Lottocracy

Thought it might be interesting to offer up some of the proposed alternatives to the democratic political systems currently in place (wake up!). Alternative forms of political structures have long fascinated me and it’s good to know that alternatives albeit mostly untried wait in the wings though heaven knows it would take the total collapse of our present system (*whistles in the dark*) before any of them were tried.

Lottocracy is a variation of Demarchy where elections, politicians and civil servants are replaced by a form of jury service for political office (I describe it far too simplistically no doubt). The case for Demarchy is  put here by John Burnheim:

“The most common complaint against contemporary liberal democracies is the remoteness of the decision-makers from those affected by decisions…

The attempt to give more power to the people ends in tyranny over the people just as the attempt to exclude tyranny keeps the people from exercising power in the things that matter most…

Whilst Lottocracy is fleshed out by L.León here

I’ll share a few more in future blog posts (admit it, you can’t wait can you?)

It’s Nice When You’re Popular

“…I just love this place and everything about it. It’s nice when you’re popular because it does kind of influence you to think ‘they all want me here”

Leo Sayer on finally becoming an Australian citizen.

Picture of Leo Sayer dancing with The Wiggles by boatload under this creative commons license

Ta Ta Teletext And So Long Ceefax

Teletext and its stable mate Oracle were probably where many of us in the UK first got to tap into a stream of pre-Internet information which was  available via our analogue television sets. Page 888 for subtitles together with pages for news, cheap holidays where page numbers were accessed via a remote control.

Teletext did make the jump to digital TV though  these days is often a reworking of content available on the Internet which of course has largely taken its place.

Ofcom have now stated that they see no reason to renew a public service teletext license beyond 2014 and so teletext services will slowly become another technology of the past going the way of VHS video recorders, film cameras and other gadget of the analogue era.

The BBC had already committed to phase out its own Ceefax service in the run up to the 2012 digital TvVswitch over. Subtitles are likely to remain on separate streams for digital TV programmes.

It’s thought that hybrid IPTV and Internet service enabled televisions are more likely to appear over the coming years

Photo by lambigred under this creative commons license

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Linux Mint 6 XFCE Community Edition RC1

A new release candidate for Linux Mint community edition has been released. Mint is based on Ubuntu but includes some free but closed source extras (codecs, adobe flash etc) in order to provide a better ‘out of the box’ computing experience (Mint does make ‘universal’ pure open source versions too).

I’m normally a Mac user but increasingly I’m using Linux Mint for sheer speed and customisation ability and even enjoy running Mint purely from CD on our Intel Mac.It can equally be installed on a USB drive or alongside an existing Windows or Mac operating system.

This new XFCE based linux desktop adds a user configurable firewall and Mint Nanny which lets people filter web sites by domain for a simple way to control where others (children for example) can roam on the Internet.

For the first time this version of Mint can be installed from within an existing windows desktop using Mint4win which is similar to Wubi used in Ubuntu.

More feature details are available on the Linux Mint site.

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Audio Doodle: Buick Refuses To Smile

A long version audio doodle which could do with some editing. As usual done very quickly and arranged live.

An equally high quality but bandwidth friendly sized (732KB) AAC+ encoded* version of this is available here

More audio doodles

(*AAC+ audio files require this Plugin(Win) or a compatible player such as Songbird (Win,Mac,Linux), VLC(Win,Mac,Linux)or Winamp(Win) however Quicktime and i-Tunes will play file at half the audio bandwidth and in mono only)

Songbird Music Player Recommended

Unexpected iNum Adds To DID

I’ve only just realised that I’ve that I now have two international non geographic phone numbers or iNum (International codes +882/+883)connected to a couple of voip accounts that I use.Introduced in November of last year these are non geographic phone numbers that are intended to either be free or local rated to call from anywhere in the world.

It also means that you would only need the one contact number that would be classified as a local number no matter which country your caller was living in.

Obviously it’s early days and not all the telcos have integrated iNum routing into their exchanges at present so many people have to dial them via an access number.

Skype is recognising iNum but is currently applying a local PSTN number charge for calling them but  Skype’s a walled garden compared to many other voip services so we should be thankful they accommodate it at all.

Fingers crossed we’ll see the use of non geographic international phone numbers increase as it could compliment or even negate the current voip setups many of us have such as having specific country DID (Direct Inward Dialing) numbers (eg: we have US, European and Australian phone numbers for people in those countries to call at their local rate rather than at international rates).

Photo by bitzcelt under this creative commons license

Channel 4 Mulls Merger Or Bust?

TV broadcaster Channel 4 (UK) have been rumoured to be in financial trouble for some time. Currently they are are a public service broadcaster who fund themselves despite being publicly owned unlike the BBC which is funded by the annual license fee.

The department of culture, media and sport has denied that an upcoming  ‘Digital Britain’ report by Lord Carter will suggest that Channel 4 merges into a new public service body, possibly seeing the BBC sacrifice their majority holding in BBC Worldwide as a way of Channel 4 remaining financially viable.

Mixing Oil And Water

The BBC would probably not like to see Channel 4 brought under the wing of the TV license fee funding and so may be willing to allow BBC Worldwide , a profitable wing of the Beeb(earning £112 million last year with the Radio Times and BBC DVD’s part of its offerings) to be offered up in this way though BBC Director-General Mark Thomson has suggested that he’d rather see Channel 4 and Five merge which was not initially received well by Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan who described the prospect as akin to mixing ‘oil and water’.

Big Brother

Channel 4 are perhaps less known these days for the edgy niche content it broadcast in the early years of its inception in November 1982. Over the years they have brought us programmes such as  Countdown, The Tube, The Snowman, Father Ted  and The IT Crowd and part funded films via its Film Four wing but Big Brother was its cash cow for funding which let it subsidise departments such as the well respected Channel 4 news but with controversy in recent years dogging the Big Brother franchise and the end probably in site for the reality TV stalwart the channel is now looking at other sources of funding to stay afloat.

Ofcom has calculated that Channel 4 needs £100 million a year to survive.Less than this and the Channel will allegedly go bankrupt.The channels public service remit currently includes the provision of programmes for schools.

Channel 4 programmes

Sources: 1 2 3
Photoshop image of the Richard Rogers Partners designed Channel 4 HQ by nick.garrod under this creative commons license

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