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Mayhem in Abuja - Nigeria going further bananas.

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A moment of National shame – when the demagogues win

Politicians on the American political right seem to have mastered the art of summoning national rage at xenophobic moments and working the nation’s myriad of loose heads into states of choreographed frenzy that belies the status of a nation that prefer to consider itself developed and sophisticated. At a time when the real news is China growing economic and political clout, and the growing likelihood of American decline ( mainly because of its emphasis on constant self flagellation,  uncommon self congratulation and rare inability at introspection) and the obvious indication that the nation has lost its edge as a global powerhouse (still a global power) and engine of global innovation and growth, the right has managed to expose the true underbelly of  a nation built on greed and ignorance. Outrage at poor immigrants pleading for a fair shake, and absolute xenophobe at a religious minority – evidence of  the bully trait that led to ill f...
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A world of fences

Israel is   building a fence along   its rugged 130 mile border with Egypt. So claims this article posted on yahoo.com. The United States continues work on a   700 mile fence with Mexico . One state at a time, the world is becoming a nation of fences – led by none other than the champions of migrant workers in the 20th century. Nations that themselves were built by immigrants!
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Blackberry and the Sheiks

Advances in communication – and the proactive deployment of privacy enhancing tools and techniques in communication devices, such as the Blackberry smart-phones is finally causing heart burns for despots around the World. There is news today that several middle eastern despotic government (as if any of them is not) have either requested that Blackberry stop selling its smart phones in their nations or that certain services be restricted from those devices Here is a   Bloomberg story   on that, and   here is Reuters take on it too. I am sure the encryption mechanism in question is the Elliptic Curve Cryptographic libraries available on all Blackberry devices since 2006, after BlackBerry followed the NSA to license the libraries from Certicom . I have written a   thesis   (for my Master’s degree) on the use of   ECC   in mobile devices, particularly smart-phones , in 2004 and it is quite satisfying to see that prediction not only coming...
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Google Docs Video

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Gphone? Gmail Phone or what

Google completed a nice integration of several of its assets with this new feature in Gmail. The Gmail voice call is being rolled into Gmail and is expected to be completed withing days for all Gmail users. There are no words on when this feature will become available to enterprise users, but it is impressive to see how Google gradually integrate its assets in its battle for “cloud” dominance. Earlier in the year, Google Voice was rolled out of invitation only into a full featured service for anyone with a Google account (except of course) enterprise users.  These progression of services; Gmail Chat, Gmail Voice and Video Chat, Google Voice Integration into Gmail – all tell the same story of what is possible with Unified Communication. And now these features also pit Google against a bunch of notable vendors including skype,  Yahoo and Microsoft.
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