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Two things I saw on the news this morning really got me thinking (I’ll leave discussion of the disaster that is the Labour party for another time…)

Doorstep lenders ‘overcharging’

What do they expect? Any company offering credit can do so on any terms it wishes to anyone - and, shock, terms are actually determined by the creditworthyness of the applicant. It makes no difference whether it’s HSBC, Capital One, or, Luigi’s Break-Your-Legs Credit… Where’s the fuss about the credit card companies offering worse terms to the least able to pay? There isn’t one, since how the whole damn industry works.

What’s next? Having a go at insurance companies who offer worse terms to the most vulnerable and needy (ie, those who have the most accidents). It’s stupidity.

On a slightly related note - Families pay 71pc more for school holiday getaways (NB: I actually saw this on BBC news this morning, but can’t seem to find a link. Also I HATE the Daily Mail and hate to draw any attention to their crap generally, unless pointing out that it is crap, which this is, so I suppose it’s OK).
Again - isn’t this bloody obvious? I suppose what’s actually needed here is massive overcapacity for the tourism industry to ensure that when these idiots want to go on holiday they can at a low cost. I can’t understand why people just don’t see that supply and demand works in the real world. Hotel rooms and flights and (pretty much) static in supply, demand peaks at certain time, therefore the price goes up. Wow. Can’t the school-kids explain it to their imbecilic parents?Alternatively, my suggestion is for everyone to start showing the peak prices on things. Term time holidays would be cheaper then. Imagine the headlines “You can save 42% on the price of your holiday by going during term time”. Problem solved.

Businesspundit: Is Concentration the New Competitive Advantage?

I’d seen the original post by Nicholas Carr and whilst it was thought provoking, I’d not come at it from this angle. Every day there is a deluge of information coming at us, some useful and some not. I have a large number of subscribed RSS feeds, some of which are actually relevant to my work, some aren’t and are for amusement and information only. Prioritising is a problem - especially when feeds that should be relevant, actually have content which isn’t at all. Without reading at least a summary it’s difficult to tell whether an article is something to read now, save for later, or ignore completely.

I’d been thinking before about how to educate people to live in the modern world (I hope to get back to this), but maybe something that should be included is time management and learning to ignore noise and distraction. On an individual level we should all be doing that more - the endless chatter going on doesn’t seem to help, especially when most of it isn’t ordered (blogs are NOT the medium for multi-way conversation*) and refers to yet another blog, which also has comments and trackbacks.

* I’m wondering if implementing something like sxore (which I have here) can actually help turn the medium of blogging into a conversational tool, by linking comments and links to a post in a central place.

Just a quick note to congratulate Arsenal on getting through to the final of the European Cup. It would be nice to think of the trophy being retained by an English club (no matter what certain people say!), although I just can’t see them beating Barcelona in the final (if Barcelona get through).

Yesterday I visted Infosec Europe at Olympia, Kensington. Nothing too surprising on display to be honest.

“Identity” wasn’t as prevalent as I’d expected, although there does seem to be a few products released with slogans including phrases like “identity aware” - still not a great deal there. One aspect of “identity management” that is common is that of Single Sign On - a number of appliances and resellers have entered this space. That should be interesting.

Apart from that, appliances of all functions seem to be the big thing - network appliances, content appliances, &c. What makes shoving software onto a locked down box so attractive?

Speaking of attractive… There weren’t as many stunning ladies as I’d expected either. A couple of the exhibitors had obviously paid models fronting their stands, but frankly, their product information tended to be lacking The “Brazilian” girls were OK and the show-girls were “showy”, but ultimately didn’t really achieve anything in terms of getting attention for the stands.

The fact that no there’s no outstanding memory of either presentation or content speaks wonders for the whole show. Oh, there was a magician doing pretty cool card tricks which got immediate attention, but I’ve no idea what company he was representing!

On the positive side, I picked up loads of feebies - pens, key-rings, foam balls etc. No doubt I’ll actually remember some of the companies when I go through my goody-bag.

UPDATE: I’ve just seen this - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/26/infosec_blog_four/ - the title says everything one needs to know about Infosec.

I’m not normally one for this, but

HA HA

Not only is it wonderful to see Chelsea beaten, but the fact that Liverpool did it is even sweeter

The human brain is an amazing thing, able to absorb new concepts, learn, remember and regurgitate facts, and adapt. Concepts, habits, attitudes and facts become re-inforced through training - this is the way that people are taught (”don’t do that, it’s hot!”, “2×2=4″, “The capital of France is Paris”, “Masturbation is dirty and makes you blind”). It’s the way that we get knowledge from our parents, teachers, religious leaders and the media (”Drinking Budweiser will cause you to become more attractive to other people”), the way we get on in life and the way that we get psychoses and sexual hangups/fetishes. The more that certain behaviours are established, the more difficult they are to break - that’s why it becomes more difficult to learn as we age and the origin of the phrase “set in his ways”. Doing something new causes us to “unlearn” and learn something - doing something in a new way causes us to relearn it. Try reading a book by an author who’s style you’re not familiar with, it’s often difficult to begin with, but eventually you get used to it.

Human discovery has been based upon slow improvement on existing ideas - each generation was taught by the previous one, taught the same ideas, punished for not reacting accordingly, and reigned in where something new and exciting happens. For a long time religion held us back, primitive beliefs in a supreme being prevented even asking the basic questions of philosophy and science. Certain periods of time have seen an accelerated level of knowledge acquisition with great men making great strides and effecting great change before the process is slowed. One thing that affects this is communication - the ability for men to exchange ideas, expand upon them, subject to critical review amongst peers will surely enhance knowledge. Won’t the Internet usher in a new era of discovery and of greatness where everyman can make a contribution?

That’s the dream, but the reality must be different. A hive-mind is good for some things, like computers generally - recording, storing and replaying. There’s nothing original though and there’s nothing to separate Man from beast (or insect) where no thought is new. Sure, some people will be great, but most of us are destined to consume knowledge and not create it. Most of the modern Internet is merely a collection of recycled rubbish - we have the notion of a blogosphere where someone can happily read a collection of views from likeminded people and shut out the dissenters. A collection of self-congratulatory egomaniacs who measure existence by how many people agree with them. The rest of the population raised on a diet of tits, football, TV and drugs are no better (or perhaps they are since they don’t have a self-inflated view of themselves).

That’s not what prompted me to write this though - my opening paragraph contained a number of statements which may be true or false depending on your point of view of things. It’s reasonable for me to assume that the reader (if there is one) is proficient in the English language (which has dominated the world in many ways) and therefore the capital city of France is Paris to him, but what if this was written in Spanish, German or Korean? 2×2 may equal 4 in most numerical systems, but in Base3 2×2=11. I won’t touch on the other statements

My point is that ways of thinking become engrained to us - most of us think in our native language and assign labels to things based on that - it gets more difficult to break out of as we get older, but I’ve mentioned previously a concern I have about modern teaching methods. We teach children to regurgitate facts to pass exams and we actively discourage critical thinking. Saying “No” and asking “Why?” should be things that are encouraged or else we’ll never have the next person who questions an established truth and advances mankind in the process.

Maybe it’s time that “think outside the box” became more than a corporate buzz-phrase. It’s probably time to challenge myself, my thinking and my habits more. I started to do that a few months ago, but I’ve only just realised why…

Do something new today.

I’m well aware certain people (Robert Anton Wilson, for one) have expressed these thoughts already, but reading them and understanding them are truely different. I’ve only just understood the concepts of “neophilis” and “neophobis”.

Earlier this week I signed up for racing frogs and overnight my frog won his first race. I’m so proud. It’s almost as rewarding as having children, but it only requires 5 minutes of attention each day

There’s been a lot of fuss recently about how political parties in the UK are funded, largely caused by the “loans for peerages” scandal.

One suggestion has been to make the parties publicly funded, which in principal sounds great, but I wonder how much this has been thought out, or alternatively whether there’s another motive.

Imagine if you will, that a certain party gets a reasonable amount of the popular vote, but has policies that are considered to be unpleasant by a large number of “right thinking” people (such as the BNP) - should they get equal funding to a “major” party?

Other issues, such as how independents and minority parties are treated, also come to fore. The only way I can see this working is to give a fixed amount of funding to each candidate. Anything else merely cements the positions of the major parties. This then causes further problems since any crackpot could run for parliament, get the funding and even if they don’t get the deposit back, the funding must account for more.
Obviously candidates would be able to combine funds to run a national campaign, but one thing I’d really like to see is the party names to not appear on the ballot papers - this would mean that each candidate would really have to campaign locally to get their name and policies known and that the typically stupid electorate would have to put in at least some thought about where to put the “X”.

The British electoral system would work best if every MP was truely independent and could represent his own constituents and beliefs.
Whilst I believe that most of our politicians are morally corrupt, I don’t believe that they or their advisers are stupid and they must have thought through the implications of this. Therefore, I’d consider any attempt to force through public funding for parties is an attempt to cement the power of the three main parties, just at the time when those parties are looking the most shaky.

Well, other stuff seemed more important at the time…

I’ve just upgraded WP to the latest version, added a couple of plugins (widgets and sxore) and will now start working on the theme… (probably).