History trumps democracy

March 29, 2014 at 3:14 PMMichele Mottini

Excellent Economist’s article about Northern Ireland, and its lessons for the wider world:

The main reason for the West’s failures to reshape societies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere was all along apparent in this corner of the United Kingdom: history and culture, orphans of neoconservative policymaking, almost invariably trump its darlings, democracy and prosperity.

Posted in: Opinion

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Phrase of the week

March 29, 2014 at 11:04 AMMichele Mottini

. . . Dr Abdullah Abdullah . . . who got his second name only because newspaper sub-editors in the West could not contend with his lack of a surname.

The Economist in ‘Runners and riders’

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Slow Surface Pro 2 WiFi connection

March 16, 2014 at 3:10 PMMichele Mottini

Recently I switched from a Dell Latitude to a Surface 2 Pro. The Dell always reported excellent WiFi signal strength (all bars) whereas the Surface reported only good connection (2/3 bars). Testing the network speed I was getting 8+ Mbps download with the Dell and around 5 Mbps with the Surface.

I have a Linksys E2500 dual-band router. Apparently the Dell laptop uses the 5 GHz band, whereas the Surface uses the slower 2.4 GHz one. I solved the problem changing the router configuration so that it publishes two different network – one for each frequency, and then connected explicitly the Surface to the 5 GHz network.

In this way the download speed went up and it is now similar to the Dell laptop one.

I am still getting a reported poorer signal from the Surface than from the Dell, and I am not 100% sure that the network speed is actually the same.

Posted in: Programming

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Phrase of the week

March 9, 2014 at 11:00 AMMichele Mottini

It is a matter insufficiently appreciated that there are very few high-wire acts without a safety net

Brad DeLong in his blog

Posted in: Opinion

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