The new "Superbug"

"Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera -- a super bug -- into the Western Hemisphere for the first time.
The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 -- two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base.

"What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible," said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. "These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease."

More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in Boston, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases.

How cholera landed in Haiti has been a politically charged topic for more than a year now, with the United Nations repeatedly refusing to acknowledge any role in the outbreak despite mounting evidence that international peacekeepers were the most likely culprits. The UN has already faced hostility from Haitians who believe peacekeeping troops have abused local residents without consequence. They now face legal action from relatives of victims who have petitioned the UN for restitution. And the cholera charge could further hamper the UN's ability to work effectively there, two years after the country was hobbled by the earthquake.

Over the summer, Assistant Secretary General Anthony Banbury told ABC News that the UN sincerely wanted to know if it played a part in the outbreak, but independent efforts to answer that question had not succeeded. He said the disease could have just as easily been carried by a backpacker or civilian aid worker.

Banbury said the UN, through both its peacekeeping mission and its civilian organizations "are working very hard ... to combat the spread of the disease and bring assistance to the people. And that's what's important now."

"The scientists say it can't be determined for certainty where it came from," Banbury said. "So we don't know if it was the U.N. troops or not. That's the bottom line."
A UN spokeswoman repeated the answer when asked again last week: "The [scientists] determined it was not possible to be conclusive about how cholera was introduced into Haiti," said the UN's Anayansi Lopez.continue

When piracy gets dangerous

"A British student faces up to a decade in a U.S. prison for actions which are not even a crime in the UK. Campaigners say Richard O’Dwyer, 23, is being abandoned by his country in the same way as computer hacker Gary McKinnon.
Mr O’Dwyer is accused of listing places where films and TV programmes could be illegally downloaded, on a website he ran from his university bedroom in Sheffield [UK]. Legal experts say this is not an offence under British law, and he did not download any of the entertainment himself. ..."

"... Instead of putting the men on trial in the country where their alleged offences took place, the British legal system is permitting them to be bundled on a plane to America. Mr O’Dwyer’s mother Julia ...said the ‘rotten’ U.S./UK extradition treaty needed 'fixing fast' and warned: 'If they can come for Richard they can come for anyone.' ..."

"The huge controversy over yesterday’s verdict will heighten demands for the UK’s extradition laws to be changed. MPs have demanded that the Government should insist a person must normally be tried in the country where the offence took place. They also want urgent reform to the lopsided 2003 Extradition Act – which gives far greater protection to Americans than it does to their British counterparts. The U.S.
requires ‘sufficient evidence to establish probable cause’ before agreeing to extradite anyone to the UK, while Britons going in the opposite direction are not afforded the same protection."

The future is Open-source hardware

Open-source hardware is on its way and it’ll foster a new era of innovation, according to MIT.
The emergence of freely available hardware designs and near-free components will unleash the same sort of technology innovation that open-source software kicked off a decade or so ago, Ito said Tuesday.

“If you want to build a video camera, some day you’ll be able to find all the standard parts, the designs online for free and then you’ll only design the pieces of the product that interest you,” Ito said at an MITX fireside chat in Cambridge, Mass.

Developers would focus their attention on the more valuable hardware they build atop that standard base, just as software developers write specialized software that runs on Linux and open-source middleware instead of proprietary Unix or Windows operating systems and Oracle’s WebLogic or IBM’s WebSphere middleware.

The industry is starting to talk open-source hardware in the context of the Open Compute Foundation which focuses on data center servers. That means far broader application.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is advancing faster than our ability to secure systems.
Companies are rapidly moving their most critical data and information from file cabinets and secured servers to shared servers on the Web.
Cloud computing provides significant cost savings and operational advantages.
But it also unleashes a Pandora’s box of security concerns.
We’ve already seen cloud break-ins originating from China.
And a number of legitimate Internet companies have suffered when the FBI confiscated a shared server in a cloud hosting facility that also hosted rogue applications.
One major security breach could throw cold water over the entire industry and slow down the corporate adoption that is expected to drive cloud growth this year and for many years to come.
Vivek Wadhwa, Published: December 30
There is clearly another bubble inflating in the cloud computing sector, with every company that uses a distributed architecture now calling itself a “cloud company.” So what does 2012 have in store?

Europe 2012

If the bulk of the economy is currently based on small business, how can this economy ever "recover" to even a shell of its former self if there's no longer any real incentive for anyone to go into business?
Entrepreneurs will tend to rely on small, less risky, cash only, capital investments, and thus, small production facilities, small workforces, "under the radar" tax payments, no benefits to part-time employees, and the other techniques needed to maintain their enterprises.
While this may result in a fairly good living for the entrepreneur, and perhaps even for his/her favored employees, it's not the stuff of which enough capital is generally produced to develop community wealth.
The main obstacle to renewed economic stability is not lack of printed paper money to be loaned out at interest, and which will only add to future financial instability, but rather, the great fear of mindless government confiscation of any small profit the entrepreneur may accidentally acquire in this very risky business climate.
If this is true, it's clear there will be no recovery, at least in rational terms, until thousands of government regulations which destroy personal incentive are removed from the books.
I can't see this happening anytime soon. In fact, each day brings the news more and more governments are INCREASING taxes, enforcement personnel, regulations...all in the name of maintaining "services" such as government payrolls, pension plans, various w elfare systems, but all of which further destroys entrepreneurial incentive. Therefore, I must also conclude there'll be no stability of the economy any time soon either.
From all evidence, we're now seeing the real-life results of yet another experiment in socialism concluding predictably, but on the largest scale in history.
We now have a population trained almost to a person to believe in the omnipotence of "big daddy" government. So much so, it's abandoned the principles which formerly gave it great strength...principles of self-sufficiency, moral belief in hard-work and enjoying the rewards of this, principles of thrift, respect for the property of others...on and on.
With a belief in "cradle to the grave" so-called "security" offered by glib politicians who have no idea how to deliver such "benefits", this former noble population has been reduced to a nation of beggars demanding eternal handouts...handouts which are dwindling as fast as the former forests of Easter Island.
Again, as I see it, it's not a problem of printing more paper money. It's a problem of individual thinking in terms of personal morality.
Printing money, especially in the form of computer digits, can be done in an instant. Building character and building a nation of solid financial structure takes generations.
The relative value of both is readily apparent.