Archive for March, 2006
After spending a lot of time designing software, you get a sense of where your data and functionality lie within a system. Hopefully, you’ve encapsulated the right data in the right classes or its time to start refactoring! You know when you’ve got it right, because there is a balance between the size of the class, its openness and its flexibility.
I call this elegance, and I think its a property that extends to people systems as well as software systems.
One of the central ideas in software design is the principle of least privilege, which says that you only allow code as much authority and resources as are necessary to complete its task. Even Microsoft knows this (although some might say they learned a little late). This happens at the operating system level (though user permissions, inter-process protection, hardware abstraction) to keep processes from interfering with eachother. This happens at the object level, too: class interfaces exist to encapsulate data and functionality, this time its to protect objects from becoming corrupted from improper use.
When you have too much privilege over data or functionality (a large class, the root user, etc…) the principle is broken, and the system is prone to instability or attack. When too much responsibility rests with one component this exacerbates the smallest problem with its implementation (i.e: a bug in important code is much worse than one elsewhere). On the other hand, when there is too little privilege, the system becomes brittle and inflexible, difficult to extend. When the balance is right you have flexibility, robustness and elegance. Elegant code is almost always concise code, which means less wasted resources.
I think the same applies (with slightly different terms of reference, of course) to systems of people, i.e: government. Apparently, John Locke wrote about the principle of least authority over three hundred years ago, and informed the writers of the American constitution (and I just thought he was a character in a TV show 
). And I think the same conclusions apply.
When a single person or small group of people have too much authority over people or money or services, they become a liability for abuse or attack (like ID fraud). Of course, its possible to have such a system run smoothly, but people, like code, have flaws (bugs). And flaws in important people (or people in important systems) are more damaging than flaws elsewhere. This is inefficient because the government invests a lot of time and effort into maintaining its own power (by spying on the citizenry, for example). To go to the opposite extreme, too little authority in the government would prevent it from safeguarding our rights, collapsing into randomness, possibly anarchy. Then “government” would have to be carried out inefficiently at the individual or local level (vigilantes).
To carry the analogy to its logical conclusion: for elegant, efficient government the balance of privilege / authority has to be right. Everyone must have the authority and resource to do their job, but no more. Unfortunately, as I blogged earlier, I think we’re already off-balance.
Forgive me for looking at this in terms of software, but, as the saying goes, when you have a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. And maybe thats the problem – our PM has a legislature, so every problem starts to need a new law.
March 29th, 2006
So Steve and I were talking last weekend about the government’s plans for creeping totalitarianism and he blogged about it. This is very, very scary because it totally bypasses our democratic safeguards: our MP’s and the Lords. (Never mind that they’re increasingly being eroded.)
Ian blogs about the increasingly mandatory nature of ID cards. This is also very scary for two reasons:
One: First, the cards are optional. Then, the cards are mandatory, but you won’t have to carry them or present them on demand. Finally, you have to swipe them to go into pubs, pick up your benefits, check into hospital…
Two: First, the database (the National Identity Register) “just” has 49 items. Then, they “just” add a few more, extend access to all public services. Finally, anyone can subscribe to to the database commercially and it stores your medical records, psychiatric results, school history, every journey you ever made on public transport or through the congestion charging zone…
Add the two pieces of legislation together and its basically all over: we have to trust that ministers won’t abuse their power, that public servants won’t abuse our private information. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel very trusting.
March 28th, 2006
Just upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.0.2, which is cool. At least I didn’t have to throw away my theme like I did when I upgraded to 1.5. I like this blix-based theme anyway.
Yeah, yeah. I should be in work, but I overslept because I thought it was an hour earlier, or later, charmed, strange, whatever. BST always has this effect on me…
March 27th, 2006
The Dream Multimedia DM-7025 is possibly the coolest thing ever. Notwithstanding my previous post about the desirability of the Humax 9200T, the DM-7025 is far, far cooler. Let me give you the highlights:
- PowerPC processor
- Linux
- Ethernet port
- 2 DVB-T tuners
- HDD
So it would seem that it is the perfect platform – you could probably reflash it and put a web interface on it to set the record function over the net. Very, very cool.
The downsides to all this (because there have to be some, obviously) are that the DVB-T version doesn’t seem to be available yet and the DVB-S version costs about £400. Given that you could buy a whole computer and outfit it with dual cheap DVB-T cards (these apparently work in Linux) and a 300Gb HDD for about £360, it doesn’t seem worth it…
March 20th, 2006
Good Night, And Good Luck is a great film, which everyone should watch! It has clearly been brought out to make a point, but its a point that needs to be made: Has television become a medium for the pacification of the masses?
Given that the film is mostly biographical, with a lot of quotations and even real footage of Senator McCarthy, there is a surprising prescience to the words of Murrow. For example:
This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.
Oh, and how pretty the lights are…
I like to think that its different in the UK than in the US, because one of the BBC’s “values” is education. But I’m probably wrong, because what we actually watch is just a stream of imported programmes from America without any educational content at all…
Another great morrow quote is:
We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
Presumably, this was included in the film as a direct jab at the “war on terror” and its continuing effects on our basic civil liberties. (Which is happening in America too.)
March 12th, 2006
The Power Inquiry report was published and has some interesting suggestions. Apparently, they’ve analysed the reasons why voter apathy is on the increase and its not due to “the supposedly low calibre and probity of politicians”. I guess its always been like that. And like this, this and this.
They have some really good ideas:
We should be creating a culture of political engagement in which it becomes the norm for policy and decision-making to occur with direct input from citizens. This means reform which provides citizens with clear, entitlements and procedures by which to exercise that input – from conception through to implementation of any policy or decision.
Or, in other words: The politicians we elect should actually do what we want? Thats never going to work – it presumes that politicians actually care about what their constituents want. I think when they’re first elected they might, but then over several years they get the taste of power and slowly, surely they turn into two-dimensional, amoralistic control-freaks.
Tony said:
But the modern world is different from the world for which these court processes were designed.
The Power report suggests that the modern world is different from the world for which current political processes were designed. It goes on to suggest such gems as:
A rebalancing of power away from the executive and unaccountable bodies towards Parliament and local government.
Don’t make me laugh. The current political system appears to thrive on the drippings of power handed down from the Prime Minister and cabinet. I think it would be highly unlikely that the PM or his heavily-whipped party would sign away the status quo just on the basis of morals, scruples or ideology.
It has been previously reported that a “key cause” of increasing religious extremism is disillusionment with the British political (specifically: foreign policy) system. The question MP’s must ask themselves is; do they love their corner offices, perks, kickbacks and power more than they care about a well-adjusted, empowered Britain?
March 1st, 2006