hintofsarcasm » uk

How the leak of diplomatic cables will free us (but not really)

Nathan — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:50:28 +0000

At the time of writing, Wikileaks has released 842 of the 251,287 US diplomatic cables that it has come into possession of by way of a leak from within the US Army.

So far it has been revealed that;

None of the governments involved in the conflict in Afghanistan are confident that the war can be won against the Taliban or that it can be turned into a viable democracy
Both the current and previous US Secretary’s of State have authorised “spying” on UN officials, including the Secretary-General.

These are just two points, there have been hundreds more and still there will be hundreds of thousands more revalations.

Of course, because the Americans are so involved in almost every country in the world, these cables also include quotes from prominent figures within these countries. Such as a William Hague, now First Secretary of State in our own United Kingdom, Ali Abdullah Saleh, President of Yemen and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabi, to name but a few.

What all of this means is that over the course of the amount of time it takes to release all of these cables (months? years?) we will slowly start to see how our governments really operate and what they really think, or at least, what they have said to the Americans and/or what the Americans perceive.

Of course, we all know that governments operate in secrecy from the electorate and what they say is not always what gets done or what they really think, but for the first time we can really get a broad view of what has been going on – where it concerned the United States at least.

What we won’t see is very much insight into domestic policy; I doubt that the US Ambassador wrote back to Washington concerning student top-up fees for example. What we will see is how they actually are concerned with international policy and action – for example how it is now becoming apparent that there have been secret US air strikes in Yemen – ordered by the Yemeni government.

We will start to see a different side to the US and other worldwide governments, one that we know is true and is not just “conspiracy theory”, and we should be thankful for that.

Having said that, I can see some potentially horrendously damaging cables still to come out; otherwise why is Hilary Clinton so worked up about the whole thing? I believe that we’ll see a lot of cables that conflict directly with US foreign policy and will cause the Obama administration to have to answer some very awkward questions at a very critical time.

Of course, there will always be things that we will not know, that is going on in government and affects us, but it has been chosen that it is to be kept from us, but at least from this we can get a clearer insight to guide us in the right direction in the future.

What does recession look like?

Nathan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:09:58 +0000

Now that the UK is officially in a recession, what is interesting to see is how news organisations want us to visualise economic slowdown.

When the Great Depression is mentioned, a lot of us would pictureÂ people walking around, in sepia, with mouth and browsÂ arced downwards,Â like a sad clown. But where did this image come from? Television, most likely.

ThoughÂ this isn’t a new piece of imagery, call me crazy, butÂ this isÂ how I’ve always pictured it.Â AnÂ episode of the SimpsonsÂ is one example that I can remember where this has been brought to screen, in the scene an ancestor ofÂ Moe Syzlack comments “Oh, jeez, there’sÂ always a line”, when attempting to commit suicide from the top of a skyscraperÂ in 1929 and is greeted by a long line of other jumpers, obviouslyÂ a veryÂ popular pastime when Wall Street crashed.

Today the image used by most major news outlets is the ‘its raining and here are some shops that have closed down, how depressing.’ scene. In this image there is usually 1, but no more than 3 people in the shot. None look interested in shopping in the least. Mostly they are shot speeding past the camera, blur lines and all,Â representative of an entire populous that just doesn’t have the money to buy.

The BBC think that recession is best represented by a Hasidic Jew and a poorly dressed fat woman who hasn’t had theÂ spare money to go to a hair salon in the lastÂ 4 quarters, quite obviouslyÂ representing the length of time that UK growth has been negative and subsequentlyÂ how longÂ it has taken to get the official ‘recession’ stamp.

For quite how long growth will continue to fall, I don’t think anybody knows, but what is forÂ sure isÂ that while we’re in this state there will be a lot more images and depictions of life as it changes significantly. The boom and bust policies of governments and corporations have once again showed us its downside and we’re left kicking ourselves for being so naÃ¯ve as to think that our prosperity would never end.

Where once credit was only an online application away, givingÂ our societyÂ the illusion that we wereÂ flush with cash to spend on luxury cars, binge-drinking and all-inclusive Carribean holidays, many are having to learn new skills in penny-pinching, seeking out deals and shopping with thought. Perhaps then not all is bad? Responsibility being given back toÂ individuals and familiesÂ for their actions and spending is a way of giving back some free andÂ constructiveÂ thought, previously clouded by credit lines that were tantamount to beingÂ unlimited?

Case study: Pineapple Boudoir [Infrastructure]

Nathan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:09:50 +0000

Pineapple Boudoir is a startup that sells lingerie, candles, sex toys and other products, aimed largely at women.

The first challenge was to design an infrastructure to support the web-application and cart.
Having previous experience with Windows and the .NET environment we decided to follow this route, based on Windows Server 2003 with IIS 6.0Ã‚Â and Microsoft SQL Server 2005. At launch we are running SQL and IIS on this single server, although we intend to run SQL on a separate server in the near future, as growth should warrant.

The server is a Dell PowerEdge with 2Gb RAMÃ‚Â and an Intel Itanium processor.Ã‚Â It’s racked at BlueSquare 2 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, a brand new facility that went live in May 2007 with a 20GBit resilient Ethernet ring. The server also sits behind a Cisco hardware firewall.

A shopping cart application was next on the list to be found, or else designed bespoke.
A small open-source project called nopCommerce came to our attention. It ticked all of the boxes and the support is very good, as the project is still small enough to receive personal responses from the developer.
The cart software is written in C# with ASP.NET 3.5. It uses DAL (Data Access Layers) and modules for payment gateway integration, including Paypal, Moneybookers and Authorize.net.
It has an impressive back-end which can handle products with multiple variants, some of which are required, like size or colour and some of which are optional items which go with the product, such as batteries.

With knowledge of C# and ASP.NET this cart is extremely easy to customise and modify, either to add custom code to change how the page displays, like the Lightbox effect on the product pages, or to change what functions are performed in the background, like showing ‘featured products’ on the homepage.

Pineapple Boudoir launched on December 1st 2008.