Tags: georgia, Politics, russia, toondoo, war

Nothing new, I’ve seen this movie before, albeit in a different world:  border crossing a painful, sometimes fearful event.

We had no laptops, or any form of electronic media back then (the 80’s), but the armed customs agents searched through bags, and if you brought any form of printed material from the “West”, it likely got confiscated.

It was the 80’s, then-communist (sort of) Hungary.

Fast forward to 2008, the United Sates:

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed…

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ ”

(source: The Washington Post)

Welcome to … 1984.

Update: Oh, how could I missed this angle: this is a Grand Promotion run by Apple.  As the Register points out:

But officers cannot read, or allow others to read, “correspondence contained in a sealed letter class mail (the international equivalent of First Class) without an appropriate search warrant or consent”

Now, as we know, the Macbook Air fits into an evnelope, all you have to do is carry your laptop Air in a sealed envelope to avoid search. (But don’t blame me if the advice fails…)

Update #2:  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is one more argument to travel “data-light”: keep your stuff in the cloud, don’t risk customs agents sniffing through it all.  Still, nothing protects you from the inconvenience (and potential business loss) of not having your laptop, or even mobile phone for a few days, or more.

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Oh, Twitter is fun:

BreakingNewsOn With less than 0% of votes returned in PA, Clinton leads with 66% (1,649 votes) in the Democratic race; Obama at 34% (838 votes). 16 minutes ago from web

zoliblog Gotta love that less than 0%. Solid lead for Clinton 6 minutes ago from twhirl

zoliblog Hey, I can get 66% of less than 0% 5 minutes ago from twhirl

Tags: breakingnewson, clinton, elections, obama, Twitter

The Olympic Torch took evasive action on San Francisco. It was here and not. The best part of this fiasco was the Twitter coverage .
My personal favorite: chadcat : if the Torch goes on a boat what will the runners do, jog on a treadmill? 

More selected morsels below in reverse chronological order:

tokboxchris : The Olympic torch reduced to sneaking around and juking protesters

KanuDawg : Just went outside as torch just went up Van Ness near work- nothing but police sirens and helicopters: total clusterfuck=accomplished << (2008-04-09 17:25:45)

SXHotdogs : acarvin: NBC11: It was an Olympic Torch Ride, then a Drive, then a Run, now a Walk. << (2008-04-09 17:21:31)

sftorch : Katrinskaya: the torch has taken evasive action. FUNNY. << (2008-04-09 17:18:10)

hdwilliams : It’s torch aerobics…run, walk, step into the bus, step out of the bus. Stand up, sit down, deep knee bend!! << (2008-04-09 17:14:40)

krismet : lame- no torch but naked protesters! << (2008-04-09 17:15:37)

zoliblog : Police alreday claiming success re. torch. Sure, nobody saw it. #torch << (2008-04-09

joshuarudd : Apparently the torch is in three different locations now. << (2008-04-09 16:54:25)

Delilah021 : Torch was re-routed!!! Bullshit!!! Started on Van Ness, likely won’t hit Embarcadero. All of us people ready to cheer, for nothing. Damn! << (2008-04-09 17:11:56)

Katrinskaya : the torch has taken evasive action. FUNNY. << (2008-04-09 17:11:11)

ajonesin : If I were a bank robber I would totally be robbing San Francisco banks right now. All the cops are with the torch! << (2008-04-09 17:11:07)

ryancoleman : they could have at least let the runner hang his head out the window and hold the torch… << (2008-04-09 16:54:05)

sdwindham : so, let’s see: If the torch runs through SF, yet no one actually sees it, was the relay a success, or was the protest? << (2008-04-09 16:53:43)

zoliblog : Torch hide-and-seek. Wear the crowd down? #torch << (2008-04-09 16:53:20)

Rubin110 : #torch It’s a trap. The city of San Francisco just Rickrolled several thousand people

ronjon : Nearly 40 minutes after lighting, still no idea where the Olympic torch is << (2008-04-09

chadcat : if the Torch goes on a boat what will the runners do, jog on a treadmill? << (2008-04-09

joshuarudd : Apparently the torch is in three different locations now. << (2008-04-09 16:54:25)

therahmin : #pier5 the scene has been hijacked by protesters - word is that torch will travel via coast guard boat << (2008-04-09 16:58:58)

niterider : [TT] The Olympic torch? Who has it? Where is it? Watching this cluster fuck on TV is amusing http://tinyurl.com/3eqb55 << (2008-04-09 16:58:31)

williamsba : why on EARTH does SF have an amphibious vehicle leading the torch run? hahhaha that’s awesome! Run for the sea!!!!!! << (2008-04-09 17:04:14)

zoliblog CBS says torch still inside Pier48. Others reported it left in a bus, othes that it’s on a boat

zoliblog If nobody sees the torch, it’s secretly driven around, can SF claim they actually had it here?

Tags: china, olympic torch, olympics, san francisco, tibet, torch, torchured, Twitter, twittertorch

Somebody wake me up: I can’t believe that anybody, especially ReadWriteWeb would buy this:  OlinePrimary.us,  an effort to to provide a simple, Internet-based system to demonstrate how the US presidential primaries, and later the elections can be handled easily:

“I don’t understand why the straightforward process of casting and tallying votes should require special-purpose machines costing tens of thousands of dollars each, from companies so suspect of fraud and incompetence that they have to change their names (as Diebold Election Systems recently did) to hide from the shame.”

Richard at ReadWriteWeb is somewhat doubtful himself, noting:

In my tests, OnlinePrimary turned out to be a basic website form and still a little buggy (an SQL error popped up after I entered my selections)

Richard, it’s really not about the bugs; it’s the very concept itself.  Anyone can create a webform to collect data - it does not demonstrate anything.  The issue with electronic voting is not how to capture data.  I am by far not an expert, but I think the critical issues all boil down to these points:

• Identification / Verification of who votes (did not ask for any)
• How many times can you vote (I just voted twice)
• Can your vote be tampered with (sure…)

Plain and simple.  Not so plain and simple to resolve. And this simple webform does not attempt to address any of these issues.  This is what we ended up with at an event with much smaller scale… I’m sure you as co-host of the Crunchies also experienced some issues… would the Presidential elections invite a thousand times more fraud attempts?

Update (2/5): Not that there’s much verification in real life, either…

Tags: crunchies, diebold, elections, electronic voting, internet voting, online voting, Politics, polls, primaries

Techmeme’s political sister-site, Memeorandum is full of speculation on how the New Hampshire polls could be so wrong. As usual, conspiracy theories abound, amongst them speculation on the role Diebold’s voting machines  played in the results.  I’m not joining the speculation, nor can I completely ignore it; after all, we’re hearing about voting machine problems all the time, several states decertified them… but I simply don’t have enough facts to take sides in this debate (although I wrote about the issue in the past)  That said, a little laugh does not hurt … and you have to admit these posters are just hilarious:

There’s more where they come from: Diebold Variations, (c)2004-06 Rand Careaga/salamander.eps.

Tags: clinton, diebold, elections, electronic voting, new hampshire, obama, Politics, vote count, voting, voting machines

The Land of Oz is already in 2008. Too bad they ring in the new year with a controversy over government censorship. Good intentions aside, letting Big Brother grow on people is never a good idea. Governments can not, and should not take over the family’s responsibility. It’s a slippery road… governments by their very nature tend to expand: porn filtering today, political views tomorrow - we know where it leads.

If you are a parent, sister, brother, uncle, aunt, YOU (and not the government) have the joy and responsibility of bringing the children to a safe and better world. That’s my parting thought for 2007, and I wish you a prosperous, peaceful, Happy New Year with a shot of the NYE fireworks from the beautiful city of Sydney:

(photo credit: Christopher Chan)

Update: enjoy this video of the Sydney NYE 2007/08 Fireworks (it’s a two-part clip, please wait a few seconds at the end of the first):

Tags: Australia, censorship, fireworks, government, NYE, Sydney

Vinnie talks about The Web 2.0 Confusion Cycle. There’s a 2.0 of everything.. we’re used to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0… next week there’s a Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. But if you think that’s stretching it, wait … here’s the Sex 2.0 Conference.

So, in the spirit of “everything 2.0″, I claim Evita 2.0, before someone else does:

First lady Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner swept to victory in Argentina’s presidential vote on Sunday to become the first woman elected to lead the country, television exit polls showed. (Reuters)

Tags: evita, evita 2.0, Humor, Politics

CNet reports that “the Globalization Institute, a Brussels-based European Union think tank, has recommended the EU require all PCs to be sold without preloaded operating systems such as Microsoft Windows.”

The recommendation is for PCs and Operating Systems to be sold separately, breaking Microsoft’s monopoly, increasing competition. I’m not exactly a Microsoft-fan, in fact just recently responded to Robert Scoble who asked: Why doesn’t Microsoft get the love?:

…just look at the examples above. There are a lot more. They all show a corporate culture that does not have the customer in focus. It’s hard to love such a company, no matter how great many of the individual employees are.

So, I guess it’s time to celebrate, the EU would finally break the monopoly. And we’ll be free to buy our hardware, OS, Software all separately, trying to get it all work together. No big deal … after all, no-one ever had to hassle with non-working device drivers even with the pre-installed, pre-configured systems? But wait, it gets better:

There is no reason why computer operating systems could not follow the same model as computer hard drives and processors, which comply with standards that allow for broad compatibility as well as competition in the market.

Now, this is a pretty poor analogy: as far as I know, the hard drive and processor come installed in the computer - or are they suggesting the EU mandate unbundling those, too? We could just buy the PC components separately, and assemble it ourselves. Hey, I have a friend who never buys complete systems, he loves building them. Oh, and he fixes his car, too.

But me, well, I happen to be the lazy consumer type, expecting these things to work out-of-the-box. Preferably one box. Answering my own questions: yes, selling windows-less computers is probably a good idea, but only to the extent there is a market demand for them. Certainly not mandated by governments.

Related posts: Michael Gartenberg, Geek Speaker, BetaNews, TECH.BLORGE.com , Macsimum News

Tags: European Union, microsoft, Microsoft antitrust, MS Windows, operating systems, os, vista, Windows, xp

It doesn’t get more bizarre then this: Iraqi chemical weapons were discovered, of all places, in the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in downtown Manhattan.

Apparently they were brought back from Iraq after the previous war, stashed away in storage and forgotten. They were now rediscovered only as the Comission were closing their offices. (full story: The New York Times)