Having recently lived in France for a year, my heart goes out to the French people. I lived in South Western France, but fell in love with Paris as a city of art, philosophy, history and music. That it was targeted with such violence last night is a travesty of epic proportions. At this time […]
November 14, 2015 | France, Politics, Security | No comments
I used to work at a Swiss bank. At investment banks they have a virtual Chinese wall that exists between folks who do deals and the trade floor for obvious reasons. At my bank, and this is back in 2000/2001, the people who did the deals and those who traded shared elevators, lunch rooms, pubs […]
May 31, 2013 | Encryption, Philosophisizing, Politics, Privacy | 1 comment
Until January this year I lived in Elizabeth, Colorado for a year and a half which is 30 miles from where the shooting occurred 3 days ago. Many of my extended family still lives there. My brother called me in France from Cape Town to tell me it was going on in real-time, via Reddit, […]
I remember seeing Napster in 2000 when I worked for eToys.com and thinking “This isn’t going away. It has too much momentum and we always move forward.” I was wrong. Today I’m wondering about the free Web and whether it will ever go away. Our intuition tells us we always move forward and things will become […]
November 22, 2011 | Politics, Technology | No comments
SOPA is a bill (HR 3261) sponsored by Lamar Smith (R-VA), John Conyers (D-MI), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Howard Berman (D-CA) and several co-sponsors. The first hearings on this bill will begin in congress tomorrow, November 16th. If SOPA is passed, it will give the US Government control of the Domain Name System in order to […]
November 15, 2011 | Politics | No comments
This is the other point of view. An interview the BBC probably won’t air again. I don’t condone violent demonstrations and I think the the looting of small businesses is sad and immoral. But you should understand that sometimes when people hit the streets en masse and make some noise, it has a purpose. It […]
August 9, 2011 | Politics | No comments
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has unleashed the rest of his tanks on Syrian protesters. Russia is warning that the country is veering towards all out civil war. Besides being politically two faced, al-Assad has an unusually asymmetric face. So I thought I’d break out both faces and rejoin them into these:
August 3, 2011 | Politics | No comments
I grew up in South Africa and for a time my birth country was the only worthwhile stop on the long sea journey that spice traders would make from Europe to India and back. South Africa was colonized by Europeans for this reason. A guy called Jan Van Riebeeck was ordered to set up camp […]
The phrase “Debt Ceiling” brings to mind phrases like “War on Terror”, “Abortion on Demand”, “Flip-Flop” – or some of the pejoratives used to criticize those wanting to depart from the Vietnam war: nervous nellies, special pleaders and politicians opposing the war were ready to “cut and run”. The reality is that there is no […]
July 31, 2011 | Politics | No comments
This is illuminating to say the least. The Washington Post is reporting on spending under Bush vs Obama. Keep in mind that the Post has been called “Pravda on the Potomac”, so it comes with a healthy pinch of liberal bias. My view is that the budget culture in Washington is broken because a new budget […]