Something that struck me the other day, after this event. Usually I’m terrible for giving people computer advice that causes them to shout at me and burst into tears, but on this occasion I didn’t find this a problem. Why? This is a case of the so-called cross cockpit gradient. Putting people with radically different…
Read More The cross-cockpit gradientI want one of these. There’s more here; the sheer coolth of a USB-based PCR analyser is hard to beat. Even if the potential for Wakefield-scale contamination fuckups is not to be denied. In general, I’m trying to get up to speed on things biotech. it is true that, so far, cyberpunk has been a…
Read More peering over the bows…I disbelieve strongly in all attempts to define “generation this or that”. So I was reading this with at least a pint of scorn, when it occurred to me that I was working in a tech start-up and I’d been to a 2-Tone gig at the weekend.
Read More uncannyI have some problems with “10:10”, the latest timebound big media campaign. The first one is symbols and aesthetics. They are handing out tags made of aluminium alloy cut out of a retired B737 down at Hurn. This is meant to be recycling, and wonderfully symbolic. No. A superbly engineered artefact has been reduced to…
Read More No Future in the Cath Kidston FavelaAh yes, the summer and autumn of 2004. The beaux jours of rightwing horseshit, back when an actual neocon disinformation job was targeting a short who’s who of blogging. It seems to be time for some of those years’ shit to float up to the surface. Here’s Dan Rather, suing CBS. Rather contends not only…
Read More covering the story: a glimpse of the press in actionI am currently reading Antonio Giustozzi’s Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop – The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan. I’ll review it more fully when I’ve finished reading it – now there’s an idea – but here’s something that stands out for reasons of pure partisan rage. John Reid has been mocked plenty for saying that he thought…
Read More John Reid RetrobloggingSays Bryan O’Sullivan in his bookmarks: Kevin Myers, the ne plus ultra of ballbag Anglo-Irish reactionary hacks, surprises us all by writing what might be an essential close-up of the Troubles. Maybe his lunatic, protean nature was a perfect fit for the time. This was the upshot of this post. I promised, I think, to…
Read More Review: Watching the DoorIf you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the FBI…
Read More Torture LawyersLet me count the ways. If you think Phorm – the evil advert-spooking system practically all the UK’s eyeball ISPs want to force on you – isn’t so bad, I’ve got news for you. First of all, let’s have a look at this Grauniad Tech article. BT’s 2006 trials certainly involved some sort of interception,…
Read More Phorm, how do I hack thee?This is interesting. Jim Bates, an expert witness for the defence in some of the Operation Ore cases we discussed, has been convicted of misrepresenting his qualifications. Specifically, the charges relate to whether or not he claimed to be an electronics engineer, despite not being one, and to his career in the Royal Air Force.…
Read More The Payback