(no subject)
1) Last Saturday's Guardian magazine had a piece on The World's Worst Hacker aka Gary McKinnon, the chap US brass want to put behind bars for 70 years for emulating Matthew Broderick in War Games. Mr McKinnon went scooping behind US army computers because he was looking for evidence of UFO cover-ups, no less, and more or less convinced himself he had found it when he came across a list of "non-terrestrial officers". Now to my unsuspicious mind, non-terrestrial officers means Air Force and Navy ones, but instead Mr McKinnon believed those were on board a secret US spaceship. Adds Mr McKinnon: "I was smoking a lot of dope at the time".
But wait, this is not the really funny bit yet. The really funny bit is this. While fighting off extradition, he was offered a deal by the US Justice Department, and instead of taking it he tried to blackmail them. About their secret spaceships. Adds Mr McKinnon: "I had very little evidence. It's not a very good bargaining chip at all, really, is it?". No Gary, it wasn't.
2) Meanwhile in the much saner world of politics, Paris' mayor Bertrand Delanoé is accusing London - with exquisite timing - of lobbying to get the 2012 Olympics, and even of corruption. Er. Bertrand, Bertrand, Bertrand. Are you telling us that you didn't even try to bribe IOC members yourself? Dude, no wonder you lost. You must have offended them!
3) And finally, French utility group EDF (that's Electricité de France), about to be privatised, is changing its logo! Hurrah! Naturally that cost squillions of pounds, but not in vain, because from now on the group will spell itself eDF! With a small 'e', to look modern like eBay. Even though E stand for 'Electricité' and d for 'de'. When I read of well-educated, very well paid grown-ups in charge of major industrial resources coming up with crap like this, I feel like curling up under my desk and sucking my thumb.
But wait, this is not the really funny bit yet. The really funny bit is this. While fighting off extradition, he was offered a deal by the US Justice Department, and instead of taking it he tried to blackmail them. About their secret spaceships. Adds Mr McKinnon: "I had very little evidence. It's not a very good bargaining chip at all, really, is it?". No Gary, it wasn't.
2) Meanwhile in the much saner world of politics, Paris' mayor Bertrand Delanoé is accusing London - with exquisite timing - of lobbying to get the 2012 Olympics, and even of corruption. Er. Bertrand, Bertrand, Bertrand. Are you telling us that you didn't even try to bribe IOC members yourself? Dude, no wonder you lost. You must have offended them!
3) And finally, French utility group EDF (that's Electricité de France), about to be privatised, is changing its logo! Hurrah! Naturally that cost squillions of pounds, but not in vain, because from now on the group will spell itself eDF! With a small 'e', to look modern like eBay. Even though E stand for 'Electricité' and d for 'de'. When I read of well-educated, very well paid grown-ups in charge of major industrial resources coming up with crap like this, I feel like curling up under my desk and sucking my thumb.