More Zonkyness

AV System in the UK: Looking at the “No” Rubbish

Apr 242011

I have commented on the Alternative Voting system propose for the UK before, but the “No” campaign stuck a leaflet through my door with some mind boggling rubbish on. So I’ll go through some of their rubbish here …

The very first thing the leaflet goes on about is just how much AV is going to cost – supposedly £250 million. I am not sure I trust their figures especially when they point out that the cost of the referendum itself is £91 million. Who is to say that this £91 million cost does not also include some of the cost of the local elections ? And they quote £130 million for the cost of electronic voting machines – who is to say that this expenditure was not planned anyway ? It may be required for AV, but it is also a way of getting the results much quicker and so would be useful under the existing system.

The “No” sayers go through a long list of things that £250 million could pay for if it was not spent on AV – 2,503 doctors, 6,297 teachers, etc. Really ? Is that per year or for all time ? And what does it matter anyway ? The other way at looking at it, is how much does this £250 million really cost us … £3.57 per person. Is that too much for a fairer voting system ?

Ok, some of you do not believe that AV is fairer, but ignore that for a moment … is it worth the cost of a slightly expensive pint of beer to make our current voting system fairer ? Of course it is.

The next thing the negative ones try to make a point out of is that “The winner should be the one that comes first”. Below this they show four men running a race. This is probably the most ridiculous comparison it is possible to make. First of all, an election is not about winning (except for the putrid politicians), but about choosing a representative to parliament (in the case we’re talking about anyway). The whole point of the electoral system is to select a candidate that best represents the interests of the people in the constituency.

The whole point of the AV system is to allow a greater chance that the representative of the people is supported by at least 50% of the constituents. Under the first past the post system, it is quite common for the elected candidate to gather so few votes that he or she is opposed by the majority of those who voted. How can such a candidate be a good representative ? To return to sport for a moment, there are plenty of sports where you have to achieve a significant margin of victory over your opponent – take tennis for example.

Even in simple races, it isn’t always the winner of a single race that wins in the end – a winner in a heat may be beaten in the final race. And even in that final race, it isn’t just the winner who is rewarded as second and third place also get a prize – admittedly this would mean three MPs for each constituency. Not such a bad idea and there’s even a historical precedence behind it as some constituencies before the 1832 Reform Act elected more than one representative.

Inside the leaflet those who prefer the status quo have compared the two voting systems with the intention of making the AV system seem as complex as possible, with the AV system explained in language that looks like it was written by a lawyer – which will result in a reflex “No thanks” reaction from most of us. But AV really is not that complex at all; it certainly is not as complex as the naysayers would have you believe.

They make a big song and dance about the fact that this AV system means an end to “one person, one vote”. And how the voters for minority parties get more votes than those who choose more popular parties. Well you could describe AV as being a system in which everyone has more than one chance to pick their choice of candidate. That is everyone – so everyone has just as many votes as anyone else.

And I would say that it is still one person, one vote, but the person has a chance to transfer their vote if the most popular candidate fails to get more than 50% of the votes cast.

Another sneaky thing they have done, is to imply that anyone voting for a minor party is going to be some kind of knuckle-dragging extremist – the leaflet specifically mentions the BNP. There are a large number of minor parties that under the current system, or even under AV are exceptionally unlikely to get a candidate elected. However it is deceitful in the extreme to claim that all supporters of minor parties are extremists – what about the Green Party, Respect Party (perhaps a little towards the extreme), Libertarian Party, Wessex Regionalist Party?

In fact a system that encourages voting for minority parties allows for more information on the policies that the people want – we can all vote for the Wessex Regionalist Party to get across the message that perhaps we want a Labour MP, but actually we would like people to consider the option to make Wessex independent.

Lastly, the leaflet plays to the anti-Nick Clegg feeling around in the country by claiming that the only party to benefit would be the Liberals under Nick Clegg and it would lead to “broken promises”. Frankly this all just too much for coherent criticism – they are campaigning on a serious issue by making pathetic political point scoring.

Muslims Against Crusades Threatening The Royal Wedding

History, Politics, Religion No Responses »

Apr 222011

There’s a bunch of moronic Muslims who call themselves the Muslims Against Crusades who have announced that they are going to be organising a demonstation during the royal wedding. The sad thing is that they are not the only morons out there – search for “Muslims Against Crusades” and you will find numerous links to intemperate responses that in my opinion count as hate speech against all Muslims.

Every community has its lunatic fringe – Muslims included. And the MAC crew definitely qualify for that tag. After all, what is the point of campaigning about the crusades ? They’re ancient history.

Whatever anybody thinks about the crusades or what the west is currently doing in the middle-east, the two really are not linked. If you’re really cynical you might believe that the west is enforcing its views on the middle-east to get hold of the oil. But that has nothing to do with the crusades which were about religion and reconquering land that had previously been conquered by Islamic invaders – yes the first “crusades” were the start of the reconquest of Spain by Christian kingdoms against Islamic invaders who had conquered Christian lands.

The lunatic fringe makes a big point about how nasty the crusaders were back in the (nearly) dark ages. What they are forgetting is that was just how barbaric Europeans made war back then – whether we were fighting Muslims, Christians, or pagans. Or just fighting each other. If you have a complaint about how the world is today, and make ridiculous comparisons to the distant past you will look like a fool.

Now we turn to the other side who seems to think every Muslim springs fully formed from the forehead of a rogue Imam with a copy of the Koran in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. They are just as moronic; whilst there are Muslims who have extremist views, they are in a minority compared with the majority. Forcing all Muslims in the UK out of the country because of the views of a small minority would be just as bad as hanging an entire village because one of the villagers show a deer belonging to the King.

And why try to spoil the wedding day of what are probably a reasonably nice couple ? If you want to make a political point with a demonstration, there are plenty of other days when you can make your point known. Like the opening of parliament, the Queen’s birthday (the official one not the real one), etc. It is probably this that demonstrates beyond anything else that MAC are a bunch of losers with no real support in the Muslim community.

Corporate Cloud Computing Dangers

Computing, Security 2 Responses »

Apr 152011

I recently read some of the papers linked to from Andrew Cormack’s blog entry on the legal dangers of cloud computing, which made for interesting reading. And caused me to do some thinking. Whilst the legal aspects of cloud computing are complex and need to be examined (it would make things a great deal easier if there was an “Internet Nation” with it’s own laws), one of the dangers most obvious to me is an old danger to corporate computing with a cloud computing twist.

The old danger itself is what happens when non-IT specialists setup their own servers. Such servers are rarely physically secured properly (allowing data to be stolen), are often poorly backed up, and are sometimes even setup with old retired desktop machines. The dangers are obvious, although those who set them up are rarely aware that installing a server is only a tiny part of the work involved in maintaining a service.

Cloud computing offers similar dangers. An organisation that signs up to a cloud-based service is almost certainly going to get a suitable contract that covers many possible concerns, but an individual within that organisation may sign up to a cloud service with the defaults terms of service aimed at the consumer. Some of the dangers are :-

If that individual makes use of their cloud service in a way that is important to the organisation, how do those responsible for IT services assess the risk of it when they are not aware that it is being used ?
Does that cloud service offer a service level agreement sufficient to protect the organisation? Most consumer grade cloud services can withdraw that service or change the terms of that service without notice at any time. They also rarely commit to protect any data held on the cloud, or offer any guarantees of availability. Or confidentiality.
A consumer using a cloud service is protected to some extent by consumer law. An individual within an organisation using a cloud service for their work, may well not be protected at all. Organisations are usually protected by contract law – when a contract exists!

Network Block Depreciation

Computing, Security No Responses »

Apr 142011

This is one of those things that I was under the impression was widely understood (at least amongst a certain specialist population of IT people), but apparently not. As anyone who has ever paid extra for a static IP address, a network block has some notional monetary value. To give you an idea of how much, a quick search shows that a certain ISP (it doesn’t matter which one) charges $2.50 per month for a static IP address.

The scales up to a value of $637 for a /24 network block, $163,000 for a /16 network block, and $41 million for a /8 network block. These values are of course wildly unrealistic given that network blocks can’t be sold (or at least not usually, although I do know people who have sold them). But let’s assume they do have a monetary value – after all with the starvation of IP addresses it is not impossible that network blocks could be traded.

Physical objects are subject to depreciation to represent the declining value to the organisation – a 10 year old server may eventually have an interest to a museum, but an organisation is likely to realise that it makes more sense to replace it.

Network blocks are also subject to depreciation although it is not time dependent but depends on what use is made of that network block. If we assume that network block A has been assigned to a bunch of unrepentant scamming spammers, what is likely to happen ? Well as spam floods their networks and servers, network administrators and system administrators will start to block addresses within network block A.

Some of the blocklists are collectively run, but some are run by individual organisations. In the later case you cannot ensure that these will ever be removed. As a network block gradually acquires more and more entries in numerous blocklists around the world, it becomes of less use to those who want to use it. It decreases in value.

Similarly when a network block (let’s call it “B”) is used for a collection of workstations run by users whose interest does not extend to keeping their machines secure, it will be populated by machines infected with various forms of malware. As such, it is also subject to being cast into the blocklists of the world. In most cases, the users will not notice, but if that network block ever gets reallocated to servers, those servers are subject to problems caused by historical entries in blocklists.

So each malware infection a machine is subject to has a cost associated with it – it has decreased the value of the network address it uses by a tiny amount. Over time and with enough long-lived malware infections, it is possible that a network block will have a much lower value than an unused network block.

The Grand National: How Many Horses Died ?

General No Responses »

Apr 102011

Yesterday the Grand National was run which for those who don’t know is a steeplechase (horses jumping) that is a bit of a national institution as nearly half the adult population of the UK bets on it. It is even one of the sporting events required to be shown on free to air television (at least in the UK).

But how many people are aware that 2 horses were killed running the race ? And how many are aware that three of the horses that finished required emergency treatment for dehydration at the end of the race … including the race winner ?

Probably relatively few. The television coverage apparently did not show the deaths, and the cameras were allegedly trained to avoid the scene of dead horses being pulled off the course during the second circuit of the course. Why wasn’t this shown ? It is part of the reality of the Grand National, and lying about this presents a false picture of what the race is.

Lying may seem a bit of an exaggeration, but how often are accidents in a sporting event hidden from us ? Car crashes in racing are shown, injuries in sports such as rugby are shown, etc. Yet those show video horse racing want to hide the accidents from us. Perhaps they are worried that showing horses being killed will discourage those throwing money at the sport.

Looking closely at the coverage, it was noticeable that :-

During the race itself, no mention was made of the deaths or even the course change that happened to avoid the two fences where the two horses died. Whilst horse commentators don’t have an awful lot of time to add in extra detail, you do wonder why the course change wasn’t mentioned.
During the race, a ticket tape at the bottom of the screen showed the ‘fallers’, but no mention was made of the deaths.
After the race, they went through the position that all the finishers were placed and went into detail of all the non-finishers. No mention was made of deaths at this stage.
In the long post-race analysis and interviews (during which time of course, many people will have turned off), there was one small mention of the horse deaths. They spent more time panning over shots of pretty ladies than they did mentioning the competitors who died.

It turns out the television coverage did briefly show the tented off area enclosing the two dead horses.

It is easy to get carried away with the deaths of race horses during a race and suggest banning races, but I’m not one of them. Even someone as ignorant of horses as I am, can easily see that horses like racing – many of the horses who fell, picked themselves back up and carried on without their jockey. And indeed it is possible to see that some horses say to themselves “bugger this for a game of soldiers, I’m quitting” and refuse to go on – that’s what “pulled up” in the statistics means (5 ‘pulled up’ and 3 unseated their rider in the 2011 race).

Unfortunately a lack of easily accessible statistics on fatalities at the Grand National over time means it is difficult to say whether the race has become safer over the years. Although it is notable that there were just 2 fatalities in the first 10 years of the Grand National (with admittedly far fewer runners) leading one to suspect that measures to increase safety have perhaps not been as effective as was hoped.

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