December 2007
7 posts
User authentication in a world with no free will →
I have a little background in user authentication. I wrote my undergrad CS honors thesis on Secrecy and Authentication. If you search Google hard enough you can even find mentions of the Seberry & Jones Scheme for implementing subliminal channels. I held a provisional patent with Sydney University on a biometric user authentication method based on typing style in 1985/6. The method turned out...
Carrying a knife onto a plane →
Tonight I carried a pocketknife with a 5cm blade onto a plane in Paris.
At the Le Web conference, the bag they handed out to attendees had a really nice pocketknife in it courtesy of Six Apart. It’s silver, very solid construction, with 11 blades including scissors, screwdriver, corkscrew, etc. It’s not a cheap knife. It’s totally different from any other conference giveaway I’ve ever seen, and...
Conference panels - self-indulgent, elitist, and... →
I’ve been to too many conferences recently. FOWA in London, Web 2.0 in Berlin, and tonight I got back from Le Web in Paris.
Among various other dislikes, one thing I particularly don’t enjoy are the panels. I find panels very self-indulgent. Some small number of panelists sit on stage and have a conversation with each other, while the rest of us are supposed to sit there passively and lap it up....
As I please: pizza margarita & 2 beers →
I’m in Paris for the Le Web conference. Tonight is the party, at La Scala, which looks like exactly the kind of place I hate. I never understand why people go to loud clubs.
So instead, I went out wandering and found a pizza place, ordered a margarita, drank a couple of Italian beers and took my time savoring more of Orwell. It’s such a pleasure, as with Gore Vidal essays or Proust, to read his...
Random travel thoughts →
Here are some random thoughts on air travel from my last few weeks.
US travel is much much easier than it used to be. In the years immediately post-9/11, it was such a hassle to go anywhere. Despite the fact that we still have to take off our shoes and put liquids into ridiculous transparent bags, it’s much less hassle than it was.
Ubiquitous free wifi is still a distant dream. It makes sense to...
Free wifi, with blacklisted IP, in Vegas McCarran... →
I’m sitting next to about 70 poker machines at gate B15 at the Los Vegas McCarran airport. They have free wifi, which is great.
But the IP address I picked up (63.164.47.227) appears in about a dozen blacklists (check your IP address here, for example). As a result, the various mail relays I have access to are rejecting my outgoing email. So I have to resort to blogging.
Pushing back on the elevator pitch →
I’ve been out talking to people about raising money for Fluidinfo.
Over the last 7 years I’ve read literally thousands of articles on talking to potential investors, pitching, raising money, angels, VCs, dilution, control, rounds, boards, strategies, valuations, burn rates, equity, etc. I’ve bought and read dozens of related books. I’m a regular reader of about a dozen VC blogs and the blogs of...