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Archive for January, 2009

Earlier on in January when Microsoft announced Windows 7 at CES, I said that I didn’t do “beta testing” and wouldn’t be downloading a copy but I did and am…

The ‘culprit’ was my good friend Nick, one of the best “techies” I have ever worked with and being a bit of a Geek had snaffled an early release before it became official. Now Nick thinks that Windows and Macs are really for “Nancy boys”, bareback riding of a self compiled version of Linux that fits on a floppy disk is what “Real Men Do !” But oddly Nick gave Windows 7 a provisional thumbs up…

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So four Labour Peers are ‘trapped’ by a undercover reporter from the Sunday Times into suggesting that for a “Financial Consideration” they would undertake to change legislation. Horror, Shock, Probe…”Something must be done…” and all the usual drivel.

Oh please do us all a favour and “Shut the F**k Up” or own up to what someone really is trying to hide from the public gaze because it isn’t this. In American Football there is a tactic whereby a player “Runs Distraction” to take away the attention of the opposite team from where the real attacking threat is coming from.

As the House of Lords has virtually no powers left anyway, just how can any one of them as an individual alter legislation ? I would not charge the 4 concerned with “Corruption” rather “Fraud” and whoever wanted to pay them I would “Section them under the Mental Health Act”.

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I can remember some years ago talking to the Help Desk Team at one company about a year after we had deployed Windows 2000. One of the Team Leaders made an interesting observation along the lines that Windows 2000 had de-skilled his job because it was so reliable.

Whilst we laughed about it, there was more than a bit of truth in his statement because when I started in the IT Industry, it was a world of DOS with 16 bit Windows x3 sitting on top of it and PC Support required wearing a pointed black hat, long black flowing robe with Moon and stars motifs plus most important of all, a ‘Magic Wand’, IT was a ‘black art’…

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About a year ago I wrote about the trauma of switching mobile phones. Although not ‘technophobic’ because of my computing background, I tend to buy “tools” rather than “toys” into which category and apparently like many sane adults, I cast mobile phones. To me life is far too short to be bothered with trying to bend my life totally out of shape to try and use every “feature” available on today’s average mobile, indeed much of what they can do seems little short of banal as in “Just why would I want to read the web on such a tiny screen ?”

But oddly today through an event, I found out that a mobile phone is an essential part of my life in a way I had never thought about up until now. I moved down to the Somerset Levels to look after my Parents who were well into their 80’s almost 5 years ago now. My Father died coming up for two years ago and now there is just my 88 year old Mother who is in failing health and housebound.

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I have been doing a lot of studying and experimenting with web design and technologies over the recent past but mainly to do with my picture web site, not having an academic brain, I have to work on ‘real world problems’. However, this blog too is a web site but with slightly different features built in so inevitably, I have ended looking at the technology behind this too.

However, this has also led me to look at both the content and the style of what I have done to date with this blog and that has led on to me asking myself what I want to do with it in the future and what, if anything, I can achieve with it. Of course the moment you stop and look at it afresh, you inevitably end up with more questions than answers…

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Well, there is and will be a lot of hoopla surrounding the inauguration of President Barak Obama and why not, in an optimistic Nation, a new President and a fresh start is something to be celebrated. In the USA as over here and in all countries, the only way the current economic circumstances will be resolved is by the actions of ordinary people, Governments are powerless.

True through rash policies and spending our money foolishly, Governments can get us into a hole but they can’t get us out, they all tend to ‘keep digging’.

So in this sense, Obama represents a fresh start and as far as economic policy is concerned, “clean hands”, in due course the same must happen in the UK, we too need a fresh start with a clean pair of hands and the Labour Government ended. All good wishes to the Obama Presidency.

In today’s Times, a former head of the armed forces Field Marshal Lord Bramall, supported by two senior generals, argued in a letter that they wrote, that the British nuclear deterrent is no longer “truly independent” and the money being spent on replacing the ageing submarines which carry the Trident ballistic missiles should be used on much more needed conventional weapons that the Armed Forces are desperate for.

They also made the following comment which I for one agree with:

“Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism,”

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This follows on from a post on the DT Blogs, I wrote there as follows:

There are many good comments on this blog and people with a lot of commitment. May I suggest that the quickest way to restore democracy is to dilute the number of seats any of the 3 major parties can hold by fielding “Independent MPs”.

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Today Hoon announced Government support for a third runway at Heathrow, this is not a commercial decision but purely a political one by Gordon Brown with an eye to the next General Election, the reality is that it will never get built and he knows it.

Brown has a simple ‘tribal’ motive in saying that it will under Labour. It is likely that Labour has written off any chance in the “Middle Class” constituencies that will be effected but has some key London seats in the immediate area. As the majority of local jobs are directly or indirectly connected to Heathrow the slogan will be, “Vote Tory or LibDem and you will lose your jobs”. It is as crude and simple as that.

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David Cameron you are only scratching the surface, ! Allow me to start with the “extreme option”: MPs have exported their jobs to Brussels which writes 80% of our Laws which never touch the floor of the Commons. We did not ask them to do this, indeed we were never consulted but therefore as they wish to turn Westminster into a Brussels Town Hall, the roughly 650 MPs should be culled with only a maximum 140 left.

Their “constituency work” can be passed to Outreach Workers and failed Social Services Employees of which Boroughs like Harringay seem to have a surfeit, far cheaper than MPs, just as ineffective, self obsessed and incompetent, the public wouldn’t notice the difference.

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