Alejandro@Oxford

£17 is what some secret photographs, fingerprints and confidential documents freshly stored by UK’s secret service MI6 may cost you on ebay. This is what a fellow citizen (as 43rd US president likes to say) found on a memory’s camera after buying it on the auction site. He reported it to the police, who didn’t [...]

At the bottom of the Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear [...]

Tonight (2 am in UK), from the University of Mississippi Barack Obama and John McCain will be talking to the world about US foreign policy in their first presidential debate. This promises to be an interesting hour and a half, it is, however, less meaningful as it is represented. The new US President will be [...]

Vint Cerf, Google’s Internet evangelist, came today to Oxford invited by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) to talk about the evolution of the Internet. I’m a very entertaining presentation he went from the origins of the idea to new possibilities, ending with a short explanation of the project on Interplanetary Internet or InterPlaNet.
Very shortly a [...]

Today, I gave a tutorial at the OII on how to start a blog – and why as part of the celebrations of the OneWebDay at Oxford. We were 10 people in the tutorial, which is a good number to have some conversation and a relaxed atmosphere. The participants were from very different backgrounds [...]

There you are a party for Greek students in Cafe Royal London. Every Friday and Saturday, Greek students in London meet up in Cafe Royal for a bit of fun. Any student? Well, at £15 cover it is likely exclusive for a rather small group of students from Greece, basically not the poorest one.

Tim Berners-Lee has announced the World Wide Web Foundation to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand the Web’s capability and robustness, and to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet.

Wikileaks has published on its site ten years (1994-2004) of translated messages and interviews by Osama bin Laden. This is a leaked document from the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Among many other things there is a message by bin Laden dated on September 16, 2001 — five days after the twin towers attacks [...]

On September 22, it’s time again for OneWebDay – the Earth Day for the Internet. All around the globe, people will gather for community-organized events and focus attention on local Internet concerns. This year’s theme is “Online Participation in Democracy.” And for the first time, also Oxford will join the celebrations with two free and [...]

The Shin Bet, the Israeli Secret service, launched a blog (in Hebrew) for four of his agents, the BBC informs.
Under anonymity, the agents discuss aspects of their job and the recruiting process.
A Shin Bet official told the BBC that the idea was to inform the public that the agency offers work beyond just stopping [...]