AlisonW - caveat lector

What's really in a name

2012-02-04T22:16:18+00:00

Yesterday I attended #BenefitsCamp , which was considering various ideas and creating option around the issues related to the UK benefits system.

I'll write elsewhere on my main topic of interest, as it has rather 'grown wings' and deserves a discussion site of its own to be better reviewed and taken forward, but one of the points I made during the event was about the name given to the field. Often seen on job advertisements — or a part of an interview process — is that matter of salary. And alongside 'salary' comes 'benefits', which might be a subsidised canteen, service discounts, pension contributions, or regular bonus payments. And the bankers have made 'bonus' a very bad word indeed.

"Benefits" are perceived as just another name for 'extras'.

So what happens when that same word is applied to payments made to those unemployed, or disabled, or injured and temporarily unable to work? Parts of the media name these payments — which provide a roof over someone's head and allow them to eat, are pretty minimal in the first place — 'benefit' in a way which makes them sound both undeserved by the recipient, and some sort of penalty to the tax-payers who provide the funding to the government.

So the next question, clearly, is what such life-sustaining payments should be called instead.

Fine tuning

2012-02-01T22:46:43+00:00

Since late last year I've started to get interested again in hardware hacking and the 'maker' movement, up to the point that I've been upgrading my home facilities for woodwork, metalwork, and electronics.

This resulted in my deciding to add a couple of new domains to my stable. One being a cetral resource for those looking for information (which, naturally enough, includes myself!) which is starting to take life at openhax.com in the form of a wiki. Once I've developed suitable templates for each typoe of link — and created some for the stuff I've already found — I'll open it up to others to add stuff too.

The second is another blog for myself, but focussed on my making and hacking. It could have been added here but I reckoned that it was a rather more 'special interest' topic so would suit a separate location. Anyway, if you'd like to see all that wander along to shehacks.com , though I'm still fine tuning the css!

Initially I was planning on using Concrete5 (again) for the new maker blog, but a poassing comment from someone at a meeting last week caused me to re-evaluate that decision and, eventually, I decided to return to Chyrp as is used for this blog. And to not re-use the existing fork but to update it to the latest version — four years after I last touched it! So far I've managed to upgrade three of my modules, and I'll be getting around to updating the rest shortly. They will all, of course, remain GPL'd as Open Source.

WebOS opens up

2012-01-26T00:19:22+00:00

Open webOS 1.0, Enyo 2.0, and fulfilling the revised dream

Shit Silicon Valley says

2012-01-26T00:02:55+00:00

Shit Silicon Valley says

The SOPA/PIPA Result

2012-01-20T23:37:47+00:00

The people spoke on Wednesday and, it seems, they were heard by some of the Senators and members of Congress debating these proposals. And they didn't like what the people were telling them (and, no doubt, worried about whether they would be re-elected again) and so they have — for the moment at least — stopped further activity on these two bills.

But it isn't over. The powerful media forces will try to get new versions back to the House and Senate in the future. We must remain vigilant and prepared.

Once, the internet was the plaything of the USA Department of Defense. Then it moved into academe and commerce. Now, the internet is the tool of people all around the world; every minute of each day and from every country around the globe people use it to freely communicate with each other. To share news, photographs, information, their life.

The internet is no longer the private property of one country, or a single guiding mind. It was created by many many people and is for the benefit of all human kind.

And any time it may be threatened again it will be all human kind who will respond: "KEEP YOUR HANDS OF OUR INTERNET!"

The SOPA/PIPA effect

2012-01-18T22:48:43+00:00

The SOPA/PIPA effect

Age and DNA

2012-01-05T16:30:24+00:00

Over the last few days a similar topic has come up during online and offline discussions with friends: does one's political world-view change as you get older?

There seems to be some received wisdom that you get more 'right-wing' as you get older, and though this has been supported by some others had suggested the reverse has applied to them. I'm certainly aware that while I've always had personal views which could be considered to cover the entire gamut from broad-left to far-right on specific topics — I've never been a believer that single Political Parties, no matter how broad a church they try to make out that they cover, are a valid answer — I can see in myself some 'focus' changes over maybe the last 15-10 years.

Making this a matter for a blog post though was prompted by one of the questions in today's YouGov survey request, "Different people have different ideas about whose DNA should be held on a national database, with the police allowed access when seeking to investigate crimes. Which of these options do you personally favour?"

They've supplied four answers, alongside the "don't know" get-out, being

There should a national database of everyone's DNA
There should be a national database of the DNA of everyone who has been arrested by the police in the course of investigating crimes, including those not charged, or charged and found not guilty
There should be a national database of the DNA of people found guilty of a criminal offence
Keeping anyone's DNA is an invaion of their privacy: no national DNA database of any kind should be kept

and the trouble starts there. There is absolutely no question that a DNA record is an invasion of personal privacy, and that every database is open to abuse. But it is as likely true that repeat offenders exists and whilst mere suspicion (or testing for exclusion) is not a crime there would be a clear deterrent effect if everyone knows without a shadow of doubt that the merest trace of their DNA at the scene of a murder or rape would attract the immediate attention of the investigative team. I am very firmly against the death penalty and find that it is still used in some countries — most notably the USA — as completely abhorrent; the state has no more 'right' to take a life than a sick individual, and the numbers demonstrate it is no deterrent.

But then my knowledge of the ease with which databases may give the wrong results (or fail to give the right one) and that, just as with the common cold you have no idea what the route of contagion was five or ten steps back, you have no idea where your DNA — be it a fleck of blood, 2mm of hair, or a few skin cells — might be carried completely innocently, then the idea of having everything on record becomes a case of 'too dangerous to take the first answer'. There are over seven billion souls on this planet and unless you have the complete DNA record of every single one then you will be searching against an incomplete set which might easily have a close match but not the exact, correct, guilty match. And we've returned to the past dangers of hanging the wrong person.

The #Fail Culture

2011-12-30T23:18:16+00:00

Failure, failing, and being “a failure” is such a part of tech culture that it is a cultural locus for entire posts, blogs, pep talks and conventions. Failure is universally feared and derided, yet framed and re-framed again and again as a means of staying positive, of learning from mistakes, of using failure as a measure of working hard for success.