Day: May 10, 2007

Categories
politics

Rambling on the radio

I’m still in a state of shock. Although it could be the antibiotics I’m taking for my throat infection. Someone from WLR called me this afternoon about my last political blog entry. Apparently I’m convincing the impressionable young voters of Waterford to spoil their votes. Well, I think I overdid the “it’s ironic of course” schtick in the interview but I’m still a little bemused that enough people are reading my blog to make it news worthy and that anyone thought it wasn’t a humorous if slightly jaundiced view of Waterford electioneering.
To give the post it’s context, it came about from many discussions with colleagues and friends about the upcoming election. It’s fair to say that most aren’t enthused about any of the candidates and even less impressed by their election claims and promises. There’s also the depressing feeling that if we don’t have a minister we’ll be ignored for another 5 years so needs must … All the evidence points to this being true and if WLR want to run a feature on this I’ll surely give them a hand. They should also give Cian “WellBoy” Foley a call as he’s sure to have an opinion or 20.
So why are “yoof” so jaded with the current elections? Perhaps it’s the essentially bi-partisan hegemony of governance in Ireland. To use an analogy it’s like saying we can have spaghetti on toast or beans on toast for another 5 years. We may liven them up with some red tomatoes or some green parsley. Even some mature cheddar. We’re not getting an omelette though no matter how much we plead. Personally, I’d like steak but there’s not a single party in Ireland that can offer me one 🙂
Equally we’re not afforded the right to vote for “None Of The Above”. Surely, in a democratic society we should be allowed to reject the election candidate list? Unfortunately our choice is to vote or not to vote (that is the question!).
On the grounds that we do have real choices in a proportional representation system like we have in Ireland it is our civic duty to have a good hard look at each candidate and their policies and rank them. If there are 7 candidates then list all 7 in order of preference. This is the closest thing you’ll get to “None of the Above” so take advantage of it!
It occured to me that my comments may have been construed as a genuine desire to run for public office. Someday I may do so. I also realise that blogging about blogging is the technological equivalent of eating yourself feet first. However, as was demonstrated in my radio interview I’m not averse to cramming both feet into my mouth 🙂

Categories
technology

Where’s the “Hasta la Vista” ?

R has got a new machine running Vista Pro. The machine is a big improvement on her venerable old laptop and she’s delighted that for once she’s the one with the fancy new toy as I seem to get one every other week. I’m a geek (see earlier post) so I can’t help it.
Now you’ll have heard a lot about Vista if you’re in any way techie but here’s my first impressions.
It looks a lot slicker. The transparent windows do make everything look a lot cooler. For once my PC can favourably compare with a Mac in terms of 80% of the UI. However, I can’t help but wonder if this is because 80% of the UI looks so damn Mac-like? It’s a thought but I’m not alone here.
It’s not all fun & games. The first problem I notice is that having run it on two machines now I’ve found that it really really needs 2GB of RAM to provide speedy performance. Otherwise you spend too much time looking around at the pretty performance bar (which actually isn’t, more on this later). The second is that the UI is genuinely confusing for XP and Win2k users. It’s not just R, I got to observe a whole bunch of users trying to come to grips with the new layout. I’d argue it’s better but it’s certainly different. PC users have essentially gotten a lot of “same” from microsoft in terms of start menu, file menu’s, explorer etc. They were all thrown by “different”. Now back to the performance bar which is actually a glorified strobing hourglass. A feature I hated on the Mac as I really want a performance bar to tell me how long more I’m going to have to wait for whatever OS trickery is going on to finish.
The third problem is poor UI design in places. Many have written about the shutdown menu including Joel Spolsky & one of it’s original authors Moishe Lettvin. It’s woeful. Absolutely staggering that a company with Microsoft’s resources could produce something so bad and incredible it took 24 people to do it. I don’t hold with Joel’s opinion that it’s due to the ability of new Microsofties. I think it’s more to do with a management structure of dense inscrutability. I witnessed R & chums spend at least 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn the thing off. That was with prompting. It’s not the only weakness with UI consistency being a major failing across the board. I reckon this is down to the difficulties in porting OfficeOS to any new version of Windows. Office has become so big, bloated and unwieldy to maintain that updating it’s UI to match the new Aero UI engine must have been a nightmare. So much so that it’s only half done.
On the plus points, it’s more stable, more appealing and easier to manage than previous versions of Windows. If Microsoft’s objective was to justify the upgrade then they’ve definitely succeeded. However, if their objective was to better OS X then they haven’t. It’s still the more consistent and unobtrusive UI.