Can’t clever people find better uses of their time? 
Sometimes technology can be too clever. Today’s Financial Times has (behind its firewall) an article on technology designed for lying:
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A week earlier he had downloaded a piece of software that runs on Nokia mobile phones. Now, whenever he receives or places a call, a window pops up asking whether he would like a sound to play in the background during the call. There are nine sounds, ranging from the useful, such as traffic or heavy machinery, to the more bucolic, such as birdsong or a thunderstorm. |
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“They sound very genuine and they give you the potential to pretend you’re in a different place,” says Liviu Tofan, founder of German company Simedia, which developed the software. “We also give you a function which plays a telephone ring after 15 or 30 seconds, so you can say you need to get another call.” |
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Mr Tofan says that the application was originally written “more for fun and as a technical challenge than anything else”. Since its launch in February, however, it has been a runaway success. Simedia now has distribution partners in both the US and China and a new cross-platform version of the software planned soon. |
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The company is well aware of the uses to which its products might be put. “Certainly,” says Mr Tofan, “people do use it to give plausibility to their excuses – both for work and in relationships.”
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Here’s someone who really knows about Iraqi sovereign debt (unlike Cheney) 
I’ve been reading a lot of blog fact-checking on last night’s vice-presidential debate. Most have focused on Cheney’s lies about meeting Edwards, his past statements on the (non-existent) links between Saddam and al-Qaeda, the definition of “coalition” forces.
Felix Salmon, however, hits on something I haven’t seen picked up. Felix methodically unpicks Cheney’s response about the cost of the war, in which he refers to Iraq’s debts. Here’s Felix:
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Now it just so happens that the one thing I really do know about is Iraq’s sovereign debt: I just wrote a 6,600-word cover story on the subject for the September issue of EuromoneyÂ… |
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Cheney then points out, correctly, that the cost of the war in Iraq so far is $120 billion, not $200 billion. On the other hand, the total projected cost of the war in Iraq has actually reached $200 billion. You pays yer billions and you takes yer choice, I suppose. Cheney then decides to compare the $120 billion figure with $95 billion that he says “the allies” are giving as their “overall contribution”. And that’s where he starts moving into the realm of complete and utter fantasy. |
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Cheney’s $14 billion figure I have no idea about: it’s not footnoted on the official Bush-Cheney debate facts page, and I haven’t been able to Google it. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. But the $80 billion figure is just crazy. Here are the facts. |
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Firstly, “the allies”, as that term is generally understood, can’t possibly reduce Iraq’s debt by “nearly $80 billion”, because they don’t even have that much in Iraqi debt. The US is owed about $4.4 billion, the UK is owed less than $2 billion, and all of eastern Europe combined is owed maybe $6 billion – mostly to countries like Bulgaria, who weren’t part of the coalition in the first place. |
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Secondly, no one’s “stepped forward and agreed” anything. Some of Iraq’s major creditors, including France and Russia, have paid lip service to the principle of reducing Iraq’s debt, promising a “substantial reduction” or suchlike when Iraq goes to the Paris Club of bilateral creditors later this year. In the world of debt restructuring, a “substantial reduction” can mean anything from 35% to 95%. Indeed, if there was any kind of agreement, Cheney wouldn’t need to be citing estimates: he could just cite the agreement. But there is none. |
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Thirdly, there are certainly people out there who think that Iraq’s debt will be reduced by $80 billion. But that’s all in the future: it hasn’t happened yet. Cheney’s verb tense (“have agreed”) is unambiguous: he’s saying this has already happened. It hasn’t. The talks haven’t even started yet. Even if a Paris Club agreement is concluded by the end of this year (a very big if), the Paris Club in total accounts for less than $42 billion of Iraq’s foreign debt. And it doesn’t take a former CEO to know that you can’t reduce $42 billion of debt by $80 billion.
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As he concludes, “Any questions about Iraq’s sovereign debt — just ask. I’m your man.”