How to do something after a certain number of shakes

More android stuff below - this post is mostly to save me the effort of having to upload pics somewhere else on the web.  Proceed at your own peril :-)

Android App Inventor

So, I just got accepted to the app inventor beta.  First impressions: it's really really shiny, but there are some functions that I would really love but can't find for the life of me...

(warning - geeky stuff ahead)

Thoughts on the perfect electoral system

Mark Wadsworth put up a post recently on what he considered to be the least bad voting system - do please go read it, it's interesting stuff, but I don't think it would solve the problem that we have here of two monolithic parties that control the country despite having very little total support.

I did put up a comment there, but the discussion was fairly minimal, so I thought I'd re-post it here:

A few quick thoughts...

This does still mean that a vote for anyone who doesn't rank highly is still wasted. Perhaps the party can reallocate a few (one third?) of the votes for members who definitely aren't going to get a seat?

I still think there's going to be some barrier to entry here - a small party that does incredibly well and gets 50% of all the votes of one member's-worth of constituency (which would guarantee a win in the single member constituency) would have only 1/10th of the vote in the 5 member MMC proposed.

Consider if two large parties get 1/3 of the vote each, and the remainder are split between smaller parties (including the 1/10th to the party that we're looking at) the large parties could simply give each of their top three 1/9 of the total vote, meaning that they'd have a fight for the top spot (likely going to whoever had a few more votes) and they'd end up with all of the seats between them.

This would be lessened somewhat if people voted for individuals instead of parties, but most tribal voters would literally vote for a plastic toy with a red/blue (delete according to taste) rosette on, so chances are they'd all be votes for the party directly. (although it occurs to me, you could make votes for the party itself worth less in comparison to direct member votes, as direct member votes have the risk that the entire vote could be wasted).

I would perhaps be a little more radical in electoral reform. We have ~60m population and ~600 MPs, why not just make it so that each MP requires a pledge from 100,000 people. They would then represent those people directly, rather than a geographical area. Each person could only pledge to one MP, of course, and for the avoidance of doubt you would not be able to change your mind instantly, perhaps a minimum term of 6 months or 1 year before you can remove or change your pledge? And if an MP got 200,000 pledges, he or she would get two votes in the commons. Simples. And under this system, every vote counts.

If we must stick close to the system we have now, I'd probably halve the number of constituencys and run the voting as we do now, then I'd add on a PR system that assigned the other half of the seats based on the number of seats each party should have got nationwide.

You could even question the need for parliament altogether. We have the technology now that we could build a computer system where everyone in the country (identified by NI number perhaps?) could vote online on our laws, giving a truly democratic result. Of course if it was built by the government the system would be very insecure, full of faults and likely have big gaping back doors so people could cheat, but it's an idea...

Anyone else have any thoughts?

I knew it!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/05/binge_drinking_ads/

A US study has shown that anti-binge drinking ads may actually provoke exactly the kind of liver-bashing behaviour they're trying to prevent.

I always resent being told what to do. If someone says "don't go to that pub" or "you know, you really should eat less red meat" it just makes me want to do it more... And it's even worse when the government do it - they're taking my money by force and using it to tell me how I should behave? That's just not going to work.

The article linked here proves that the government should leave us to do as we please - but what are the chances they'll actually listen?

Minimum Wage

"Ministers have been stung by a series of reports in recent weeks showing that, while Labour has reduced poverty since taking power in 1997, the gap between rich and poor has widened because the incomes of the top 10 per cent of earners have soared."

What does it matter? Ok, I will admit that I find it very amusing that under Labour, the gini coefficient has increased, but surely all that tells us is that what they're doing right now isn't working. The point is: they're looking at the wrong thing.

The poor are now more poor than before, when compared to the rich. Well, why are we comparing them to the rich? Are they better off than they were? If so, where's the problem? Like all Labour policies, it seems to stem from a combination of deep seated jealousy and a wish that we could all be good communists. Who cares what the "top 10 per cent of earners" are earning - the only question that matters is whether or not the poor are better off...

What is a Crime?

What is a crime? It's an interesting question, which becomes more and more vague the longer we let politicians run the place. As the government push through more and more laws that criminalise various different activities, I started to consider what I would consider a crime.

I have been known to quote Robert Heinlein and this little statement about sin:
'Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid).'
Which I think is a good starting place. The key thing of course being that someone must be hurt for a thing to be a crime (of course, for the good of social cohesion, you need to consider cases where it is simply planned that someone be hurt - I'll go into that below). If you do something that causes no harm to anyone other than yourself (or only causes harm to willing consenting people) then it should not be considered a crime.

The most simple kind of crime to quantify and identify is theft. Depriving someone of something that is theirs without their willing consent (buying something from someone is fine, that's a trade - and taking something that they want to give away is fine). If you steal something then destroy it, it's still a crime even if it gains you no benefit, because you have still deprived the victim of whatever it was that you stole and destroyed. This should apply to all manner of things, not just physical items. Theft of liberty (currently called kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment), theft of consent (rape), etc.

So we make the first law:
1) Thou shalt not deprive another of something that is theirs in the form that they wish to have it, whatever that thing may be, unless they consent to your taking it or changing it and are in sound mind when doing so. (aka no stealing)

Sound mind would of course be largely interpretational. Someone who's had a drink or two should still be capable of judgement, someone who is passed out and under the table is not.

Let's look at some examples of what this would mean:
Vandalism - you are either breaking something or changing it in a manner not desired by the owner, thus depriving them of it as they want it. Thus, this would be a crime.
Assault - you're depriving someone of health, looks, blood. This would be a crime.
Rape - as mentioned above, this is depriving someone of the ability to consent (or of the right to say no). This would be a crime.
Murder - depriving someone of life - definitely a crime.
Accepting Charity - someone is being deprived of their money/goods/whatever, but they are giving it up willingly, so there is no crime.
Assisting a Suicide - provided that the person is willing to die and in their right mind, this is not a crime as the person who is losing their life is willing and consenting - of course you'd want to make sure that you had plenty of evidence/witnesses so you can demonstrate that they were willing
Posession of Drugs - the only person being harmed by this is you - this would not be a crime. Bear in mind that you are still 100% responsible for your actions while under the effects of the drugs, so could easily get into trouble as a result of this.
Sale of Drugs - again, not a crime. If people want to take drugs, there's no reason to stop them. As long as they are aware that they are fully responsible for anything that happens as a result. Of course, if you've cut the drugs with something harmful and don't tell people this then you're causing them harm, and they're not fully aware, so you would still get in trouble for supplying poor quality drugs.
Sale of Drugs cut with something harmful - unless the buyers are fully aware of what you've done here and are willing to risk their life with these dodgy drugs, this will cause harm - and so is a crime. If you tell them it's cut with bad stuff and they're still willing to take it, then it's ok - but as with the assisted suicide, you might want some sort of evidence.
Drunk Driving - this does not directly cause harm. As a result, this would not be a crime - but any harm that is caused as a result would be fully prosecuted (rather than having the silly rules now where killing someone with a car gets you a fine and a suspended sentence, whereas killing someone by accident can get you 5 years in jail).

I'd imagine a lot of people are going to look over that list and dispute some of those cases. I'm not quite finished yet, though...

The rule above covers most things that I would consider to be crimes, but it does miss a few. What if you plan a murder, but are caught before you can pull the trigger? Technically, you've committed no crime as yet, but you clearly intended to. If it can be demonstrated that you planned and would have carried out a crime, then you should be charged as if you had carried it out. This would have to be very carefully treated though, I'm reminded of a case in the US where a schoolboy was arrested for terrorism because he'd made a doom or quake map based on his school, and modded the monsters so that they looked like the teachers. He never planned to actually shoot them, but enjoyed pretending to. No harm done to anyone, so why was this a crime?

So, the rule should probably be something like:

1) Thou shalt not deprive another of something that is theirs in the form that they wish to have it (or attempt to do so), whatever that thing may be, unless they consent to your taking it or changing it and are in sound mind when doing so.

It's a little long winded, but relatively simple (as compared to the literally thousands of laws currently on the books)...

Just a quick one

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8435805.stm

So they're building a big statue in Senegal ("When completed early in 2010, it will be bigger than the Statue of Liberty in New York.") The President says that the statue was his own idea and "...he says he will personally take 35% of the revenue it generates, with the rest going to the state. "

Just out of interest, is he paying 35% of the £16.6m cost of building it?

News from History - 5 Sept 2005 to 11 Sept 2005

Way back in 2005 I started to play around with php. One of the things that I made was a simple little chat site so that some friends and I could talk while at work (as we couldn't get on msn). To begin with it was really simple and I gradually added features to it over time. One of the things I liked to do even back then was read a bunch of blogs and news stories and pass on the ones that I thought were interesting.

On the 5th of September 2005, I added server side logging of what was said in the main chat page. Given how life is kinda hectic and I really don't have time to post regularly on this blog, I thought it might be interesting to revisit the past, and see what was interesting back then. I plan to put posts up here with a week at a time, detailing the links and what I think of them now - hopefully some of it will be interesting for anyone who happens to read them :-)

So to start with, 5/9/05 to 11/9/05:

on the 5th, we have:

• the house that css built - quite a neat demonstration of what can be done with no images at all, just cleverly written CSS code
  
• a baby grown outside of the womb - I've heard of ectopic pregnancies, but I'm no medic and I'm not sure if that was what happened here, exactly. I do know that it's interesting stuff - might it mean that men can one day give birth?

On the 6th:

• Buttock vibrating technology to be included in cars - I've not heard of this happening for real yet, but it wouldn't surprise me...

On the 7th:

• MP critiscised for taking the mickey - A grant of £48k was given to study Gypsies and travelling communities. Monmouth MP David Davies (Conservative - note this is not the David Davis who resigned over the terrorist detention extension - there's an e in the surname) wrote to the Heritage Lottery Fund asking for the same amount to study people who don't travel around. I thought it was amusing...

On the 8th to the 11th:

no news posts. I should point out that on the 7th and 8th most of our talk was around the forthcoming release of Exalted 2nd edition, but I figure most people won't want to see links to that. If anyone does, just say so in the comments :-) On the 9th I wasn't at work, so there was not a lot of chatting and linking going on, and likewise on the 10th and 11th (as they are a weekend).

Politicians

I think it was Frank Herbert in Dune who wrote "It is not that power corrupts, but that power attracts the corruptible." Yeah, no prizes for guessing what I plan to write about.

It's quite easy to see how the situation could arise whereby they assume it's all ok. Consider it, you're a newly elected MP, getting paid a paltry £60k... Your colleagues in parliament point out how it's the MPs who run the country, who make things work - in private industry they'd be paid a lot more.

They use logic - we deserve more, they say. We need to be paid more to do the job properly, but the public won't be happy if we award ourselves massive pay rises, so we just have expenses... Think of it as extra wages, just without any of that bothersome tax to pay - put down any old excuse.

There are a number of problems with this argument. First and foremost, who says that they deserve more? The easiest way to tell if a job is overcompensated (be it in pay or benefits) is to look at the number of applicants - and there are a lot more applicants than there are seats. Of course the position of an MP is a little unique in that there are no doubt some people who would do the job for nothing. We need to ensure that someone who is an MP receives enough money to live on so that it's not just a job available to the rich and those with sponsorship (and the attaching vested interests). But there's no reason to pay them any more than this amount...

If the pay isn't good enough, go get another job. Don't try to sneak in pay rises as "expenses" and expect the general public not to find out or care.

"But compared with CEOs of big companies, we get paid hardly anything" they say. Well, probably not literally, but that sort of thing. The problem is that CEOs of private companies are responsible to their shareholders, they can be kicked out at any time, and if they're not shown to make money for the company, out they go (unless they do catastrophically badly, but the government agrees to pick up the cheque, as with the banks). There is no measure of an MPs performance that's meaningful, and there's no way they add value to the country at present. Look at the current economic crisis, brought about primarily because of Labour's inability to understand how things work.

Several people have said that MPs should just be paid more, and lose their allowances. I say why the hell should we pay them any more - pay them less! Work out what the average wage for a British worker in the private sector is and pay them that much. Allowances should cover travel costs, and the cost of renting a place near westminster if their constituency is a long way away, and nothing else. Staff, if necessary, should be supplied centrally and paid a reasonable wage - not £40k p.a. for your husband (because I doubt that job was awarded based on any bias at all, honest... I'm sure it was advertised, and the best man for the job selected, with no consideration of any links to the employer which might bias things...).

MPs make our laws. If we don't have faith in them, the whole criminal justice system is under threat. They must be above reproach, honest, fair and trustworthy. Our current lot fail all of these tests - at the next election we must kick them out and show them what we think of them. Then put into place a system to stop the troughing...

Hello

New blog here - I plan to post my thoughts on what is and isn't moral behaviour as well as highlighting the extent of the madness that currently afflicts the UK.

I should probably say right out, politically, I follow a nearly Libertarian stance. I think we should have minimal government (government is meant to serve the needs of the people, in as unobtrusive a fashion as possible - if you ask me) and I absolutely abhor the idea of the government taking people's money because they think they can spend it better than we can.

To start with, there was this story on the Register. As the commenters have pointed out, it's not entirely clear what actually happened, but it's still a scary example of power creep in the hands of unelected busybodies doing their best to impose their own views on everyone else.

UK Music chief Feargal Sharkey told a House of Commons select committee that the policy had already been used to pull the plug on an afternoon charity concert of school bands in a public park organised by a local councillor.

"No alcohol would be sold, tickets were limited to three maximum, and the councillor offered to supply eight registered doormen. Police objected on the grounds that the names, addresses and dates of birth of the young performer could not be provided," said Sharkey, speaking to the Department of Culture Media and Sport's hearing on venue licensing today.

If it were a rap battle between rival bands where the followers could be expected to be violent and trouble was anticipated, then I could see the need for the police to get involved (although surely the limit of that should be to provide additional policing for the event) but this was a case where we're talking about school bands in a public park. Where is the risk? Where is the danger? And why on Earth do the police need the names, addresses and dates of birth of the young performers? How long before they need DNA samples as well, to be added to the ever-growing databases?