2009

People are talking about using “cyberwar” to assist the Iranian opposition. Let’s put some of our new cyber-warfare capabilities to the test, quietly and covertly of course, to disrupt Tehran’s ability to shut off the flow of information to Iranians and between them This makes no sense at all, even less sense than “cyberwar” usually…

Read More what is cyberwar?

Shorter Martin Kettle: Both the state Tony Blair left the Labour Party in and the failure of European centre-left parties that adopted a Blairite compromise with neo-liberalism show that we need still more Blairite compromising with neo-liberalism Jesus wept. I am not joking. Meanwhile, I wasn’t aware of this: Martin Kettle & Lucy Hodges (1982)…

Read More death or glory becomes just another story

The oldest trick in the book of tatty British industry. When times turn tough, find anyone who’s been caught innovating, and sack them. Hence the Obscurer gets rid of Simon Caulkin’s management column, part of their generally excellent business section’ s highly reliable opinion page with William Keegan. But I suppose it leaves more space…

Read More tatty

I’ve just been geocoding. In fact, I’ve been putting together a non-GPS geocoding function for FixMyS60. Specifically, I can say that I have no use whatsoever for geonames, which although it has an interesting range of Web services doesn’t seem to have any data in it. I love OpenStreetMap, and it’s possible to query its…

Read More easter egg

Philip Hammond is whining. One year ago, Philip Hammond thought the economy was OK, that the crisis was made up, and that everything would be even more wonderful if he got a tax break on his own property interests. In fact, Hammond was arguing frantically for the government to encourage people to buy property into…

Read More Sauce!

Jamie Kenny watches the Lebanese elections and asks if the Saudis could spend so much money on British politics. The answer is simple: they already have. Consider the original Al-Yamamah contract, and the famous National Audit Office report that was shown to two MPs and then buried for good. We’re still not trusted to see…

Read More Money