Dam that forum addiction.

Sorry been neglecting blogger because of my new found love of forums.

For me forums were the web 2.0 before web 2.0, social media before facebook and a way of following other people before twitter.

It was Duke Nukem that got me addicted to forums. I spent a few years making levels for Duke Nukem 3D  and was checking the company that made the game's website. 3D Realms. They had quite a good website for the time with stuff like webcams, staff info, fan art and the forum. After checking the site for updates and info on the new Quake powered Duke Nukem Forever I eventually joined the forum. This was before anyone knew the game was going to go into development hell. I was already pushing the DN3D editor to it's limits and wanted to get ready for the new game and more powerful tools.

As the news on the new game dropped off the forum turned into an active place discussing the advances on games technology and an active 'anything goes' section. It was a real shame when 3D Realms had to give up on the game and killed the forum, it killed a great community.

Anyway I took it as an excuse to have a break from forums and threw myself into this new facebook thing. Facebook is not the same as a good vibrant forum though. I poked my head into a few forums like the The British Mac Forum's lovely The PussyCat Club forum and even set up a forum for John Watts of Fischer-Z.

But I was really looking for somewhere were I could talk about my first love, technology.

Then someone at work pointed me to a new forum set up recently called geekschat.net

Looking through the list of topics I instantly knew that this was the place I had been looking for.

It was not long before amusicsite was the top poster and it seems the perfect place for the type of rubbish I write, that always amazes me how many people enjoy reading. It's still low on registered users but it seems to be attracting more and more guests.With the 3D Realms forum I spent years just reading it before joining. I believe it was something posted on one of the topics that I just had to reply to which got me to register. So I'm fairly confident that the site will grow and become a vibrant place one day.

Why I didn't vote

Let me first start by saying I fully support the right to vote and if I lived in a country where there was no democracy I would fight for the right to vote.

But nothing is as simple as just vote to change things. For example there are countries in the world that have votes every few years but the government never changes because opposition groups are hidden from the general public. This can be done many ways.

Controlling the media.

Always a popular one no matter how democratic your country is. In the worst case this would be state owned media with only one side to every story and no mention of an alternative view or system. This obviously keeps the population ignorant and hopefully unquestioning off all the facts.

Though full on control off everything is not the only way. There are many more subtle ways in a country with a free and open media. One would be to abuse the knowledge that you have in government to leak information about the opposition while gagging information that might hurt you. Even a subtle change of the national TV station to use your governments party colours can have a surprising effect.

Suppressing the opposition.

Again a popular way of staying in power. In the worst case this would be diapering key figures that start get a popular alternative party going. Along with this can be killing people at meetings and making people scared to talk openly about alternatives.

There are the less violent ways to. Like making it expensive or technically hard to get a party on the ballot card or to easy so there is the government and dozens of alternatives splitting the protest votes. Maybe using laws like prisoners can't vote to lock up ethic groups, tribes or people likely to vote against you in key seats.

Needless to say you can always lie about the vote result or might be able to pay off the opposition party to let you stay in power.

Others.

Welcome to our country. Some governments have stayed in power by issuing passports and offering duel nationality so supporters in neighboring countries can vote.

Misinformation is always good. One day you say someone in the opposition may have done something really bad. Set up a small investigation and some time later release a low key note saying they did not do anything wrong. Most people will remember the crime they were accused off and many will never realise it was false from the start.

Closely linked to the 'We had an inquiry'. It's very easy to have an inquiry, though they may know what the outcome will be before doing any inquiring, if they even bother doing any.

...

So to say democracy is all about the right to vote is so wrong.

Democracy is about the right to change along with the right to a fair government.

So you might be thinking our country is not some small 3rd world despot. Those problems don't exist here.

Well I think your wrong.

There are plenty of examples here in the UK.

Intimidation of anti capitalist groups and meetings, I would not even put it passed our recent governments helping disappear a few people you have never heard off. Though more likely in jail rather than the grave.

WMD. Need I say more about the best use of misinformation by any government. BBC branding is often either red or blue depending on who is in power, especially for news. Then you have the recent AV vote, a perfect chance for the Tories to use their marketing might to get their message across and make the yes campaign look idiots. Then again if they wanted a yes vote and the rest didn't, I'm willing to bet the vote would have been a mirror of what we had.

But there is one thing I really hate about politics which is very unlikely to change. It's the party system.

Here you vote for your MP, whoever wins in whatever area you have been grouped into gets a point for their party. The party with the most points gets to set up as governments and their hand picked leader get to be the countries head, although the party can change that person on a whim.

So if you take politics seriously you are often presented a dilemma.

Do you vote for the countries leader, the party they stand for and their chosen MP for your area?

Do you vote for the party who's ideology best matches your and take their leader and local MP?

Alternatively you vote for the best person to represent your views locally regardless of what party or leader they have.

Now you might be lucky and have three ticks for the same party, local MP and leader. Though there is likely to be a point in your life where you may consider voting tactically to keep out a party or voting for a party or leader you hate because they have by far the best MP for your area.

The media like to over simplify the whole thing but to make a good informed decision means knowing a lot of information. Who are the individual councillors standing in your area, what is their agenda and will they work well with your MP? Who are your local MP choices, what are their agenda both local and national and how much weight do they have in their party or the government? What are the parties likely to do? What type of cabinet is the leader likely select and how will they lead the country if something unexpected happens?

All that has to be put into perspective of how others around you might vote.

They had the cheek to say the alternative vote system was too complex!

The 'AV' vote to me is the classic example of how they have created a system that perfectly pulled the wool over everyones eyes and created a system of limited choice that everyone accepts.

The nation was given the choice of 'first past the post' or the 'alternative vote' or 'first winner of 50% of all votes'. The term alternative instant makes it sound less attractive. Also it made it sound like the only alternative even though the main alternative mentioned for all my life has been 'proportional representation'. If our vote really counted there would have been real choice and debate on all forms of voting systems including..

Dictatorship
Separated local and national management
Communism
Abolishment of local boundaries and voting just for the party
Abolishment of parties and voting for individuals who cooperate to do the best for the country.

You know hours of debate and tv shows on prime time comparing the strengths and weakness of different systems from the really bad to the quite good. We seem quite good at that for choosing who will be in our pop charts or the next fake celebrity.

I would favour the removal of the party system and run the country more like a company. Set up a few hundred key jobs and each five years you vote people into those positions. Obviously with the option to remove really bad performers anytime.

This would free up you local MP just to be your representative on local issues and work as the go between of local government and national government.

A very radical change and would obviously need a lot of debate and would need to be set up right to work.

Though I don't expect much debate of looking at big changes like this being given space in the corporate media even as much as wacky ideas like green issues or zero polluting cars.

With a better system I would pay attention and vote but with the current system I believe all votes are wasted votes for changes between current or alternative with very little difference between them.

https://picasaweb.google.com/amusicsite/April2011

Why I love the train and hate the plane.

Traveling to Europe recently I went out by train to Gent via Brussels then on to Köln where I flew back to England.

Going out I took an early train from Brighton to London arriving as the sun was coming up. The station at both ends has good shops that are open all the time the station is open. They are near shops that stops them inflating the prices too much and gives you a good choice of options.

The Eurostar checkin recommends you get their 30 minutes before your train should leave but could easily still get the train if you arrive with 5-10mins before departure. I got there a bit earlier, after about 10 minutes of queuing was through the gate, security and plenty of time to grab a coffee to take on board the train. Shortly after grabbing the coffee the gates opened and was shortly on the train.

A nice pleasant journey to Brussels where you can get up, walk around go to the bar / restaurant or as I chose stay put and drunk my coffee and read the paper.

Arrive in Brussels and a short walk to the correct platform and I was on a train to Gent. Arrived there feeling refreshed and in a good mood.

Then coming home....

Well to get to the airport you have to get on a train anyway. This takes you to the airport amusement park. Miles form anywhere you are a captive consumer. Barely any choice, overpriced goods. You are recommended to get there 2 hours before the flight, get there later than 30 minutes before the flight and you may not be let on the plane. If they let you through the boarding and security you would probably have to run quite some distance to get to the plane.

Typically you have to queue to check in, get through to security, at security, at passport control, to board the plane and to get a seat on the plane. Then more delays getting off the plane, hike to baggage claim and potentially a long wait for you bag. Then most likely a train to finish the journey.

To avoid one of these delays I decided to just take a carry in bag. Unfortunately unknown to me these no longer need to be weighed at check-in so I queued there for no reason, like the person in front of me, to be told I could have gone straight to boarding/security area by the nice German lady spitting the words out like we were all crazy.

Having not flown for a while I was not sure if the stupid no liquids rule still applied. There was noting about it in the printed ticket I has. Did not mention it on the DO NOT TAKE THESE ITEMS ON THE PLANE signs. Apparently it does then. I had a drink with me and was given the option of throw away, go outside and drink or give it to someone in the airport if anyone was seeing me off. Bin it was then which seemed a bit wasteful. When explaining that anything that he could turn upside down and would pour out is a liquid and not allowed in units of over 100ml. Then asked to check my tooth paste. Which I believe is a paste and not a liquid! Along with not being able to pop out for a smoke on the long wait until you actually get to sit down on the plane, other annoyances include having to watch the safety demonstration, keeping seatbelts on all the time (recommended) being interrupted by someone trying to flog you stuff you were not allowed to bring on three plane yourself and being told not to use electronic devices at take off and landing.

So if I get it right you must not use your phone because it could crash the plane but you are allowed them on the plane.

You are not allowed to take onboard your own liquids because the could be used to crash the plane but are allowed to buy overpriced replacements once on the plane.

Finally you are obviously more likely to need to know what to do in the event of surviving a plane crash than a train crash.

I and now wrapping up on the nice train trip back to the south coast and have cone to three conclusion that flying is like taking part in a survival game show, where as international trains are like relaxing and watching cinema.

In future I may just travel to paces I can get to by train...

Supermoon = Superlow tides

The Chinese in Africa.

A tricky one this. Is the huge investment in Africa by the Chinese a good thing for Africa?

Let's start with what little I know. Firstly the Chinese will happily invest in any country, human rights issues are not even considered. Then there is the type of investment. Which mainly seems to be, build the infrastructure to ship natural resources out of Africa and Chinese products back into Africa.

Though it seems the infrastructure in many places is the bare minimal needed. Often built and run by the Chinese with only low paid jobs for the African nationals. There are sometimes big local companies set up with the local government. Presumably to give the impression that it's a local business. Then again it's not going to be hard to let corruption and miss-management of funds run the company into the ground. Then you can come in and buy the company, install a Chinese workforce for all the skilled jobs and you now own a huge company that is more than likely a monopoly.

Obviously you give the local government their cut with tax and sweeteners. After all having the same dictator or 'only option' elected leader in power for a long time allows you to do long term planning. Like invest in a railway to get to the mine. Invest in the mine to improve investment. Take control of the mine to improve profitability. Invest in the railway to meet maintenance costs. Buy the railway to make it profitable.

Within a decade or two you can help set up a national monopoly and privatize it while making it look like you are just trying to help. Then you can ship all the resources you like back to resource poor China to make all those cheap products. To then ship these products all over the world, including Africa. For there comes another drawback to the Chinese deal. The more Chinese you have working in these new industries, the more services run by Chinese you have. Shops, doctors, banks and entertainment run by the Chinese for the Chinese. Some of these can even under cut the locals with Chinese food or cloths shipped in from China.

Just like the west did for the last couple of centuries the Chinese seem to be taking and giving very little back. Yes you may get some perks like better roads or a mobile phone network. Also the local government will get more money but this is unlikely to filter down to the poor. Along with this you have jobs being replaced by technology and foreigners.

The only real advantage is that better roads, phone networks, internet connection or any other kind of communication infrastructure helps the local start up business. Good communication is important to business and any good business person can utilize good communications to make money and grow.

I guess the question is are more people disadvantaged by the Chinese or are more people better off?

Wrong advert for a tsunami

While the Japanese tsunami was unfolding I was watching live TV from Japan on http://www.ustream.tv/

Every time I dropped in to watch it the above advert was playing followed by images of the awesome destructive power of water.

To go from happy fluffy kids playing around in water to images of water destroying buildings and washing away thousands of lives seemed quite disturbing.

Definitely did not make me want to rush out and book a holiday.

I think in hindsight it may not have been the best advert for the time and content.