Stilgherrian – Page 246

06 May 2012

Weekly Wrap 100: Delay, disease and cold, clear nights

My week from Monday 30 April to Sunday 6 May 2012 also covered the entire continent, because a cancelled flight kept me in Perth through until Monday evening.

I won’t go into the cancelled flight in detail just now. Either you saw it unfold via my Twitter feed or you didn’t. Not everything has to be recorded everywhere forever.

I got back to Wentworth Falls late on Tuesday and went to bed — and didn’t emerge until Friday, thanks to a nasty cold I seem to have picked up along the way.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 136, “Blackhole crimeware as a service here to stay”. A discussion of the evolution of the Blackhole malware toolkit and other trends highlighted in the latest AVG Community Powered Threat Report (PDF) with Michael McKinnon, security advisor for AVG Australia and New Zealand, and Rob Collins, senior sales engineer for Asia-Pacific with WatchGuard.

Articles

Street View Wi-Fi: is it Google’s News of the World moment?, Crikey, 30 April 2012.
Facebook is profitable, but $86 billion is still speculation, Crikey, 4 May 2012.
Anonymous hacktivists prefer penetration, but choose targets of opportunity, CSO Online, 4 May 2012.

Media Appearances

On Wednesday I spoke about the risks of unsecured Wi-Fi on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

The current plan is that I’ll be in Wentworth Falls until Thursday morning, writing a whole bunch of stuff and, with luck, getting rid of this cold. I’ll head to Sydney some time on Thursday, and then present a keynote on security at Friday’s Saasu Cloud Conference.

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 (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags. Yes, I should probably update this stock paragraph to match the current reality.

[Photo: Waratah Cottage via Instagram. Waratah Cottage is one of the Bunjaree Cottages, where I’ve spent maybe three-fifths of my time over the past year. It’s not the building I usually stay in, but it’s likely that I’ll be here until Thursday.]

05 May 201205 May 2012

Talking the risks of unsecured Wi-Fi on 1395 FIVEaa

News that the Queensland Police is once again war-driving to find unsecured Wi-Fi networks is doing the rounds, and I ended up talking about the risks with Keith Conlon and John Kenneally on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa on Wednesday morning.

Here’s the audio, and I reckon you can hear very clearly that I had a very bad cold.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.3MB)

29 April 201229 April 2012

Weekly Wrap 99: Perth, privacy and poor photographs

My week from Monday 23 to Sunday 29 April 2012 covered the entire continent from Sydney to Perth and (at least later today) back again.

That’s Perth in the photo, with the Swan River just visible between the apartment buildings of East Perth. The photo was taken with my bashed-up HTC Desire phone and processed through Instagram.

Heck, if Zuckerberg reckons it’s worth a billion dollars I might as well have a look, right?

I’ll comment on Instagram itself later, and figure out a better way to integrate the photos into this website. Meanwhile, here’s a gallery of my Instagram photos, updated automatically.

And now on with the show…

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 135, “iiNet wards off AFACT, but what next?” A summary of the High Court’s decision in Roadshow Films and others versus iiNet Limited, the initial reactions, and a wide-ranging discussion with Dr Rebecca Giblin, a copyright academic and geek from Monash University’s law school, who literally wrote the book on this subject: Code Wars: 10 Years of P2P Software Litigation. Keywords for the other things we mention are SOPA/PIPA, peer-to-peer production,

Articles

Blockbuster trial for a movie and TV industry in decline, ABC Drum Opinion, 23 April 2012.
Security concerns over Australia’s e-health records, CSO Online, 23 April 2012.

Media Appearances

On Wednesday I was interviewed about the cash for tweets demi-scandal by Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser and their website AdelaideNow. The cash for what? Well, ABC TV’s Media Watch covered it on Monday night. Basically the South Australian Department of Tourism paid “celebrities” $750 to tweet about Kangaroo Island — but the tweets weren’t disclosed as advertising.
On Thursday I was interviewed by SBS News for the story Wi-Fi networks ‘too hackable’. Quotes from this article appeared in Your WiFi Used In Their Crimes at smarthouse.com.au, where I was billed as a “tech blogger”.
On Friday I presented at the DigitalMe event in Perth. I’ll link to the video as soon as that’s posted. Meanwhile here’s Sara Culverhouse’s summary.
Also on Friday I was interviewed on ABC 720 Perth about that DigitalMe presentation. Thanks to Perth’s endemic taxi shortage I ended up walking briskly to the ABC studios — but not briskly enough. I did the interview via phone from the street. That meant I couldn’t record it.
And still on Friday I spoke about the Optus TV Now appeal on ABC Local Radio sort-of-nationally with Dom Knight, as well as some of the stuff I covered at DigitalMe.

Corporate Largesse

I wasn’t paid to present at DigitalMe, they did cover travel from Sydney to Perth and one night’s accommodation at Aarons Hotel including breakfast. Wine by Brad provided booze for the welcome drinks, as well as a bottle to take home. Food was supplied by Sorrento Restaurant, Northbridge.

The Week Ahead

A busy week of writing lies ahead, including a story for CSO Online and my presentation for the Saasu Cloud Conference the following week. I’ll also continue work on the feature story I’m writing for ZDNet Australia

I believe I’ll be back in Wentworth Falls for most of the week, but this could change at short notice. The Dopplr widget on the left-hand side of every page of my website is usually updated within an hour of plans changing, so always check there first — but bear in mind it has odd ideas of what day it is.

Elsewhere

28 April 201228 April 2012

Talking the Optus TV Now appeal on ABC Local Radio

In February the Federal Court ruled that Optus TV Now, which recorded free-to-air TV on behalf of customers for more convenient playback later, was legitimate personal timeshifting as allowed under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968. Yesterday the Full Federal Court overturned that decision.

This case has interesting implications. Originally, Justice Steve Rares said, effectively, that someone using a recorder-in-the cloud was still making a personal copy for domestic purposes. The fact that they’re using a recording device that’s provided as a service rather than sitting on the shelf under their television is irrelevant. The Full Court is saying, effectively, that the cloud provider is complicity in the action, which means it’s no longer personal, and in some cases may even be the sole actor.

This interpretation could have massive implications for providers of other cloud services. Could they be found to be copying data that they’re not entitled to? I’m no lawyer, so don’t ask me. But I can at least see that the law is having to deal with situations that are very different from the circumstances imagined when it was written.

Paragraph 100 of the Full Court’s decisions does say:

We should emphasise that our concerns here have been limited to the particular service provider-subscriber relationship of Optus and its subscribers to the TV Now Service and to the nature and operation of the particular technology used to provide the service in question. We accept that different relationships and differing technologies may well yield different conclusions to the “who makes the copy” question.

Will this decision be appealed? You bet.

Last night I spoke about the decision and its implications with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio nationally — well, except for the analog transmitters that were broadcasting the cricket. I also spoke about the material I presented yesterday at DigitalMe in Perth.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.9MB)

[Update: I just noticed that there’s a couple of little audio gaps. I was recording off the stream, y’see. I’ll fix them later.]

Personally, I stand by what I said in the opinion piece I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald in February: Sport has to think outside the box.

If you’re in Perth today, the DigitalFamily event starts at 1000 local time at Northbridge Piazza. It’s free.

25 April 2012

Anzac Day 2012: Recycling the recycled stuff, again

I haven’t written anything new for Anzac Day this year. I’ve said it all before in 2011, and before that in Anzac Day Rememberings and Anzac Day 2009: Sacrifice.

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
And in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest we Forget

[Photo credit: The rosemary sprig was taken from Matthew Hall‘s Twitter page from 2008. If I owe someone for that usage, I’ll make good.]

22 April 2012

Hellfire? What a coincidence!

So this is a bit weird. Just as someone on Twitter asked whether I was hanging out at Hellfire Club, the robot @hyper_mpesce mentioned it too. WTF?

I’m not sure who @fivewalls is, but he asked: “You’re not hanging out at hellfire again are you?” That’s the column on the right, people who mention me or direct their conversation towards me.

@hyper_mpesce, which is a robot that repeats things Mark Pesce says, rearranging and making everything hyper, said: “hyper-If hyper-you hyper-even hyper-if hyper-you hyper-read hyper-the hyper-Hellfire hyper-Club. hyper-” hyper-#DISCONNECT.” As one would. That’s the column on the left, which is everyone I follow.

I can think of no explanation for this coincidence.