So Apparently I’m An Exceptionally Dull Weirdo …

 Computing, General, Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 252013
 

Apparently this idiot thinks that all coders are exceptionally dull weirdos. I’ll quite happily admit to being a weirdo, but as to exceptionally dull … I only seem that way to the exceptionally thick, or prejudiced.

Concentrating for the moment about this journalist’s (in the loosest possible sense of the word) insult to a good number of people, we can probably deduce the following :-

  1. He doesn’t know many developers socially. If he accidentally encounters one in a social setting one of the following occurs :-
    1. The developer denies all knowledge of computers because of the prejudice of idiots like him. This is a bit of self defence we geeks learned in the past and used in the past. So we can also assume he’s a bit of a dinosaur (like me).
    2. Once he learns someone is a developer, he will climb the walls to get out of the way.
    3. He converses in his own specialised area, and anyone who runs away is classified as an exceptionally dull weirdo.
  2. If he thinks that coding is mechanistic, he is totally clueless about programming, and thinks that anyone can simply start writing code immediately. As a little hint, the majority of the time spent programming is thinking; simply grinding out code is a relatively small part of the job.
  3. Lumping coding in with car mechanics, or plumbing in a derogatory manner indicates this guy is one of those fools who think that anything technical is a low-status activity. Hope his plumber tells him to fix it himself when his next water leak occurs, or charges him double!

Now onto the main point of his ill educated rant on the subject of teaching “coding” to school children. Hopefully the government plans to teach “programming” rather than “coding”, but does he have a point? Perhaps, although it’s a bit difficult to take an idiot like this seriously.

It really depends on exactly what and how it is being taught.

If the plan is to turn out vast swarms of fully fledged developers, everyone is going to be disappointed; apart from anything else, if we were going to turn out fully fledged developers it would have a catastrophic effect on every other subject being taught. After all, it would take so much teaching time away from other subjects, there wouldn’t be enough time for Maths, English, History, etc.

But if the intention is to teach programming in a fun way (say with Logo and robots), with the intention of giving students a better idea of how computers work and how they are instructed, it could well be a good thing.

Not everyone needs to code he claims. Actually most people may find themselves coding in ways that may not be thought of as programming – setting up formula in a spreadsheet, setting up a database, automating a task in a word processor. Although none of these are “true” programming, they do share some elements with it – not least to think about the task in hand, dividing it up into sub-tasks, and setting about telling the computer how to do those tasks in a way that the computer will understand.

Does everyone need this? Perhaps not, but they will find using computers much more effective if they have a better idea of what is going on.

Is The US Government Still Lurching Around Like A Drunken Sailor?

 Politics  No Responses »
Oct 172013
 

With apologies to all drunken sailors who will no doubt resent – quite reasonably – being compared with a dysfunctional government.

The big news today (and yesterday – different time zones confuse these things) is that the US government has grasped just a bit of sanity and has stepped back from the abyss. Well most of them did, but the lunatic fringe of the Republican party (also known as the Tea Party) still persisted in trying to block the government from doing any work and paying any debts it owes.

But it is only temporary, and unless some more sanity returns to US politicians, we will get to see this mess repeated in January.

Ultimately this is all the fault of a fanatic wing of the Republican party who believe it is their right to undemocratically block the government budget until their favourite hobby horse is taken care of. Obamacare. Whether it is a good or a bad thing, it is a done deal, and it is undemocratic to try to sabotage it without first giving it a chance.

Yes the US has too much public debt, but too much is made of the so-call US ‘debt crisis’. The overall figure is immense to be true – so big that it is impossible to understand; so big that we have clever means to make it understandable, and to understand it in terms of affordability. If you look at the US debt as a proportion of GDP (in other words how affordable it is), you will see that the US is in 35th position (according to CIA figures) with a figure of 73.6% of GDP. Or 9th position (using the IMF figures).

Not a good position certainly, but hardly a basket case.

Now there’s a great deal of sense in reducing US government debt, but not in this way. Simply by stopping US government cheques would cause a catastrophic effect on the US (and world) economies.

Perhaps those with a vote in the US would like to remember this when it comes to voting next time. Your current set of politicians look dangerously dysfunctional; even in comparison to politicians in other countries.

Did Ralph Really Hate Britain?

 Media, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 042013
 

Ralph Miliband, Ed Miliband, and the Daily Mail. No prizes for guessing who the villain is; even blue-rinsed Conservative party card carrying reactionaries are beginning to think that the Daily Mail is on a sticky wicket with their latest story. But that part can all be best summed up with :-

The Daily Mail have somehow decided that Ralph was an evil person, hated Britain, and so Ed Miliband is an inappropriate person to lead the country. Which is bizarre on several levels, but rather than concentrating on whether Ed is suitable or not, or looking into the Daily Mail’s deranged reasoning, let’s have a look at poor old Ralph.

After all, Ralph is dead so he is hardly in a position to defend himself, so someone should do it for him. The Mail picked up on something he wrote shortly after arriving in Britain (after encountering anti-semitism: “The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world …”. Whilst it may be a little extreme, it is understandable coming from a Jewish refugee arriving in London in the middle of war fever, and not being aware of the Battle of Cable Street.

And of course Ralph was a prominent Marxist which is the sort of thing that will cause any Daily Mail editor to start frothing at the mouth. As a Marxist, Ralph was probably not too keen on the monarchy, and the British establishment. But hating the way that Britain is governed is not the same as hating Britain.

What the Daily Mail would rather have you overlook is that Ralph fought for this country during the war. And at the end of the war, he chose to stay in this country rather than return to Belgium, or take up any number of opportunities in the USA. Sure he was a Marxist and if he had managed a worker’s revolution and liquidated the whole of the Daily Mail, I would be the first to call him evil.

Let’s be honest, if we have to pick one of the Daily Mail or Ralph to label as “evil”, then the only answer is the Daily Mail.

Who Decides What Public Inquiries Should Take Place?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 292013
 

Who decides whether or not to hold a public inquiry? The government of course, and they usually make their decision on the cost of a public inquiry.

But it is rather convenient when a public inquiry delves into embarrassing subjects such as :-

Never mind the fact there has been no public inquiry into political corruption after the MPs expenses scandal. Which all goes to show that we cannot trust the government to investigate themselves. Or the police: Look at how hard people have had to work at getting at the truth behind the Hillsborough disaster.

Or in other words, we cannot trust the government to determine whether public inquiries should be held, nor the scope of those inquires. Whilst the government usually does reasonable work in setting up public inquiries, and the reason for refusing to establish public inquiries is down to cost, it is not unreasonable to plan for the worst case scenario where a future government may refuse to establish an inquiry to conceal their own bad deeds.

As such the decision of what public inquiries should proceed should be in hands of a third party. An independent third party with no past or present politicians, senior policepersons, etc. Essentially a panel of the powerless.

Are We Living In A Police State?

 Politics  No Responses »
Aug 192013
 

No.

Anyone who thinks so needs to read a bit of history on what life was like in real police states.

But on a day when news of an incident where a journalist was detained for 9 hours and his electronic media confiscated, we do have to ask ourselves whether we are headed in that direction. And whether we really want to go in that direction.

David Miranda was held under anti-terrorist legislation – specifically schedule 7 – in what was clearly an attempt at harassment for publishing stories embarrassing the UK and US governments. Now the victim here is clearly a journalist, and whilst it is possible for a journalist to be involved in terrorism, I really rather doubt this one has time to be particularly active at this time. This is a high profile case, but how many of the 61,145 other suspects detained under schedule 7 last year were detained for non-terrorism purposes?

Anti-terrorism legislation is very powerful, and whilst it may be justified to tackle terrorism, it certainly must not be used for other purposes. And in this case it was.

And undoubtedly we will have some sort of review of the case, a lot of noise, and very little action. It’s almost certain that the police who detained David Miranda will escape scot free, or with a notional slap on the wrist, and not with a prison sentence that they deserve.

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