Corruption in Panama

It seems corrupt cops come as a standard part of the adventure when
traveling to Central America.

Tonight my dad and I were stopped by a freightening duo of Panamanian
National Police officers decked out in bullet proof gear and carrying
large shot guns, standing next to a police motorcycle.

We were walking in the Amador Causeway area, near the Country Inn and
Suites and the local TGI Fridays, in case you are familiar with the
area.

The officers asked for identification, passports to be exact. The
leader of the two explained that there is a law in Panama for everyone
to be able to identify him/herself. I did have my driver license, but
that wasn't enough.

"You might be illegals," the officer said. We will have to take you to
the police station where you can pay a fine. I offered to pay a fine,
but he drifted from the fine to letting us go, as long as we gave him
some beer money.

We offered to take him out for a beer right then and there, but he
said he couldn't. After what seemed an eternity of discussing Panama,
the city and world travel he seemed to give up.

Ultimately a Panamanian girl showed up and we found a taxi to take us
away and back to a hotel.

The Panamanian girl, by the way, was never asked for her ID.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Powder day at Northstar!

Heavy Snow in Truckee

We woke up this Sunday morning to heavy snow outside the cabin in Truckee. Amazingly beautiful, but also a bit scary when it comes to driving back home this afternoon. I'm planning on doing a slope check at Northstar and ski in white out, but powder conditions until the weather front passes and I80 is plowed :)

Photo: Sunset over Jefferson Memorial

I've spent the majority of my day today working out of a hotel room in Washington D.C. While working, I have seen Barack Obama's helicopter fly by several times, seen tons of take-offs and landings at DC's National Airport right across the Potomac River and now saw this nice sunset while on a teleconference.

Picture: Great Falls, MD

Great Falls NP, Maryland

Quick stop with my Virginia-based relatives. A bit of a rainy Sunday, but nice to get out. These falls are no match for Iguazu though ;)

Newseum, Washington DC

A weekend in DC with some strolling on the mall after searching for parking for ever :) We're headed to an exhibit of Dutch master artists across the street from the Newseum.

BBC uses botnet to spam, launch DDOS attack -- what?!

After reading this BBC News piece I could only say one thing: "What were they thinking?!"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7932816.stm

BBC's Click, a usually excellent program that explains technology to the masses, used a botnet of 22,000 commandeered PCs to send spam and launch a denial of service attack.

Granted, they sent spam to addresses set up by themselves and attacked their own Web site, but that doesn't take away that PCs of unknowing people were abused to do this. These commandeered PCs were in use by businesses, government, schools and regular consumers.

So what's the purpose of the BBC stunt? It seems they wanted to showcase the botnet problem. Unfortunately, the botnet problem is well understood, it is not a new threat that is not reported on enough. In fact law enforcement has been ramping up arrests of bot herders and organizations like Microsoft and McAfee have been warning consumers about the botnet risks for years (since we saw the first big DDOS attacks about a decade ago.)

Will Scotland Yard be knocking down the BBC doors early one morning? Maybe they should at least have an ethics conversation.

Salt Lake City Airport

An early morning flight today from San Jose to Salt Lake and on to Washington DC's National airport. Lots of snow surrounding Salt Lake City, makes me want to bring my skis and just get out here instead of heading further east.

I am heading to DC to speak at the IAPP's Privacy Summit together with Sue Glueck from Microsoft and Andrew Howard from Edelman. I'm sure it will be fun, our session is all about preparing for a tough interview or hearing. We hope to find some volunteers to participate in our "murder board."

Isabella Ann Soper's welcome cake.

The cake is about eight times as big as the baby.

Winter storms over Silicon Valley

Winter storms have finally come and are dropping a lot of rain and hail over Silicon Valley. Maybe this will help remediate the water shortage. (And there is tons of new snow in the Sierra Nevada.)

I80

Wagon Trail cafe, Truckee, CA

Sunday morning brunch in Truckee, CA

Wagon Trail Cafe Truckee, CA

The Wagon Trail cafe in Truckee, CA gets really busy on Sunday mornings with a large brunch crowd of skiers. Great selection of omelets, pastries with your standard mediocre coffee. Highly recommended.