Jason Kitcat

I caught Bulworth on TV last night. I've been meaning to see it for a while. Nothing prepared me for how good it was!

After letting the anger and honesty of the film wash over me I went online to find out more. Sure Wag the Dog and Primary Colours came out in the same 12 months and were both strong. But they were still very Hollywood, I enjoyed them yes, but Bulworth was like a stick of dynamite under my seat. The others were less energising for me. I'm just stunned how much Bulworth was panned at the time (e.g. Charles Taylor in Salon).

Decide for yourself, rent it now. It's perfect viewing as the US presidential election builds up to its finale.

More on the Newham story continues to trickle out. As I said in an earlier blog entry, it was no great surprise that the council stuck with Microsoft. But the fact that apparently independent reports could justify huge cost savings in using Microsoft over Open Source was questionable. John Lettice at The Register comes to the rescue with an excellent article exposing the flawed methodologies and spin used to get the conclusions Microsoft wanted.

It's getting easier and easier to 'find' important documents when a story calls for it. Companies need to learn that simplistic fudging of findings is very difficult to get away with in this digital age.

Thanks to Tom Raggett for the links

Tom Steinberg of MySociety has some good thoughts on the limitations of using the Net for political campaigning. One more thing though, don't underestimate the importance of websites for getting press coverage. Journalists love using sites to root around press releases, get photos and bios all pre-prepared for them. A good media section can significantly boost a candidate's chances of getting a mention.

This article in the Guardian tells of how a policeman took money from a Saudi diplomat to ferret out information about various persons from police databases. This is an excellent example of how databases can be misused to extend the ever encroaching surveillance society.

For quite some time Windows has been gaining ground in running non-critical warship systems. But Microsoft are pushing their operating system to the 'next level'… using Windows to run the complete operations of a warship. I don't think Windows or the world is ready for such developments.

The Register tells the tale of a poor guy at BAE Systems who lost his job trying to stop the move to Windows for Warships. It's a very interesting story indeed. It's incredibly worrying that a so-called engineering company accepts using Windows for mission critical operations without an even-handed analysis of the alternatives.

The Guardian has a valedictory interview with Andrew Pinder, the e-Envoy that was. Nice to hear he had a blog, even if it was for internal use only.