Do aliens and God affect your security budget?
Cyber-criminals, God, the universe, mafia, aliens, Nazis and IBM -- these are just some of the subjects touched upon in a video interview I conducted with Richard Thieme at the AusCERT security conference in Queensland last month.
Richard Thieme walked up to me at AusCERT, took a close look at my badge, and then grilled me for calling him controversial in my conference build-up story. I explained to him that there were not many people who have publicly called Bill Gates and Steve Jobs a couple of thieves, which he basically did in his keynote the previous year.
Thieme is an incredibly intelligent man who has lived all around the world and done many different jobs -- he was even a priest for 16 years. According to his bio on Wikipedia, he delves into many of the "issues behind the issues" that exist in the online world, which it turns out is a fairly accurate statement.
On the final day of AusCERT -- shortly before Thieme was due to present the closing keynote -- I managed to grab him for a few minutes to find out what he had learned from this year's event and what he was going to say during the final presentation.
Whether you love him, hate him, respect him or ridicule him, one thing you can't do is ignore him.