T3H Blog

Now that bonus is a dirty word, many institutions – kept alive by political largess – are reading to offer new retention loans (the one that do not have to be repaid, ever) to the same clowns that kneecapped the world economies.

Like Albert Einstein said “two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe.”

I could not agree more…

Here is a thought – if A.I.G. is so vital to the U.S. economy, why not nationalize it. It works for Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. The U.S. tax payers own 80% of it anyway, so it should not be so hard to get the other 20% and turn it into a department.

It should be renamed American International Gaffe Department, headed by a board of directors chosen from the glut of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recipients living in the United States. You know the one that have blindly watched the world economy tank because of greed and callousness for their bankers and financiers friends that were too busy calculating their bonuses while giving us the line “we look after your interests, because it is in our interest.”

Further, I am sure that President Chávez would be happy to consult, for a fee and bonus.

I am privileged to have been a member of the IEEE for the last 18 years. It has been a great assistance in helping me (and thousands of others) keep up with the fast pace of amazing innovation and technologies in so many fields. If you are an engineer (technologist, technician) you should consider membership to the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

The “IEEE: One Voice” Video aims at making those in the technology community feel proud to be part of IEEE, and encourage those who are not affiliated with IEEE to feel good about the contributions of technology to society.

In 2008, IEEE launched a Public Visibility Initiative to increase IEEE’s visibility and increase public understanding of how engineering, computing and technology benefit humanity.

Additionally you can click here to view an inspirational video chronicles a history of innovation, and celebrates the contributions of engineers and IEEE to technology and society – enjoy!

I stood on guard for tee willingly for nearly 20 years because Canada is a decent country that Canadians can be proud to call home, always, no matter where a Canadian chose to keep her or his shoes. A place where, regardless of which generation, is gratified to have its citizens come home – the envy of countless around the world.

Cutting off citizenship by descent after the first generation of Canadians born abroad, as described in Bill C-37 in it’s current form, will result in some offspring of Canadians born abroad in the future being stateless, which contravenes Canada’s commitment to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness to which Canada ratified.

Civilized societies just do not condone such prejudiced laws. If you are a Canadian living abroad, or not, please sign the petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/cexpat01/petition.html. Descendants should never have to carry a burden for their ancestors’ decisions; there is enough of that nonsense around the world, Canada does not have to add to it.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_Canadien_errant

The current global economic crisis was brought about by the derelict irresponsibility of Wall Street caretakers. [Note: Wall Street is figurative, it could be Damrak to Paradeplatz, via Bay Street, Marunouchi, Lujiazui, Shenton Way, Martin Place, Bankenviertel, basically any financial district.]

Yet, not one single top management individual from organizations that have been on the receiving end of unprecedented governments’ largess has been tried and convicted for dereliction of duties and fiscal irresponsibility, for which most Security and Exchange Commissions have regulations. In many cases, these so called , the so called best and brightest’s actions, that landed the world into this mess, border on fraud and larceny; and yet, politicians under the guise of saving us choose to avert their eyes and keep giving. [Political payback? - but that is another post.]

Case in point: to date the equivalent of approximately 2.4 trillion dollars have been handed out to organizations, mostly financial institutions, worldwide. The very same organizations that created this gargantuan insane crisis. These generous handouts where  collected by private jet flying, presidential suite staying, bonus receiving  incompetents from the likes of A.I.G. who received US$180 billion, to date, of tax payers moneys – and yet arrogantly pays its top management bonuses worth US$165 million, with another round of bonuses of US$450 million for later on in the year.

Although this surely should be a crime in itself – the real crime is committed by the business as usual attitude of the politicians. They scream “outrageous’ to the populace and in the same breath that there is little they could have done to stop them – as it if was Force Majeure! (The people who change laws to enable pork-barrel deals for themselves and their friends.)

Hear the politic as usual nonsense spin-0ff from Dr Lawrence H. Summers (The USA’s 8th Director of the National Economic Council).

As I said – laws apply equally, according to income! This is universal and irrevocable when it involves money.

Chris Dillon, a friend of mine, who is the Managing Director of Dillon Communications of Hong Kong; was recently on Bloomberg TV’s Asia Confidential with Bernie Lo to discuss and present an analysis on opportunities during the property slump.

Chris moved to Hong Kong in 1992, since then he has created, sold, and expended three corporate communications firms, and of late bought and renovated an office, an apartment, and a factory. From the later endeavours, he authored Landed, a widely read “The expatriate’s guide to buying and renovating property in Hong Kong.”

Additionally, he writes an always-interesting topical blog - Beneath the Peak.

Chris is writing a sequel to Landed, which will describe expatriates in Japan successfully master property endeavours. He is also thinking of writing other guides for other Asian local.

I have known Chris for nearly 20 years and watched in admiration his rise to fame as a successful entrepreneur and adroit writer. All I can say, with some envy, is – well done Chris.

If you were interested in making business and/or making investment in the property market, especially in Hong Kong, you would do well to buy Landed, or like many of us wait for the sequel on Japan. So keep an eye on his blog.

If you cannot view the attached video visit http://www.clipsyndicate.com/publish/video/867250.

Ports all around the world provided a method for ships to obtain an accurate time so they were able to rate their chronometers. The correct time on the chronometer, a ship’s clock, was necessary so the crew could establish their exact longitude, a necessity when following their charts. Each ship had two chronometers one set on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT or Zulu) and the other to calculate the local time.

A plan for a time ball was drown up in 1899 and build 1900 on Arthur Head. In 1902 a time gun was incorporated into the signal station. This meant they had a sound signal as well as a line of sight. The line of sight was necessary because the slowness of sound meant it would not have been exactly 1 pm (13:00) when it was heard. The time ball was re-located once onto the top of the disused lighthouse tower. An electric spark was sent from Pert Observatory each day at 1 pm (13:00) to activate the time ball and gun.

There was one more move as Arthur Head was taken over by the Federal Government to be used as a fort. After some controversy between the Harbour Trust and the Fremantle Council, who wanted it located on the roof of the Town Hall, it was re-located to the Harbour Trust Building at the end of Cliff Street.

The building had a second story tower with a signal mast above. A cane signal ball was attached to this mast and on the balcony around the tower was a hanging bracket. Prior to 1 pm (13:00) each working day – Monday to Friday an employee of the Harbour Trust would affix 1 ½ sticks of gelignite to power leads to the handing bracket then a t 3 minutes to 1 pm (13;00) use a windlass to raise the ball to the masthead. Arrangements were made with the Pert Observatory so that the 1 pm (13:00) signal could be diverted from Fremantle Railway Station to the tower. The observatory at the time sent signals to railway station every hour.

The time signal was discontinued on the 17.11.1936 as radiotelegraphy has superseded it.

To-days time gun

In1998 when the Fremantle Heritages Guides were formed it was decided to re-create the time signal.

A time ball was erected on the mast and a cannon owned by the Fremantle Football Club was lent on the permanent basis. The time bass is one of three signal balls previously used by Fremantle Ports on their single station.

The cannon a four powder, was salvage from the “Slave” a ship wrecked off the West Australia Coast in 1878 near Augusta. It had the capacity of firing four pound cannon balls nearly a kilometer. Six replicas were made of the cannon in Bunbury by Tom Talbot.

To-day they fire what is called a maroon that resembles a giant firecracker containing approximately 1.6 grams of black powder. It is very effective producing not only a lood band but also flame and smoke issuing from the mouth of the cannon.

(Source: Fremantle Heritage Guide)

Today was a beautiful day, perfect for climbing up to Azumayama Mountain Park in Ninomiya; the village I live in. The path to the park was busy, ascending and descending, and the top of the hill (really not a mountain at about 1,200 meters) was fairly crowded. Many couples and families, enjoying a early spring day to picnic.

Here are some of the pictures I took today, enjoy.

http://picasaweb.google.com/triple3house/AzumayamaMountain150309#

A new attack exploiting a previously unknown bug in Version 9 of Adobe’s Acrobat and Reader is on the loose and being called very severe, and Adobe is not in a hurry to fix this critical buffer overflow vulnerability (at least not until March 11 for Version 9 and later for Versions 8 and 7).

The Shadowserver Foundation reports that several iterations of the attack are spreading in the wild via the popular Acrobat and Acrobat Reader applications – read Shadowserver’s blog by Steven Adair.

Accordingly it is HIGHLY recommend that you DISABLE JAVASCRIPT in your Adobe Acrobat [Reader] products. You have the choice of a small loss in functionality and a crash versus your systems being compromised and all your data being stolen. (It should be an easy choice.)

Read more in Kelly J. Higgins’ DarkReading article - No User Action Required in Newly Discovered PDF Attack – where Kelly talks about malicious PDF sitting on hard drive can generate attacks exploiting unpatched Adobe Reader and Acrobat flaw.

Note: several antivirus applications can now detect the attack.

Now security managers are more concerned about the possibility of internal data leaks – both accidental and malicious – than they are about external threats.

In the last 15 years, most security professionals have spent the majority of their careers fighting attacks that originated from outside of their organizations. This trend may now be shifting inward. It has been coming for some time, as evidenced by reports and studies from a wide range of sources. Most “insider breaches” are unintentional, according to a Dark Reading‘s report Understanding the Insider Threat – Employees often break internal security policies or circumvent tools and practices designed to protect corporate systems, networks, and data from compromise.

To no great surprises, many have altered the security settings on company-issued devices so that they could access unauthorized Websites. In the worse for of security policy breaches, many employees admit sharing sensitive corporate information with others or having allowed others to use their company-issued devices without supervision.

According to a study released by Cyber-Ark Software last December, nearly large percent of workers say they have already downloaded sensitive corporate data in anticipation of a future layoff and indeed do take that data with them when they leave.

It is going to get very ugly as the likelihood of malicious insider malicious activities increases exponentially with each day of economic bad news, as exemplified by this story By Tim Wilson “Insiders Pose New Threats In Down Economy”, which was all about the fact that instances of theft and malicious attack are rising with employee discontent.

My last stop in Australia, this time around, was Adelaide – the most populous city in South Australia. Although it is a city of over 1 million people, it retains its small town flavour. The region is well known for its many good wines. I especially liked walking about town – especially its malls, the University of Adelaide sprawling campus, the Adelaide Zoo (which is constructing an enclosure for it coming Pandas), and Botanic Garden. It made for an healthy (lots of walking) entertaining day.

However, I have still the feeling that something was missing in Adelaide; just one of those nagging things in the back of one’s mind that never comes into focus. Well maybe the next time I am there I will figure it out.

I did not stay in Adelaide proper; I was billeted at the nice Lakes Resort Hotel in West Lakes, a suburb with a huge made made lake at the back. Near the hotel was a good Greek restaurant, Zak’s Cafe-Restaurant (149 Brebner Drive, West Lakes, SA 5021, Australia – tel: 08 8353 5000‎), with a decent Australian wine list.

Here are my pictures – http://picasaweb.google.com/triple3house/AdelaideAustralia#

I returned to Sydney in New South Wales, after visiting Fremantle. It is a very agreeable city to be in, even on a rainy weekend. Among large metropolitan centre, this is one of the best to be in and in my opinion much better then comparable size European cities. Sydney with it interesting architecture mix and its cosmopolitan population offers much from the arts to a plethora of eateries,  with a splendid scenery backdrop, and much more. It appears to be a very livable place.

This time around I walked from the ANZAC War Memorial, across The Domain, which has one one of Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, all around Farm Cove, The Rocks and Dawes Point, all the way back to Darling Harbour – of course stopping here and there to take pictures. With all this walking around I was so bushed that I gave up on what appears to be some very lively nightlife — well maybe next time. However, I did make it to the CohiBar （359 Harbourside, Darling Harbour, NSW 2000, Australia – tel: 02 9281 4440‎）where I enjoyed a Number 3 with a nice pint of Pure Blonde.

You can view some of the pictures here – http://picasaweb.google.com/triple3house/SydneyAustralia#

I had the pleasure to visit the port city of Fremantle in mid-February.  It is located 19 kilometres (12 mi) southwest of Perth, at the mouth of the Swan River on Australia’s western coast.

Now this is a very beautiful small town – population around 26,0o0 people, with very interesting architectural beauties all over town. While walking about town taking pictures, I ended up at the  Round House, where thanks to Michael (local volunteer guide) I had the distinction of firing the signal gun for the Time Ball at exactly 13:00. The Round House which is the oldest remaining building in Western Australia, was built as a gaol between 1830 – 1831.

While talking with Michael, I found out the the French were the first to settle the area, but gave up due to the lack of interests back in France.

From my 5 days in Fremantle, it appears that it has just about everything one needs to enjoy life.

It has a very nice Halaal restaurant serving Turkish meals – called Istanbul Restaurant (19 Essex St, Fremantle, WA 6160, Australia – tel: 08 9335 6068‎) . Further, you can bring your own bottle of red wine – at else can one asks for. It is just down the street from the Esplanade Hotel where I staid.

Here are some of my pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/triple3house/FremantleAustralia#