Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Nine to Noon: 4 Mar 2010

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I talked today about cryptography, China, and Facebook's billions. My apologies for how rushed it was on air, but we had less time than usual. I've written up below what I was going to say. Listen in MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. Links The Code Book, Mozilla Debates Whether to ...

Nine to Noon: 4 June 2009

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Listen to my 4 June 2009 appearance on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon show. I spoke about national security and social unrest on the Internets. Links: Guatemala The murdered lawyer National Security GhostNet Guatemala Guate is an unstable country. 36 years of civil war ended in 1996, but the unrest continues. This year ...

NZ Healthcare

Monday, December 1st, 2008

At the New Zealand Open Source Awards, David Cunliffe (the then Minister of Health as well as of IT) literally tapped me on the shoulder and asked whether I'd be interested in serving on HISAC, the Health Information Strategy Advisory Committee. The health system in NZ, he said, might ...

Nine to Noon: 30 Oct 2008

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Today I was on the National Radio show Nine To Noon. It was nerve-wracking beforehand, but fun once it started. The podcast of my appearance needs some context: she'd been teasing future segments, which featured a gentleman who took casts of people's bottoms so they could see it; ...

Ode to Auckland

Monday, October 27th, 2008

Auckland Even when I'm well stoned on a tab of LSD or Indian grass, you still look to me like an elephant's arsehole surrounded by blue-black haemorrhoids, The sound of the opening and shutting of bankbooks, The thudding of refrigerator doors, The ripsaw voices of Glen Eden mothers yelling at their children, The chugging noise of masturbation from the bedrooms of the ...

Plone in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

November 7th is World Plone Day, when the Plone community will run outreach events around the world to "promote and educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using Plone in education, government, NGOs, and in business". There will be activities in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. Get ...

Two Posts On The Meltdown

Monday, October 13th, 2008

In case you're interested but don't follow O'Reilly Radar, I've recently made a few posts there about the mortgage dramas: Effect of the Depresson on Technology The Connected Economy Torkington's Law

Cybernetics Quotes

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Reading A Curriculum for Cybernetics and Systems Theory, I found some thought-provoking and sometimes inspirational quotes. I've collected them below: "When we try to pick up anything by itself we find it is attached to everything in the universe." — John Muir "I throw a spear into the dark -- that ...

NZ Open Source Awards

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

(reposted from The O'Reilly Radar blog) Wednesday night in Wellington is a lot more exciting when the New Zealand Open Source Award ceremony is on! The Minister for Communications and Information Technology, David Cunliffe, made a brief speech lauding open source and was around to hand awards to the ...

NZ’s Business Talent Crisis

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Kiwi Foo Camp was my way of finding and support great technical talent in NZ. Last week I realized that NZ's critical shortage isn't in technical staff, it's in business staff. This goes beyond the widely-deplored lack of VC experience—where are our deal-making CEOs, the well-networked bizdev gurus? I ...