Whether or not you support the smoking ban that is about to come into force in England, you cannot argue that the policy was fully debated and discussed over an extended period by those institutions in the country we trust with the business of setting laws. A legal challenge is not, therefore, something which I [...]
I hate mornings, have never had one as bas Michael Moylan from Florida. Here was his morning: Woke up with terrible headache – suspected wife of hitting him by mistake in the night. Headache so bad he went to hospital. Had bullet removed. Began to suspect that wife tried to shoot him as he slept. [...]
I watched the transfer of power in the company of a few friends. It was quite clear that the journalists had little to say, and were trying to play up what was in the event quite a down-beat occasion. One BBC commentator, tasked with providing commentary as the car transporting Brown from the Palace to [...]
For a little over an hour today, the United Kingdom was governed by Her Majesty and the Civil Service. I think it went very smoothly indeed. I hear from the Today Programme that President Bush thinks that History will judge Blair kindly. Well it is possible, I suppose. Though I know some of the people [...]
I have written before about (what seem to me obvious) dangers inherent in putting personal or commercial information online. Here are some concrete examples: 1. Whether by design or incompetence, Facebook reveals more information to strangers than you think. 2. Your remotely stored documents may be liable to subpoena without your knowledge. The moral of [...]
For some inexplicable reason Google Earth’s maps of Oxford have been of terribly low-quality for years – so poor that one could not make out even where the roads were, let alone particular buildings. All that seems to have changed – someone has clearly flown over Oxford on a sunny day taking some nice pictures. [...]
Senior French politicians may not use the BlackBerry. We have become very used to storing data in what Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others refer to as “the cloud“. Data stored ‘somewhere on the internet’ – on servers managed by someone else – is terribly convenient. We can access what we need, from wherever we [...]
Steve Jobs makes at least two major presentations each year, one in January and one in June. I’ve written about the January 2007 announcements before. The June ones (made on Monday) seem to have been more an effort in spin than an announcement of new technology. He made much of the fact that games are [...]
There has been considerable astonishment at Apple’s announcement of a version of their web-browser that will run on windows. After all, despite what Apple claims, Safari does not have greatest reputation even among OS X users, and it is not as if Windows users do not have a wide choice of browsers already. All of [...]
This is a worrying tale. But then, as I’m always telling my students, check the footnotes!