Radstats: Bill Gates and My Part in his Downfall<BR>(and how we need more help with the web-site)

Radical
Statistics

Bill Gates and My Part in his Downfall
(and how we need more help with the web-site)

Paul Hewson

This was really intended as a very short piece describing what is currently happening with the web-site, but discussions arising from some recent problems really prompted a broadening of the comments.

Back Issues of Radical Statistics from 69 up to the present are now available at www.radstats.org.uk, and we have started adding Portable Document Format (pdf) versions of more recent articles. This is currently rather a basic form of pdf but this should improve over time (and will hopefully have improved by the time this is read). Document processing is now being done in LaTeX (www.latex-project.org). This means that the pdf and html files can be generated exactly as required from the same source file, but also means that when necessary it will be easy generate a suitable form of XML. This should ensure a degree of future-proofing in the substantive part of the archive.

At present there is a search widget on the site, but this is currently an external feature provided for free by FreeSearch (www.freesearch.com) so it's longevity cannot be guaranteed. Another external feature is a Wiki, again currently provided for free on a Wiki farm (www.seedwiki.com). The point of this little widget is that it allows visitors to the web site to modify the pages as they see fit. It is hoped that this will be useful for collaborative working, for example in terms of writing collective responses to consultation papers such as the National Statistics Code of Practice but there is clear potential for shared working beyond the current membership. Caveats about longevity of these features are not meant as 'doom-mongering'. If they are useful features, the worst implication will be that they need to be scripted into the web-site (and paid for!). Both these features can be found on the main page of the web-site. There is also an animated penguin button at the bottom of the main page where the hit counter used to be. This links to a large page containing some historic access information and a link to a site explaining why those particular statistics mean even less than hospital waiting list figures.

Open Standards

It was glitches with the Wiki that issued a strong reminder of the way Microsoft are amending standards in order to develop a monopoly on the web. Even promises to use XML, which is a generic protocol, could well turn out to be implemented by those nice people in Seattle as Microsoft-XML. To avoid being charged with cynicism when attacking a virtuous testimony to the values of globalisation such as Microsoft, it has to be admitted that it has its uses. Clearly some individuals and corporations have too much money. There are limits to the dividends you can pay out, or the bonuses you can give to your top staff. Something has to be done with the excess money, and we might as well give it Microsoft and let the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation distribute some of it as they see fit. I think it is also fair to say that given the incredible resource Microsoft have to spend on product development their marketing is usually glamorous, and their products generally tend to be easy to use. They don't often fall into the trap of requiring an end-user to learn much. This helps maintain the "training" industry, as there is no job in the world you can't do with the appropriate M$ software and a half-day training session. Ultimately this will save the inconvenience and expense of needing experienced professionals in many walks of life. And whilst many in the IT industry thought the inclusion of executable scripts in email attachments was a risible decision, it was good news for most of us. Listening to the management classes complaining about the "Anna Kournikova" virus on their Versace Laptop Computers made a welcome change from listening to them bemoaning the state of British Tennis and wondering if Tim Henman was going to win Wimbledon last year.

Ranting aside, it has to be admitted that there is some consumer choice, as any Mac user will testify. However, the people who run this country (Daily Mail leader writers?) remain an alarming attraction to the aura of successful big business. One isolated example of this phenomenon is that we may only be able to complete on-line tax returns using a M$ browser. Whilst this in itself may be no great concern, the underlying reason is because some of our leaders have become convinced that only Internet Explorer has the necessary security guarantees. (M$ have a proprietary "Passport" scheme, which rather conveniently requires the server to be running an expensive Microsoft application). And if that belief has driven the Inland Revenue, what will happen to other parts of the same Government concerned about security such as those dealing with patient records or police files.

Open Source / Free Software

There are already practical alternatives to the Microsoft monopoly. With the growth of the Internet the Free Software / Open Source Movement have recreated a co-operative attitude to development. The difference between Free Software and Open Source Software is an emotive one to those involved, and will not be discussed further here. The web is a good place to read more on this subject (e.g. http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/). However, to quote the adage, free refers to "Free as in speech, not free as in beer". Whilst making money from Free / Open Source Software is challenging a large section of the IT industry, there is little doubting its technical viability. Co-operative working, with community ownership of the source code ensures rapid software development. There are some big successes in the Free / Open Source Community. The Radical Statistics web-site is located on a server running Red Hat Linux (details are available at www.radstats.org.uk/webabout.htm). Free Software arguably runs most of the web (apparently there are more Apache Servers on the web than any other, but many of these are small servers so it depends whether you measure numbers of servers or information capacity). However, there are some powerful and free (as in they don't cost anything as well the source code is available) applications in widespread use. Some spectacularly successful examples of 'Free' software include document processing (www.latex-project.org - which has its own licence), statistical software (www.r-project.org), GIS (listed at www.freegis.org), graphics image manipulation (www.gimp.org). In principle scanning software is available (http://www.mostang.com/sane/) but we have started evaluating some free OCR software (www.claraocr.org) with a view to making more historic Radstats material available on the web. Some of these applications have been so successful that developers have binaries available for the technically dispossessed (those using Windoze). Many of the applications listed have been released under the Free Software Foundations' GPL (details at www.fsf.org), which is often referred to as copy-lefting. It seems to be the most challenging licence from a commercial perspective, but it guarantees that the source code of the application, and any applications derived from it must be made available and that no restrictions can be placed on the user of the software.

One important side issue relates to the computer equipment which is required to run GNU / Linux. This operating system can run on kit many in the UK would consider obsolete. Much of the Radical Statistics web-site is processed on a 486 with a 200 Mb hard drive running the Debian distribution of Linux (www.debian.org). There are a number of projects refurbishing old computers and making them available for educational use, such as www.free-computers.org/ all of which demonstrate important potential in widening community access to Information Technology.

The significance of all this is that we are keen to encourage broad internet access. We are particularly keen to hear about browser specific / operating system specific problems in using the www.radstats.org.uk. Most of issues 77 and 78 have been validated as html 4.01 compliant (hence the buttons on the bottom right of the articles). This should mean that any browser, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera and others have the same opportunity to access information on the site.

Open Directories

The Radstats web-site was indexed early on with dmoz.org, the open directory project and the one used by Google. We have attempted to register with a number of other search engines, namely Lycos, Yahoo and Altavista. All of these really wanted us to part with between $149 and $299 for the privilege of looking at our site and seeing whether it was suitable for inclusion. At least these sites offered a free registration service, which is more than MSN. It looked as if the only way to register with MSN was on parting with $149 (which you don't get back if you don't meet the criteria for registration). One can only presume at the likely objectivity of the searches that are run on these engines. In addition to registering with search engines we have been beefing up the keywords on the pages themselves. It is possible to check the keywords on the Radstats web-site (most browsers offer some facility for viewing the html source, the "meta = keyword" tag is near the top of the file) and any suggestions received will be incorporated.

It would also be interesting to hear from anyone who failed to locate something on the web-site which they know should have been there. It would help to have details of the search engine as well as the search strings used.

Request for Old Newsletters.

Issues 68, 56 and 54 are currently on the web-site, all missing their original figures. Help in tracking down both these figures and any remaining electronically stored issues would make a large difference to the extent of the archive.

Request for help.

There is still a lot that can be done to improve and develop the web-site. As Christina Pantazis and Mary Shaw are now committed with real work more volunteers would be appreciated. The nature of the work needed varies greatly. At one level help checking our registrations on search engines and helping to proof-read the site is always appreciated. Much of the web-site still needs validating (which merely involves entering the URL on http://www.mirror.ac.uk/services/validator/ and either passing on the output or even more gratefully appreciated, making the corrections). This is not technically involved, but can be time consuming. There is also some scope to use more technical expertise, for example we have been working for over a year trying to get a Perl script running that would allow users to contribute their own links. This could be a short job for anyone with expertise in Perl. And it is fair to say that there is still scope for improving the look and feel of the site. There is therefore a range of work available, from short, discrete technical projects to more open ended non-technical work. Please get in touch if you would like to help, and please report any browser woes.