9/11, one part of the story is how peace and war became interchangeable afterwards. what's the meaning of war after 9/11? a story broadcasted in feb. 2007 and maybe worth to bring to the surface again, after seeing and reading all these reports. another historical piece to add ...

wondering what carl bildt would say five years after the interview, though, as well as sir michael howard, who is 88 by now.

it was my first time with these crowd, thanks to charles herzfeld, whom i wanted to see and went to geneva to do a story on arpa (was the first time we met personally, but having to many questions one needs to meet more often, which i could, luckily). but who would leave out a chance to listen to all these strategists of iiss, charles came over for?

the second mil event was en berlin (handelsblatt gathering). and i have to say, in hindsight i preferred geneva. at least it was far more interesting and challenging, yet strange. will never forget sir howard's talk about war was actually given as a dinner talk.

still wondering why they use the word cyber here, anyhow besides of wording the bill is worth a close look.

proposed bill giving obama power to shut down Internet

the only analogy that wasn't drawn yet is the one with the homer ...

what i find interesting is the statement i heard yesterday at the austrian ministery of science and research that mail voting can't be implemented for the student elections, as it is not one election, but a serial of. if that is true and there is a legal aspect to it, counting electronic votes from all universities at one single place in one machine wouldn't be possible either, no? guess the question is if mail voting in this case is a legal or practical challenge, besides of all other problems of that system, one has to add.

too many things not thought through, imho. yet, the question if democracy can be supported by technology remains an interesting one if one keeps in mind that the network is not designed to be democratic, as it is not designed to be random but scale free, laszlo barabási argued already some years ago. anyhow, not all agree but add: it's not a fundamental principle, it's a property.

when the attempt to use networks for democracy (audio/mpeg, 586 KB) leads to more of the same.

anyhow, about cryptography one should take some time to listen to:
rsa09 panelists: whitfield diffie martin hellman, nuclearRisk: "unable to recognize risk until it's too late", "cassandra is always right" ron rivest, scantegrity: "voting hardest sec problem, mentions cassandra chanting, nist sha-3 competition for new hash functions, bruce schneier has a horse there ... adi shamir, worries about cloud computing as data will be handled by few companies ... worried also about law enforcement: quotes an article he read saying: the chances to be killed by a policeman is eight time higher than being killed by a terrorist bruce schneier: kind of bored with cloud computing, feels like how computing was and is: it's all about trust; prospect theory, recommended book: science of fear,