The Grammar of Ornament

Recent Articles

• AusCERT 2012: What’s changed since 2011?

  15 May 2012 in Internet, Politics

  I’m currently on the train down from the Blue Mountains to Sydney, en route to the AusCERT 2012 information security conference on the Gold Coast, and I’m thinking about what stories might emerge. Here’s what I wrote last year when, just like this year, I was on the ZDNet Australia team: AusCERT 2011: Firms ignore [...]

• Talking Facebook pay-for-highlighting on ABC 702 Sydney

  14 May 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media

  While the Facebook IPO Roadshow rolls on, the company is trying a bunch of experiments — both to search for new revenue streams and to maintain the buzz. One of them is paying $2 to have your post highlighted. The numbers in the story don’t surprise me. Typically a Facebook user’s posts are only seen [...]

• Weekly Wrap 101: Codeine and counter-surveillance

  13 May 2012 in Weekly Wrap

  My week from Monday 7 to Sunday 13 May 2012 was less productive than it might have been thanks to my shoulder being “out” for a few days, resulting in severe pain. No, I don’t mean I have a gay shoulder. I mean that a rib wasn’t seated properly. The shoulder was repaired on Wednesday [...]

• Security and the Cloud: Hype versus Reality

  11 May 2012 in Business, Internet

  My presentation from the Saasu Cloud Conference 2012, which I told you about previously, is now online: Security and the Cloud: Hype versus Reality. I’ll leave the article to explain itself once you click through, but to provide some Googlejuice here are the words hacking, infosec, cybercrime, cyberwar, information security, malware and cows. Possibly related [...]

• Why tweeting my movements isn’t a safety risk

  10 May 2012 in Internet, Politics

  [Update 2.25pm: Comments on Twitter have persuaded me to emphasise that the question here is specifically about "personal safety" only, and my personal safety at that. As the second-last paragraph says, the risk profile might not be the same for everyone. These are the choices I've made with open eyes.] “How do you think that [...]