Anyway, I thought, why should I get up from my desk and sit in front of the iMac just to use one application? Lets see what this thing can do in terms of remote access. The machine is not exposed to the internet so I had a go.

First up, I enabled SSH access. That was very easy, just one tick in the settings and we were good to go. SSH in using PuTTY? Fine. Run xclock? Fine. xclock got forwarded to my PC and displayed using the Cygwin X11 server. Run a native MacOS application? Er, yes, sort of. It appears on the local screen not on the remote client machine. This is because, although MacOS has an X11 server and some standard X11 applications installed as standard, it doesn’t actually use X11 for its own applications. Idiots! Anybody who can go to all the trouble of making X11 work on their OS and then decides not to use its amazing abilities is greatly insane.

So on to the “Screen Sharing” feature, which is really a VNC server. In MacOS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) this behaves much as it does on Windows, it shares the screen. It also performs like a dog compared to TightVNC on Windows. Even after turning off as much of the pointless eye candy as possible, to reduce the graphics being shipped over the VNC, it was terribly sluggish.

Fortunately the iMac was eligible for a free upgrade to MacOS 10.7 (Lion) and that has a multi-user VNC server in it. I loaded that and the initial results were encouraging. Then they were not. The system would occasionally hang with four-squashed-beachballs-of-coma and the only way to rouse it was to SSH in and kill the offending processes. That problem seems to have gone away with the update to MacOS 10.7.1. The VNC performance is much improved too. Finally we have a winner!

OK, so here is what you need to do to get it working:

• Make sure you are running MacOS 10.7.1 fully patched.
• Make sure you have a decent amount of RAM. Having multiple users requires enough RAM to go round.
• Enable the screen sharing. You don’t need to put a password on it if all your users have passwords of their own.
• Make the users you want, if they do not already exist.

The way it works is a bit weird and reflects a confusion about whether this is “screen sharing” or “terminal serving”.

First up, when you VNC in you get the MacOS login screen. This is why I said you don’t need to password protect the VNC, unless you really want to.

If a user is logged on locally and the remote user logs in as the same user then they will share the screen. Presumably this is what is wanted.

If no user is logged on locally and a remote user logs in their session is also shown on the local screen. This may or may not be what is wanted.

If a user is already logged in and another user logs in over the VNC then a brand new session is created for them that does not affect the existing one. This is not displayed locally and is only accessible through the VNC server.

Pros and Cons:

Pro:

• It works! You can have multiple users logged in at the same time and doing useful work without interfering with each other. Woo Hoo!
• Performance is acceptable. VNC is never going to be as fast as RDP or ICA but, if you select a plain background image, it works OK.
• It is free. OK, you have to pay for the OS, but it is a free feature. You don’t need to buy CALs or anything.
• You don’t need MacOS Server. It works in the normal desktop MacOS.
• Most applications will run for multiple users simultaneously without interference.

Con:

• General weirdness: The fact that some sessions are on the screen and some are not. Also the privacy and security implications of this.
• Not clear what happens when a local user wants to get on and there is a remote user already on.
• You can’t set a preferred screen resolution for VNC without it affecting future local sessions as well.
• No optimisation in the GUI to reduce the graphics load on the VNC connection. Why can’t you turn off the stupid window shadows and animations on maximising/minimising/etc?
• Some VNC clients seem to find the Mac VNC server problematic. If they seize up, try enabling the local cursor and disabling the remote one. That worked for me on Snow Leopard. Maybe this is not necessary on Lion but I have not tried changing it back to normal.
• Badly written applications may interfere if two users run them at once.
• See The BIG Caveat…

The BIG Caveat

Now you may be thinking this is the solution to all your problems. You can deploy MS Office to multiple concurrent users without paying for loads of Windows Terminal Services CALs. Well, yes you can but check the EULA on MS Office and any other applications your remote users may want to run. You may need to buy at least as many licences as you may have concurrent users, maybe even more if they want to be really nasty about it.

Comparison with Other Remote Desktop Systems

Note: Windows XP/Vista/7 Remote Desktop is not included as it does not allow multiple concurrent users.

Summary

It hasn’t turned me into a Mac fanboy. In fact, I have found many instances where the MacOS experience has been depressingly similar to the Windows one. To the fanboy claim that “It just works” we should add “except when it doesn’t.”

Still, having multiple concurrent users for no extra cost is pretty damn cool and it does make a Mac look a lot more like a proper computer and a lot less like an overpriced toy.

Of course it would be churlish to point out that X11 based Unix/Linux systems have had multiple, concurrent remote desktops since XDMCP was introduced  in 1989 and that even most of the proprietary Unixes don’t charge extra for it.

Now, I enjoy getting a bargain as much as anybody but there has to be something wrong with a system that allows standard class fares on the same train to differ by up to 2,300% depending on how much effort the customer goes to to find the cheapest option. I am sure the train companies feel that they are getting the most out of the customers by selling at all price levels but I think that most people find the whole thing confusing, annoying and even exploitative.

Once in Liverpool sanity was restored. In Liverpool, Travelcards are called Saveaways and the zones are not concentric but, when it comes to the stuff that matters, Merseytravel clearly thinks along the same lines as TfL, rejecting the craziness of the National Rail system. They are just getting started on their equivalent of Oyster, which they hope will reverse falling levels of bus use, as Oyster has in London. Clearly they are on the right track.

If this stuff works in London, Liverpool and cities all round the world then why can’t we have the same thing for the whole UK? This isn’t about ideology or politics; It is about a system that works and a system that doesn’t. We need regional bodies, like TfL and Merseytravel, for every region of the UK. We need a single cashless payment system, supporting price capped pay-as-you-go and season tickets, for every bus and train in the country. We need a system that does not penalise the casual or disorganised traveller with fares 23 times as high as others just because it hopes it can get away with it.

If we could have a coherent UK wide transport system that always charged a consistent, predictable and fair price to all its users then people would have more confidence in it and would use it more. I would gladly give up my occasional bargain ticket for that.

I wouldn’t hold your breath for that though. In the meantime I guess all we can do is keep our wits about us and grab whatever cheap fares we can find.

PS: And here is a final irony that might make you smile, if only weakly. The result of the referendum might be decisive enough to make the No campaign wonder it they really needed to cheat in the first place. A clean victory for the Nos, even by a small margin, would have done more long term damage to the cause of reform than this much larger one achieved by what would have been illegal practices had the referendum been properly regulated. Cheaters often prosper but they are very rarely respected.

I have been looking at the regional referendum results in a bit more detail and I am now convinced that I was right. Scotland, Wales and London all voted No. The significant point here is that they all already have fair voting systems in place for their parliament/assembly. They could not have been as effectively bullshitted that FPtP was the fairer system. This did make a difference but not as much as I expected. Yes polled about 40% (instead of 30%) in those regions.

So you can add another irony to the list. Not only was it unnecessary for the No campaign to cheat like it did, they seem to have done so because they were working on exactly the same set of misconceptions as lead the Yes campaign to run such a complacent and ineffective campaign, i.e. that those regions that already had a fair system would support AV by a large margin.

Well, we can forget that idea now. The Scots gave the SNP a landslide victory so we can’t accuse them of voting for the status-quo. What were they thinking when they voted No? Were they holding out for something better than AV and FPtP? Sadly there will be no incentive for anybody to ask them. After a referendum between the worst and second worst voting systems in the world, we still don’t know what people really want and now we will probably never know.

Here is what really makes me puke.

Puke #1: How come the Tory vote held up so well?

The Tories actually gained in most areas. This is at the expense of the Lib Dems, minor parties and independents. There are two possibilities here:

1. Voters blame the Lib Dems for everything that the colaition government does while giving the Tories a free pass.
2. Core Tory voters are happy with the government while Lib Dem voters are not.

The second option is much more plausible. Lib Dem voters, almost by definition, have higher standards than Tory voters. They don’t relish spending cuts for the sake of them. They don’t regard things like the tuition fees debacle with the casual disregard that Tories do. They feel let down. Tories meanwhile are loving it.

A vomit stained speculation:Nick Clegg as Cassandra?

With AV off the agenda, a boundary commission coming up that is massively going to benefit the Tories, the Tory voters quite happy with the government, and everything being blamed on Clegg there is almost nothing that can stop the Tories winning a big majority at the next election or two. We will have plenty of time to compare and contrast the coalition with the same Tories running wild.

Will we moan “Oh God, it was so much better with Nick Clegg to limit the damage. Why didn’t we listen to him about AV”? With no hope of fixing the electoral system it will be a long, long time before we see anything but Tories in power so why not use that time to nurture an impotent, belated (and not entirely deserved) appreciation of Saint Nick of Clegg? Well, it is not like anything else will do any good.

Which brings me to my next big gripe…

Puke #2: Why was the referendum allowed to become a farce?

The referendum was lost the day the Electoral Commission admitted that it had no authority to regulate objectively false claims being made in the referendum campaigns. It was carte blanche for the sort of lies that would have lead to disqualification or prosecution in any normal election. This will not have done anything to enhance Britain’s reputation for democracy and openness. William Hague may well find that next time he berates an oppressive regime for not adhering to good democratic processes that they giggle and roll their eyes slightly more than usual. Nobody respects hypocrisy.

Clegg probably didn’t realise that it was going to be perverted into an unregulated travesty of a referendum. The No campaign didn’t so much defeat AV as a non-existent system of their own invention. This was probably the Tory plan from day one. Clegg was set up and he fell for it. He should have seen it all coming, after all, everybody knows that you can’t trust Tories. Tories lie. It is natural and instinctive. It is what they have always done. If you believe a Tory you deserve no more sympathy than if you stick your hand in an alligator’s mouth. The one thing Tories hate more than anything else is constitutional reform. They were never going to play fair on this. They had too much to lose.

Despite this, my real vitriol is reserved for stupid, stupid, stupid Labour…

Puke #3: WTF was the Labour No2AV campaign thinking?

Given that Labour had to know that the boundary changes would put them out of power pretty much forever under First Past the Post why were so many Labour bigwigs so keen help the Tories nail themselves onto the government benches by supporting it? AV was their only chance to play any role in government for the foreseeable future. Do they hate pluralism so much that they would rather the Tories win every election until doomsday than see a handful of Green or UKIP MPs? Could they not see the Greens as potentially useful coalition partners and even as an alternative to the Lib Dems come the next hung parliament?

This really is a “turkeys voting for Christmas” scenario.

I felt more sorry for Milliband than Clegg as he tried to talk sense into his own party. Now he emerges weakened within Labour and set up as a stooge to lose the next election. Come the next election I am sure Labour will see a nice big swing it its favour but it will still lose seats due to the boundary changes and lose the election whatever Milliband does. Only then will Labour see the wilderness it has walked into. It would be nice to think that the dinosaurs, who consistently hold Labour back from becoming the progressive party it deserves to be, will be punished for this but it seems unlikely. Instead they will probably choose its next leader from their own ranks.

Puke from the past: Why didn’t Labour do something useful while it was actually in a position to do so?

What upsets me more than anything is the squandered opportunity that Labour had to reform and reinvigorate democracy in the 1990s. If Blair had stuck to his own manifesto and accepted the outcome of the Jenkins Commission (which he never had the slightest intention of doing) we could have had a genuinely proportional system in place for the millennium. We could have avoided the hubris brought on by the later Labour landslides. We could have had a real political choice under a fair system that gives a voice to everybody. But then Blair always was an egomaniac Tory in disguise and he only ever cared about his majority, his mad projects, his hubris, not the future of Labour or of Britain. Sell the future for two landslides? Of course he would, and he would do it again if he could.

Where now?

Reform will be off the agenda for a while now. House of Lords reform will probably be the next casualty. The bad guys won again, just like in 1914, 1917 and 1930, but tories (from whatever party) should not get too smug.

Constitutional reform isn’t like ordinary politics, with its four-year timeframes and the memory of a goldfish. Reform is a process that works over decades and centuries. Reform has seen bigger setbacks than this. Reformers were imprisoned, hanged, beheaded, and worse, and yet we still got from no democracy to our current rather poor democracy. At least that doesn’t happen any more. We are winning, slowly.

Reform does not belong to any one political party and it can’t be destroyed by defeating the Lib Dems. Reform is never going away and one of these days meaningful democratic reform will come to the UK.

If recent Metro Mail is anything to go by, campaigning in the AV referendum seems only to be making people more confused. There has been a lot of mudslinging and focus on trivia which is not helping anybody, least of all the people still trying to make up their minds.

Without telling readers how I think they should vote, I would like to encourage everybody to do a few things to help themselves decide:

1. Don’t let the bluster from the campaigns make you think the choice is more complicated or more important than it really is. Both voting systems are pretty simple and fairly similar. AV is really only a minor change to the way we vote and count votes. It is far less radical a change than the systems already used in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London^[1]. Both AV and First Past The Post (FPTP) are equally based on the principle of “one person one vote” and neither one is going to help the BNP get itself elected (which is why it is sulking)^[2]. Neither system will either shower us in milk and honey, or bring about the apocalypse. AV would not change the outcome in most seats^[3]. You just have to decide whether AV is a small change for the better or for the worse.

2. Use impartial sources of information to make sure you really understand both systems. The leaflet from the Electoral Commission and the information box on p29 of Thursday’s Metro both do an excellent job of explaining the choice simply and fairly. Once you understand the systems you will easily spot when they are being misrepresented.

3. Focus on the arguments that are clear and specific enough for you to make sense of. Ignore all the vague arguments that just try to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt without having any substance.

4. Ask yourself whether each side has presented convincing, positive arguments for its preferred system? If all they have done is slag off the other system then maybe theirs is even worse.

5. Try to ignore all the focus on personalities. This isn’t easy. We don’t have a lot of referendums in the UK and we are used to electing individual politicians where personality is a big issue. This is different. The last time the UK came close to changing its voting system was in 1930^[4]. If past experience is anything to go by, Cameron, Clegg, Lucas and even the boy Milliband could all be dead by the time we get another chance to vote on this. Try really hard to forget about them^[5]. Ask yourself which system is right for your great-grandchildren?

6. Remember that the referendum is just a choice between First Past The Post and AV. You might not like either, or you might think that another system is even better, but try to forget about that. There is no way you can vote in support of any other system. You just need to choose between FPTP and AV. There will be plenty of time, probably several decades, to argue about other systems once the referendum is over.^[6]

7. Finally, while I am not aware of any specific rules prohibiting the use of ouija boards in ballot booths, I strongly recommend everybody to make up their own minds without consulting the spirits of ancient Greek philosophers.^[7][8]

Daniel Rigal, Surrey

Footnotes:

[0] and why is their website so bad?

[1] Northern Ireland uses STV (which is a really great system!). Scotland and Wales use a Mixed Member Proportional system (which really does mean “one person two votes”). London uses the hated Closed Lists for the assembly and a half-arsed version of AV to elect the Mayor.

[2] The BNP stands no realistic chance of getting even one MP under either system. AV makes it slightly harder. The BNP are sulking in the No camp, although the No camp are not too keen on this, understandably.

[3] A completely different change is coming at the next election anyway, one that will go ahead whatever the outcome of the referendum; Changes to the constituency boundaries will remove the current bias towards Labour. This will almost certainly make more difference than the outcome of the referendum to the result of the next few elections.

[4] See http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=40 for the sordid details.

[5] I wish I could.

[6] And won’t that be fun?

[7] See http://www.metro.co.uk/news/861477-av-voting-system-is-a-load-of-cobblers-says-boris-johnson for details (and a lovely picture of Chipmunk trying to teach a befuddled Boris how to play Rock, Paper Scissors).

[8] OK. If you really must know: Democritus is supporting “Yes”, Plato is supporting “No” and Diogenes of Sinope refuses to come out of his barrel and answer questions.

Can anybody think of a (non-medical) reason to ever type “chmod 600 /dev/null“?

What next? Restricting /dev/zero so no bastard can steal all the zeros?

The whole thing is hosted on Streamline using a cheap but obsolete package that gives you Perl, CGI and SSH access with cron. What it doesn’t give you, unless you pay extra, is a database or the ability to password protect folders.

I found a nice, simple search engine written in Perl, that does not require a database, at Boutell.com. The index is a plain text file. After sexing it up a bit, I think it looks quite good:

• Search Lawrence Rigal’s Websites

The bit I am particularly happy with is the way I was able to make it colour code the results by which section of the site they are in. Given the disparate nature of the microsites, that seems to work quite well and avoid the need to index each microsite separately.

Still it is refreshing to hear him acknowledge that some changes are needed on the buses. While wary of anything that any Tory says, I am prepared to give him a chance to come up with a workable proposal before heaping abuse on him. In the meantime, here is my little rant…

It is easy to get all ideological about transport policy but the real problem is to find a policy that actually works. It can be argued that no recent national government has done a good job of this. Whether you want to blame the Tories most for privatisation and deregulation, or Labour for inventing the insane PPP, is a matter of taste. What is clear is that London does a lot better than the surrounding counties. Partially it is because a lot more money gets spent there but mostly it is because it has an integrated transport policy in a way that the rest of the UK does not.

Or, to put it bluntly, for a non-driver, civilisation ends at Zone 6.

You might think that this is unfair. After all, I live in Guildford and South West Trains provides a fast and reliable train service to London every 15 minutes. It is horribly expensive but at least it is a good service. If so, you miss a point. The point is that I don’t live in Guildford Station. A station is only any use if you can get to it.

Essentially this is going to be a rant about buses. Yes, I know buses are boring, unsexy and deeply, horribly unprofitable. They are also absolutely essential to a functioning economy. I make no apology. I am now going to rant about buses.

Your attitude to this will probably depend on which side of the Zone 6 boundary you live. If you live in London then you will probably feel a small twinge of sympathy swamped by a massive wave of smugness about your decision to live in the right place. If you live in south-east England outside of Zone 6 you are probably already thinking “Why doesn’t this loser stop whining and just get a car like everybody else?”. I will come to that point shortly but first lets take a look at what we are up against, taking Guildford as the pathological case.

Of course, Guildford is not London. It lacks the population and population density to sustain a bus service like London’s. Also we can’t blame the bus companies for the fact that the railway station is in a stupid non-central location with narrow road access. Nearby Woking fares better due to the better location of the station.

Even so, there is clearly a lot that could be learned from London.

• Some sort of regional body needs to be in charge of coordinating and monitoring the bus services. This body has to have real power over the operators. The operators have to accept external management. In return the operators should not have to bear the commercial consequences of the decisions that are no longer theirs to make. Instead, operators should receive bonuses or penalties depending on how well they provide the mandated service levels.
• Routes should be rationalised so that there are an appropriate number of frequent routes linking the destinations people need the most in a simple, direct way. Routes should cross towns rather than rely on expensive central bus stations, which can be sold off. Special effort needs to be made to integrate with railway stations, even if this is not always easy.
• Timetables should be rationalised with simple “clock face” running patterns which continue at full frequency well into the evening and then tail off gradually. Once people are able to rely on a regular bus service they will start using it again. The days of the office worker who knocks off at 5PM and is home in time for Magic Roundabout and the 6PM News are long dead. People need their buses at 8PM.
• There needs to be a single system of season tickets and a move towards cashless payment to speed up boarding. Ideally a single system of cashless payment should cover all modes of transport for the whole UK.
• Every bus should be tracked in order to monitor performance and provide accurate information about delays to passengers.

Cameron’s plan to make buses part of “The Big Society” seems to fail on the integration issues. We need efficient service coordination not a bunch of local enthusiasts doing their best. That said, the enthusiasts can’t be worst than the incumbent operators doing the bare minimum they can get away with.

Now, I know I said I would return to the “why doesn’t this loser stop whining and just get a car like everybody else?” issue. Well, I lied! That was just a cynical ruse to make you read all my opinions about buses. You see, it isn’t only car drivers who can put their own interests before others.

Oh. All right. Very quickly then:

I do not drive and I have no intention of driving for a mixture of environmental, financial and practical reasons. Once you have a car it takes over your life like some sort of Roman domestic god requiring your time, attention and never ending quantities of money. I have done pretty well out of being a non-driver. I have a lot of money in the bank and in my pension which is essentially money that I never spent on petrol. I could be a very happy non-driver if the buses worked properly. I resent the idea that I should be expected to pay through the nose because somebody else isn’t doing their job properly. The fact that the single occupant car is a poison choking our cities and choking our planet almost pales into insignificance compared to the fact that I really don’t want to be just another idiot living to service their stupid tin box on wheels.

Well, you did ask…

* – Arriva is Guildford’s main bus operator. Hence the old saying “It is better to travel than to Arriva.”

Further down the food chain, there seems to be rather a lot of amateur quantitative easing going on in Guildford at the moment. These would be pirate Mervyn Kings’ method is simple. They augment the money supply with pound coins of their own devising. This would be all well and good except for two minor problems:

1. The coins are not legal tender. They are worthless. It is illegal to spend them.
2. The sector of the economy that benefits from the easing of the money supply is the criminal part. Quite apart from everything else they get up to, they pay no taxes, and if they did they would probably try to pay them in forged coins.

Charming.

The long term solution is to call in all pound coins and replace them with bimetallic coins like the two pound coin. These are far harder to forge. Write to your MP, if you can be bothered.

In the meantime, keep a look out for fake pound coins. I got a dodgy one in Co-op today. The staff were completely unaware that forged coins existed.

Details, and lots of pictures, here:

• http://blog.alism.com/fake-one-pound-coins-part-one/