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The lack of posts since 15 January — including still not posting last week’s Weekly Wrap — is the direct result of me spending the entire week covering the Linux.conf.au 2012 conference in Ballarat. I’m exhausted. And today there’s still the War on the Internet forum to cover in Melbourne.
I’m exhausted. So it might be another day or two before I catch up with everything here. As usual, the best way to stay in touch with what I’m doing is my high-volume Twitter stream.
I’m heading to Ballarat, Victoria, on 16 January 2012 to cover Linux.conf.au for TechRepublic and ZDNet Australia.
While in many ways it’s a standard conference coverage gig, it’ll be particularly interesting for a few reasons.
I’ll post further details of my plans for the trip and our plans for the coverage as we get closer to the date.
At this stage it looks like I’ll arrive in Ballarat on Monday 16 January and depart on Saturday 21 January. My intention is to bracket the event with other things in Melbourne. If you know of anything that you think I should know about, please tell me!
Benno Rice is the winner of the recent caption competition featuring Sex Party and Eros Association representative Fiona Patten, Fairfax technology journalist and editor Ben Grubb and me.
His entry was:
That’s not her arse you’re grabbing.
Now I never got around to organising a prize, and I’m not sure we really need one. However Fiona Patten has said she’s “happy to go thru the toy box and find a prize if the winner is interested”.
Benno, Ms Patten is executive officer of the Eros Association. Would you like her to rummage in her box for you?
It turns out that my technical difficulties the other day were in all likelihood not the result of being hacked but an arsehat software incompatibility.
The short version is that the weirdnesses I experienced were caused by:
I determined all this while I was running backups. It’s always sensible to make sure your backups are in order before doing any significant technical work.
I discovered that:
In hindsight, I suppose I should have checked software compatibility when transferring everything from the dead Snow Leopard machine to Lion, but then it did flag other stuff as incompatible so I assumed… yeah, I know.
Uhoh. My MacBook Pro may have been hacked. I’ve already done a bit of troubleshooting, but this looks like it’s going to be A Thing, so I’ve decided to liveblog it. And here’s the liveblog.
The brief version is that Apple Mail crashed when it tried to open a particular email message dated 4 November, one containing a PDF file. Consistently. So I thought I’d do a virus scan on it.
That’s when Norton Internet Security reported that LiveUpdate was missing pieces, and I saw that it hadn’t checked for updates since… 4 November. Eek.
Now all the action would have happened on my battered old MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. That computer finally died of motherboard failure on 11 November and I replaced it with a fresh OS X 10.7 Lion machine on 12 November.
However I did just transfer everything across using Apple’s migration tool, rather than freshly installing all the software and just copying the data, so… well… who knows what the hell is going on?
Deep in my heart I suspect that it was just bugginess and a dying computer, copied badly to a new computer. I hope.
If you want to follow or even help, the liveblog is over the jump.
[Update 11.20pm: Things may not be as bad as I thought. It turns out that Norton Internet Security for Mac version 4.x is only compatible for OS X up to version 10.6 Snow Leopard. There's NIS version 5.x for OS X 10.7 Lion. It looks like it's a straightforward software compatibility problem, and the lack of updates could be because I was travelling that week and the computer was offline when updates were scheduled. If this is all the case, I'm a bit disappointed that the software itself couldn't figure this out.]
What is wrong with this picture? Here’s me, Sex Party and Eros Association representative Fiona Patten, and Fairfax technology journalist and editor Ben Grubb at the Internet Industry Association’s Harbour Nautical Policy Party last Thursday afternoon.
I reckon we should have a competition for the best caption. Entries in the comments below, please, and they closes 5pm this Friday 9 December 2011 Sydney time. We’ll choose the winner between us. Somehow. Stop asking me questions.
I suppose I should think of a prize.
If you need more details to inspire you, zoom in or look at the original uncropped image.
Maybe Ben can be the prize.
No, I think that’s illegal.
Does someone have a prize?
It’s a relatively warm night at the end of spring here at the Bunjaree Cottages in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. Quiet? Tell that to the critters down by the dam!
Here’s a brief sound snippet recorded a few minutes ago. I’ll post something longer in due course, because I think it’s worth recording the ambient sound.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:55 — 1.1MB)
Can anyone identify any of the creatures here?
Yes, there’s been a bit of a gap in posts. There’ll be a big catch-up tomorrow, Tuesday 29 November — and there’ll be plenty for you to deal with. Brace yourself.
I’m off to Canberra again on 22 November for Trend Micro’s half-day Canberra Cloud Security Conference on 23 November, which I’m covering for CSO Online.
I’m actually a bit skeptical about the worth of this event. Some of the language on Trend Micro’s promotional materioal does not fill me with confidence.
This C-level gathering will bring together stakeholders across government, while offering a dedicated platform that weighs the pros and cons of the journey to the cloud… This event will offer a unique format for leading security specialists and business leaders in Federal Government to exchange ideas, gain valuable knowledge, and share their real-world risk management experiences.
What’s so goddam “dedicated” and “unique” about a bunch of people listening to a few blokes talking, followed by a panel discussion? Arsehats.
I’m off to Canberra for a few days next week to cover the 3rd Annual eCrime Symposium, which this year is a two-day event at the University of Canberra.
This event has been steadily growing since it was kicked off by former Australian Federal Police chaps Alastair MacGibbon and Nigel Phair two years ago. On that occasion I filed a story for Crikey, eCrime: the bad guys pwn the internet.
Last year I don’t seem to have filed a written story — I was writing abut the National Broadband Network instead — but I did chat with the FBI’s Will Blevins for a podcast, Cybercrime: the FBI’s worldview.
Those first two events were run under the rubric of the Surete Group, but now Messrs MacGibbon and Phair have formed the Centre for Internet Safety, part of the law school at the University of Canberra, and it’s all rather more special.
This year I’ll be filing for CSO Online. I’m arriving in Canberra on Monday evening 7 November, and will stay in town until just before lunchtime on Thursday 10 November.
[Update 12 November 2011: The articles I wrote about this conference are listed at Weekly Wrap 75: eCrime, Canberra and a dead computer.]
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