Duty of care

This article from Le Monde relates two harrowing accounts of prisoners held in Iraq.
The first story tells of a man who had been in the bomb disposal squad of the Iraqi army during his military service but had absconded before the war started. He went to Bagdad after the Americans had taken control of the city to arrange his wedding, but found a car bomb outside his hotel. He reported it to a member of the police, who in turn denounced him as a terrorist sympathiser to the U.S. army.
Despite any evidence, he was then transferred to Abu Ghraib prison where he was starved, hooded, shaved, beaten, held in stress positions and pissed on. One of the prisoners had his sister raped in front of him. On his release he had to sign papers recognising that U.S. forces' "duty of care" towards him had ended.

XP SP2

Microsoft now appears likely to release Windows XP Service Pack 2 by the end of July. SP2 is essentially a giant security patch, designed to protect your PC from having spyware and adware being installed on it, or from being controlled by an external machine.
Microsoft will make SP2 freeey available even if you have a pirated copy of XP, as leaving machines exposed is considered a greater risk to the company than rogue software. The download is likely to be in the order of 300Mb however -- practically as big as XP itself -- so expect hundreds of thousands of simultaneous downloads to slow the internet down somewhat.

Charlotte Rambling

Went to see Marivaux's The False Servant at the National Theatre last night. Great translation by Martin Crimp, shame about the performance.
Why is it that directors feel that plays have to mean something? All this was meant to be was a comedy. Unfortunately it was read as:

Lust and avarice trample on the finer feelings of love in this subversive take on sexual manners and the cruelties of courtship.

There's no doubt that it's tricky to transfer 300-year-old jokes to the contemporary stage, but when you miss so many opportunities for the comic in the way you stage a play, you can't expect people to enjoy it. Even the actors didn't seem to care: Charlotte Rampling in the lead got her lines wrong three times.

Was it in his briefs?

Here's a story of when to kill a mocking bird became to spank a monkey. I wonder if the judge was the only one to get off this charge...

Melomania

Despite their adulation at Glastonbury, the Scissor Sisters are rubbish. I had toyed with the idea that they were electro-funk pranksters, but now I realize the error of my ways: they are Elton John for chat-room adolescents. While I never had any intention of braving the festival mud, I did spend Saturday trawling for music, wading knee-deep through Selectadisc genres. What is downbeat? Does that question make me ignorant or just old? Do people really know the difference between ragga and reggae and roots hall? Would I find Otis Redding in 60s or Northern soul? And just what is French-type stuff? It's not French by the way...

Patent blog

Another patent of interest, by Microsoft again. This time it's for using the human body as a conductive medium to power an output device. It's likely that Microsoft will want to use this for electronic credit card technology, but I wonder if they'll now start claiming royalties on experiments using a van der Graaf generator?

Are women a minority?

It's a long-standing issue for French feminists that one of the three tenets of the Republic -- liberty, equality, fraternity -- has no relevance for them. A new law to equate sexist or homophobic harassment with race crime is now being accused of offering greater protection to gays than to women. Sexism appears to have been added as an afterthought after the justice minister Dominique Perben explained that the law was designed to protect all minorities.
But it is the meaning of the word minority that has changed, rather than the need to protect smaller groups. People are minorised when they are discriminated against, not because they are fewer. Blacks in South Africa and women in France are not in the minority but have been discriminated against. The privileged are in a minority but already have plenty of laws to protect them.

The least worst place

This story in the Register about the Kafka-esque rebranding of Camp X-Ray is well worth the read. It made me laugh.

Innovation against type

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, iBiz are promoting a virtual keyboard for use with SmartPhones and PDAs. It's a unit that you plug into your device which then projects lasers onto a surface and measures your keystrokes, relaying your typing back to your computer. Not sure how well it works in bright light, but it looks pretty damn amazing:

Healthy choices?

Both Labour and the Tories are advocating choice as the way to improve the health service, the main difference being that the Tories are more overt in subsidising the wealthy and private enterprise at the expense of the rest of us. Perhaps we'll get Tesco's to run a hosiptal that one in eight of the population will all flock to.
Instead of introducing an illusion of choice -- most people will choose their local hospital or the one that specialises in their condition, which is what happens now -- parties ought to focus on improving public health instead of the health secretary telling us it's all right for the poor to smoke.

Now the Labour party is also planning to withdraw control of schools from local authorities, despite the fact that this has failed everywhere it's been implemented, most pointedly where I live in Southwark.
My grandmother used to say that education was the one thing that couldn't be taken away from you -- particularly poignant given that she had so much taken away from her -- but it appears that you can get it taken away if you never get it in the first place.

Aftermath

So it wasn't a foul, but Terry was off-side. England's only other chance in normal time was Costinha's mistake leading to Owen's goal; no passing yet again. Only Ashley Cole emerged with credit.
Once ahead, no one came to pick the ball up off the defence and for the umpteenth time we saw defensive substitutions backfire. Sven should have brought on Joe Cole rather than Phil Neville to carry and above all keep the ball.
Portugal deserved it, but Ronaldo's still a smarmy diver.

No quarter spared

So tonight's the night for England to show what they're capable of. I really don't think Portugal are that great, but England's left flank has been hopelessly exposed all the way through the tournament and there's still no genuine holding midfielder to play against Deco. Both teams are crap in the air.
The winners of this match will play either the Netherlands or Sweden, who play on Sunday. Portugal have rigged the tournament so that as long as they won their group they will always get maximum possible rest and their opponents would get the minimum. Ticket allocations have also been biased, with some games offering 9:1 ratios of support for one team or another, not just the hosts.
The French are up the swanny meanwhile, with the only player who gives balance to the side, Sagnol, out for the rest of the tournament and Vieira and Gallas also injured. This is likely to mean Thuram at full back and the return of Desailly, so any opposing centre forward will fancy his chances.
How could the World Cup semi-finalists be knocked out of the tournament by three teams that didn't even qualify for the tournament?

Where there's smoke...

If you're still smoking, you should be interested in an extensive survey conducted over the last fify years that shows smoking knocks 10 years off your life. You're twice as likely to die before you get to 70 if you smoke, probably through cancer, heart disease or a stroke. If you've seen these diseases and you're still convinced you can handle them, ask yourself whether you can handle coming round after diagnosis and telling your family how ill you are. If you're still in any doubt, this is an example of what they'll take out of you.

(Just like) handing over

If you thought things in Iraq were improving before handover to an Iraqi authority (what price the Palestinians getting such autonomy?), a United Nations audit into handling of Iraqi oil revenues has found processes to be "open to fraudulent acts". The maths show a $4bn hole in development funds, while the $11bn that have been spent has been strongly criticised. There is meagre Iraqi involvement in the process so far, but since the officials responsible are returning to the U.S. next week, Iraqis will soon be able to find out just how fraudulent administration has been.
We also note that while the Americans have been given the right to use "all necessary measures" to provide security (interpreted by Donald Rumsfeld as sleep deprivation and the use of dogs), U.S. officials have told Iraqi authorities that its interim government will be bound by human rights. In other words the Iraqis will be in charge of the country but won't be able to take charge of restoring human rights, and the Americans can still do what they like.

Mysteries of our time

• Why does ITV's opening sequence feature Adrian Mutu? Did Romania or Chelsea qualify for Euro 2004?
• Why is Petr Cech the only player who ITV commentators refer to by both first and second name?
• Why does a senile old codger like Barry Davies still have a job when he can't tell who any of the players are and in desperation complains about Portuguese TV replays?
• How is Joe Royle an "expert summariser" when he thinks Paul Gerrard and Jamie Redknapp are playing for England?

Secure as your Palm

You can now install Pretty Good Protection on your Palm OS PDA to protect that data you shouldn't be carrying around on it. PGP encrypts information to prevent your data being hacked. I'll give it a try and let you know how it works out...

Capital approach to online hate

The growing problem of xenophobic material being disseminated online, either through email or through websites, has engendered two quite different approaches to tackling the problem according to The Register. While the EU aims to make online publishing of racist material illegal -- this would be in line with German and French bans on Holocaust denial -- the U.S. attitude is rather different: "Rather than fear the purveyors of hate, let us confront them in the marketplace of free ideas." It is true to say that legislation may not prevent racists making use of the web, but this kind of capitalist approach has never worked either. The web should not be reduced to a market and racism is not a vertical. It seems that some people will view everything in terms of money and power and call it freedom, while disenfranchising those who want to make the web an inclusive and informed community.

911 over 17

Fahrenheit 9/11 has been given an R (restricted) rating by the Motion Picture Association of America, despite Michael Moore's assertion that kids of 15 and 16 who could be sent to Iraq in the near future had a right to see what was happening there.
Meanwhile the group Move America Forward, a group "tired of the constant stream of America-bashing" has launched a stop Michael Moore campaign trying to put pressure on the film's distributors. They want to make sure Americans hear the "good news". And there was me thinking that was what Fox was for.

Exemplary conduct

Home Secretary David Blunkett tells us he's still determined to "nail" Gary Mann. Mann was sentenced to two years in Portugal for recent hooliganism, but his deportation order failed to comply with international treaties and so he had to be released on his arrival in the U.K. Given that Mann's conviction remains subject to appeal and that having the Home Secretary announce to national media that he wants to punish Mann irrespective of the terms under which he was deported, Blunkett's comments are rash and tiresome, though not out of character. He panders to the populist lock 'em up agenda without any consideration for the legal implications.
While everyone wants to see hooligans convicted, it's obvious that this has to be done properly. Blunkett's bandwagonesque sticking his oar in makes him unfit to oversee prisoners' appeals and policing methods. A little more humility and a lot more care is required: if communication between the U.K. and Portuguese legal systems had been properly managed, Mann would already be "nailed".

Euroverrated!

Most over-rated players at Euro 2004

1. van der Meyde - whinging and unproductive.
2. Totti - even before his spat, so overhyped.
3. Trézéguet - no movement off the ball.
4. Steven Gerrard - real drive, but gives the ball away so often...
5. Paulo Ferreira - £13m for a full-back who gifts goals to the Greeks!

Those who have the inexplicable confidence of their manager:

1. James - Paul Robinson didn't have a great season but is still a better keeper.
2. Desailly - could be replaced by Gallas, Silvestre, Boumsong, Mexès...
3. van Bronckhorst - don't the Dutch have a left-back who can run and tackle?
4. Raul Bravo - another left back who can't defend.

Offside tactics

If there are any of you who have read more than couple of postings to this blog, you may have detected a tinge of antipathy towards the Dutch style of play at Euro 2004. They were a little more fluid (but just as tetchy) against the Czechs with Arjen Robben and Clarence Seedorf key factors in their improvement. Yet Dick Advocaat's short-sightedness manifested itself after an hour when he withdrew Robben for the defensive midfielder Bosvelt. The Czechs had already taken off their right back, Grygera, so why take off your left winger? The Czechs no longer needed to defend that flank and the substitute, Smicer, went on to score the winner.
Van Nistelrooy's goal was shambolic. He was about ten yards offside in the middle of the penalty area when the ball was played to an onside Robben on the wing. All he had to do was cross the ball for an unmarked van Nistelrooy to score. If that wasn't in an active area then every team in the world will leave one centre forward on the edge of the six-yard box and simply pass to wingers. It's a crass and ill-conceived rule: there is no benefit to football in making scoring easier.

Express Yourself!

When Gaultier designed the pointy bra for Madonna to express herself, did he mean this?

Iraq in $

Now that the 9/11 commission has found "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States", it's worth looking again at how contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry were awarded; U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney was in charge. Cheney had been managing director of a company called Halliburton from October 1995 to August 2000.
In November 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon secretly asked Halliburton to plan for reconstruction of Iraq's oil supply, paying the company $1.9 million for the study. Five months later, the Pentagon chose a subsidiary of Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) to carry out the plan that the parent company had defined. The work was awarded under a discretionary process so there was no invitation to tender; an email showed this was sanctioned by Cheney. Halliburton's stock rose from its then value of $71.3 million to $2.4 billion within nine months: more than thirty fold.
In addition, Halliburton won a further $1.2 billion tender for work in Iraq despite being under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting irregularities during Cheney's directorship.
Even though Iraq was not implicated in attacks against the U.S., Cheney had already planned to kill thousands – not just Iraqis but Americans too – and make a profit out of it. And lest we forget, our government sanctioned this too.

Why English fans drink beer

Beer wouldn't have made Swiss match less tedious, but might have made it seem shorter. Beer-drinking can be the only reason why the media is so positive about the result. It was only when Hargreaves came on that there was any real drive. Despite Paul Scholes' refusal to defend, this was an good result for England to take into the final group match.
France performed below par again and Desailly must surely now be dropped; Gallas should be in the centre with Sagnol (who can actually cross the ball) at right back. The team needs to allow Henry to drop deep and wide, and Trézéguet belongs on the most over-rated players list to appear shortly.

More patent palavers

This time it's Oracle who've filed an all-encompassing patent in the U.S. for a "self service system for web site publishing", or web content management system as it's otherwise known:

A web site creation and maintenance system permits distributed control and centralized management of a web site. [...] The web site system permits a site administrator to construct the overall structure, design and style of the web site. [...] The web site system permits content for the web site to originate from multiple content contributors. The publication of content is controlled by content owners. [...] The user, through use of only a web browser running on the user computer, transmits the parameter to the web site database. In response, the web site is updated at the database in accordance with the parameter.

Does this mean that Vignette, Documentum, Interwoven et al. are going to have to pay Oracle royalties for all the licenses they've sold?

Done Loading

Having previously referred to Microsoft's attempts to patent the double-click and to do lists, the British Technology Group (BTG) are getting in on the act with a patent on downloads, including virus fixes and product enhancements. BTG are apparently looking to get companies like Microsoft to pay royalties.

Patently monopolistic

For people in any doubt as to why Microsoft are so despised, it's because they've got to where they are by shafting everyone else as hard as possible.
The company's latest wheeze is to secure worldwide patents for as wide-ranging intellectual property as they can get away with. This now includes double-clicking and electronic to do lists. Any other company developing software to make use of this functionality will do so under Microsoft licence. This is compounded by governments supporting this kind of practice, most notably the Irish who recently renegotiated European patent law to allow Microsoft to get away with this short of nonsense.
The open source community's distrust is not misplaced.

The future's bright, but it's not orange

We've heard a lot about the next generation of Dutch superstars -- van der Vaart, Snejder, Robben, etc. -- but on their showing last night it was the Germans who can look forward with greater confidence. The full-backs Friedrich and Lahm were particularly impressive, as was the centre-forward Kuranyi. This may be a tournament too early for them however.
Are the Dutch the most over-rated team in Europe? Zenden can't cross the ball, van der Meyde kicks people but can't hack being kicked, Davids is past it, none of the defenders can tackle... their style of play is really poor.
Who do we like so far: still the same as before the tournament: France, Czech Republic, Denmark. Possibly England if Robinson is picked and plays well.

Bus Why-Fi

While we wonder why German bendy buses become combustible on London's streets, Paris buses are being kitted out with Wi-Fi. Parisians don't have Oyster cards however. These are real gadgets: wave them at a screen and they credit or debit your account. Finally we see some innovation in our transport system and you don't need a PDA to use one.

Euro 2004

It's worth noting that while Kilroy claims 16% of the vote gives him a mandate to "wreck" the European parliament, the Lib Dems polled 15% of the vote on a pro-Euro, pro-integration slate. Could the UK be less anti-European than the Express newspapers would have us believe?
I'm going to let the whole UKIP thing go now.

What Flash was made for?

When you don't have rights to reproduce video replays on the net,
seems you can always use Macromedia Flash. This is a pretty wicked application, with the ability to view the action from all angles.

Under-Channelled Aggression

The Eurostar offered another cliché on my dual nationality. I'm embarrassed when the French vote Front national, but twenty minutes out of Paris and the train bar was full of Englishmen too pissed to even stand. You simply never see the French like that; in fact they find it as incomprehensible as it is shameful. My disdain was compounded by idiot posh English who understood neither French nor football shouting out what they thought was going on in the England vs. France match. You'd have thought that if they were going to listen to French radio commentary they'd at least have found out the French word for goal.

Hypocynical

So Fernando Couto has 100 caps but still can't tackle. A great performance from the Greeks but Portugal's golden generation seems a little leaden.

La plume de ma tante cordiale

I'm getting excited now... Sunday's match looms large and I'm pretty sure that I'll be supporting both teams. The win is more important to France, who need a boost after the World Cup and are likely to find Croatia tougher opponents than England will. The main thing is that both teams qualify from the group and when one loses, it's in a blaze of glory and not hooliganism.
As an addendum, I drew Croatia in the company sweepstakes so now have three teams to shout for in the group.

Pop your bubble!

Try downloading this to your PC and setting it as your background. It's kind of de-stressing...

They KIP

While Max Clifford and Richard Desmond shepherd the ovine for the European elections, we note that Kilroy won't even attend parliament if elected and Joan Collins has never voted.... let's hope UKIP supporters (rascists who won't admit to being rascists) are equally committed on June 10th.

Where did I put that carrot?

I've had four separate people I manage tell me this week (and it's still Wednesday) that I've been cracking the whip. But in a meeting this morning my bosses told me that I need to crack it some more.
Fair enough, as I'm not averse to driving people hard, but I need to give them a bit of a positive incentive too. Who's going to provide me with that? Meanwhile I will revert to my sjambok.

Piers Blair

Piers Morgan, when pressed whether photos of British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were authentic, declared that they were an accurate representation of real events. Compare now with Tony Blair's statement that Saddam Hussein was "someone who still retained complete determination to pursure WMD business; I would be very surprised if that turned out to be wrong". And he could pursue that determination within 45 minutes.

Communications Skills

I'm sure it's unprofessional, but I thought I'd share this email from a competitor company who deal in communications and process (this is the complete mail):

For info [Dave] is off on leave for next few weeks, [Gary] is taking over as PM here.
Please ensure all communiciation is fed via [Gary] re the outstanding work.
Re Majordomo changes, we note you have implemented some or all of there?
Please laise to advise which if not all. (Had anticipated some liaison here beforehand..)
We are planning to conduct tests and validation of MD changes before commencing andy repete security pen.tests, which may render the current timescales as difficult to achieve.

Ie Friday meeting

RSVP

So farewell Ronald Reagan

You supported the Taliban in Afghanistan by giving them arms for heroin; you supported the Iraqi state with chemical weapons technology to use against the Iranians; you sanctioned Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip; you supported coups against democratic governments in Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Angola. But you're best remembered for Reaganomics and playing opposite a chimp.

Trans-Pennine Urban Myths

So why did Cantona leave Leeds for Man U? Rumours of an affair with Lee Chapman's wife Leslie Ash have been greatly exaggerated. Perhaps Cantona was having an affair with Chapman himself?

UKIP

Don't get me started on this lot: racists and fascists by another acronym. A vote for them is tantamount to a vote for the BNP or Front national. Close the borders! Ban all asylum seekers! Sever links with the EU! Will they have a mandate to annexe the Sudetenland?

PET hates in the pea-souper.

I have a tumour the size of a pea whose behaviour is inscrutable. It's too small for x-rays or ultrasounds, or even for CT scans. It doesn't secrete hormone markers required for a labelled somastatin or octreotide scan; so only Positron Emission Tomography can penetrate the fog surrounding my pancreas. But even these PET scans struggle with my cancer.
Tumour and technology are lurking in and around my body; which one will jump out first and surprise the other?

Palm war(e) on terror

Most Wanted Terrorists Pocket Directory Database; just in case you're wandering around Finsbury Park and you're not sure whether to report the man with the hook...