From the high rises of midtown Manhattan I turned my attention to Scotland Yard and FBI headquarters, where dogged teams of investigators had been assigned the thankless task of tracking this digital samizdat back to its source, a process that often took years.
Then again, it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that the contents of the programme have now permanently imprinted on his young brain, dooming him to a thankless life as a bloodthirsty despot with a number of profound entitlement problems.
Other commentators pointed out that even her phrase, from the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend: "He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth if he wasn't as dull as ditchwater", drew inspiration from "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/ to have a thankless child" in Shakespeare's King Lear.
Throughout it all, she's constrained by a thankless role as the brittle, bitchy wife; an uptight Nurse Ratched figure the rebelling Lester can kick against.
Mirren matches him, though, despite a slightly thankless and less rounded role to which she brings all her heft and leverage; finally, however, she is the film's – hell, both films' – secret heroine.
Bale had made it clear from the outset that he had no intention of going through the motions here and, at times, it was difficult not to feel sympathy for Ari Skulason, the Icelandic left-back who had the thankless task of trying to stop a man who was hell-bent on wreaking havoc every time he received possession.
Many of the best potential chief executives have recently made so much money from share options and the like that they no longer need the thankless task at the top.
Mr Obama's taboo about deploying American soldiers against IS in Iraq has led to a self-defeating shortage of special forces to guide air strikes to their targets.Desperate measuresThis work is dogged and often thankless.
But governing the place remains a thankless job.
Unrest in the Gdansk shipyard helped drag Warsaw 7.7% lower.In this section The final hurry The world's most thankless job Aztecs 1, Christians 0 The once and future boom Thugs brought to book Hands in the till Bring back Dem Bums A King's beginnings Rudy Giuliani's middle way Reprints.
BRITAIN'S poet laureate, whose job it is to churn out verse to mark royal occasions, is often thought to have a pretty thankless task.
