Rubenerd

On the 22nd of November 2006 I posted Comparing Flat Tax to Variable Tax, my rebuttal to the dubiously titled article Understanding Tax Cuts: A Must Read For Children, Adults, Journalist and Absolutely for Liberals article published on the right wing World View Weekend website that claimed, with no economic logic, that variable tax systems are evil.

Well just today I received one of the best comments I've ever received for a post, by Chris in Australia:

It’s interesting to note that America’s government debt increased the most during Reagan’s presidency, with his combination of huge tax cuts and his failure to cut government spending at the same time. That’s the problem with politicians who promise big tax cuts – they fail to cut the government spending and instead borrow the money from other sources, placing the public in debt. The same has happened under George W Bush.

The problem is that people don’t question how the government manages to cut taxes and then go on a spending spree, and end up rewarding politicians who do this by voting for them.

Thanks for the great post Chris, I agree with you 110%.

One of the more interesting facts I discovered when reading Al Frankin's latest book is that George W. Bush is the first United States president in history to give tax cuts during war! This kind of short changing when the country needs the revenue the most, and when it has a record debt, is completely unsustainable.

You make a very valid point: how does a government service a tax cut when it itself owes vast amounts of money? It goes further into debt! I think it's in the interests of the American people to have a government that is working to resolve its debt for the long term rather than making itself look good in the short term, but we all know they're still going to do the latter.

I guess it's true what George W. Bush said himself: "a dictatorship would be so much easier!" ;).

george bush, economics, flat tax, variable tax, government debt

NOTE: After I posted this I thought I may have not been clear enough as to what I meant by "data independence". I am referring to data independence between physical software, not the established field of research dealing with data in DBMSs. Whoopsie ;)

One issue (amongst others) that many people would no doubt know I feel strongly about about after reading this blog is the issue of data independence.

From what I understand, data independence deals with how easy it is to move your data from one software program to another while maintaining its integrity. Whether you are moving to another program written by the same company or a different one altogether, moving your data should not only be possible but also painless; in a perfect world of course.

Date independence is important for several reasons; the most obvious is probably the fostering of competition in the software market. Competition, as with any industry in a market based economic system, forces software producers to improve their products, lower production costs and in turn not get too greedy in charging for that software. If people can easily move their data from your software to a competitors then the onus is on the current producers to keep their software at the cutting edge to keep their customers.

Another reason which is gaining more traction as the software industry matures is the idea of future proofing. It is dangerous to assume the software we'll be using years from now will be able to open all our files; whether the company creating our software will cease to exist in the future or whether they themselves will allow future versions of their software to be backward compatible are chilling possibilities. By ensuring from the beginning that you are using software that allows easy transfer of your data you have more leverage to use that data with other systems now, and more likely in the future.

There is also ample evidence that data independence also fosters collaboration. The HTTP protocol on the web itself uses (x)HTML and variants which allow one coded page to be used on a multitude of devices, operating system platforms and software. No matter whether the website you generated was creating in DreamWeaver, Frontpage, GoLive or… nano… other programs can easily access that information. The recent explosion of the RSS and Atom XML standards are also examples of this.

Of course freedom for the consumer is rarely what corporations want! By using open standards and allowing for data independence many companies believe they will have to work harder to keep existing customers because the ability of consumers to move from their system to another is too scary. The Microsoft Office suite (sorry, the Microsoft Office System) and it's proprietary "standards" have been and still are a classic example of this paranoia: if they allowed for native support of other formats and allowing for more data independence, they would have to work hard to make their software not suck, and their market share wouldn't help to defend their position anymore. Screw that!

However, I am of the belief that promoting data independence can actually help your bottom line; del.icio.us for example still leads the social bookmarking space despite their ability from very early on to export media to move to another service. Steve Gillmor on a 2004 episode of The Gillmor Gang argued that data independence can actually be a value added feature in itself and the security people feel using such services would keep them coming back for more.

This the puts open source software at a tremendous advantage; but that's for another post ;).

I'd be really interested to hear what James Ross and Dave Winer would have to say about this issue, or anyone else. Have I got thie gist of this? How easy is it to implement data independent measures in your programs? Is it really economically feasible?

data independence, gillmor gang, microsoft office

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10:00 – Ingesting actual coffee cups, changing batteries live (again), listener email (Anony Ms from Singapore!), looking back at Rubenerd Show 001 and Rubenerd Show 100, memory, 2007 good wishes and Ruben hopelessly trying to be Horatio Caine!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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18:30 – Ruben tries to do a completely ad-lib episode (with mixed results!), reviewing what happened in 2006 (with some glaring omissions!), vaccum cleaners that suck, Saddam's hanging (why I think he should have got life instead, being turned into a martyr), the Western media, alternate universes, the new Rubenerd Show and Blog rollout (now with more fibre!), and Ruben hopelessly trying to sing Gwen Stefani!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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14:00 – An update on the Asia-Pacific internet outage, book review (The Truth with Jokes by Al Frankin, Fear-Smear-Queer against John Kerry, evil super evil people (Karl Rove, Dubbya, John Howard) and keeping secret sources secret!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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10:00 – Earthquake south of Taiwan knocking out Asia-Pacific's internet access (from Sydney to Singapore to Seoul, hoping nobody was injured), how fragile our Internet infrastructure really is, frustrated Malaysian bloggers and distressed book tape dermatologists!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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10:00 – Cleaning my awesome vintage Commodore Amiga 500 billboard (photos pending), Wikipedia being the only website, Boxing Day (the origins of the term, Proclamation Day in South Australia), the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and Rock Lobster!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

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13:00 – Dedicated to Dr Tan and Dr Fuad. Update on the South Malaysian flood disaster, audio excursion (Coffee Bean in KLCC, Malaysia), Commodore Amiga 500 billboard, an orange Crumpler laptop bag and Ruben doing a Troy McLure!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

If you haven't heard about this disaster yet, no doubt you soon will.

The most intense and widepsread heavy rains in over a century in the state of Johor in Malaysia (the closest Malaysian territory to Singapore) have caused wisespread flooding and property destruction; already many of the expats here in Kuala Lumpur where I live at the moment are calling the state the "New Orleans of Malaysia". Whole neighbourhoods and business districts have been engulfed in floodwaters which have displaced hundreds of people and caused millions of ringgit in damage.

Today though the flood situation took an even more tragic turn when 6 people were killed. From the Malaysian Star Newspaper:

JOHOR BARU: The floods have claimed six lives in Johor – four in Segamat and two in Kluang. Police discovered three bodies floating in Segamat, one of the worst hit areas.

The dead were identified as Ahmad Sarkawi, 70, Marsiah Ahmad, 69, and Nor Azahari Nordin, 28.

It is believed that all three drowned.

Also in Segamat, 61-year-old Teh Sook Ching died after hanging on for 24 hours for help to get her to the hospital.

In Kluang, two bodies were found in a car submerged along the Paloh road.

They were identified as M. Mageswari, 26, a teacher, and A. Muniandy, 59, believed to be her uncle.

Property loss and monetary damages are terrible, but any loss of human life is infinately more tragic. I'm not a religious person so I can't say my prayers are with those who have lost loved ones and friends, but I can sinderely say my thoughts are.

I've pulled the scheduled episode of the Rubenerd Show for today and am going to replace it with an episode talking about this. The new episode should be online in a few hours.

Johor Bahru is the capital of the Malaysian state of Johor, the southern most point on the Asian mainland and home to over 1.5 million people. The city is connected to Singapore across the Straits of Johor by the Johor-Singapore Causeway and the Tuas Second Link.

johor, johor bahru, malaysia, floods, johor floods, flooding, singapore

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12:00 – Trying to be a bit more serious today folks. Discussing the current flood situation in Southern Malaysia (Johor, Malacca), The Star, helping out the affected people (The Malaysian Red Crescent), possible causes and a dedication to the 8 people killed.

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.