Examples

Examples
Examples are normally just a simple illustration of some supposed truth and don't have a great deal of significance. However, the right example can have enormous importance in shedding light on an issue and I've recently come across a few instances of this. I'll try to substantiate my assertion with the following cases (examples).


Argument On Principle
I've mentioned before in this blog that I distrust people who insist on principles. I think I stated something along the lines that principles were in many cases simply bludgeons with which to beat opposing arguments over the head. An instance of this came when my son referred me to a series of comments around the John Terry trial on Facebook. Reading through the comments I was struck by two discrete trains of thought. One was pragmatic, offering various suggestions; the other was based on principle: if he uttered the words........then in principle.......which led to some apparently silly conclusions.

Given my stated position, I tried to think of an example against arguing on principle. It is this. Suppose you find a 10p piece on the ground; what do you do? You could pick it up and put in your pocket, which would be a practical solution, although against principles of honesty and legality. Or, you could ignore it, which would be to dodge the issue. The solution according to principles of honesty and legality would be to hand it in at the nearest police station, have the transaction recorded and the 10p piece kept somewhere safe to await a claimant. Common sense would suggest that was an unnecessary waste of time and resources but not what principles would dictate. Now suppose the money found was not 10p but a bundle of notes to the tune of £10, 000. Both principle and common sense would propose that this find should be handed in. The point of this example is that common sense can easily distinguish between these two cases but argument on principle never can.

The Year 2000 Problem
I spent years working, lecturing and consulting on the date problem affecting computers as the year 2000 approached and became probably the foremost commentator on it in Europe ( I was often called that). Yet during all that time I never came up with a single, simple, clinching example as to why the problem was not only real but had widespread implications. It is only recently that I have been able to formulate it, as follows.

One item of data that is used in countless transactions but never recorded in a computer system is a person's age. It is used frequently and widely in financial, medical and social applications. It is not recorded because it changes every day and would therefore need updating every day. When it is needed it is always calculated and it is calculated by subtracting the person's date of birth, which is recorded, from the current date, which the computer knows(?). Moreover, the result of this calculation is never signed (+ or -) because that is unnecessary; a person can't have a negative age if he/she already exists. So....let's take the situation of a woman born in 1980 in 2001. Her age would be calculated as 01 minus 80, giving -79 (but there would be no minus sign). This woman might be pregnant and looking for a mortgage to buy a house, at a calculated age of 79. It's not difficult to understand the implications of that, financial, medical and social. Why couldn't I have thought of that example in the 1990s?

The UK Postcode
I'm not sure why it has taken me so long to figure out what goes wrong in the use of UK postcodes on websites but I have finally got there. The Post Office created postcodes and so also, I reasonably infer, the code for generating possible addresses from a given postcode. I infer also that this has been made available to websites. The problem is that it has a logical flaw for any organisation that has contact outside the UK. This is an unnecessary consideration for the Post Office, since it is concerned with delivery only to buildings within the UK, so it has been omitted. Organisations that may require to recognise contact outside the UK (after all, the first two “w”s of www stand for worldwide) have slavishly incorporated the code without realising the logical flaw, which requires an escape (or “else”) clause.

It's taken me too long to realise how this has happened but it's clearly taken many UK organisations longer, as the flaw is still prevalent on many UK organisations' websites (government, utilities, hotels, you name it). And they should bloody well wake up and do something about it. In code, it's a simple IF, THEN, ELSE statement. IF UK, THEN Postcode; ELSE ignore Postcode. Please, please copy.

The Practicalities

The Practicalities
 The practicalities left few moments to grieve. My mother had so little that I was spared the hassle of probate; there were enough forms to complete without that. Sharing her few possessions as mementos with friends and family before numerous trips to charity shops and the municipal dump seemed to take ages. Nearly every official I had to deal with was kind and considerate, though.


The Tyranny Of The Postcode
The utilities I had to contact, apart from BT, were a different matter. Unable to hang on to the phone lines for Thames Water and Southern Electricity until, conceivably, my own death might be approaching, I resorted to online contact. Their websites had “moving house” forms, the nearest to my circumstances, but all wanted my contact details and none would allow the completed forms to be submitted without a valid UK postcode and telephone number. So I put in false ones. Fortunately they all also had questionnaires asking me, when the form was completed, to please tell them what I thought of their wonderful website. So I did. I told them about the false contact details, asked if they'd ever wondered what the first two “w”s of www stood for, asked also if they remembered geography lessons at school which suggested there might be other countries in the world than the UK. Do they never have customers who move abroad? But then, if they have any problems contacting me for a final settlement, the problems will be theirs, not mine.

I spent the last night in England before returning to France in a Premier Inn right beside Southampton airport. On checking in I was asked for my name (obviously) and my address and postcode. The hotel's system wouldn't accept the foreign postcode, which had to be over-ridden by the girl at the desk with the help of a supervisor; at an airport?

Since I have already reported the same problem with the HMRC, it appears that the problem is widespread on UK websites. Are UK websites mindlessly copying one another's code and the same logical mistake? I have commented before on the supreme importance of the “else” clause in IT. The UK postcode is an extremely powerful location mechanism which is rightly widely used and which also illustrates beautifully the logical need for the “else” clause.

Thames Water did have the courtesy to reply with a helpful email. Southern Electricity seemed not to comprehend the problem and, in return, sent an email addressed to my dead mother.

Clearing Up
Clearing her small maisonette was a nightmare but, in the end, a fruitful one. She had pitifully few possessions but generally quality ones which should earn useful amounts for the charity shops in Godalming. It's what she would have wished. She also had objects of far greater sentimental value, some of which were adopted by members of the family. Among them were every letter I had written to her since the age of about 18. I even, by chance, came across a local gardening society that maintained the gardens in an old peoples' home and which gratefully took the many beautiful garden pots she had. What distressed me most was what still had simply to be thrown away even though it was still usable, particularly electrical goods, because of stupid restrictions; does “caveat emptor” no longer apply in England? Overall, I hope I did her memory justice. 

While I was in England, I came across two more idiocies. My mother's local council, Waverley, was one that had decided to reduce rubbish collections from weekly to fortnightly, to save costs. The resultant complaints about smell and rat infestations had caused a rethink. So a special collection of food waste had been instituted, weekly. Er......if there are to be weekly collections, why not.......?

The other idiocy concerned a report that passengers arriving at Heathrow had such prolonged waiting times to go through passport control that they had become unruly; so police had been drafted in to control the behaviour of the waiting passengers. So if, because of cost cuts and resultant staff shortages, extra expenditure is incurred and extra staff are drafted in, why not passport controllers rather than police? Because that would solve the problem? Better to keep the problem and, presumably, incur the extra costs on someone else's budget. Are there any brains left running the country or has that been reduced to a matter of political bun fights?

In Memoriam

In Memoriam

And so it's over. My mother died on Wednesday the 27^th of June. I had been forewarned in time and so was able to be at her home with her when she died. Her increasing weakness had long heralded the end. I would merely like to record here what I said at her funeral.

“As most of you here know, Mum looked after me or out for me for all my life. When I was young, she over-protected me, without meaning to. She would say to me then, and continued to say it until I was drawing my pension: have you got a clean handkerchief and have you combed your hair? Because, as she would say, suppose you had an accident and had to be taken to hospital; what would the doctors think if my hair wasn't straight or they found me with a dirty handkerchief? Perhaps there is an NHS warning out to doctors now: before brain surgery, check state of handkerchief. It was something I had to bear, but a token of her love for me, which I never doubted.

When I got to Bristol University I was told a story by one of my tutors there. He said that, a few years previously, he had received a letter from a student's mother asking him to watch over her son especially carefully. Because, she said, he had never been away from home before, apart from five years in the navy. That could have been my mother.

Mum meant the world to me. Not only did she bring me up single-handed, she supported me absolutely when I most needed it. She scrimped and saved to get me through university. After Doreen left, the help she gave me in making a home for Natalie and Carl was immeasurable; I don't know how I would have coped without it. She even, when she wanted to marry Bill, asked my permission; said she wouldn't do it if I didn't like him.

Not only did she support me, she delighted in my successes when I had them. My O level results brought her to tears of joy and she was similarly delighted when I got my degree. She loved my early success at ICL, even if she couldn't understand why I left such a good, safe company; what's a more challenging job and 50% hike in salary, after all?

Mum and I continued with our understandings and misunderstandings throughout her life. But it is to her that I owe my love of nature, the countryside and gardening, and good food and drink, things that have stayed with me throughout my life. That and much, much more. I owe her everything.

I had known for some time that her life was in danger, from at least four years ago when aortic stenosis was diagnosed. She was fully aware that her life might end at any moment but carried on regardless until old age finally weakened her, to the extent that she could no longer continue doing anything she loved. At the beginning of this year it became clear that she could not live much longer. I could not bear the thought of being with her and waiting for her to die but neither could I bear the thought of not being with her when she did die. In the end, I was lucky in coming over when I did. When I saw Mum on the Tuesday evening it was clear she was dying; I knew it and so did she. She couldn't even raise her eyes to watch the birds she so loved outside her window. We managed a little chat, between breaths and sometimes tearfully, about the good times and I got her some strawberries and cream before she went to sleep, apparently happy. The next morning we continued until, around 11 o'clock, she closed her eyes and said: “I'm going now son”. I held her hand and continued talking to her; she died ten hours later.

I was devastated when she finally stopped breathing. But, really, I'm happy, even if I don't look it. On my way across from France I had dreaded the thought of maybe having to persuade her to go into a home. That never happened. Mum had a life that was sometimes hard but she enjoyed it and was always upbeat, cheerful. Finally, she wanted the end and the end was as she wanted. She died peacefully, in her own home, and, I believe, in her own good time. She was totally exhausted and had simply had enough. She will be with me for the rest of my life.”