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Looks like the US is playing hardball and refusing to compromise with the Islamists in Iraq. All to the good, I suspect. The best chance for a reasonable long term political settlement in Iraq will come when Moqtada al-Sadr and as many of his supporters as possible are dead. Getting there will require resolve in the ongoing attrition battle but if the casualty numbers are even close to accurate, then things are going as well as can be reasonably expected in such a grim business. August 14th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 … yet another blog party at Samizdata.net HQ… 
There are so many new bloggers ‘on the party circuit’ now that we have to rotate our invitation lists. So if you did not get an invitation, we (probably) still love you… maybe next time. August 13th, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I use both a PC and a Mac (OS X 10.3.4) and I was wondering… is there any way to make the Mac not use that ghastly bugfest called Safari as the default browser? August 13th, 2004 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Jackie: “Do you ever make cakes for people?” (Overheard at the Big Blog Company ‘open day seminar’ held this evening Samizdata.net HQ) August 11th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have always regardless the Olympics with indifference at best (I am not a great sports fan) but clearly the people organising the games in Athens are completely demented.
These people would be funny if they were not so self-important. And from a PR point of view: message to the folks sponsoring the Olympic… rule number one is do not piss off your prospective customers. Morons. And whilst on the subject of sporting madness, what I cannot understand is why the furore over well known lothario Sven-Goran Eriksson’s love life? So he has some hanky panky with a kiss-and-tell money grubber who happens to be female employee of the Football Association… so what? The guy is the coach of the England football team: he is in the sports business which means reasonable expectations of probity are surely somewhere between rock stars in hotel rooms and sailors on shore leave. If there is any scandal here it is that Sven’s standards seem to be slipping: at the risk of being ungallant, ‘beauty’ Faria Alam is not quite of the same ‘calibre’ as Italian lawyer Nancy Dell’Olio or Ulrika Jonnson. links via AdRants and the Big Blog Company August 10th, 2004 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Radio Userland is more popular with tech bloggers. radio.userland.com August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Expression Engine is a powerful content management system and is particularly suitable for ‘high end’ group blogs that are full featured and expect heavy traffic. www.expressionengine.com August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
noun. A spambot is online code which automatically generates larg numbers of unwanted messages and directs them at members of the public. Within the context of blogging, it is code which enters unsolicited comment spam. A spambot can enter dozens or even hundreds of unwanted spams in a matter of minutes into the comments of an unprotected blog August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
technical A Turing Test is a test which determines if the party on the other end of a remote communication is a human or a computer program (also known as a ‘Captcha‘ (qv)). This is germane to blogging because many comment sections on blogs use non-machine readable systems prevent spambots from entering comment spam. August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
noun. ‘Spam’ is unsolicited online messages generally of a commercial nature, usually delivered as e-mail (i.e. virtual junk mail). Comment spam however is when someone posts off-topic commercial remarks with links in a blog’s comment section. Some comment spam is overt but just as often it takes the form of innocuous remarks such as “I agree with your article!” or “Hey, great site!” in a blog’s comment section: the spammer’s ‘payload’ being in the personal details link, which takes you to a dubious (often pornographic) site. One reason comment spam is a major problem is that if readers visit the spammer’s link(s), their site often tries to install browser hijackers, tracking cookies or other adware/malware on the duped reader’s computer. Most comment spam is entered by spambots rather than actually people. Increasingly blogs are using technical means such as Turing tests, pre-publish moderation or registration in order to prevent spambots from polluting their comments sections with Viagra ads, online pharmacy scams and links to Russian porn sites. August 9th, 2004 | Comments are closed
The fighting in Iraq has flared up again and most of the people getting killed appear to be Islamists, which is just fine by me. I cannot but wonder if the Islamists thought that if they just kept on slugging away, the Brits and US would just fold up and slink off, leaving them to impose an theocratic ‘paradise’ on Iraq. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr is offering a return to a truce is both a good sign and an excellent reason to do nothing of the sort but rather escalate efforts to kill him and his supporters. I suspect that is indeed what is going to happens and moreover I think that the US and UK governments will stay the course regardless of who wins the elections in the USA. Seeing Iraq ‘go Islamic’ would be too much even for the dismal Kerry to want to have happen on his watch. Likewise for the Tory party in Britain, should they somehow miraculously contrive to defeat Blair at some point in the future. Come to think of it, that is yet another reason not to bother voting next time: the hard decisions have already been made and the course is now set. The politics become even easier if another Al-Qaeda ‘leaker’ like September 11th gets through on either side of the North Atlantic. The equally dismal Bush already did the heavy lifting in Afghanistan and Iraq and now it is just a case of taking on targets of opportunity. As for the Brits, I doubt any future Tory government would be any better or worse regarding the on-going hollowing out of Britain’s fading military capabilities, so no real choices are on offer there either. The West, well the Anglosphere bits at least, will continue to oppose Islamists like Al-Qaeda for the foreseeable future regardless of the supine predilections of the Guardian, Independent and New York Times reading classes and it does not much matter whose face is on the portraits in the US and UK embassies. August 6th, 2004 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Gibraltar remains a British colony to the overwhelming relief of its 27,833 inhabitants. Yet they are well aware that the reason Geoff Hoon, Britain’s dismal defence minister, yesterday attended the 300th anniversary of Britain’s capture of The Rock has little to do with any great enthusiasm for the people on The Rock or a deep commitment for retaining Gibraltar, but rather a disinclination to ‘make nice’ with Spain due to its policies regarding Islamic terrorism and Iraq. In fact members of both the ‘tranzi left’ and ‘paleo right’ see Gibraltar as a weird anachronism and despite those groups fetishising their minor differences, both have a shared collectivist meta-context and think nothing of what the inhabitants of The Rock wish for themselves. If the Gibraltarians were wise, they would let it be known that they are prepared to go all the way and exercise a ‘dooms day’ option of Unilateral Declaration of Independence if the political class in Britain ever decide to ‘give’ Gibraltar away: the battalion sized Gibraltar Regiment should simply take up arms with whoever will rally to the red and white flag, and man their border with bayonets fixed. Of course it is unlikely a militia army in Gibraltar could hold off a serious military move by Spain, though success against the odds is not without precedent, but would Spain actually be prepared to fight for 27,833 people who simply do not want to be Spanish? I realise that is indeed what the Spanish state is doing in the Basque parts of Spain but this is a rather different proposition and unlike in the Basque country, there is no friendly constituency in Gibraltar who sees Spanish sovereignty as in any way tolerable. A Spanish takeover would be nothing less that a colonial occupation of an unwilling population. People have to be prepared to literally fight for the things they value and if the people of Gibraltar made it clear that in the final analysis they would be willing to do exactly that, perhaps the chattering classes in both Spain and August 5th, 2004 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
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