Would A Meat Tax Be A Good Idea?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 222023
 

Now that Sunak has reversed a policy that didn’t exist in the first place – taxing meat – the question is whether it would be a good idea or not?

I can already hear the howls of protest from meat eaters, but bear with me …

Firstly there are all sorts of good reasons to discourage meat eating – environmental reasons and health reasons chief amongst them.

Secondly we should encourage the occasional consumption of high quality meat rather than constant consumption of low quality meat. This might mollify some of the British farmers – at least those who have very sensibly concentrated on quality rather than quantity.

So what we want is a flat rate per kilogram of meat – perhaps 25p per kilo of mince which would make Quorn mince a relatively cheap option, but not make much difference to quality mince.

Make meat a luxury not a necessity (because it isn’t).

Filthy Roaring Beasts Rushing Along The Scar

The Quality Of Commercial Software

 Computing  No Responses »
Dec 032008
 

At work I have the pleasure (if that is the correct word) of dealing with a number of commercial software packages which are a little more expensive than the run of the mill packages such as Word that most encounter. In fact I am probably more familiar with software costing more than £10,000 than those less than that cost because I have the curious habit of opting for free software.

I do not have any moral objection to commercial software – if someone wants to pay money for it and pay me to support it, then that’s fine by me. I am just somewhat reluctant to spend my own money on software (although I have done in some circumstances).

However I have come to the conclusion that commercial software just isn’t very good. To give some examples of poor behaviour (without mentioning any names, because it wouldn’t be fair to their competitors) :-

  • A Java application server that does the equivalent of Listen ipaddress-of-server rather than Listen 0.0.0.0 making it difficult to move the server to another server (such as cloning Solaris zones for recovery purposes). This is the kind of kindergarten mistake that any decent developer knows not to make … even I know, and I’m no developer.
  • A software package whose configuration script will work fine for 1-4 members of a cluster but breaks that cluster when you add an additional member of the cluster (taking it to 5). Not only did the configuration script break, but this was known to the vendor.
  • Packages that take months to install even with the support of the vendor.
  • Vendor supplied consultants who apparent have never encountered a keyboard. Or have trouble with basic Unix skills when they are to support a package on a Unix server.
  • Installation or configuration scripts that simply don’t work and have to be effectively re-written by ourselves.
  • Patch bundles that have obviously never been installed on the product as they completely break the service when installed. We have one vendor who consistent wants to break things and have to go through their patch bundles with a fine tooth comb to debug their scripts.
  • “Support” that takes months to respond to a query. Or only responds when hassled through an account manager.
  • “Support” that takes weeks to accept that you are entitled to support because the product whose serial number you have a photo of “hasn’t left the warehouse”.

And people pay for the privilege of this ?

The classic argument in favour of open-source software is that you have access to the source code to apply any fixes that need making. The counter to that is that places do not have the skills to be able to create any fixes, but from what I have seen, in many cases the customers have more skills than the vendors!