My Solution to Britain's Problems

The UK is suffering from a social meltdown. The problem is spiralling and if something is not done soon, the morally-destitute youth of today will become the parent's of tomorrow. Parents are unwilling to take the responsibility of controlling and disciplining their children. They no longer understand, or have been taught, the meaning of respect. The media does nothing to help the situation and schools have become the last place where any degree of social responsibility is being taught, and even then, it is almost impossible for them to do so effectively. I generalise, but as this becomes the norm, and the majority of our youth become unproductive and problematic in society we are left with a country that will not be able to compete in a world that has recently seen 3 billion people added to the capitalist economy.

So what can we do to stop the rot? How can we turn this around? Are we doomed to a country where it is no longer a pleasure to live?

I propose that the government needs to enforce a program of social responsibility. It needs to be done through a mandatory program of combined social and military service. It needs to be well thought out, widely supported and effective. The young people placed within the program need to feel that they are achieving something, and earning the respect of their peers. It should not be a waste of their time. Both military and social service should be undertaken abroad and not in the UK. This will teach them the value of life, and what the UK still has to offer compared to abroad in poorer and more troubling areas of the world. Military or civil service should be mandatory for both sexes.

There should be certain exceptions. The vast majority of my German friends have stated that in certain cases a blanket approach is not the way forward. The system in Germany forces all men to take part in either military service, or if you have a valid reason not to military service, you have to do civil service at school leaving age. For students who will undertake long periods of study afterwards, such as doctors, this is simply a break in their studies they do not need, and provides them with no long term benefit.

Therefore, students studying certain professions can do their civil service as part of their studies. Doctors for example could do their civil service after their first few years on study, and as a practical part of their studies give their services abroad in countries where their expertise, even though their studies are uncompleted, will be valuable and welcomed.

The government needs to evaluate the higher education system, plan for which professions will provide our country with the most beneficial professionals in the medium to long term. These people should not have to take part in the civil or military service program. They should have as many resources available for them to improve and deliver in the community around them. If we want to compete on the world stage, against highly technically skilled Indian students and Chinese labour, we need to consider where the UK will fit in the global marketplace.

We forget that the UK is a very small country. We forget that our place in the world stage is 50 years in the making, and from our position at the end of the last world war. We forget that our economy is built on the adventurers, explorers and entrepreneurs (and imperialism) of the past. This power is quickly starting to wane. Our position on the world stage during the past decades is leveraged with our affiliation to the United States. Although the US is not going anywhere soon, its power is in recession. The US has happily outsourced its manufacturing and services, and now in recent years its technological research and development abroad. It only brands goods and services, and that, it not something you should rely on. The new economies of India and China, are starting to become more aware that they don't need to US, and our connection with the United States becomes less and less beneficial, from an economic point of view, if not a militaristic one.

We do not want to end up with a country that is full of young people with no work, no work ethic, and a stagnating economy. I don't believe that any of the British political parties have the forethought to consider our long term survival on the world stage. It will take a definitive plan, hard work, and a drive to succeed to achieve this goal. Other countries are aware of this, and if we don't do something soon, we are doomed to become a second rate nation.

How is price determined in the stock market?

This question has bugged me for ages. I understand that on a base level, the price of a share or stock, is governed by demand and supply. The supply of a stock is for all intents and purposes, finite, so if the demand for that stock increases, the price increases. Obviously when demand decreases (or supply increases) the price should drop.

All good, perfectly understood. Now, let's assume I have 1000 shares in Yahoo. Today's share price is roughly $27. That means that I can sell my 1000 shares and I will receive $27,000 dollars for those shares. To sell those shares, there needs to be a buyer, who will pay $27,000 to buy those shares, or a number of buyers, who will all pay $27 per share, for a percentage of those 100 shares (e.g. 10 buyers each buy 100 shares).

What I would like to know is three things:

• What happens when there isn't a buyer for my shares?
• What happens behind the scenes when I sell my shares?
• What is the underlying process, that allows my 1000 shares to be sold to one or more buyers at the price I agreed with my broker (or online trading account)?

I am trying to understand how the inner working of the stock market function. There needs to be two parties at the exchange, who agree a price, but what doesn't make sense then, is that my price has already been set? It is the point of exchange, which I think is the black box I don't understand.

I'd love some feedback on this. I am interesting in creating a computer model of a stock market, and I need to understand this issue before I can continue.

How I built my personal website in 10 easy steps

1. Download RSS Toolkit from CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/ASPNETRSSToolkit
2. Identify the data about me that I want to mix into one place.
3. Make a list of the RSS feeds that are available for that data.
4. Setup a simple Yahoo Pipe that unions all of my RSS feeds of interest into one RSS feed.
5. Get the single RSS feed and pump it into an RSSDataSource.
6. Bind that RssDataSource to a simple ASP.Net Repeater.
7. Setup the RSS Toolkit Caching using the application settings suggested here.
8. Revamp website design using templates from the Open Source Web Design templates library.
9. Remove old administration code used for Blogger, Flickr and Youtube.
10. Publish, and see results of Ben Powell's new website.

And, now for some code:

   1:  <%@ OutputCache Duration="86400" VaryByParam="None" %>

   2:  <%@ Register Assembly="RssToolkit" Namespace="RssToolkit.Web.WebControls" TagPrefix="cc1" %>

   3:  <asp:Repeater ID="Repeater1" runat="server" DataSourceID="RssDataSource1">

   4:      <ItemTemplate>

   5:          <h2><%# Eval("title") %></h2>

   6:          <%# Eval("description") %>

   7:          <br />

   8:          <a href='<%# Eval("link") %>'>Link</a>

   9:      </ItemTemplate>

  10:  </asp:Repeater>

  11:  <cc1:RssDataSource id="RssDataSource1" runat="server" url="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=_&lt;your pipe id>&_render=rss" MaxItems="10"></cc1:RssDataSource>

Yahoo, Microsoft and Google

Microsoft made the right move in backing off from the Yahoo deal. Yahoo are in a mess. Yahoo know they are disjointed and screwed, their Y!OS is proof enough of that. Until Yahoo can reassemble their offering into something cohesive, and reunite all that they have, Yahoo will still have the same problems it has now. Yahoo, also believed that Microsoft had undervalued them. I believe that the market quite aptly demonstrated that Microsoft overvalued them, otherwise Yahoo's share price wouldn't have collapsed 20% yesterday. The market sets the price Mr Yang, not you.

Microsoft have similar problems. Not many people know where to find Microsoft's search engine, even though it is easier to type than both Google and Yahoo. It is simply live.com, but who would know that? Microsoft changes and rebrands their offering so often, the consumers have got completely lost, and given up on them. I don't believe it is for any other reason that live.com has such a dire market share.

What Google does well, is simply that it delivers everything consistently, and makes it simple to use their tools. I have one Google account, and that account page shows we all the services I am using. It makes that easy. Yahoo has a multitude of web sites under its umbrella that look different and act different. Y!OS needs to fix this for starters.

The search engine market isn't dead yet, but I for one am happy to see three players left in the market. I'm happy to use whichever service I feel is the best. I'm certainly not brand biased. I'm one of the floating voters Yahoo and Microsoft need to win over. Bring it on guys.

Facebook can't get their advertising to speak the right language

Apparently Facebook has gone German. Not the clichéd hairy-armpitted-sun-lounger-thieving German, but the nice Deutsch speaking people that I'm so fond of.

The Guardian picked up on this and ran a nice little article on the subject, even touting a rather nice screenshot. However, if you check the provided screenshot of Facebook in German, you'll notice an error. The advertising is in English, UK focused and not in German.

As with nearly all advertising online, the language of the ads you see are governed by geo-targeting your IP address, and not by your browser preferred language. Hence, if you live in Cardiff, Wales you get the English language ads even though you might be Welsh speaking. If you live in Barcelona, Spain, you get ads in Spanish even if you are a Catalan speaking Catalonian. If you live in LA, USA, you'll get advertising in English, whether you are Spanish speaking or not. What I find most interesting about Facebook, is that they themselves run their own advertising platform (with some ads from Microsoft it would appear?), and Facebook actually asks you for your preferred language in your account settings. So what’s the problem?

In the Facebook case it would seem that the developers have just made the same mistakes as all other ad-serving platform providers. In this Guardian example most Germans who live in the UK can speak English rather well. Imagine the estimated 5.5 million Brits living abroad (that's roughly one in ten British people). A large majority of those 5.5 million Brits who are living in Spain are much less likely to respond to advertising in Spanish on Facebook, or any other website (including Google).

Online Advertising is a funny business, run predominantly by a few very big companies. These ad-serving providers deliver millions of advertising impressions, without fully optimizing the click-through results for those advertisers that pay them a lot of money. To give you a better idea of that, 11.4% of total advertising spend in the UK in 2006 was spent on internet advertising.

The point here is that ad-serving companies are focused on the majority; Therefore, targeting those people who use the internet at home, in their home country, and speak the dominant language of that country.

However, I believe that the minority are larger than the ad-servers have considered. For example, there are more Catalan speakers (9.1 million) in the world than speakers of Norwegian (4.7 million). There are 45 million people living in America who do not speak English at home (and over 14% of the US population is Hispanic). In our increasingly shrinking and interconnected world, immigration and travel is growing steadily.

Advertisers are forgetting some of their most profile targets, those businessmen with disposable cash. Whenever they travel abroad, they won't be seeing any ads targeting them correctly.

The best example of how ad-servers have screwed up their technology, is that in the USA, 82% of the country speaks English as a first language. Hence the other 18% are being missed out in terms of effective, targeted advertising. Now, if I come to you, the advertiser, and say, "I can show your ad to a great many people here in the USA, but 18% probably won't understand it, because they don't speak English as a first language, hence can you make sure the ad isn't too high brow or witty", do you think you'd be happy with that?

Whilst the advertisers remain blissfully unaware of this fact, the arrogant ad-serving platform providers will not be addressing the issue. If Yahoo really wanted to dent Google's market share of online advertising, they should consider fixing this before Google does and marketing this technology advantage.

Quiz Fun: Challenge your brain!

I received this challenge today by email, which is apparently easily solved by 5th grade mathematics students. Feel free to post your answer in the comments. I'll post the proof after you've had a crack at it:

• There are 7 girls on a bus
• Each girl has 7 backpacks
• In each backpack, there are 7 big cats
• For every big cat there are 7 little cats

Question: How many legs are there on the bus? All information is implied; No driver & no amputees!

Why we should all fight against a nationwide DNA database

David Aaronovitch wrote in the Times today that we should not fear a nationwide DNA database and that we should "Ignore the paranoid fantasists". I cannot concur, and commented thus:

A nationwide DNA database is great way to identify and discriminate against ethnic groups, should any future despotic British government wish to do so. Of course, considering our superb history of arms sales to dictators and nut-jobs, this technology would be great for them too. I can think of a few states around the world where such a technology could be very welcomed, and allow much more effective and targeted genocide.

Hitler would have certainly put this to "good use", should he have had access to it. Do not forget that much of today's genetic technology stems from the ground work Nazi scientists started 60 years ago.

Such technology is the absolute power John Acton spoke about when he said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men". William Pitt also noted, "Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it".

Do not doubt it; A government that controls a nationwide DNA database has absolute power over its citizens.

I have no problem with a DNA database that stores criminals DNA to help solve crimes both past and future. Yet all recordable crime suspects have their DNA taken and added to the existing database, whether proved guilty or not. That already quite adequately demonstrates the deep desire our authorities have for a national database of all citizens, and not just criminals. We, as a nation, are fast approaching that fine line between having enough rope, and hanging ourselves.

To add a twist to a common phrase, I shall note the following for posterity, "That which is given, cannot be taken away". You can quote me on it.