The problems of the future - Youtube's board discusses Pakistani politics.

Youtube recently had a global site outage. According to Youtube this is because of an ISP based in Pakistan. Politics aside, what happened here is that the government wanted the ISP to block access to Youtube and it sounds like the ISP took a sledgehammer to tap in a nail.

Here is another way to look at it, if the Pakistani government wanted to block access to Victoria's Secret catalogs to its mass population, it is easy to do. Locate all points of entry and destroy the printed material. Unfortunately restricting access to Youtube is a bit trickier, routing protocols are smarter than the 20 words used to describe them in Wired.
My point being, I think we are going to see a lot more of this in the future. The good news is that clumsy attempts on information restriction will now be globally noticed, the bad news is that in many cases (like this one) the effects will also be globally felt.

Btw, I heard on NPR this morning that Taliban has given cell phone companies three days to turn of their cell towers at night (to prevent US troops from tracking them through their cell phone usage) . After three days they plan on blowing up cell phone towers that operate through the night.

Welcome to the era where the CEO and technology companies have to discuss terrorist demands in their board meetings. This was inevitable as technology kept moving towards becoming an indispensable commodity like energy. Well it is here now... enjoy

My alignment with the presidential hopefuls

My wife sent me this link to a poll that estimates how much my views align with a given presidential candidates. Thanks kim :-)

84% John McCain
81% Mitt Romney
74% Mike Huckabee
72% Rudy Giuliani
69% Fred Thompson
68% Tom Tancredo
58% Hillary Clinton
56% Ron Paul
56% Barack Obama
54% Bill Richardson
53% Chris Dodd
52% John Edwards
49% Joe Biden
30% Mike Gravel
29% Dennis Kucinich

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Is this because of lack of choices?

From an San Francisco Chronicle article about Gavin Newsom who is running for re-election as Mayor.
Fact:

On Feb. 1, the mayor publicly admitted the accuracy of a Chronicle report that he had a sexual affair with his appointments secretary, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the wife of Alex Tourk, a friend of Newsom's who at the time of the affair was his deputy chief of staff.

Tourk later managed Newsom's re-election campaign, but he resigned late last month after learning of the affair. Newsom disclosed four days after admitting the affair that he would seek treatment for an alcohol problem. He publicly apologized again today to Tourk and his family.

The article continues with some responses from the residents of San Francisco,

"I am not going away. I care so deeply about you and this city," he (Newsom) said to cheers and applause.

His speech had the desired effect.

"I think he's good for the city," said Ralph Romberg, a lower Pacific Heights resident who has volunteered on Newsom's two past campaigns, for mayor and for supervisor. "I'm not interested in his private life. It's not my business."

Pacific Heights resident Yvonne Thompson shook Newsom's hand and told him to "hang in there."

"We all have some skeletons in our closet," Thompson said. "He's a nice person and supportive to the African American community."

Not only is he getting away with this behavior (which would be unacceptable if our son/dad/uncle did it) but he is "good for the city".

Why..?