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Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

07 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper…

Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:06 — 11.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

05 February 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February 2012.

It was an odd week. It rained. A lot. And the continual greyness felt like it was threatening to trigger seasonal affective disorder unseasonably. I figured it was best to generally ignore the world. I’m amused that this seemed to cause some distress in certain quarters. Thank you for taking an interest.

Well that, and fucking around in the rain caused me to catch a cold. Sort of. I conquered the cold with massive doses of Vitamin C. I am a hero.

I was less of a hero when it came to tackling certain technical problems with my computer. I’ll whinge about that another time.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 123, “Skipping security is human nature”. Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, explains how V = EC2 explains everything. Or something. I don’t know. Listen to the podcast.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Rain clears, momentarily. As I said, I was raining almost the entire week, making Bunjaree Cottages a slightly a dreary place. But when the rain did clear, this was the view from Rosella Cottage.]

Weekly Wrap 86: Linux, paranoia and a few rants

29 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 23 to Sunday 29 January 2012.

This week included the last of my output from Linux.conf.au. I’ve just gathered all of my Linux.conf.au coverage plus selected other people’s in one place for your convenience.

Add this week’s media output to last week’s and you can see why I’ve been kind of exhausted. Thank the gods, we’re having a pseudo-long weekend.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 122, “War on the internet: it’s all about power”. The podcast covers the previous weekend’s War on the Internet forum Electronic Frontiers Australia and The Greens, and featured Suelette Dreyfus, co-author with Assange of Underground; Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam; Crikey’s Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane; and headline speaker Jacob Appelbaum, internet security researcher, software hacker and activist.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • D-Link gave me a DCS-930L Wireless N Network Camera, which they sometimes describe as a “cloud camera”, the arsehats. I’ll be writing about that separately.
  • On Wednesday Chris Wood, regional director for Australia and New Zealand at security vendor Sourcefire, bought me a coffee.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Three sprigs at Threefold. Three sprigs of mint in three brown bottles grace the windowsill in the toilet at Melbourne's Threefold Foodstore and Eatery. I think that's just a wanked-up word for "cafe". I had the spatchcock, thank you very much.]

Weekly Wrap 85: Trains, planes, Linux and podcasts

27 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 16 to Sunday 22 January 2012, i.e. last week. Yes, just like last week’s Weekly Wrap it’s being posted way late because I’ve been incredibly busy.

The main cause of that was covering Linux.conf.au 2012 (LCA) conference. Indeed, some of the conference coverage wasn’t posted until well into the following week — which is this week as I’m posting this post, except it shouldn’t be because this post is about last week. Confused? You should’ve been there!

Now there’s so much stuff here that I’m posting the main body of text over the fold. If you’re only seeing the preview, do click through ‘cos there’s a very important question about the photo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Weeky Wrap 84: Rosellas, cyberwar and lots of radio

26 January 2012 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 January 2012, posted way late because I’ve been incredibly busy.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 120, “Anonymous vs. Stratfor: the real issues”, being a nice long interview with Richard Stiennon, chief research analyst with IT-Harvest, a privately-held IT security research firm based in Detroit, Michigan. He also edits and publishes the newsletter Cyber Defence Weekly, and is author of the book Surviving Cyberwar.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. I thought things might start picking up this week, but apparently not.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Rosellas neat Wentworth Falls, photographed near Railway Parade on 17 January 2012.]

Linux.conf.au delays everything else in my life

21 January 2012 in Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

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.

Weekly Wrap 81: Twitter, chaos and Christmas cheer

24 December 2011 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Part of me wants to make a profound comment there but, you know, Christmas.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 119, “2011: IT’s year of consolidation”. A panel discussion with broadcaster, columnist and author Paul Wallbank and open source developer and strategist Jeff Waugh. This was the final episode for 2011. The next one will appear on Monday 9 January 2012.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday night I enjoyed food and drinks at the Hilton Hotel Sydney’s Executive Lounge thanks to Dave Hall, who has membership.
  • On Tuesday night I had a little pizza and a rather large number of gin and tonics thanks to infosec firm Black Swan Consulting.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: The Western Distributor, Darling Harbour, photographed from the Parkroyal Darling Harbour.]

Visiting Ballarat for Linux.conf.au 2012

22 December 2011 in Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

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 get to interview some developers with unusual experiences such as Jacob Appelbaum, developer of The TOR Project, to name just one. Indeed, I’m hoping he’ll be a guest for the Patch Monday podcast.
  • We’re toying with the idea of doing a daily podcast. That’d be a fun challenge, if exhausting.
  • I’ll end up giving myself a crash updater course on Linux. While I’ve been a Linux systems administrator for years, and even did some less-common stuff such as custom installer CDs, I haven’t really done any hands-on work for two or three years. Geekery shall ensue.
  • I haven’t been to Ballarat in ages, and it’s a lovely little town.

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!

Weekly Wrap 80: Dropping bombs, dropping Es

20 December 2011 in Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which wasn’t a lot because the sloth and the holiday season have started to take their toll. That’s also why this is being posted so late. Cope.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 118, “2011: the year in security”. A panel discussion with Chris Gatford, director of penetration testing firm HackLabs; Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology for Asia Pacific; Stephen Wilson, managing director of Lockstep Group, who provides advice and analysis on digital identity and privacy technologies; and Jon Callas, chief technology officer at Entrust.
  • The 9pm Edict episode 15, which includes my claim that Senator Stephen Conroy deliberately dropped the f-bomb earlier in the week.

Articles

  • Time to drop the ‘e’, Technology Spectator, 13 December 2011. Lovely headline, but the article is actually about the language we use to describe technology.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday, MobileIron paid for lunch at Silverbean on Enmore Road.
  • On Friday, Symantec paid for lunch at Sake Restaurant, The Rocks.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A View from Hilton Hotel, Sydney, in particular the view onto George Street from the Executive Lounge. This photo was actually taken last night, 19 December, not in the "correct" week. But I know you won't mind.]

Weekly Wrap 79: Rain, glitches and a cuckoo-dove

10 December 2011 in Internet, Politics, Privacy, Weekly Wrap by Stilgherrian | No comments

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. I have no further explanations to add.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 117, “Is anonymity online your right?” A conversation with Scott Shipman, eBay’s global privacy leader, about online reputation and trust, data breach-notification laws, the behavioural targeting of advertising, eBay’s AdChoice technology for controlling that targeting, some of the clever things you can do by data mining eBay’s sales data, and how you might create the online equivalent of an untraceable cash transaction.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • I was a panellist on the Technology Spectator “webinar” [ugh!] “Board with security?”, which looked at why company directors need to understand information security a bit better and how they might go about it. The recording hasn’t been posted online yet, but I’ll put a link here when it is.
  • On Thursday night I was interviewed by ABC Radio News about a report by the Australian Government Competitive Neutrality Complaints Office, part of the Productivity Commission, into claims that the National Broadband Network’s grenfields fibre rollouts breached certain government policies. Exciting stuff. Sound bites were used on Friday’s morning’s AM program in a story headlined Government brushes off NBN criticisms.

Corporate Largesse

None. And I thought there’d be a bunch of corporate parties this week. But I spent most of the week at Wentworth Falls instead.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A slender-billed cuckoo-dove, photographed at Bunjaree Cottages in the Blue Mountains. There's a lot of bird life up here.]

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