Evidence that Wikileaks aren't simply publicity whores

One of the allegations made about Wikileaks, a site which publishes leaked governmental (mostly US) secrets, is that it is simply a publicity exercise for the site in general or the founder in particular. I think the way that they've handled the latest release shows fairly clearly that this is not the case.

You see, they've essentially dumped a bunch of US diplomatic cables (up to Secret; no Top Secrets) onto the media and Internet, all at once. If they'd wanted to really take advantage of this from a publicity point of view, they would have done a staged release, like so:

Day 1: Catty personal comments; "Isn't Brian Cowen fat and dim?", "Gaddafi's new hat is ridiculous" etc. No major consequences, but it would sure build interest.

Day 2: Embarassing revelations; deals with drug dealers in Afghanistan, specific questioning of competence of major figures, "Gaddafi's favourite hat is ridiculous", etc. Probably no serious consequences (except for the Gaddafi thing, which might touch off a war) but extremely embarrassing for the US. Should keep interest building.

Day 3: Dangerous revelations; the Berlusconi/Putin thing, organised crime and Russian government, Israeli comments about window of opportunity to bomb Iran closing, etc. Considerable diplomatic fallout, mainstream press attention.

Day 4: Potentially illegal revelations; spying on UN officials, attempts to prevent attest of CIA agents who abducted German citizen, etc. Total chaos, lots of attention for Wikilieaks, maybe hold something back for day 5.

Instead, they've released it all on a Sunday evening, and it will no doubt be overwhelmed by news about who's gotten bumped off of X Factor and how cold it is and so forth tomorrow.

Bailing out

So, it's finally official. We are taking the ECB/IMF bailout. And, well, is this such a disaster, really?

The various parties involved have been falling over themselves to insist that the bailout will not effect the Holy of Holies, the corporation tax. Merkel has stepped down from her effective position of demanding it be raised. The French say that they believe it will be raised, and that Ireland, due to its low base, has some leverage to raise it without too much issue, but they are also not demanding it. Sweden and Britain, who have not, as yet, officially been asked for help, appear to be okay with it too.

Separately, everyone is insisting that the deficit cuts have not been effected, that the cuts had been discussed with the IMF over the last while anyway (which seems plausible enough) and that the deficit reduction goal remains at 15 billion over four years.

So, assuming that these two claims are true, we are going from a situation in which unscrupulous incompetents with only their own short-term interests in mind are pushing a punitive series of cuts, to a situation where a selection of people who have some long-term interest in the stabilisation of the Irish economy are pushing a punitive series of cuts. In one case, it would be necessary to return to the bond market to attempt to sell debt at a probably absurdly high rate, in the other debt will be available at a more reasonable rate.

Most importantly, I think, in practice outside forces will take over the resolution of the banking mess. This is important, because as we have already seen, the banks are not too interested in providing all of the information they have available to them, and FF/Greens are not too interested on pressing them on this minor, tiny detail. I doubt that the ECB and IMF will be so lenient, which is a good thing; it lessens the chance that next year we'll have further unexpected billions of bad debt sprung upon us.

The talk of loss of sovereignty is, I think, a bit of a red herring. We had in effect already lost our sovereignty to the markets and to the banks who have been allowed run roughshod over government policy, protected while not perhaps giving quite so much information or cooperation as they might. Now, we are transferring it to people who at least may be vaguely competent.

It's a sad day when we have to welcome something on the basis that it is likely to be less incompetent and untrustworthy than Fianna Fail and the Greens, but that seems to be where we are right now. I suppose that we can be comforted that it could have been worse. If the bailout had not gone ahead, then, why, we'd still have the same punitive budget, but it's hard to imagine that the banks would be dealt with sensibly and firmly.

And what happens when the dust has settled? I think it's pretty clear at this point that FF and the Greens are doomed, and rightly so. But what is the alternative? Enda?

Tesco Value Bonds

Designer Irish government bonds may be found in the 'More Money than Sense' department of Brown Thomas (that'd be all of it).

Optimism in the cloud

On MongoDB now being available on Microsoft's dubiously named Azure cloud-y thing:

He noted it's still too early to tell if MongoDB will take off in large numbers, but he said whenever 10gen holds events people invariably ask asking about integration with Azure. 

Er, well, no, because nobody has heard of Azure. Seriously, have you ever heard of anything running on Azure?

Rob the television philistine

I've got a confession to make.

In this age of surround sound LED-backlit 50" 1080p TVs, well, I just don't get it. In my last place I had a 40" HDTV with my flatmates; here I have a 20" CRT. And I don't really see the difference; I actually prefer the CRT a bit because it doesn't dominate the room as much. Obviously, I can, if I put my mind to it, see that a HDTV looks better than an SD signal on a CRT, but if whatever I'm watching is any good I'll stop noticing the difference within a few seconds, and if whatever I'm watching is not good, well, then, why am I watching it?

But yes, for me, little CRT in the corner beats big wall-dominating flatscreen. This apparently makes me very unusual; you can barely buy a <30" TV these days...

Now, computer monitors, on the other hand... I'm having dangerous urges to buy a 27" iMac for the screen...