Archive for: May, 2010

Too much newness

May 13 2010 Published by under Life, politics, software

Two bits of newness.

I've taken the plunge and moved to hosting my own WordPress blog. The LiveJournal import script crapped itself a few times (it reached 13,000 comment imports; I only have 212 comments), but I think I've gotten them all across.
Also, I apologise for the lack of OpenID support, I can't seem to get any of the plugins to work without either errors or interfering with a nifty way to set my blog as an OpenID provider without any provider software. I hope to fix this in the near future, or just hack away at it until it works.

The other is the Lib/Con government. I've had a read through of the agreement, and whilst I'm not thrilled about nuclear power, replacing Trident or the marriage tax rebates, I'm heartened that the LibDems can abstain from the votes and speak against them without jeopardising the coalition.
I'm more heartened by the wholesale adoption of LibDem policies, such as the £10,000 tax free allowance and political reform. Along with the common viewpoint on education and civil liberties, these are good things, whatever the nay-sayers say (Try saying that quickly repeatedly)
With respect to them, the LibDems have not abandoned their soul, lost the plot or sold out. Whilst a number of supporters would like to have seen a Lib/Lab pact (and had Labour got more seats it probably would have happened), it would have been more unstable than the current arrangement, and I have a gut feeling that the public would vilify the LibDems more for propping up Labour. I also suspect that once Labour were "safely" back in, the promises would get dropped as "too expensive", "unworkable", "not a priority", or New Labour's current authoritarian streak would assert itself.
I'm not fan of the Tories; I would not vote for them even if every other candidate were more unpalatable. The element that gets me enthused about the government are the LibDem ministers, providing liberal viewpoints to counter the conservative ones, to propose liberal solutions to problems. This strong counterpoint will be enough to hold back the Tories' natural instincts whilst providing decent government.

I think I've finished drinking the KoolAid now. Cynical service should be resumed shortly. ;)

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Its been a while

May 10 2010 Published by under Life, politics

Its been a while. In more ways than one.

Firstly, its been a while since I posted here. Whilst I've sort of randomly updated my identi.ca account, I've been irregularly working on lapwing-web, RPMification of Lapwing-Linux and various other bits n pieces. I'm hoping to rectify that a bit (not the first and definitely not the last time I'll say that) by using this blog to demonstrate/showcase FOSS I've written. Or I could move everything to http://samwwwblack.lapwing.org. I dunno.
Otherwise, its business as usual; looking for a developer/computer support related job in the Midlands in a job market fixated on the south east whilst working in the Argos stockroom offloading lorries. Great return for 5 years of uni ;)

Secondly, its been a while since we had Liberals in power, and hopefully by the end of today tomorrow we will again. I have to admit to being really disappointed at the outcome of the election, with the LibDems loosing seats even when getting more votes than last time. I spent most of the following day pissed off (5 hour shift at work didn't help) that the LibDems had done as badly as they did, especially after the hype and hope in the run up (teach me to invest emotionally in hype).
However, I kept coming back to how Dib Lemming put it; the Lib Dems won. Not in terms of seats, votes or forming a LibDem government, but in terms demonstrating the fatal flaw in first past the post voting; how can a party get more votes than last time, but lose seats? Is that a fair representation of the people's will? Is giving 9% of the seats to a party with 23% of the vote fair?
Viewed in those terms, the case for voting reform is made readily apparent.
I hope the current Tory/LibDem talks end well, although I don't like the secrecy surrounding them. I can understand the case for keeping the discussions under wraps as both sides could be tearing chunks out of each other whilst publicly proclaiming to be getting along, so as not to worry the people or fuel the anti-coalition sceptics. It just seems, as a FOSS developer (and I use developer in the loosest terms), that this antithesis to public conflict is counter productive. Raging arguments of opposing views happen on a regular basis in the FOSS world, yet those projects around the arguments still exist and release code. It seems that some very good work has come out of these major arguments and disagreements, the GNU Project being the most prominent example.
Open arguments engage more people, allowing them to contribute their view point, their experience and their information. It also allows a greater number of people to fact check "truths" used in an argument, and to provide counter arguments backed with "truths", and so on. This perpetual proposition and rebuttal process tests an idea to destruction, where it either evolves to fix the flaws or dies. Having this argument in public, recorded for the public, adds the sense of ownership to the idea.
In a time where people are disillusioned in politics and the LibDems especially standing for a "new era" of politics, airing everything in public and inviting public input is the best way to push this change.

Thirdly, its been a while since I started to write this post. I tend to take the best part of a day getting things just so. Thus, everythings probably changed when this post appears ;)

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