So Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…
Read More belated bloggingSo Viktor Bout is guilty. Some discussion is here, including the suggestion that the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) is losing out politically. Dunno about that, but it’s striking that the best politician they could find to speak out for him was someone from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s outfit, and not even Anna Chapman or Andrei Lugovoi at…
Read More belated bloggingBy the mid-2000s the minimal cost-to-serve a mobile phone user had got down to the point where it was worth Roshan’s while to put base stations in places where British soldiers broke down 105mm light guns to carry them piece by piece up a cliff, in order to fire from the hilltop next to the…
Read More The world’s most expensive mobile networkEh, Charlie Stross’s blog is a machine for destroying time. Anyway. This post is going to be so wonkish it’s to not come back from. An occasional theme on this blog has been the intersection between the Bush wars and the mobile phone industry. In fact, looking back, that’s not been so much an occasional…
Read More The Penrith problem – structural incentives and mobile service networksI am reliably informed that an individual who was a member of Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street staff, and then one of the Tony Blair foundations (I’m not sure which one – the Faith, or the Sports, or just the Tony Blair Associates commercial version?), is now a scriptwriter for Simon Cowell on the American…
Read More I know, but I don’t knowBy special recommendation from the other author of this blog.
Read More non-Thursday music linkBy special recommendation from the other author of this blog.
Read More non-Thursday music linkThe creation of a database containing all 9 million Israelis’ demographic, family, and medical information plus identifying biometrics has not necessarily developed to their advantage. Bonus points for use of the phrase “Hasidic criminal underworld”. They’ll make you an offer it takes years of painstaking theological scholarship to understand.
Read More What these people need is a national biometric identity registerFollowing up on last week’s pull the records post on Foxitty and tasers and stuff, what if “G3” really refers to G3 Good Governance Group? Here’s the data, on LevelBusiness, which is even better than CompaniesintheUK. There are four names involved, two of which – Hugh Petre and Andries Pienaar – quit the board at…
Read More G3 Good Governance: what is it?The question isn’t so much “did Eric Pickles eat all the pies?”, it’s “who paid for the pies, and how many did he declare in the register of members’ interests?”. TBIJ is on an absolute tear on Tory lobbying stories at the moment, and the combination of photo and caption for the Eric Pickles one…
Read More it flies! well, that’s what it was bloody well designed to do