Americans love to forgive those who have sinned, as long as they repent. It is probably because of the way christian evangelists interpret the Bible. That is why televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart were forgiven for their sins after appearing repentant in front of the public.

The same happens in politics. In the 2000 elections, everyone knew that then candidate George W. Bush had abused alcohol during his youth. He was never known to be a hard-working person either. However, because he was repentant and claimed to have changed, everybody seemed ready to forgive him.

Today we find ourselves in a similar position. Barak Obama has recognized that, as an adolescent, he “experimented” with marijuana and cocaine. The question is, should he be forgiven for his errors?

The fact is that it is very easy for me to forgive all the mistakes made by politicians like George W. Bush, Barak Obama or John Edwards. After all, none of them did have direct consequences on me or my loved ones. Truth is that it is really up to the people they have hurt, not us, to decide wether they deserve being forgiven or not. However, from a voter point of view, it is a totally different matter. It is our duty to elect the best person for the job. Past mistakes, specially if extremely serious, are a clear proof of bad judgement. This is something that we have to take into account when choosing a candidate. We can forgive but we cannot forget.

We all have flaws, it is part of human nature, but many of us don’t lie repeatedly, aren’t unfaithful to our spouse and haven’t abused controlled substance. I believe that our society deserves to have candidates that do not need to be forgiven and that we can be really proud of. Is it really too much to ask for?

I was promoted a couple of weeks ago. This was something totally unexpected but it turns out that I am now just a step away from becoming a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, which just a month ago seemed like an impossible goal to achieve. It won’t be easy but I will certainly do my best to try to reach that position.

The best part of the promotion is that I got a larger, closed office. When you spend as many hours as I do at work, you want to feel at home at work. I therefore decided to decorate the walls by hanging pictures of all the tech luminaries that have left their mark on the computer industry as well as the products they brought to market. In a way,this is my personal Computer Hall of Fame.

Well, it turns out that this is much easier said than done. If you look on the web you will not easily find many pictures or stories from our recent past. Try for example looking for images of Sir Clive Sinclair (the man who brought us the ZX 81 and the ZX Spectrum computers) and you will be disappointed by the results. Same story for Sir Alan Sugar, the founder of Amstrad, who brought us the CPC 464 back in the eighties. You may think that this only happens to brit aristocrats, but you would be wrong. I tried to find a picture of former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner and could only find a small picture on IBM’s corporate site. Even worse, I could only find two poor quality pictures of Adam Osborne, the man who brought us the first commercially available portable computer, and passed away just five years ago. There isn’t much information about him in Wikipedia either.

In general, most companies will carry current pictures of their top executives but except for a small number of honorable exceptions (IBM and H-P mainly) they don’t seem to care much about preserving their history. The situation is obviously much worse for dead companies like Netscape, Amstrad or Atari which do not have curators interested in preserving their legacy.

With the Internet focusing mainly on recent events, if we are not careful, in a couple of years we will have lost a large part of our recent history. There are a couple of nice sites that deserve praise, for example folklore.org which extensively documents the history of how the original Macintosh was built, but that is obviously not enough. It would be nice if there was a place for all of us to collaborate on preserving the exciting stories of the computing revolution. On wikia there are 28,586 Star Trek articles, but there is nothing comparable for the computer history. That is really sad.

Several argentinean newspapers (link in Spanish) have reported on a MacBook Air gifted by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to Argentina’s president Cristina Kirchner. This is apparently creating a large controversy as the product is perceived as a luxury item. As a result, the presidency will create a public official gift registry to avoid any suspicions of corruption. This is certainly a good initiative implemented in many countries rocked by similar scandals in the past. However, in general the controversy was created over much pricier gifts like the diamonds that African dictator Bokassa gave to French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing back in the 70’s.

What really surprises me is to see how Apple products have become a symbol of luxury recently. I am sure that everyone remembers for example the gold plated iPod that David Beckham received from his team mates. I have seen many CEOs of large enterprises be the single Mac users of their company. For example, I know that Ricardo Salinas Pliego, CEO of Grupo Salinas and one of the wealthiest men in Mexico uses a Mac. At Banorte, one of the large Mexican banks, and probably the fastest growing one, there are only two Mac users. However, those users have a lot of weight as they are the CEO and the Director of Marketing.

What does that mean for the future of the Mac in large companies? Well, it means that the IT staff has no option but to learn how to use those computers and support them. That opens a new market for Apple. It also means that it is becoming harder for IT departments to adopt solutions that exclude the Mac. This is not good news for Microsoft and it could help companies like IBM or Oracle that have developed collaboration solutions that are truly platform independent. Many open-source advocates have long criticized Apple for their proprietary approach to computing. It is time for them to recognize that Apple is helping their cause very strongly by forcing the adoption of open standards.

Everyday you hear about globalization. It just seems that every single day our earth is becoming smaller and smaller. Global brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Starbucks are found everywhere. People all over the world are complaining that nations are losing power and independence. They claim that all important decisions are now taken at a supra-national level (this is specially true in the EU). But is it really true? Sometimes I wish it were. You see, I am Dutch but I was raised in Switzerland, attended college in France and Spain before getting my first job in Canada. I now happen to live in Mexico, but as many other things in life this is due to circumstances, and circumstances may change. That means that for me, as well as a growing group of people who have become used to live all around the world, the nation system doesn’t make much sense anymore. It simply places too many artificial barriers that make life ridiculously complex when it doesn’t need to be.

Despite all the talk about globalization, most of the changes that have happened over the last decades have mainly impacted corporations. At the individual level there are still many barriers protecting nations which make the life of people like myself difficult. I think that these barriers can easily be grouped in three kinds, commercial, financial and legal.

The commercial barriers are starting to crumble. It is becoming very difficult to limit the sale of a product to a single country or region or use differentiated pricing policies around the world. The gray market which quickly appears when artificial product availability and pricing is introduced by the manufacturer is taking care of the problem in most cases. However, there are still important issues impacting global consumers where I feel totally unprotected. One case is for example DVDs. The introduction of regions makes it impossible for me to buy a Spanish Blu-Ray disk because it will simply not play on my American PlayStation 3. The same happens with console games. Music is another sector that needs to be liberated. It doesn’t make any sense that I can easily buy a French CD from Amazon.fr but that I cannot buy from the French Apple Store. The problem is that I do not feel that anyone is fighting for the global consumer. We really need someone to pick that fight for us. These issues should be discussed at an international level, for example by the WTO.

On a financial level, I strongly believe that individuals deserve more freedom. We should be allowed to easily open a bank account anywhere in the world. Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to avoid paying taxes, I just want to move my money where I can get the best returns. I would love to invest in the US through online brokerage companies like e-trade, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter if I have access to all the required information to find interesting investment opportunities. Because of all the legal barriers imposed to individuals, there is no way for me to invest in Serbia for example, now that they are moving closer to joining the EU. I would love to sell Euros and buy Dollars now that it is clear that the current exchange rate is taking a terrible toll on the European industry and that the ECB will have to lower rates, but that is not going to happen either because I cannot have an Euro denominated account in Mexico, despite being a customer of a global bank based in Europe. That drives me crazy. I do understand that if we liberalize the financial system this could be a great opportunity for drug lords and other evildoers to abuse the system, but I still believe that something needs to be done to help individuals take their financial decisions freely. Moving exclusively to electronic currency could be the solution to start eradicating crime and allow for more (supervised) financial freedom.

The legal front is the most complex and where more work is required. Taxation and retirement benefits for example are regulated by law and represent a major issue that countries have been trying to solve through bilateral agreements. However, if there is no such agreement in place you may be out of luck. Say for example that you worked 40 years in total, 20 in one country and 20 in a different country. You may qualify for retirement in any of those countries after working for 30 years, but if there is no agreement to recognize the years worked in the other country you may end up not qualifying for benefits in neither country. In general laws are still designed to protect citizens who live and die in their home country. This simply does no longer represent the current situation of an increasingly large population group and inadecuate laws are reducing worker mobility. If countries are serious about attracting talent they must make sure that situations like the one I described are avoided.

The problem is in many ways cultural, people are not used to this new situation. Most people still expect your nationality to describe you. However, those traveling to France will be very disappointed if they expect to only see white people wearing bérets and carrying baguettes under their arms on the streets of Paris. The world has changed. You would expect large Internet companies like Yahoo or Google to understand the problem, after all their reach is global, right? Wrong. They still assume too often that because someone connects from a certain country they are citizens of that country and that they behave in a predictable way. For example, when I connect to the US Yahoo main page from Mexico I get an ad for the Mexican soccer section (I couldn’t care less for Mexican soccer). When I connect to Google from Brazil, I get my search results in Portuguese. When I try to see the goals scored by Real Madrid on marca.com, I am denied service because I am connecting from outside of Spain. All this is simply ridiculous. Of course, I have the option to fight back, I can use a proxy server in the US or in any other country to fool the system, but why should I have to? This happens to some degree even in the US. That is why a device like the slingbox has become popular. People want to see their home team games while on travel. Consumers demand freedom and they will ultimately get it, even if they have to bend the rules.

I do not expect changes to happen quickly. Politicians do not have any incentive to help people like me. For starters, we do not live in our home country and too often we do not vote or represent a political force. Besides, the issue is complex and international cooperation is needed to solve the many problems that I have briefly outlined. As usual, governments are playing catch-up with the social issues that are grappling the world. Globalization is happening and not just at the corporate level. Governments need to adjust to a new reality and they need to do so very quickly because the amount of people who are becoming global citizens is growing exponentially and we are increasingly asking for solutions to our new problems. However, this issue needs also to be tackled by corporations who need to work with a new kind of customers who expect truly global service from global companies.

Founded by John Calvin, the Collège Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, will soon turn 450 years old. On February 24, 1428, the Conseil Général of Geneva decided to establish a collège in Rive (now downtown). In it was taught the liberal arts and universitary studies, which Genevan people had previously had to go abroad to study. After the Protestant Reformation, school was made obligatory as well as free for poor people. However, it wasn’t until May 29, 1559, after the enactment of the Leges Academiae Genevensis (Order of the Collège de Genève) that work actually began on building a new official Collège de Genève. When it was finally inaugurated, students didn’t have much time for fun, working generally for sixty hours a week or even more. But then, nobody should really be surprised, Protestant theologians were not famous for their sense of humor. What they appreciated was hard work and dedication which is why they started a tradition of excellency by recognizing every year the best students at a ceremony called “Promotions”

The Collège de Genève was renamed the Collège Calvin in 1969. Many things have changed since the school was founded, theology and latin are long gone, but the school still provides great education, free, now to everyone and the “Promotions” still reward the canton’s best students every year and have grown into a significant festivity in a town not exactly known for being fun (clean and safe yes but fun, certainly not).

I didn’t stay very long at Calvin, just under two years, from 1981 to 1983, because my father was transferred to Spain. I must say though that those years were probably among the most productive of all my student years. Sure, we had some excellent teachers, like Mme Lejeune, who I will always remember because she was able to inspire us with mediaeval literature (which was no small feat), but that wasn’t the only reason. There is just something about old schools that inspires a level of respect that modern buildings simply cannot easily reproduce or even replace with technology. It may have been the mystery of what may have been hidden behind the old doors or the implicit pressure to be up to the legacy of a school that has produced some great alumni like Jorge Luis Borges or red-cross founder Henry Dunant. Who knows? It doesn’t really matter. Whatever it was, I could sense it and that is why my short stay at this school will always be one of the most important parts of my life.

Speaking of old schools, I must say that I feel very lucky to have attended two other schools loaded with history. I attended elementary school at the École des Cropettes, also in Geneva, surrounded by a large park where kids could feed the squirrels that lived on the trees. Later on I went to Sécheron, a school housed in a large 19th century building next to the park bordering Lake Geneva.

It is easy to say that good students can learn at any school, but the truth is that a good environment can make the process much easier. Buildings like those really make it easy to love going to school. When I see some of the public schools here in Mexico I cannot avoid thinking that in order to improve education there is still so much work needed, better teachers, smaller classes, improved security and last but not least, much better buildings that make schools much more compelling to kids.

Fitna is a short movie created by a Dutch politician and lawmaker about the threat Islam poses to the Western World.

The movie basically reminds people of many of the brutal unacceptable acts performed by radical fanatical islamists over the years. It is not a strong reminder of the dangers of religion. In some ways this movie reminds me of the attempts of many Europeans to warn against the thread posed by Hitler in the nineteen thirties. Nobody listened and people preferred to ignore the problem thinking that it couldn’t be as bad as these pesky protesters claimed. We all know what happened.

The Western world cannot accept threats to his citizens who are just exercising their free speech rights. We must also openly fight for the rights of dissidents, women, gays and all those who live in fear in Islamic countries. It is great to denounce Scientology for being a business or express outrage at China because of what is happening in Tibet, but the truth is that all this is just peanuts compared to what is happening daily in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or even Saudi Arabia. It is our obligation to denounce human rights violations everywhere in the world, independently of what caused them (a ruthless dictator, historical neighbor hate tread or a holy book), and clearly state them as morally unacceptable. This has nothing to do with liberty of cult.

Fitna was originally posted on liveleak where it was viewed by millions, but it had to be removed because of serious threats to the company workers. However, it can still be found here. It is also available on Bittorrent.

The recent events in Tibet have prompted some world leaders to discuss the possibility of boycotting the olympic games next summers. So far only French President Sarkozy seems to consider the idea seriously but if the situation worsens I see more European countries starting to consider that option.

I personally think that at the very least the topic should be discussed. After all, the Chinese track record on human rights has been historically extremely poor and this is a good opportunity to show our dissatisfaction with this situation. I do not believe though that this decision should be taken by governments, it is up to the athletes themselves to decide. They are the ones who have spent at least the last four years training and they would be making the sacrifice, not the officials.

A couple of days ago, Haile Gebrselassie, who has asthma and is the world’s record holder in the marathon, announced that he would not risk his health by taking part in the 26.2-mile race in the Chinese capital, which is notorious for its poor air quality. This decision was widely discussed in the media and as a result many eyes turned east to examine the environmental situation in China. This clearly shows how individual decisions can have a significant impact on society and raise awareness about social problems.

A formal boycott is a political decision by a government that too often does not have the moral stature to chastise others. On the other hand, individual decisions made by people who make real sacrifices to send a message are much more powerful.

Digg has bothered me for quite a while. It is a good source for news as I do not have to scour the web for interesting stories. However, if you are looking for objectivity you will have to look somewhere else.

This is probably not a problem for those who only visit very specific Digg sections like Technology/Apple you or Gaming/XBox. You know what you are getting into. Those sections have fanboy written all around them. I don’t think that anyone reading the news posted there have any objectivity expectations whatsoever.

On the other hand, if you enter a more general section such as World & Business/US Elections 2008 you may think that all positions will be equally (or at least proportionally) represented. If you think so, you may be in for a big disappointment.

Today I tried to submit a story published on the Yahoo front page about how Hillary Clinton was now leading the polls among Democrats. I don’t really want Clinton to be elected President but I wanted that particular news to get posted on Digg since Obama suporters have clearly hijacked that section of the site (previously Ron Paul supporters had done the same on the Republican side). I was just trying to get some balance into Digg because I naively though that the problem was that only positive news for Obama were being published. I was wrong, dead wrong.

It turns out that the news had already been submitted by someone else. That should have made me happy, right? That is what I wanted, a positive note for Clinton in an ocean of notes favoring Obama, providing some well needed balance in my quest for objectivity. Well, let’s say that I was deeply disappointed (this is probably the understatement of the year). The person who actually submitted the story first is obviously an Obama supporter. Instead of titling the story “Clinton leads the polls” or something similar based on the actual content of the article, he decided to name it “The Media Is Already Gearing Up To Justify Clinton Winning”. With such an absurd title it is likely that most Digg readers will never read the actual note, which probably was the intent of this person from the beginning.

Since the same article cannot be submitted twice, it is easy to play the system. A partial solution would be to have Digg automatically use the original article title. However, this is hard to implement from a technical perspective. The problem here is that as long as some of those who submit stories are more interested in publishing their point of view than in hearing all the facts, a site like Digg will never become a trusted news source. While traditional media has its own share of flaws, it still beats hands down unmoderated web sites. That is why I do not see established newspapers going down anytime soon.

This is amazing, it now turns out that according to Cosmopolitan Magazine (a.k.a. Cosmo), the Apple Stores are one of the best places to meet a guy. Cosmo stops short of recommending to date a geek (the picture of the guy included in the article is probably not representative of the average customer) but well, I am probably asking for too much. We all know that Cosmo readers are looking for sexy fun guys. That kind of guys isn’t always the loving, caring and faithful husbands women crave for later in life. Geeks usually are. Hey, after all, we’ve stuck to Star Trek for fourty years and to Star Wars for thirty. Being faithful is certainly not a challenge for us.

I love Plaxo. This is the first social network that actually solves a real problem for me. That is probably because it is not really social network in the same sense as FoceBook or MySpace. Plaxo allows me to have an up-to-date agenda by delegating to each of them the responsibility to maintain their current information accurate. Ever tried to call someone just to find out that he changed his/her phone number? Lost contact with someone after he/she moved to a new job? The promise of Plaxo is that this will never happen again. On the Mac, using the Plaxo plug-in any changes your contact make on the site are automatically synched to your Address Book and from there to your cell phone. This is a great simple idea that will make my life so much easier. I encourage everyone to give it a try. Most of my contacts are already using Plaxo, but the site will be totally useful once everyone gets on board.

But then, is it really such a great idea to join Plaxo or any other social network? The more I think about it, the more I am concerned about privacy issues. The data that social networks store is extremely valuable to all kind of people. Marketers want to understand who you can influence. Political parties want to look for blue persons surrounded by red friends (they are much easier to convince) or vice-versa. And then there is the government and law enforcement agencies.

The truth is that I wasn’t really scared by Facebook or MySpace. On those sites, the term friend doesn’t have any meaning. Popular Internet figures like Leo Laporte or Jason Calacanis have thousands of so-called online friends they have probably never met. Plaxo is different. These persons are on your agenda. When you call someone a friend he really is a friend, you are giving him or her your personal home address and phone number. That is not something you want to do to a total stranger, there are too many risks involved. Imagine the value of this information for those looking for criminals and or terrorists. Yes I know, it is unlikely that Osama Bin Laden will ever join Plaxo and list all his friends on the site. But even Osama had a normal life before becoming a terrorist. Knowing who his friends were back then could still prove extremely valuable. That information is so valuable in fact that I sincerely doubt that they will erase it. Once it is recorded that you know someone that information sticks to you. This information can potentially cause a lot of trouble. What if one of my customers becomes a criminal? What if one of my employees is a terrorist? I know, Plaxo offers a privacy policy but the simple fact that the data exists and that it can easily be used to reach many conclusions is scary.

Government agencies around the world are eager to understand social graphs. At IBM we sell solutions that help uncover hidden relationships. Using customer data from banks, airlines, utilities or even magazine subscriptions it is possible to find those relationships. It is known that the use of these products could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks using existing intelligence data. Unfortunately, at the time casinos were the main customers for these solutions in order to avoid gambling fraud, not governments. However, Plaxo takes this to a whole new level. If the idea really catches on, people who are not on that site will eventually look suspicious. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for helping law enforcement but I do not feel quite comfortable about the negative effects I may suffer if some of my acquaintances go astray. Of course I am assuming that the government of the country I happen to live in is democratic and doesn’t turn on its citizens (or foreign residents). What happens if that proves not to be true?

As a Dutchman I know all too well what can happen when sensible information falls in the wrong hands. When nazi Germany invaded The Netherlands in 1940, they used the religious information collected by the government for statistical purposes to exterminate the Jews. We do not want something similar to happen again. I will probably uninstall Plaxo from my computer. Too bad, it seemed such a great idea.