Eee, that’s good

The Asus Eee will speed Linux takeup:

Dirk Hohndel, Intel’s chief technologist for open source, believes the install base of Linux-based desktops could potentially double this year, based just on Eee PC sales. Speaking at open source conference Linux.conf.au in Melbourne, Hohndel said commercial pressure will be the incentive for traditionally Windows-centric hardware vendors to begin offering open source drivers and Linux-based systems to their customers.

Yay!

Paper industry linked to suicide

Paper industry linked to suicide, after many victims leave notes!

Obviously, paper should be banned.

Get a degree in teaching creationism

According to New Humanist:

The state of Texas may be about to approve an online master’s degree in science education provided by the Texas-based Institute for Creation Research. The “degree”, which has already been given preliminary approval by a Texas state advisory group, is now awaiting the final go-ahead from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Events like this make it more plausible that China will be running the world in 50 years time.

Britain may be dumbing down its educational system but at least we’re not teaching this ridiculous nonsense (mostly not, anyway).

Patio Heaters

Some MEPs want to ban patio heaters:

The EU parliament is expected to back a resolution requiring the use of appliances with low energy efficiency to be phased out. Patio heaters are specifically targeted in the motion, which calls on the EU to act urgently and introduce minimum standards for energy efficiency on such appliances as air-conditioning, television “decoder” boxes and light bulbs.

Patio heaters are used for two purposes: by pubs wanting to allow customers to sit outside and still be warm, and by people using them in their gardens. The first use has been greatly increased in the UK by the smoking bans introduced in the UK, and the correct response would be to allow pubs to have an indoor area where smokers could smoke. Because it’s unreasonable to expect employees to have to endanger their health in the course of their work, this area probably wouldn’t be cleaned except after the pub closes at night, but I doubt if people who deliberately inhale smoke and ash would be all that bothered.

People using patio heaters at home are not really a problem, because the proportion of carbon emissions caused by that use is miniscule. Home patio heaters are a stupid idea — there’s already a perfectly good technology for staying warm when it is cold outside, called “buildings” — and people who use them are idiots who I disapprove of on aesthetic grounds. But that doesn’t mean they should be made illegal; if people want to waste their money (including paying a tax to pay for the negative externalities they cause), that’s up to them.

If the EU want to reduce carbon emissions, there are two things they must do. Firstly, they must tax activities that emit carbon, ideally according to the amount of CO₂-equivalent they emit. And secondly they must persuade outside countries to do the same — China and the USA each produce more emissions than the EU, and China’s emissions in particular are growing quickly. Because most countries do a large proportion of their trade with the EU, the EU can use tariffs as a lever with which to influence these countries.

There are other policies that it might also be useful for the EU to pursue — for example, encouraging research on solar energy — but unless they do the two things I’ve stated above, they might as well not bother doing anything at all, because other policies will not on their own be effective.

Norwegian state broadcaster puts show on BitTorrent

From Boing Boing:

NRK, the Norwegian state broadcaster, just made one of their most popular TV shows available for free through bittorrent. Without any DRM or restrictions. Free for the planet to watch. Because this is a completely legal download people seems to seed it happily. Making the bittorrent technology work exceptionally well, giving the audience very high download speeds. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation will keep on with experiments like these and try to make more content available through this technology in addition to the more traditional channels of streaming, podcasts and DVD sales.

Now why can’t the BBC do that? (The short answer is: because the government won’t let them).

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Kate Belgrave writes:

This is a quick blog to update LC readers on the latest god-based outrage against women. As most of you probably know, Gordon Brown’s cabinet contains a number of career Jesus freaks – Ruth Kelly and Des Browne are the main offenders, and there are a couple of other perpetrators whose names and point in our lives escape me for the moment.

Anyway – Ruthie and her fellow holy-rollers have revealed themselves concerned that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will make it possible for lesbians to avail themselves of IVF and become parents.

I’m still trying to grasp the exact reasons why the thought of a couple of dykes pushing a pram is considered such a disaster – who gives a stuff, basically – but I’ll go out on a limb for you here and posit the theory that the big concern is that two women who bring a child up without male input will wash its hair and teach it to bake and turn it into a Gay.

My understanding is that it is government policy to allow for civil partnerships between gay people which are marriages in all but name. Furthermore, civil partnerships include the possibility of bringing up children, and IVF for lesbian couples is an obvious extension of that. If Kelly and Browne disapprove, then they are entitled to their opinion, but if they oppose government policy what are they doing in the cabinet? If they had any integrity, they would resign, instead of demanding a free vote on the issue.

More on McA-levels

There’s been more coverage of the McDonald’s A-level story.

Dave Osler says “Palming off teenagers from poor backgrounds with fourth-rate pseudo-qualifications can only further entrench their disadvantage.” I’m sure this is true, and when they realise they’ve been conned into wasting their time getting worthless qualifications, it’ll put some of them off the idea of education for life.

Tim Worstall, on the other hand, says they’re an excellent idea:

I’m really not quite sure why the howls, I think it an excellent idea. Two constants in the analysis of the British economy over the past century (and if you read Corelli Barnett, further back as well) have been that we don’t do vocational training well and that we don’t do management well.So when someone proposes vocational training in management (please, note that this is not training in burger flipping, this is training to run a store), an apprenticeship if you like, I think it’s an excellent idea myself.

A “basic shift manager” at McDonalds doesn’t make more than a bad lawyer, to be sure, but the company, via it’s franchising process, has created more millionaires than any other on the planet so far.

I’ve never run or worked in a McDonald’s but I suspect managing one cannot be too hard. McDonald’s is successful, not because they make great burgers, but because they do so cheaply, and they’ve got the whole thning donwn to a system, a process, whereby each McDonald’s store is run on the same principles. In other words their workers — including store managers — are essentially cogs in a machine with little scope for independent thought or intelligence; they have to be so, because otherwise their system wouldn’t work.

Janine at Stroppyblog thinks it important to remember this is not just McDonald’s, the government is doing it with other private firms too:

The media has concentrated on McDonald’s way more than the other firms involved, with headlines such as Would you like a diploma with those fries? or SuperSize my CV. Maybe McDonald’s is more newsworthy than FlyBe or Network Rail, maybe its brand best represents the radicalism of the policy for its supporters or its ludicrousness for opponents.

We should certainly oppose this policy, but be careful how we do so, avoiding chiming in with any snobbishness about academic purity or suggestion that young people who get jobs in McDonalds do not deserve equivalent qualifications to those whose families can afford for them to go to college. Nevertheless, oppose it we must, for two reasons:

• It is outside public education and training, and is therefore unaccountable;
• It is run by private firms, and is therefore compromised by the profit motive.

If McDonald’s trains its staff in, say, food hygiene, then it does not do so in the sole interest of public health, but in the interests of doing just enough to keep the inspectors away and the customers coming through the door.

What’s wrong with doing things on the cheap, with doing “just enough”? I don’t think anything is wrong with it. In fact I’m rather in favour of it. For example yesterday i bought a pair of jeans that cost me £8. Yes, they were cheap. They were also good enough to do the job, and I’m buggered if I’m going to spend more (money or time or effort) than I need to. Or consider when I was a kid and I was studying for exams. If it was a subject I was interested in, I put some effort into it, but if it was something that didn’t interest me, I did the bare minimum I needed to pass the exam.

Doing just enough has one big advantage: it is cheaper, which means everyone is better off because they can have more stuff. If McDonald’s spent more on their food hygeine, bought better ingredients, and had more luxuriously furnished premises, I’m sure eating there would be nicer. It would also be more expensive — and their are plenty of other establishments that are operate in that sector of the market.

The modern world has been created on the premise that it’s best to aim to do things cheaper, with less effort, less time, less money, less care, less raw materials, with less thought, etc. And I’m very glad that’s the case, because if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to write this post, and you wouldn’t be able to read it.

Get an A-level in burger flipping

From the people who brought you McJobs, Mc A-Levels:

McDonald’s has won approval to offer courses which could form part of an A-level standard qualification.

The fast-food giant, airline FlyBe and Network Rail are the first three firms to be approved to offer courses equal to units of the new diplomas. It means students could combine units from in-house courses with others to obtain the government’s flagship new vocational and academic qualification.

Ministers are keen to involve business in attempts to boost workforce skills. It follows concerns raised by business leaders that schools, colleges and even universities are failing to equip youngsters for the world of work. But critics complain that the diplomas they see as the answer to the issue are not sufficiently academically rigorous.

Personally I think there should be an A level in Erotica Studies, which would involve watching porn and wanking over it, and maybe creating a porn movie or website; I’m sure this would be every bit as worthwhile and academically rigorous as the new “diplomas” the government is introducing.

Incidently if you want to know how good these diplomas are, consider what university admissions officers think of them:

Just last week, four out of 10 university admissions tutors said they would not accept students who had taken the new diplomas which are being introduced next autumn.

Britblog roundup #154

Britblog roundup #154 is up at Philobiblon.

Nominations for next week’s Britblog Roundup should go to the usual address, britblog [at] gmail [dot] com

Open source and utopia

Is open source software a utopia? If so, what kind:

“Open Source Software: There are days when I can’t figure out whether I’m living in a Socialist utopia or a Libertarian one.” — Alex Future Bokov