Ok. This week some obscure on line sci-fi site has published a reader result of the top ten best sci films ever. Red the story on the Reg here. In interest of levity, here is my list of excellent sci-fi films. You will notice I have taken a small liberty with number one.
...actually more than odd. Just plain old mad. This is a copy from the BBC News site from the other day, copied from the Nigeria 'burning schools' story :
"In an interview with the BBC before he was killed, Mr Yusuf, 39, said such education "spoils the belief in one God. There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam," he said.
"Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain. Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism." ".
Make your own mind up, certainly, but it has been known since circa 1550, when Copernicus published his book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres that the earth is not only NOT the centre of the universe, but IS a sphere as well. If you really push it, Pythagoras postulated the 'round earth' theory some 2500 years ago.
And yet, there are still 'flat earth' and 'god makes rain' people out there who, rather than being benign, are a menace. Is it any wonder the world is in such an appalling state right now ?
I don't see it getting better any time soon whilst there are people with view like this....
A new book, soon to be published, is Made by Mammals. This is a quotation and image from the book.
“Historians of religion recognise a progression from primitive tribal animisms through polytheisms such as those of the Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen, to monotheisms such as Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam.” Richard Dawkins
“Monotheism is in its turn doomed to subtract one more God and become atheism.”
... but feel free to upgrade to Linux anytime you wish.
Windows 7 is coming with a whole swell of money making opportunities for the boys in Redmond.
As ever, why pay a whopping great excess on new hardware for a piece of software you don't need, when you could up grade your existing hardware by dropping one of the many excellent Linux distrobutions on it.....
Distro Watch has all the info you need, but Mandriva is my choice, but Ubuntu is very popular, as is Fedora and PCLinuxOS which as the name suggests, tries to make it as easy as possible to look like an MS product, whilst still actually working.
... is the title of a web log advocating the mass deletion of the Opera browser from users computers.
Put simply, the man is a loon. A fruit cake, a delusional wombat whose arguments hold less water than a very small bucket with a very large hole.
His argument has as it's central premise that Microsoft is the victim of an unfair, un-just and irrational attack and that the act of not offering choices, restricting competition and charging far too much for substandard bloatware is something Microsoft should be proud of. As I said, the man is a loon.
A further read through the inconsequential witterings of this half baked flap jack does suggest some understanding for the absurdities he propagates. He is an ardent Redmond-phile, a lover of all things Gatesy and firmly believes that, for example, MS Office is a truly outstanding piece of software, well worth the near £600 they want for it. A bargain at twice the price, surely ?
A couple of quotations from our colonial colleague.
"Many have been saying that Microsoft has been taking advantage of its dominance of the market by bundling IE with Windows and that they are forcing it on customers. I do not see how that is true in any way. Nothing has changed in the last 15 years. Internet Explorer has been an integral and key feature of Windows ever since Windows 95, before Microsoft "dominated" the market. It's not like Microsoft only recently started bundling IE with Windows, it has been there all along." and ""But all Opera wants is a ballot screen, what's so wrong with that?" The idea of having a ballot screen as a whole is a ridiculous idea. The entire purpose of this ballot screen would be to promote competing products within Windows. Hello!!! Do I really need to explain to you how ridiculous that is?"
Well actually, yes you do need to explain it, as for any user of Windows will tell you, the lack of choice in the OS market when buying hardware, i.e. a computer, is staggering. There is none. The reason there is no Netscape any longer is that MS squeezed them out by bundling IE and then by making it exceptionally difficult to install anything else.
Opera should be applauded for their stance. It is both laudable and desirable.
And of course, the next logical step would be allow hardware vendors to put any OS on the hardware that the user wanted, not what Microsoft wants.
... might seem like an odd title for this page, but wooh there, steady on, everything is not as it seems. The gigantic behemoth that is the Redmond cash cow is pulling its (in)famous money management software. To see what the alternatives are, clear your mind, put away that cheque book and relax.
There are many parts of human progress that have advanced by vast orders of magnitude over that last 100 or so years. Physics, astronomy, medicine are three. Genetics, despite the enormous drag factor that is organised religion, has mapped the human genome to a point where two entire human beings have had their genetic codes mapped and recorded. This is a wondrous achievement. There have been countless inventions during the 100 years that was known as the 20th century. We have sent machines into space that have now let our own solar system. We have, despite the conspiracy theories, put members of our own species on the moon, our nearest largest satellite. These are incredible achievements indeed.
Charles Babbage invented the forerunner of the computer, and Alan Turing advanced this to such an extent that, despite being persecuted to suicide for the 'crime' of being homosexual, was immortalised on the case of many an over priced laptop and eye candy laden music player from the boffins in Cupertino.
Communications have advanced beyond belief that we can now talk, and write message, from any point on the face of the earth to any other point on our own pale blue dot. The small oblong boxes are now able to browse the interweb, write, send and receive emails, listen to music, conduct video calls and watch television, although this small feat, watching television in a small field in Wiltshire, on a screen which is far too small to actually watch television was in fact brought to market with earth shattering success by Casio. This may be part of the reason why nobody does actually watch television on their mobile 'phone.
All of these things, despite the possible dubious social benefits,are indeed progress, worthwhile or worthless. However there is one area of human endeavour, that has not moved forward one jot in the last 100 years, neigh, possibly even 200 years. And religion has done nothing, on this occasion, to hold back the advances of Man.
Personal transportation has not moved forward one step. Yes, we now have the car and yes, those cars are now fast, more economical and with far better radios than ever before, but they are, basically, still the same as they were once were when a chap called Benz rolled a carriage on wheels out of a barn to absolutely no acclaim what so ever. We have, in the last century, not worked out a way of powering this tin boxes by any other means of taking lots of black shiny liquid out of the ground, buring it and turning it into lots of black shiny clouds. Where are the ion powered cars, cars that would levitate or run on water ? Where are the cars that would drive themselves, float or become submersible ? Where are the flying cars and the cars made of paper light but iron strong materials that were promised by Raymond Baxter and the delicious Miss Philbin, amongst others? Is it possible we have been lied to for the last fifty years ?
Cars are not the only immovible force. Take the bicycle. It is, with the exception of a spring on the front wheel, almost identical to the very first velo's. They are still, when you look at them, two triangles welded together, with a circle t each end powered essentially by the consumption of large amounts of sugar. Take a look at the next bike that you see; two triangles. There may be a line missing at the back, but, the designis still two triangles. Depressing I know, but the 20th century has not moved this most personal or methods of transportation on one carbo' powered yard.
However, the greatest travesty of of the failure of man has been the advancement of flight. Not only have we failed to move forward in our desire to navigate the globe without actually touching it, we have in fact gone backwards.
In the late 1960's England and France joined forces to design and build the supersonic passenger plane. Russia developed their own independently, although there was always the question of industrial espionage by the Russians, especially as their own supersonic marvel turned out to look, at least on the surface, identical to England's greatest.
Flight, at least for the masses took a major step backwards when the Air France Concord crashed in Paris. As a result, their are now no more Concords, no more flying faster that the speed of sound. This is a sad thing. Now, the best we can do is simply to make 'planes bigger, to shove more and more people into the delights of cattle class, with nine hours of piped banality in the shape of Tom Cruise films. Last year I had the 'priveledge'of flying 11 hours from Frankfurt to Johannesburg. Not, I repeat,nota pleasant experience.
The human species is capable of some amazing achievements and some appalling deeds, but in in almost all cases they are a move forward. The future of transportation has however come to a grinding halt and, as it looks now, there is no chance of any change any time soon.....
As some of you will know, I am a bit of a bore when it comes to open source software and free software. These two things are not always the same thing, but often are. I won't go into the differences here, so, for the ease of reading, let us assume that free software isopen source software.
So, over the weekend, I happened to be in one of the countries larger computer shops. You know the sort of lace, stacked to the gills with shiny Dell's, HP'S, Alien Ware machines [HP's with a 25% premium] and of course the joy of all Jobsian fanboys, the over priced and ever restrictive Apple boxes.
I happened to overhear a conversation between a mature couple and a spotty little oik pretending to be an adult. He was trying to persuade the naïve sexagenarians to part with a large amount of money to buy Microsoft Outlook. They declined.
And left the building.
I followed them out and had a chat with them. All they want to 'do email'. Nothing clever, nothing fancy, they just wanted to 'do their email'. So, I suggested they could try Mozilla Thunderbird. They had never heard of it. Do they know about Firefox. Oh yes, they use it all the time. The 'orangey one'. Yes, that is it. Go to the same place, look for the 'blue bird' and there is a bit of software that will 'do their email'. It'll do more, far more, if they want it to, but, it will 'so their email'. When I told them it was free, like the 'orangey thing', they were very happy.
I hope they did download it and are now happy with their new found emaily freedom. But that got me thinking. Open source software. How much money could you save if you really were on a budget ? Well, think of this scenario. You have an oldish [one, two years old] laptop and want to 'do stuff' with it. Lets look at the options. The prices are taken from the MS website this very evening.
Vista Basic : £140 Outlook [stand alone] : £112 Office Home Basic : £324 includes Outlook
Or, and here is the kicker :
Linux : £00.00 Thunderbird or Evolution [stand alone] : £00.00 Open Office*: £00.00
*The current version is V2.4 is compatible with all MS office formats, except their new .x format, such as *.*docx. This is the £324 Office 2007 option. Download Open Office 3.0, currently in the final stages of testing, and it is still open source and free and does open and save in the new *.x MS Office 2007 formats.
So far so good.
But what about other things. Money management ? MS Money, $60. I happen to use GnuCash. The latter supports almost every banking download formats as well as MS Money and Quicken formats. The price : £00.00. The GIMP is just about as good as it gets for doing anything 'arty', from creating graphics and managing 'photos. Price :£ 00.00.
For Photoshop, Adobe will be asking for $700. Yep folks, $700. You can see a bit of a theme here. Don’t forget the raft of excellent astronomy software [Celestia or Stellarium] , graphics software, a stack of games and a wealth of specialist programmes for mathematics, science and education. The cost of this wealth of joys : you guessed it, nothing.
So, on a basic level £464 is the minimum saving by going to open source. This is for the operating system and an office package. For the rest, the savings are unlimited. If you are interested in more free software, take a peek at this finance website [ http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software ] for a range of free excellent software. A peek at a link that can also be found on this site for a range of free and very good anti virus software just goes to show that you don't have to be loaded to have the very best software on the market.
What do I use : Mandrive 9, with Firefox and sometimes Konqueror, with Thunderbird with the calendar plug in. GnuCash and Stellarium. Oh and Open Office 3.0 for all my scribbling needs…….
It has, I will admit, been some time since I scribbled any thoughts, sane or inane, on the subject of food, and more importantly food on the hoof.
For those of you who are new to this concept, food on the hoof is not just the quick 'grab and go' of the quick fix cholesterol injection, it is a culinary delight that is designed, intended to be eaten mobile, perhaps in smaller portions, sometimes with the appendages and extrusions of the upper body, sometimes with the most simple of cutlery, but always, always, without the table or a napkin, and, without exception, from the hand.
In the past I have extolled the virtues of the Germanic foods, the smoky smells of grilled würst wafting through the winter markets, the delicious and yet so easy pizza from a small Roman eatery, and Dublin.
It is well over a year since I last made comment on any of these luscious delights so now, dear reader, it is time to be enthralled once more. The last twelve months has taken me to Madagascar, Germany, briefly, Libya, South Africa, only a week, but I have a stamp in my passport to prove it, and of course, my current location, Swaziland.
As far as food is concerned, Swaziland is an interesting place. It is almost entirely a meat based diet, with the concept of 'vegetarian' being largely alien, both to menus and to people. Most people here that I have met find it odd that I am a vegetarian. Or is it just me that they find odd, I'll have to ask.
Like a lot of Africa, fruit and veg' is sold by the side of the road and is the main place to buy for the majority of people, although there is a sizeable class of consumers who shop in the local supermarkets, Spar, the vast Dutch megalith and Pick 'n' Pay, as South African outlet that pays no lips service of any description to local produce. Spar does at least carry a significant amount of local food. The Swazi' made yoghurts are a, frankly, delicious. English style runny yoghurts with lots of fruit, rather than the French style set yoghurts, often with little or no fruit.
This, saddens me as it does, is not about yoghurts. Maybe I will do a piece about the delight of fruit in milk another time. Nor is this about shopping in Swaziland. This, as I mentioned at the beginning, is about food, food on the hoof.
The sad thing is that food on the hoof here in Swaziland is almost, almost, non existent. It is not something that Swazis do, or at least not very often. In the city of Mbabane there is a single fish and chip shop, but most people seem to get them wrapped, not open. There is a single Indian take away. You'll notice neither of these are very Swazi. And before you say 'well, fish and chips, it could be...' remember Swaziland is land locked and the chippy is called London Chips with a large picture of the clock tower, in Westminster, home to the bell Big Ben. Oh yes, very Swazi'!
And for the vegetarian ? Nothing. Well almost nothing. The chips in the chippy are cooked in beef fat, with the fish, so that is of the menu and in the Indian, vegetable samosa's. Don't forget, Gujarat is a vegetarian almost vegan part of India, the choice can be a multitude of vegetarian dishes. Here, a veggie samosa.
The flip side to all of this is of course the is a staggering range of Cadbury's chocolate, so for that alone there is a big 'thumbs up', however, this does fall outside the category of food on the hoof.
Sadly then, Swaziland does fall short of most other places in the food on the hoof steeplechase, but this is minor consequence for Swaziland as a whole. I'm probably the only one who cares!
So, I've been here in Swaziland now for a few weeks so I think it is about time I provided an update on my thoughts of this place.
My initial thoughts have not really changed, only enhanced really. Swaziland ISa beautiful country. Even in winter, which we are leaving and moving in to the spring, it is beautiful. But, I think the thing that makes it for me are the people.
The people here are just some of the friendliest people I have ever met, they are wonderful. They are polite, kind, courteous, and, as far as I can tell, pretty happy with the cards they have been dealt. The usual cynicism I have about people being fundamentally 'un-trustworthy' has all but vanished here in Swaziland. The Swazi's will talk to anyone it seems about pretty much anything.
There have been a couple if incidents here recently though. There have been a couple of riots in the main city of Mbabane protesting about the Royal rule, and wanting a democracy. However, the people who organised it seemed to be, largely, non Swazis. They seemed to be, most, South Africans who feel that 'now that have sorted out Zimbabwe, they'll sort out Swaziland'. No, I am no expert, not on this at least, but there are some problems with introducing Swaziland to the concept and high ideals of democracy. The principle problem being, as it seems to be to most new democracies, one of understanding that only half the people are ever happy. Sometimes, a lot less. A lot less. Look at the UK with it's 40-45% turn out. 55-60% don't actually vote. Labour won the last election with a smaller number of votes than the ten seat majority that John Major [remember him?] had before the Conservatives were so rudely swept aside on a tissue of lies..... sorry, I'll get down from the soap box and put it away......
Back to Swaziland. In some ways, Swaziland is what South Africa would like to be, without the Royal Charter. South Africa, since the end of apartheid has had year after year of political unrest. It was only last week that Thabo Mbeki was pushed into stepping down and 14 cabinet minsters went with him. Swaziland has no such problems, clearly, but most people seem to be happy with what they have, which, if I am honest, is a country that functions pretty well.
The power system works, the 'phones work, the mobile network works magnificently [smug look], the tap water is clean and drinkable, the roads are in excellent shape and, all in all, Swazi's are pretty organised when it comes to building stuff. The road works on the main road into Mbabane from Manzini / Matsapha flow very well, despite the traffic volumes.
There is also, for me, a sense of de'ja vu whenever I see a Police woman here. I think Juliet Bravo, the early 1980's Police programme. The uniforms are identical.
Sunday mornings are also quite interesting. Walking through the city of a sunny aand fine sunday morning is to walk through a city in song. Ecverybody here it seems goes to church, and sings. Big and bouncy songs proclaiming the immpressive creations of God. I'm not really sure which particular branch of Christianity is prracticed here, but, there are billboards a plenty professing the utter joy of and the Godly delight of having chunks of 'intimate bodily protrusions' removed from the male half of the populus. Believing in God is alien enough to me as it is, but to be circumsied 'for God' is frankly, insane. Iyt simply is not going to happen.
Am I happy to be here ? Yes. Simple question, straightforward answer.
I have just learned that this year is the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Is it really, I hear you say. Yes. And to mark this 'celebration' the Economists Intelligent Life quarterly has asked a collection of eminent thinkers to list a freedom gained and a freedom lost. My invitation to rant in such an esteemed mag'has clearly been lost in the trip to the southern half of the planet,so with this in mind, I give you, here, my views.
Freedom Lost.
There have been a number of significant freedoms lost over the last decades, but, as I have not been around for all of these, I am accepting of the status quo, however, the last ten to 15 years has seen a significant shift away from the freedom to express, the freedom to articulate and right and freedom to self determination. I am not talking about the the break up of countries, such as Yugoslavia, performing acts akin to the Matryoshka dolls from which spring ever small countries, determined to offer the right of its own people to their self determination. Countries and political entities are, almost by definition, only transitional states. Even places like England or Britain or the United Kingdom or the British Isles are transitional, the boundaries of 'rule' have changed over the last thousand years or so, some times not always from the 'where' but to the 'who'. As an aside, have you ever tried to explain to somebody who is not familiar with our sceptred isle the difference between those four nomenclatures ? I did have a chat with a colleague from Johannesburg who thought that Scotland was simply a part of England, that England was the entire island. It pains me to admit, but, in the end, yes, I did correct him. I did not however bring up the West Lothian Question, to which it seems there is no answer.
No, what I am talking about are the small freedoms we have lost, the little things that can make life just a little more tolerable for The Self. For example, the freedom for an adult to go to a, sometimes private, adult only environment and participate in adult only experiences, such as smoking in pubs.
Now,I understand that there will people reading this that will say that they want the freedom to go to a pub and come home not smelling like and ash tray and yes, I do, broadly, agree. However,and this is the crux of the matter, we are adults humans, beautiful,intelligent, amazing creatures, often flawed but capable of some breath taking feats and we are all, every one of us, capable of making our own choices. Some of those choices are good, some bad, some ugly. But we are capable and as such we should be allowed to continue to make bad choices as well as good ones. We understand that some times we have to take the rough with the smooth and to this end,there may be activities that some people enjoy that others do not. Well, tough is my point. If you don't like it, don't do it.
Pubs are adult places. Alcohol has been categorised as an 'adult only experience' and pubs are intended for the consumption of these delightful malty infusions, and as such will tend to be associated with other adult only experiences. Keep the smoking inside the pub where the consenting adults have made the choice to be in the first place and do not let it spill into the street where the hoards of smokers now ply their ever increasingly illicit pass times, infusing the innocent passer by with the scent of second hand Gauloises.
Should you need any more convincing of the rights of smoking inside pubs take a walk though any small to large British or Irish city on the morning after night before and look at the amount of cigarettes ends that are strewn liberally and carelessly in the shop and pub doors ways. A few years ago these would have been indoors and our urban landscape would have been just a little more pleasant.
There are other small freedoms we have lost over the years. If the last point was flippant, and maybe it is, the freedom, neigh, the right to express oneself certainly is not. The right to express oneself is now so curtailed for fear of offending somebody else that almost every interesting subject of conversation is now, effectively off limits. The most interesting and now most dangerously taboo subjects is religion.
As most of you will know, I am an atheist. I have been for some time. I arrived at this decision after weighing up the pro's and con's of religion, and, after a period of careful consideration and looking at what is laughingly called 'the evidence' for god. I made a concious, considered and quantifiable choice and am now, firmly, in the land of 'infidel' or 'gentile'. I am happy with this choice. It works for me. I am allowed to express it.
However, I am, technically, not allowed to publicly express why or how I arrived at this position, for fear of enticing religious hatred. This rationale would be part of the series of draconian laws that have been passed in the UK in the last seven or eight years or so, in theory to counter the threat of religious extremism. Needless to say, these laws are comical and in the most spectacular ways have simply not done anything other than allow those with the most conservative of religious views to propagate their acidic ideas to the most vulnerable or stupid in society.
And yet, as an atheist, I have no right at all to question those views, I am not allowed to counter them, I am not allowed to posit a counter rational. Not least this is denying a lot of people the right to have a damn good argument, over a pint and a cigar in small pub with a good cosy fire of burning atheists smouldering nicely in the corner. And, should you think that I am exaggerating, Turkey, the denizen of pseudo secularism, the country most desperate to join the Euro' Union has banned access to a number of scientific journals and web sites, perhaps the most high profile and recent being that of Richard Dawkins. Yes, freedom of speech and thought and wonder isalive and well.
And here is the common thread that joins together both the flippant, perhaps, and the serious. The only way that we grow, intellectually, the only way that we can discover new ideas and new thoughts, the only way that we can progress, scientifically, intellectually, artistically and emotionally is to explore, to break new ground, to be allowed to express ourselves, to counter and be countered and develop extensions to those ideas, and, perhaps most importantly to challenge each other and make mistakes.
To stifle this expression, either through legislation or fear of being hit over the head with a sturdy lump of wood is simply to allow the extremist of thought but more fearfully of action to take the upper hand. And if this happens, we may very well end up living in a world that is, very much akin the the world which originally gave rise to all the crusty old books to which the religious do so love referring.
Freedom Gained.....
This, I have to admit, did take some thinking about. Quite a lot in fact. My head still hurts a little at the back. I could have written about the freedom of travelling, but that is restricted to those that can afford it, or, as I am, lucky enough to have somebody, in this case my employer, to pick up the bills. It is also curtailed by the need to get a visa to some of the more interesting places which in turn could be declined if you have previously visited some other interesting locations that are deemed unacceptable to the next country you are wanting to visit.
I could also talk about the joys of the internet and the freedom to read and learn about other views but again, this is sadly restricted by far too many elected and more often unelected regimes. I won't mention them here, but you know who they are largely because you are not restricted by those ideologies, but many, many are.
I could talk about the joys of technology and the freedom we have to watch and listen to the bland and mundane or, occasionally, interesting, as and when we want, but alas, this too is restricted. Try buying a dvd in one country and playing it in another. The copy protection added will permit the user, often, only to watch the film in the country of purchase. Region country codes were invented by the film makers and distributors to keep the prices artificially high and ripping these to hard drive to allow them to be watched 'on the road' is, technically illegal. Pah.
Even the humble mobile 'phone is coming to the attention of the multinationals; try putting some software on an Apple Iphone and see how long it lasts. Apple will remove that software at the next update. They take the view that, even after forking out several hundred pounds they still own the device and it is your privilege merely to rent the device from them. This particular issue is something I could rant on about for days, and, to the chagrin of some of my colleague, often do.
So, what, as a result of 60 years of the UN Declaration of Human Rights have we gained ? An end to wars ? Sadly, no. Anecdotally at least, there seem to be more wars and conflicts around the world than ever before. I admit that we may simply be more aware of conflict,due to the parasitical rise of the 24 hour news channels such as Sky and CNN, but the UN Declaration of Human Rights has done nothing to curb these local endeavours.
So what about the rise of equality ? Peter Tatchel, the UK gay rights campaigner, suggested this as his 'freedom gained' but this is not a universal right and is, largely, restricted to the 'developed' western world. There are many places where the concept of homosexuality is utterly alien and in many places, illegal. Tatchel is correct from a UK perspective, perhaps even a european standpoint,but not in such liberal enlightened places as Saudi Arabia, our 'big friend' in the Middle East.
So what then, has the UN Declaration of Human Rights given as a freedom gained ? Sadly, I am going to say, not a lot. Maybe the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a work in progress, maybe it needs to be bigger and more encompassing. Maybe it needs to be smaller, more lithe, quick thinking and more pointed. However, in it's current format, the UN with its 180 plus members it will never satisfy everybody, it will never deliver the big ideals for which it was, originally, and correctly, created after the second world war. There are simply too many polarised views with the UN, there are too many local interests, culturally, intellectually and religiously to satisfy all member and as each resolution takes longer to ratify,there are more and more 'op-outs', more and more exceptions to the rules.
So, as a riposte, I will leave you with this single freedom. Human beings are an incredible species. We are both clever and stupid at the same time. We are capable of the most wonderful creations and the most amazing destructions. We are capable of discovering the wondrous, and ignoring the obvious, we can create something from, seemingly,nothing and in return something into nothing. But the one thing we are all capable of is thinking. The freedom to think is perhaps the greatest freedom of all.
Imagine what we could do if we are all allowed to think and act upon those thoughts; we could explore space properly, create wonderful architecture, find a cure for James Blunt and Lilly Allen, anything.
Gordon E Moore, co founder of Intel, observed a trend that was as true in 1965 as it is today : the processing power available to users would double every two years. This has become known as Moores Law.
Broadly speaking, this trend has been proven correct for pretty much every and any two year cycle since the late 1960's and, unless something catastrophic happens, the future looks to continue this same trend.
For consumers, users, generally, this has provided a wealth of opportunities and headaches alike. There is more data created and saved and passed around than ever before. There are more methods of saving that data and more and more methods of distributing that data to the point where the average home computer has 96 million times more storage and processing power than just 20/25 years ago. You, like me, may have started out on computers like the Commodore C64. the 48k Spectrum, the Vic 20 or like me, the 16k Acorn Electron. Heady days indeed. Look at your current typical home computer, with its 3Ghz processor, 1Gb plus of RAM and 160gb plus hard drive, not to mention the terrabyte plus external hard drives, capable of passing so much information so quickly that two 'firewire' connections are now de rigueur.
There is a feeling of course that this wealth of incredible processing power does nothing more than allow the user to get to the wrong answer more quickly than ever before.
The urban and industry myth surrounding Thomas Watson, IBM Chairman in the mid 1940's suggests he said that there would be a need for no more than five computers on the entire planet. Five. He may have said this, he may not, and short of employing the finest of mediums with the blackest of cats, we may never know. However, it is the idea that is interesting, not necessarily its provenance.
The situation now is that almost every home in the developed western world has dozens of computers; from the microwave and VCR, oven and web enabled refrigerator, the plethora of chips in the average family car, controlling everything from the angle of the lights to the warmth of your bum, the house alarm, television, calculators, self moving vacuum cleaners, digital cameras that are about as close to the Box Brownies and Camera Obscura as I am as likely to want to meet Anthony Worrell-Thompson, i.e., not very; and of course the ever more complicated and complex mobile 'phone. This is all a world away from the visions of Babbage and his 'automatic counting machine', or even Alan Turing, to whom an homage is made on the front of the majority of music players and an ever increasing number of lap top computers.
It is, broadly speaking accurate, that the average 'smart 'phone' on the market today has more processing power than some of the earlier Apollo missions launched during the 1960's, not only in raw processing power but also sheer storage. I have a 2GB card plugged into my micro SD slot and is happily playing my music as I type these words. This is my mobile 'phone.
And herein lies the crux of some of the most important issues and questions the technology and communications industries are facing right now. Technology convergence and differentiation. The boundaries between a device for talking and a device for reading email, playing music, looking at the internet, getting lost and getting found once more are becoming less and less clear. A single device, with differing levels of success, is replacing more and more smaller, more specialist devices. Why carry a mobile phone and music player when the average mobile phone is a music player ? Why is a computer needed when it is perfectly possible to download content directly to storage in your mobile 'phone, to view your friends latest holiday pictures and of course to share the same with anyone else who is even vaguely interested ? Why indeed ?
Cloud Computing is advocating more and more then need for connectivity and 'single device' convergence, the 'one box does all' solution where everything is accessed to and from The Cloud. The Cloud, as advocated by the likes of Ellison and Jobs, Gates and Page and Brin suggests that mobile connectivity is the future. One small box neatly located in your pocket will bring to you all the wonders of the digital world, all kept secure safe from prying eyes where ever the user happens to be, as long as of course the user is connected to the internet via a wireless connection which will carry this vast amount of data.
So far, Mobile Network Operators have been reluctant themselves to make the investment that is needed to enable this wireless utopia envisaged by the California Visionary Society. They have, after all, had their fingers bitten, more than once, and fairly recently.
3G was seen by many as the next logical step in providing high speed wireless connectivity. Many MNO's made large investments in 3G, both in the purchasing of licences from their respective regulators, the UK for example gave the treasury £22 milliard pound [£22 billion for those versed only in American] plus a large undisclosed amount to technology supplies to actually build the networks themselves. So far, there are three old men in Weston Supermere, a fourteen year old boy in Lewisham and a chocolate machine in Hounslow which are considered active users. Returns have not yet been anywhere near enough to cover the investments and, it is likely, probably never will.
SO what of Mobile TV ? Will this not be the catalyst to a bright and rosy future of instant gratification? Surely users will be flocking to buy new devices and new services to watch the latest episode of 'Celebrity insert name of vacuous programme here' or learn how Jade Goody is currently supplementing her protein intake. Alas, no.
Consumers seem to be asking themselves two or three pretty basic questions when it comes to mobile television. The first is 'given that I have a television the size of a window at home which is piped with more channels than I could ever possibly watch for a not inconsiderable fee, why then would I pay more money to watch less channels on a two by one inch screen' and secondly, 'why not just buy a Casio portable telly, bigger screen and much, much cheaper'. This is in fact what a lot of people actually do.
Even in Korea, the southern part anyway, long seen as a test bed for emerging technologies and seen as the haven of mobile television, even here, subscriber numbers are dropping off and revenues are decreasing. It seems that, once more, suppliers and networks have misjudged the paying public's ability to have money weaned out of the wallets and into the coffers of Big Business.
It seems at the moment that the only thing that is really capturing the imagination of the user is the device, the thing that sits in their hand. The own it they feel, they can do with as they wish, it is theirs. They are in the technology world and they can feel it sitting there. And they can show their friends and bored and largely unimpressed passers by that they have grasped the proverbial bull by the large and pointy horns and will ride the Pamplona Run of Technology to the end. Or at least until they have read the 274 page manual, and forgotten all but 'press the green button'.
The end user device is becoming more and more the public focus of the driver for the technology. Small, shiny boxes, with buttons, without, with large screens, with small, with eye candy, without, qwerty keyboard, or traditional numericals, this is the current battle ground. This is where the current marketing budgets are being focused and where the black polo necks are turning and looking. There is a small but significant amount of success here, at least in shifting boxes, but the networks themselves, the service enablers are not yet seeing the returns, they are not seeing the users using and, more importantly paying for extra services. There may be a million pictures taken by thousands of mobile devices, and yet the amount of MMS traffic is, frankly, comical. Good old SMS, the tool that allows every of spotty teenager to use and abuse our glorious language, is still the back bone of Operators margins., Hardly surprising given the retail price and the cost of the SS7 link in the first place.
So, once the user has exhausted the eye candy of the device what happens next? Largely, nothing, because the networks have not fully invested in those wonderful 21st century networks, that will give unfettered access to The Cloud, in cheap, usable chunks. Which means of course the demand is small, so there is no investment, which keeps the demand low, and so, like a mitochondrial protein, this cycle is seemingly never ending.
So what happens ? This is a good question. There will, almost inevitably, be one or two companies that do make the investment to provide the sort of connectivity only thought possible in episodes of The Jetsons. But, like the early days of the railways in England and across europe, it is the pioneers who do the hard work, who have the vision, the foresight and the guts and promptly go bust and the cautious, wait and see types, how pick up the pieces, and the margins, and make the large juicy profits.
We are yet to see the start of this cycle, so it will be some time before we, as users, are granted the gift of The Cloud and the unfettered joy that streaming adverts will, undoubtedly, bring.
And what of Walton and his vision of only five computers ? He may have been correct in some ways. Lift the concept of 'computer' up from the desk top and place it higher. Elevate it to The Cloud. Consider each interconnect in the cloud as a computer, each content provider as a computer and maybe Walton will be more correct that ever he thought.
Tim Berners-Lee, when he first touted the idea of the internet when he was working in CERN, saw the opposite. He saw content and access be controlled by the people who owned the content, the user. Big Business, if it is to provide The Cloud at levels that we, the users, are prepared to pay, will have different ideas.
A one hour flight from Dresden down to Frankfurt followed by a ten hour over night flight and one arrives in the South African city of Johannesburg. Luggage arrived, a car was waiting for me, despite that I was two hours late, and I was as far south as I had ever been. And yes, even though it is winter it still feels like the sort of English summer that Laurie Lee would eulogise about for page after boring page.
Still, it was somewhere new to explore, somewhere new to find out about.
Johannesburg has, after two weeks, struck me as a peculiar place. It really only dawned on me after a week or so what it was. It reminds me of England. Not in any great overriding way, but the small things, the subtle things. Cadburys chocolate everywhere, which is always, without exception, a good thing. Cars drive on the left, Fishermans Friends are made made in Fleetwood in the north of England. English news papers, English television, English football everywhere. English beer and so many Land Rovers that it feel like being in the Yorkshire Wolds on a fine sunday afternoon.
All very well and good. But this is not England, despite what I have said above. First of all, there is a certain tension in the air. As is by now fairly well documented, the recent history of South Africa is one of mild disagreement about who should be running the place. Forty years ago a black man was put in gaol for blowing a power station and various other government run buildings. In 1990 he was released and most people saw that as the renaissance for a new age in South Africa.
Nearly 20 years later and it seems that, in some ways things are actually worse than they were. There has, for example, been little or no investment in the power network, resulting in fairly regular electrical power cuts. There is also a little tension in the air. I had often heard the phrase “gated community” but had never really experienced it. Until I reached Johannesburg. For my 30 minute drive through some quite salubrious suburbs I have yet to see a single house. I have seen a few ridge tiles and the occasional chimney but the over riding view is of high walls topped with flesh shredding razor wire or heavily rusted barbed wire. Surely though, I hear you say, this is all changing and eventually these walls will come down, once people move home or renovate ?
Well, no. Actually, I'm told, all these walls have been erected in the last two decades, ever since F W de Klerk released some of the longer staying guests of the countries gaols. And the new developments are being designed with security as the main selling point. The walls, razor wire and gate house are built before the actual houses they are there to protect.
So, is it all bad ?
Well, no. Despite the fashion for calling everything “Mandella something or other” which does make it very confusing for the pale faced English gent to find his way around, Johannesburg is quite a nice place. There is nothing outstanding to note about Johannesburg, no outstanding architecture, old or new, there is no fascinating history, no culture. This is not a Glyndebourne view of culture. Not at all. It is just that there is nothing to stimulate the old mind cogs.
There are lots of places to have a drink and even more places to consume copious amounts of dead cow, grilled, fried or, on a bri, which I am told is a barbecue. In fact, the two main social activities for white South Africans seems to be eating and drinking, or drinking and eating. Having said that, judging by the size of some of the black women here, eating seems to be a cross denominational thing. I'm pretty sure I saw a woman who had inflated a dinghy down the back of her pants.
I use the distinction between black and white after a very interesting conversation with a colleague and his wife, who, despite the evidence to the contrary, describes herself as coloured, a phrase which is seen as distinctly unsavoury in England, but more of that in a minute.
During this conversation I learned that blacks and whites will or will not drink certain alcoholic beverages because they are being consumed by the other lot. For example, Carling Black Label, a fairly tasteless lager from Blighty, will not be drunk by whites, because it is mainly drunk by blacks, mainly because of its football links, and football, especially African football, is seen as a black sport. Whites will and do watch football, but only the English Premier League. Whites will drink lager, but mainly Castle, another pretty tasteless South African Breweries beer or some of the imported and therefore more expensive european imports.
I will add at this stage that the nicest beer I have found is Windhoek, pronounced Vindhook, a Namibian beer brewed to the 16th century German brewing laws known as Reinheitsgebot, which is considered to be the oldest food law still in existence. This edict permits the use of only malted barley, hops and water in the brewing of pure quality beers. It strictly forbids the use of any additives, colourants or preservatives. And very nice it is too.
And so, with this in my ears, I took my hired Toyota Yaris into the Kingdom of Swaziland from where I write this missive.
So, if you want to know more of Swaziland, then dear reader, plough on.....
The first thing about Swaziland I did not know was if the place was actually a country in it's own right, or like wales, was just a part of country it is in. Well, Swaziland is a country, its full name being the Kingdom of Swaziland.
Which means of course, that I now have another exotic stamp in my passport. I am always a little sad when I drive around the region known as europe that, now there are no restrictions on the movements of people or trade, not only do you not get a stamp in the passport, most of the time the possession of a passport is not even required. Try driving from England to Germany through France and Holland and you will see what I mean.
The drive from Johannesburg was much less exciting than I thought it would be. Driving east out of the big city will, eventually take one to the agricultural factory that feeds not only Johannesburg but much of South Africa. It is flat, dull and being August and therefore winter, barren. As far as a drive of interest is concerned, it is possibly one of the dullest four hours I have spent behind the wheel of dull Japanese car.
And it rained.
To alleviate my tedium of the drive I decided to have a fiddle with the radio and did find a station which played a three hour jazz session. Nice. And so onwards.
But what was this approaching in the distance ahead of me ? A hill. Surely this would provide some interest. And such it did. As I had done the clever thing of buy and look at a map before I left the comfy softness of my hotel, I knew that Swaziland was fast approaching.
And such it was. Once I had navigated the customs and immigration into Swaziland, which involved filling in some forms, paying a 50 Rand, circa £3.50, car import tax, I found myself in the mountain country of Swaziland.
My first impression was one of stunning beauty. Swaziland is a small but beautiful country. The main road that takes the drive into the the capital of Mbabane winds its way down the side of a mountain in large and fun sweeping turns. By this time the radio had lost its signal but this was not an issue as I was spending as much time looking sideways at the scenery than I was looking forwards to steer the car and avoid the locals who, as I have since realised, all drive very slowly indeed.
Swazi's are a very relaxed people and driving fast is something that, frankly, is far too energetic. They are though, as I have also discovered, very polite, and this extends from the car to everything else.
Actually, polite is not quite the right adjective. Friendly is far more accurate. Regular readers of this diatribe will recall that I once described the Malagasy as friendly people and such they are. However, Swazis take friendliness to new limits. They will talk to anybody. They will engage you with a level of sincerity that will make the average American wince with self contemplation. This maybe because of curse, I am English. You knew that I assume ?
I was told that most Swazis probably have not met an actual real life English person, despite the fact that Swaziland was once, like much of Africa, a colony of the Crown. The slightly irritating thing is though, that most people I have met seem to think I am South African with an odd accent. When at last they do find out where I am from they tell they love England, because we have a Queen a free health care. Amazing. Free health care. This was not the first time I had been told this of course, as a few people in the office had told me that they had heard of the NHS, but was it really true, you could go to the hospital for free ?
The NHS is of course 60 this year and I have to say, as wondrous as it is, I am ashamed to say that I had never really appreciated as much as I do now. The fact that I have been reminded of its greatness three times in the last month does make me feel proud of its achievements and slightly worried that the turnip that we have a Prime Minister will continue to devalue this wonderful institution, in much the same way as the previous cabbage leader did. The irony of course is that it was in fact a Labour government that gave the United Kingdom its National Health Service.
Once more though I find that I am wandering.
So what of Swaziland, the land locked southern African country with a population of just over one millions people.
A sign of things to come.. ?
There were two things I thought I knew about Swaziland, one turned out to be totally wrong and other only vaguely inaccurate. The first was that this was the place where the film Zulu was set, that well known film of plucky English colonials taking a stand against the hordes of barbarians trying to kick out the English and take a tea interval any time they damn well pleased. Actually, the reality was that this battle took place at Rorke's Drift, which is in what is known as Zulu-Natal province in the south eastern corner of South Africa, just south of Swaziland.
The second thing I knew about Swaziland which was only slightly wrong was that the King of Swaziland has 13 wives. In fact he is up to almost 20. He has just bought another nine BMWs for them to keep them happy. And each has her own palace from which she could, presumably, make wonderful tapestries.
One thing I have found out is that that the number 40 is significant, more so this year than most. First of all, it is the Kings 40th birthday this year, in fact, about now, the end of august. Secondly, the life expectancy of the average Swazi is 40 because, 40% of the population have AIDS.
But more of that in subsequent scribbles.
So what is Swaziland like ? Like South Africa, Swaziland does remind me of England. Actually, it does rather remind me of Yorkshire, most particularly the A64 driving up through the Wolds towards Pickering and the home of the story of Dracula and the port of the Beagle from which Darwin set down his initial thoughts about evolution: Whitby.
Which way to Hutton-le-Hole ?
Again, it is the little things, like the street sign above, are straight out of the HMSO High Way Code. Obviously the names are a tad different, but for those who know them, they are comfortingly familiar.
The landscape could be described as sweeping rather than distinguished. There are no incredible vistas, no gasps of awe when you sweep around a corner and that is because the topography of the land is more windswept rounded hills rather than the jagged mountain scape of say, northern Indian or southern Germany.
But, none the less, it is still a beautiful country and one that makes driving a relaxing experience, rather than, as in , say, Libya, stressful. In fact the most stressful part of driving here in Swaziland is simply if there will be more cows on the road and if they will move out of the way. In typical Swazi style, the locals will happily sit waiting for ten minutes until the cows finally, slowly, get their big arses out of the way.
So, for the moment, I will leave this here, but there will be more of the Kingdom of Swaziland for further times......
Additional : I'm told that the King actually does have 13 wives, so I'm correct there [wu hoo!!] and the seven new BMW's were for his fathers widows.
There is something a foot in the confectionery industry. It seems not to be blowing very far, only in the Minnesota area of north America, but there is a little furore going on. There is a row blowing through the North Star state about the ingredients of a small, not very tasty wafer. The particular wafer in question comes from a catholic church where, it is inferred, the wafer is is the body of christ, and not just a mixture of flour and water. and perhaps a little salt.
Philosopher PZ Myers tends not to agree and has written about it on his web page.
As often happens in debates / discussions / conversations about religion there is an assumption on the part of the 'believer' that, because they believe, which ever view they hold about a particular religious subject, trumps your own, perhaps contrary view, simply because they are religious and you are not. This is a view to which I personally do not subscribe and, to a certain extent, do not understand. One persons political views may differ wildly from another's [in fact, very often do, this is sometimes called the joy of politics!], one may like red wine, another white and lots of people really do not see the point of cricket. However, in all of these cases, there will often follow a healthy debate, some to-ing and fro-ing and which will either result in agreement of, in the case of cricket, blank apprehension about why anybody could possibly find this marvellous game event he slightest bit dull.
However, as soon as religion hits the market place of discussions items, some people do get very heated indeed. Personal insults, threats of violence and poor grammar are very often directed towards the person who even thinks about questions the very existence of anything even remotely holy. I wonder why this is ?
There seems to be a real deep seated insecurity about religion that must not be questioned, or, in some cases, even thought about questioning. For, if one were to question them it may turn out that the entire construct of religious belief may fall down about peoples feet. And, I'm told, this could not be allowed to happen.
So what of this wafer and the controversy surrounding it. Well, it seems that some people have become very offended by the suggestion that flour and water is just flour and water and is not in fact the body of christ. They feel that their monotheist world view s in danger of collapse and that, all costs, the body of christ, embodied literally in flour and water must be defended. To take a wafer out of a catholic church, without first eating it [is this not cannibalism ?] has been suggested is a hate crime. Yes, I know, It is not a typing error, catholic have suggested that taking a biscuit out of a church is a hate crime. It has also been suggested that not eating said wafer is the same as kidnapping and holding somebody as hostage. Again, no irony nor sarcasm intended. Not a jot.
When I read / hear this kind of twaddle, I start to understand why life is held with such little value. If people are going to put so much energy into protecting a biscuit, and said biscuit is given the same status as, perhaps, your spouse it is frightening to realise how little value the church and associate religious people do put on the value of life.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
On the whole, I am not really a massive fan of You Tube, and at some point I may get round to writing down why, but once in a while, a small nugget is found, a golden gem that really does make the use of hundereds of millions of pounds worth of technology actually really quite useful.
So here is it, a seven minute clip of Marcus Brigstocke, taken from The Now Show talking about the evils of religion.
Equally the same can be downloaded here, in mp3 format.
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