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“It’s looking very gloomy for Iceland at the moment,” said Bjarke Roed-Frederiksen, an economist in Copenhagen at Nordea. “The currency isn’t trading at the price the central bank has set and we’re already seeing signs that people don’t want to accept krona in transactions on Iceland.”

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The chaplain to the London Stock Exchange has offered a “full and complete” apology for suggesting on his blog that gay men should carry tattooed health warnings.

[..]

According to the Evening Standard, he backtracked yesterday with: “I realise that the remarks were injudicious and I have caused offence. I was not actually meaning to criticise individual homosexual persons, but the promoters of gay culture.”

So let me get this straight. You’re sorry you hurt specific persons and all you meant to do was hurt the whole group?

Apology not accepted.

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A heavyweight US investigation of counter-terror databases has concluded that the type of intelligence mining proposed by UK spy chiefs under the auspices of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) probably won’t catch jihadis.

The central database aspect of IMP is being discussed in secret on the basis it will “maintain capability” to examine suspects’ communications activities, which in most cases are already stored by telcos. Critics charge that pooling call, mobile phone location and internet records will grant the intelligence services unprecedented powers to go on “fishing trips” for potential criminals.

But Tuesday’s 352-page report by the National Academies, which advise politicians on science, engineering and medicine, says that trawling databases for “suspicious” activity generates “huge numbers of false leads”.

No worries, the database is still perfectly useful for finding dirt on specific persons. Instead of trawling facts for suspicious persons, they’ll trawl to find suspicious facts for persons. And as earlier intelligence agencies have demonstrated, that works just fine.

[Quote:]

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CHARLIE GIBSON: You’re in Juneau, walking along the snow, when all of a sudden you look down—
SARAH PALIN: Why?
GIBSON: Why what?
PALIN: Why am I in Juneau?

GIBSON: It doesn’t make any difference—
PALIN: But, how come I’d be there? Oh, you know, Todd’s got a snow machine race outside Wasilla tomorrow and—
GIBSON: Maybe you’re on state business. Maybe you want to do some governing. Who knows? You look down—
PALIN: Do I get a per diem for this?

…

GIBSON: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the Alaskan sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
PALIN: You’re darn tootin’ we’re gonna help out with those turtles that are in our American tundras that are hurtin’ in this time of economic crisis in America! Also, I’d like to talk for just a minute about energy again, which…

…

GIBSON: Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about… your running mate.
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

[Quote:]

Iceland took over its second largest bank, propped up a battered currency and sought on Tuesday a 4 billion euro ($5.44 billion) loan from Russia to help tackle a crisis threatening to overwhelm the island nation.

Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said Moscow viewed positively the request from Iceland, whose premier said it had faced a risk of “national bankruptcy.”

“The result will be announced after negotiations,” Kudrin said.

[Quote:]

But what price will the Russians demand for their bailout? A highly-placed source in Reykjavik tells Coffee House that Iceland might look kindly on requests from Russia’s military to use America’s former military base in Iceland. America closed its Naval Air Station at Keflavik Airport two years ago, handing back the Nato facility to the Icelandic government.

Now the word in Reykjavik is that the Russians could have use of it in return for the loan. Not that Keflavik would become a Russian air base — Iceland is a member of Nato, so that is out of the question — but it would suit the Kremlin to be able to use it for, say, refuelling and maintenance. Having use of such a facility only a few hours flying time from North America would be a major Russian propaganda coup and cause consternation in Washington.

Funny, but wrong (and a very ‘cold-war’) way to look at it:

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You have to admire the efficiency of the Russians. Bush spends 700 billion in Iraq for nothing. Russia spends 5 billion and gets control of the North Atlantic shipping lanes. Putin sure can play the game.

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I attended a Domain Driven Design course on Monday at Skills Matter offices. Eric Evans led the course and put forward a very interesting theory that the quality of a software system is proportional to the skills of the second worst programmer.

The explanation for the idea is that everyone on the team knows who the worst programmer is, so senior developers are closely monitoring everything that he does and cleaning up problems. The work of the second worst programmer is not monitored with that attention so he has the chance to do some real damage.

A few hours later, the domain is registered:

http://thatone08.com/

The logo is made:

and you can get the poster

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Keene Valley resident Jerilea Zempel was detained at the U.S. border this summer because she had a drawing of a sport-utility vehicle in her sketchbook.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers told Zempel they suspected her of copyright infringement.

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If we didn’t know better, we’d swear that some marketing genius at Microsoft came up with the entire premises of The Office, Extras and, hell, probably even grew Rickey Gervais himself in a magic test tube. Such is the mastery the of cringe-inducing humor found in Microsoft’s promo videos.

This latest is one of the best, and we challenge you to get more than half way through before hiding your eyes in your hands, your teeth so on-edge that it feels like you have been rubbing a mixture of Ajax and cocaine into them for the past week. With a wire brush.

[Quote:]

Adobe is aware of recently published reports of a ‘Clickjacking’ issue in multiple web browsers that could allow an attacker to lure a web browser user into unknowingly clicking on a link or dialog. It has been determined that this potential “Clickjacking” issue affects Adobe Flash Player.

[..]

Adobe is working to address the issue in an upcoming Flash Player update, scheduled for release before the end of October.

If you don’t want to wait that long, here is a better solution.