The 21 Steps by Charles Cumming is a short story which owes something to John Buchan told via an interface using Google Maps which allows you to follow the protagonist through his adventure.
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Month: March 2008
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The Guardian: Experts cast a wary eye over new online payment systems
Two new systems claim to make it easier and safer to shop online, by letting you pay for goods directly from your bank account without having to hand over card details. But experts are warning consumers not to be “lulled into a false sense of security”.
By acting as middlemen in the transaction these systems provide security by ensuring that credit card details are not passed to the retailer however if the banks don’t allow access to their back office systems (and why would they) then these two new systems rely upon users installing software on their computers to handle the transaction details.
But by making it necessary to install software the systems will introduce a vector of attack by criminals who will use phishing techniques and introduce trojans to steal users financial details.
Arman Noory’s “The War on Terror” is a short film that he created for his senior-year (Canadian) Politics class and it includes amongst other pieces of video safe-for-work scenes of a 1980s porn video. [via]
Kid Does His War on Terror School Project using Porn (Clean) from Arman Noory on Vimeo.
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Which is the greatest TV drama ever?
Which is the greater televison series of Deadwood, The Sopranos and The Wire?
The House Next Door hosts a roundtable audio discussion of this question featuring Andrew Johnston (Time Out New York), Alan Sepinwall (The Star-Ledger, What’s Alan Watching) and Matt Zoller Seitz (The New York Times). Needless to say there be spoilers there.
My personal pick would be The Wire as I think Deadwood never got the resolution I felt was necessary it deserved a fourth season and though I think The Sopranos was a fine show it stopped being a must see show around about the fourth season.
They touch upon the effect that starring in such shows will have upon the actors in them and it occurred to me with some dismay that these shows are probably going to be the best thing that they will ever work on. The more seasoned actors like Ian McShane will be able to appreciate this I think but it will be a bit of a comedown for the younger actors for whom this might have been there first big job.
Tags: Deadwood, The Sopranos, The Wire, TV
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Iraq five years on: Epic Fail
British people deceived on entering the war and deceived about our withdrawal.
We have left a mess of Basra and Southern Iraq.
Iran and disparate militias have control basically, and former translators are being abducted and killed.
Violence is down in Baghdad but the new Iraqi parliament is a failing system and many MPs having suffered threats and attempts on their lives are not attending parliament and due to sectarian division very little agreement can be reached on any legislation.
Former enemies are being paid to secure their own neighbourhoods, the insurgents have been given territory.
The US is effectively governing Iraq through Concerned Local Citizens (CLC) militias
Numbers of Al Qaeda will dwindle when the US pulls out as the locals get reabsorbed into civil society or join militia and foreigner will return home.
The Kurdish north has become a self governing autonomous region. Iraq has broken up.
Cheney again links Iraq invasion to 9/11 attacks as bombing victims are buried
“The improvement may be due at least in part to the “surge”, the increase in US troops”.
The downturn in violence has nothing to do with the surge. The downturn in violence is due to;
– the ongoing cease-fire with Muqtada, a cease-fire that he recently extended;
– most of the internecine fighting is over with and the Shias and Shiites now live within their own ghettoes and will not travel outside them. Baghdad today is a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
– Americans paying and arming those they were fighting a few months ago. The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the US, al Qa’ida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.
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Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country, but the media carries on and reprints Bush’s mendacious claims of victory and a noble cause without even blushing.
The Guardian: There must be a reckoning for this day of infamy
Uneven thriller that is largely intelligent and well written but is let down by being afflicted with massive illogical plot holes.
It is surprisingly well written in regard to creating the triangle of betrayal between cop Enrique, terrorist Veronica and Javier the assassin. But a double for the president who is willing to stand in to get shot! That the Secret Service would use that as a means of keeping the president safe when they have just received confirmation that it’s a real threat is not credible.
Interestingly for a Hollywood film made post 9/11 it shows the terrorists to be very competent and the secret service to be incompetent other than the near superheroic Dennis Quaid as Thomas Burke.
In the end the plot is foiled more by luck than anything.
The BBC has over the past several days been running a daily series of short dramas based on the true events leading up to the war in Iraq. The series is titled Ten Days to War and the episodes can be seen online via that link although as it uses the iPlayer interface it will be restricted to the UK only.
One episode however has been put up on YouTube by the BBC, Why this rush?
A diplomatic battle raging at the UN where the British and Americans are intensely lobbying for a second resolution that will authorise war. They are met by fierce hostility and resistance by countries who want to give the weapons inspectors more time in Iraq.
Patrick Malahide and Tom Conti feature in this story of a diplomatic poker game where the fate of the UN itself is at stake. Director David Belton.
Another excellent episode was These Things Are Always Chaos which stars Stephen Rea as General Tim Cross, the man charged with the mission of Reconstruction of Iraq after the war.
Put young children on DNA list, urge police
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.
‘If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large,’ said Pugh. ‘You could argue the younger the better. Criminologists say some people will grow out of crime; others won’t. We have to find who are possibly going to be the biggest threat to society.’
Unproven science and surely any children that exhibit such behaviour should be helped in some way to prevent them from becoming criminals in later life rather than waiting until they commit crimes and then banging them up because they’re in some database.