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It is reported that Microsoft has patented technology for networking mobile electronic devices through the user’s skin. Gear like PDAs, phones etc would communicate by using the skin’s electrical conductivity. Further applications could supposedly include producing power for such devices from your movements, rather like a self-winding watch, and even displaying information on the skin.…

Numerous reports in the main media suggest that the Ministry of Defence is going to come out very badly in the current public spending round (yes, I know it’s not called that any more). In so far as the leaks agree, they seem to be suggesting a 1% budget increase. Whether this is real terms…

The Financial Times reports that US counter-terrorist efforts in West Africa are being strengthened after increased scrutiny of the former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor’s alleged links with Hezbollah and al-Qa’ida. Reportedly, more staff have been assigned to help in financial investigations there, and a further legal attache (a FBI representative) is to be appointed. The…

Dealing with road rage, the monkey way. (Thanks to www.africans.co.za.)

At the NATO summit, George W. Bush made time for a demarche on the subject of Turkish membership of the EU, which angered Jacques Chirac. Chirac responded that “It’s as if I was advising the US on how they should manage their relations with Mexico.” Indeed. I am sure both the Turks and the French…

Well, that’s supposedly it. Calamity Paul Bremer handed over Iraq two days early and was out of the country the same night. If anyone thinks this is anything else than a response to some really ugly intelligence warning about (part-)independence day, they must be astonishingly naive. As Mountbatten’s chief of staff put it about the…

So, I did indeed attend Tech Active yesterday. Key points of the discussion, held in the all-white but strangly ransacked looking premises of the Stanhope Centre, covered a wide range of problems related to political campaigning and technology. A curious crowd, made up of equal parts tech-hipster/German video artist types in painfully fashionable (but ugly)…

TECH ACTIVE – June 28, 2004 Sounds interesting. Will be in Big London later, so I’ll blog it.

I know it’s terribly eurocentric and arrogant to complain about this sort of thing, and we should be tolerant of alternative cultural values, but is anyone else worried by Iyad Allawi’s assertion that “Iraqi democracy should not be a replica of models imported from America, Britain or any other country”? Now, this is all very…

Kremlin Looking for Loyal NGOs It is reported that the Russian government is trying to build up a base of friendly NGOs as a counterweight to the numerous campaign groups that are about the only effective opposition left in Russia. First question – is an NGO created to be nice to the Kremlin “nongovernmental” in…