For those who would like to investigate in more details the concept of the highly improbable, check out a great book by Nassim Taleb "The Black Swan".
Taleb has also an interesting take on scalability.

For those who asked, attached the presentation made at LIFT08 on mobile telecommunications in China

If something is to be remembered from the World Economic Forum 2008 edition it is probably the very candid comment made by the Wang Jianzhou, the CEO of the world’s largest mobile phone operator.

“We know who you are, but also where you are” was actually meant to convince the audience that China Mobile could use the personal data of its customers to sell advertising and services to them based on knowledge of where they were and what they were doing. Instead it turned into worries about the risk of passing over private information to Chinese authorities: with more than 370 million subscribers, China Mobile has a real-time ear and eye on 25% of the country’s citizens.

The outcry of congressman Markey (chairman of the US House of Representatives subcommittee on telecommunications) was even more surprising since most national security agencies have so-called signals intelligence collection and analysis networks (like Echelon or Onyx). That said most countries are supposed to have checks and controls in place to make sure that only court orders allow the government to check phone records.

Maybe time has come to look into more details at how the mobile phone is becoming a threat to privacy in all countries!

P.S.: It is quite revealing that the two operators invited to the World Economic Forum’s discussion on “The Future of Mobile Technology” were China Mobile and SK Telecom

While education has a cost it is priceless. The bono pro initiative supports deserving students who could otherwise not attend tertiary education in Switzerland through honour loans.

bono pro supports financially students (up to CHF 5'000 per year over a 3 year period) through a donors syndicate (individuals and institutions). It also offers practical support to students through a network of coaches/mentors.

bono pro is based on the values of community and solidarity. By signing the bono pro charter, beneficiaries make the moral – but not legal – commitment to contribute to the fund at a later stage. In other words, it is not a loan, rather a gift with thin strings attached.

bono pro is a private, non-profit-making association, independent of any political and religious affiliation. It was founded in Decembre 2006 by Marc Laperrouza et Ralph Hefti.

Find out more at www.bonopro.org.

You can find the weekly column here which covers technology issues and China. Here is the last article (October 19):

« Made in China » = « Made by everybody but China »

As you can guess, the iPhone is manufactured in China. But in fact, it is made by everybody else but Chinese companies…

About 17 Taiwanese companies - none a household name - provide parts ranging from the camera lens to the battery charger. Japanese companies are responsible for printed circuit boards and the lithium ion battery. Then, there îs the German touch screen, worth around USD 35, the Korean microprocessor chip - itself based on a British technology… In other words, while most components are produced in China, no wholly-owned Chinese company appears in the iPhone food chain. As a result, of the $280 manufacturing cost of each iPhone unit, less than 5% actually stays in China.

In fact, during the first 6 months of 2007, Chinese exports from solely foreign-funded and joint-ventures amounted to 84% of total IT exports… or close to USD 200 billion. And don’t forget that electronic information products account for 36% of China’s total exports of all products.

No surprise then that, in order to counter the supremacy of foreign multinationals, the government has designated integrated circuit, software and new type of electronic components as “the fundamental core sectors”, and new-generation telecommunication and high-performance computers as the “strategic growth sectors” for the 2006-2010 period!

You'll find much more here