alecm
alecm
@alecm@alecmuffett.com
7,980 posts
302 followers
  • Great – now I’m worried that #CCDP / #CDB is going to get horse-traded against #Leveson …

    … but in which direction I have no idea. The Lib Dems might withdraw their support for government plans to give the police new powers to monitor email and internet use, the BBC has learned. Party sources say leader Nick Clegg is ready to use a parliamentary report, due out next week, to oppose the…

  • BBC News – New York City celebrates day without violent crime / why is London not partying?

    New York record low murder rate in a “city of 8 million people”: 366 (to date) Aggressive prevention tactics Despite the fall in homicides, statistics point to a 3% overall rise in crime. There has also been a 9% increase in larceny, which police blame on a surge in smartphone thefts. But killings are now…

  • Visiting Chez Gravier

    With Gilles, Nicole et famille; plus Moukie the next-door cat. Plus: a Swiss two-cheese fondue – bread dipped in wine or kirsch before the cheese; and hot tubs, Carrom, the discovery that blancmange is almost unknown in France, the Larousse Encyclopaedia of 1923, ‘Arry Potter, princesses, pink and green soup and model helicopters. Epic, and…

  • Visiting Geneva

    Hidden costs of Swiss watches … first you have to breed. Also: spot the cheapskate romantics with the cable tie.

  • Making an impact…

  • Relative Milibands on Twitter

    You can’t make this shit up – I found this a few days ago when searching Twitter having seen Ed at Gatwick Airport:

  • Doesn’t anyone else find it odd that the Met can describe covert operation sex as “almost inevitable”? It’s not the sex aspect…

    It’s not the sex aspect, it’s the number of undercover police operations which make me wonder that it is possible to bandy terms like “inevitable”. Met police boss: Covert relations ‘almost inevitable’ Bernard Hogan-Howe said such relations should not form the strategy Some undercover police will “almost inevitably” have sexual relationships with members of groups…

  • Using Google Image Search to prick and deflate the #DailyMail’s obsession with Diana / Kate stories

    Step 1: Find weird Daily Mail Kate looks just like Diana story: (link) Step 2: Note the weird selective image cropping and fabric drape. Step 3: Note the weirder framing text: But it was the combination of the new haircut and the retro silk green dress that brought to mind a more significant likeness: that…

  • Were you hacking on X.25 JANET prior to the introduction of the Computer Misuse Act 1990?

    There was a big and friendly (and incestuous) scene back in the 80s; we had public access accounts – and some less-than-legitimate ones, too – and hung out on bulletin boards, muds (CALL 00004960000001, anyone?) and occasional unguarded PSS gateways <cough>. So gradually I’ve been building up a list of who-was-who; funniest one was a…

  • They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside | Danger Room | Wired.com

    HT @adriana872 We know the rules and statistics of English: which words go together, which sounds the language employs, and which pairs of letters appear most often. (Q is usually followed by a u, for example, and “quiet” is rarely followed by “bulldozer.”) There are only so many translation schemes that will work with these…

  • AberMUD in 1989

    A colleague just questioned what the earliest citation you could find for yourself on the extant net, is. I am not certain that this is the oldest, but it is pretty old – and it’s amusing to see what no longer gets recognised as an e-mail address and so obscured: Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!ginosko!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple! brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!usc!skat.usc.edu!acliu From: ac…@skat.usc.edu (Alejandro…

  • Moukie

    Click to embiggen.