I don’t think Chris Dillow is right. Chris argues that the whole sordid fiasco about the Disasters Emergency Committee broadcast suggests the BBC should stop doing radio and TV news and put the money into long form reportage and documentaries instead; this, he reckons, would get people to read newspapers, would create a lot of…
Read More all too often it’s just a comic, not much moreJason Scott tells a sad tale of how AOL eliminated a whole mass of little Web sites and then erased all traces of their content. (Readers with long memories will recall the shutdown of Dave Winer’s blog farm.) What follows showed the best and worst of Internet culture – Scott called for volunteers to start…
Read More a small object lesson on the past decadeThis may or may not be significant, but soon after the An-12 exodus from Sharjah, a dodgy An-24RV was seriously damaged in Boosaso, northern Somalia. Interestingly, this aircraft (serial 47309406) had been used by Aero-Service in the DRC and also by UTAGE in West Africa, the firm involved in the Christmas Day 2003 727 crash.…
Read More you fasten the triggers..Two things. Marty Lederman of popular legal blog Balkinisation has just become the first blogger in good standing to join the Obama Administration. He’s going to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Council. That’s repellent schreibtischtäter John Yoo’s old job. I repeat, old Organ Failure Yoo has been replaced by Liberal…
Read More US flattened by self administered denial of service attackPhil Woolas is beneath contempt. I was going to say more, but it would be waste verbiage.
Read More a very short postSo, there’s this rumour-surrounded gadget that GIYUS wants people to install on their computers as part of the War on Terror. Obviously, I wondered exactly how it worked; did it analyse the Web sites you visit semantically, so as to target its talking points precisely? Did it use some sort of social recommendation mechanism? Also,…
Read More give IT yahoos United States (dollars)Having spent over £1 million collating the files of MPs’ expense claims in order to make them available under the Freedom of Information Act, the Government is now trying to pull off a last-minute parliamentary ambush that would exempt them entirely from this disclosure. They are attempting to use the provision in section 82 of…
Read More Action: Government trying to kibosh MPs’ expenses disclosureI’m increasingly annoyed by official-media consensus that young people will suffer more than anyone else from the recession. Not that I especially doubt this; I doubt the reasoning, which appears to be that they’ve all gone soft and they’re not like we were in my day. As a general principle, I believe this is usually…
Read More you can’t blame the youth of todayAs usual, the Daily Mash catches the zeitgeist. Clubbers ditch ketamine for elephant tranquillisers – “it makes you feel really elephanty”. In North London, meanwhile, they’re wanking on the streets. Seriously. So far this weekend, I was standing in a toilet in the Sir Richard Steeles* when I heard groaning. I cancelled the maniac. But…
Read More surrounded by wankersIt seems the UAE’s Antonov-12 ban is real. The shortage of inbound flights in the Viktorfeed continues; out of 57 overnight movements, in itself an unusual low, there were 10 inbounds after cleaning up the odd false positive. Here is a list: South-Airlines STH7002 Erbil Sharjah scheduled 1600Z Transaviaexport TXC1722 Kabul Sharjah scheduled 1500Z Safi…
Read More fly or die