atheism to myself – which goes to show, all atheists are different!