Hippo, birdie, two ewes...

... to sammyd!!! Have a great one!

Getting around the American internet spies

Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. - NYTimes.com

“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”

Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable. Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures, Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with larger international Internet service providers.

(From cryptome.)

Not surprising.

The day so far...

Breakfast was an omelette with leftover pesto -- Colleen made wonderful fresh pesto last night for dinner.

Spent my time alone in the morning (I get up much earlier than the flower_cat) doing some much-needed but basically uninteresting maintenance on my email foldering system, and going through most of the unread mail in my "misc" folder. Added a "friends" folder.

After breakfast, the Cat and I went up to San Francisco for the Chihuly exhibit at the de Young Museum. Amazing. Indescribable. If there's one near you, go see it. Also some amazing paper art by Jane Hammond. Lunch in the museum cafe; tasty (we both had the lamb curry), but the rice was underdone--they're clearly running a bit beyond their capacity with the Chihuly crowds. No problems with the wheelchair, though I need to remember to ask whether she's ready to roll after she's been in one place for a while; sometimes she puts her feet down.

Nice drive back by way of the Great Highway, State Route 1 past Devil's Slide to Half Moon Bay, and 92 back to I280. Tempting to take 1 down all the way to Santa Cruz, but we really didn't have the time.

Walked around the Rose Garden. You know that pain in the ball of my foot that I mentioned yesterday and the day before? Had it again, even with my Keen hiking boots. Something bruised, I think. The running shoes seem to have the best padding; may have to use those plus an ankle brace for a while.

Spent the evening puttering, and attempting to diagnose Colleen's dual-boot desktop machine in the bedroom, and Kat's HP Ubuntu box. Oddly enough, both worked fine for me (though the HP doesn't seem to recognize the monitor size through a KVM switch even when X is restarted; it may have to boot with the monitor switched in). Loose connections, maybe. That, or I scared them into working.

My daughter is starting to scare me

My 16-year-old just wrote a couple of song lyrics. I'll see if I can get have persuaded her to post them in public; you'll find them here.

Actually, she's been scaring me for the last year or so, ever since she grew taller than me. But that's another matter.