hard-core
« Previous EntriesSpit and a Handshake
Saturday, September 6th, 2008Horse traders in Ireland famously spit into their palms before shaking hands to seal a deal. A great deal of spitting goes on in Vanuatu-style horse trading, but it’s almost all kava-induced.
Almost all.
The political scene here is small enough that everyone knows each other. In some cases, this acquaintance borders on respect, even camaraderie. But [...]
First election results
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008The very first election results are starting to trickle in. They’re very preliminary, incomplete and subject to change.
This is gossip, not reporting.
Final Update: Okay, it’s time to call it a day on this thread. I’ve been cross-referencing sources all over town, and the only thing that’s clear is that nothing is clear. The electoral [...]
Election follies
Monday, September 1st, 2008This week’s column for the Daily Post is about Vanuatu’s imminent general election, to be held on September 2nd. In the course of researching this country’s political and electoral history, I found far more than I could reasonably fit into a spartan 850 words. So here’s a rambling brain dump about some of the more [...]
Then and Now
Thursday, August 28th, 2008Nobody seems to have anticipated just how widespread and immediate the effects of telecoms liberalisation would be. Some of the expectations outlined in the World Bank report titled ‘Infrastructure Regulatory Review’ appear now to be quite conservative, in some cases landing nearly outside the ballpark.
PACNOG Talk
Monday, June 30th, 2008One of the items in yesterday’s brain dump was a talk I presented to the Pacific Network Operators Group (PACNOG) at the Sebel Hotel. It’s titled ‘Network Effects: Social Significance of Mobile Communications in Vanuatu‘. It explains Network Effects and how they manifest themselves in village life, then looks at some obvious and not-so-obvious implications [...]
Adventures in Paradise
Saturday, May 31st, 2008The rain drives the tourists off the sidewalks, diminishes the Pacific to a neighbourly size, and melts all my plans like ice cream.
I open the paper and read a wandering, questing letter about the ‘beautiful, innocent people of Vanuatu‘, and ache a little because it’s so nearly true.
In the wall-high mirror, a woman spins her [...]
Trust Works All Ways
Monday, May 19th, 2008Over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about last week’s disclosure concerning Debian’s OpenSSL package, which in effect stated that all keys and certificates generated by this compromised code have been trivially crackable since late 2006.
There’s a pretty good subjective analysis of the nature of the error on Ben Laurie’s blog (thanks, Rich), and of course [...]
Steaming Piles
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008Sometimes you have to destroy the document in order to save it….
Stop Bad Errors
Thursday, May 8th, 2008I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04, which comes with the most recent beta of Firefox 3.0. The new version of Firefox has a number of interesting features, not the least of which is a set of measures to reduce drive-by infection of PCs.
If they wander from the beaten path, people now see a big red [...]
Fix This and Tell Me When You’re Done
Monday, April 14th, 2008[First written in February of 2004. I'm reposting it here for posterity, and because it came up in conversation earlier today. There've been a few serious attacks against expats recently, including a murder and a particularly brutal rape. The perception among some is of a sudden uptick in violent crime. I recounted this story to [...]
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