Hello everyone. I want to wish everyone a happy new year and say a few things about what I expect for the new year. I believe that one of the most important issues facing "first world" countries like the USA and England are the issues of Internet security and privacy. The news this morning of the umbrage of US congress people to the news that NSA is monitoring of their communications with people in the Israeli government is laughable: let us be clear about this: these people don't care about the privacy of US citizens but they do care about their own privacy and the privacy of leaders of another country. This stinks, and badly. While privacy is important I believe that a bigger issue security. I would like to see my government (USA) conduct a multi-year "going to the moon" type project for strengthening our information infrastructures to the benefit of people, companies, and governments. This means that there can be no encryption back doors installed in any

I may be late to the Raspberry Pi party - I just bought my first one this week. The Rasberry Pi is everything that I would hope for in an educational computer: cheap enough for all children to own and based on open source software (Debian Linux, LibreOffice, lots of games, and programming languages like Python, Ruby, Java, Scratch, etc. pre installed). The open nature of the Raspberry Pi encourages kids to experiment. RPs might not be as practical as other systems like ChromeBook that have more distributed infrastructure behind them but I think that open systems provide a better better environment for experimenting with computers. I reformatted a 32GB memory card and installed a fresh Debian Linux image provided by the Raspberry Pi project and when hooked up to a large monitor the Raspberry Pi 2 is quite capable. I installed the RubyMine IDE and git cloned a few of my Ruby projects and loaded the manuscript for my current writing project. I find the system is surprising fast with

This post contains my advice for maintaining a reasonable amount of privacy without reducing the utility and entertainment we get from the Internet. It is no news that governments are pushing back against our right of privacy and we should also be concerned by tracking by both corporations and organized crime. Privacy is a basic human right and once rights are lost or reduced in scope they can be very difficult to get back. To start with I believe that everyone should have the privacy enhanced Tor web browser installed. Tor was developed originally by the US Navy in support of journalists and other people living in countries with oppressive regimes. I strongly recommend using Tor for the following reasons: Research any medical conditions that you have. You are interested in buying a product and you don't want advertisers to put ads on web sites you visit because you would rather make independent unbiased purchasing decisions. Visit any sites for any reason that you would not lik