This NYT story is an example, I think, of the way one’s mental models control one’s perception. The report deals with a proposed U.S. policy of providing the Frontier Corps, the paramilitary police of the North-West Frontier Province, with aid directly rather than via the Pakistani military. This is one thing. It is not an…
Read More Pakistan, NOIA, and a rebel data centreDan Hardie keeps getting desperate e-mail from stranded Iraqi employees of the British Army. I haven’t yet, but I do regularly get people on NewSkies satellite-Internet links searching for information on how to apply for asylum. Expect dramatic news from him tomorrow; you’ll need to write to them. Apparently David Miliband doesn’t think the matter…
Read More Slower and slowerRight, I’ve got this honking great MySQL dump file, and I’d like to use the data in it without needing a MySQL db server; so I thought I’d turn it into a SQLite db, as python has native sqlite3 support. Various suggestions are on offer around the web; SQLiteBrowser, for example, claims to import and…
Read More Python and CSV; know your limitsThe Biggest Data Fart In The World Ever (BDFITWE) just keeps on getting better/worse. Check this out: Sir John Bourn, the outgoing comptroller and auditor general, told a secret session of the public accounts committee that a senior business manager at Revenue & Customs had authorised the information to be released in its full form.…
Read More That’s not what software-as-a-service is meant to mean!So now we know; looks like the Glock 17 caucus got a clean sweep of the “independent” MPA members. BBC: The MPA chairman, Len Duvall, said the watchdog body risked bringing itself into disrepute by the public and vitriolic attacks on Sir Ian. I think I’m going to vomit. Excuse me, will you? Anyway, the…
Read More 15-7It’s usually the Home Office that leads the way in the British government’s eternal Olympics of stupidity; but now and again, someone is inspired to go that bit further, to be a tiger, to raise the bar. Having built a monster centralised database of every last child in the UK, the Revenue burned it to…
Read More ID Cards will make us safe from identity theftThe Register has been having fun with a script that removes all mention of the word “iPhone” from webpages; a necessary function these days. Better, they developed it to work on an iPhone; but just check out the code. // JavaScript here //This one thinks it’s an object var myRequest = new XMLHttpRequest(); //This is…
Read More ConciseSun Microsystems is building a data centre in an abandoned Japanese coal mine using 30 of their data-centre-in-a-shipping-container boxes. Of course, the ostensible reason is that it’s always 15 degrees down there, so they expect to save 50 per cent of the electricity requirement, and further it’s as secure as you like. But seriously, this…
Read More Muhahhahaaaa!Everyone was all over this NYT story about those vanishing cargoes of guns in Iraq. It’s nothing new if you’ve been reading this blog; we’ve been concerned about this ever since 2005. And, unlike Spencer Ackerman, we’ve got the whole supply chain; those guns didn’t come on no C-17, Spence, but on JLI and Aerocom…
Read More Belated Bad Logistics Blogging