Veni | Вени

The workshop under the headline iLaw Eurasia, organized by the CDT and others, took place in Tallin from Monday to Friday. Great place (the IT college of Estonia), in cooperation with the e-gov academy of Estonia… This country is really amazing – a mixture of great history and Soviet style. But they don’t complin, instead move forward. The result is that it has Internet all over – free and paid, but you pay like $ 2 for 24 hours – by far the cheapest public wireless access I’ve seen.

The histories of way Internet is being developed in the Central Asian countries, but also Bulgaria, Belorussia, Moldova, etc., are quite interesting (hope they will be published at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ilaw/eurasia_2004

However, listening to Ivar Tallo’s presentation at the end of Thursday, I am really getting upset… by my own government! We were at the same position as Estonia 15 years ago. Even 4 years ago we moved on the right track. Today Bulgaria’s totally lost in cyberspace… And no political will to do the changes, no need of society to change things, as criminals work better when there’s no accountability.
I’m very sorry for not being able to push my own government hard enough so that they would lead the e-revolution. May be next year…

John Gage of Sun Microsystems is talking to us in Tallin, Estonia about Technologies Development. One of the points is about how we’re being spotted with all the radio equipment we have.

However, that brought me to the idea that the new DECT phones allow to connect one base stations to another one, and thus you could actually use a normal 2.4 or 5.8 GHz phone to talk from one location but noone will be ever able to locate you. Of course, it gives only like few hundred meters, but imagine installing 5 base stations, and you may be 1 km away from where the police would think you are. Or the bad guys.

Have to think more about it.

Well, one piece of advise – if you travel around the world, avoid the Prague airport. On my way to Estonia, I had to go via Prague. While Czech airlines (name tag OK:) are fine, the airport is not that great. They took all passengers in a very cold bus (temperature around zero Celzius), and kept us there, doors opened, heating not working, for… half an hour, until all late arriving passengers made it through the gate.

After this I was so freezing, that it took me the whole day and night to get back to normal sensitivity.

The airport itself is OK, and there are launges for the different companies. Of course, there’s nothing in the lanunges, except drinks and cookies; no fruits, no vegetables. Nothing like in Vienna or Frankfurt. But after all, if there was no difference, how could the czhechs progress? Now they have so big road to go:))