Blog – Page 131 – Stilgherrian

09 June 201318 June 2013

Weekly Wrap 157: Too many spiders and dogs

My week Monday 3 to Sunday 9 June 2013 was laid low by an excess of the black dog. Most unproductive. Most annoying.

I’d intended things to be fairly quiet, to counterbalance the previous week’s hectic pace. Well, quiet it was, because it was the beginning of a new month and nobody had paid me yet. Most inconvenient before a long weekend.

Still, I did nearly drink a spider (pictured), and did quite a bit of pre-production for my new SEKRIT podcast project. The first episode will appear very soon.

Articles

Dump shared hosting to avoid ASIC’s Section 313 hammer, ZDNet Australia, 7 June 2013.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

On Thursday I interviewed Sean Richmond at Sophos in North Sydney, and he bought me a coffee.

The Week Ahead

Monday is a public holiday for the Queen’s Birthday, in theory, but I’m planning to continue my planning for the weeks ahead.

The only fixed appointment is on Wednesday afternoon and early evening, when Intel launch their 4th Generation Core processor chips in Sydney. So that means I’ll probably stay overnight in Sydney that night and cluster some appointments around it.

My writing schedule says that I’m doing pieces for Technology Spectator and CSO Online, as well as my usual column for ZDNet Australia.

[Photo: Spider in my water glass, which I nearly drank, but managed to spot it at the very last moment â€” and there was water everywhere.]

08 June 201326 August 2020

Hillary’s mangoes, no NSA involved

[I was in a bit of a mood on Thursday, so when The Guardian broke the news that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of American citizens, my tolerance for political arsehattery was nonexistent. Calls for street protests? Bah! My countermove was to tweet a bunch of nonsense, which is posted here as prose.]

Maybe if we all run around like headless chooks, Mr Obama will say “Oh, sorry” and disband the NSA. And then Mr Obama will mount his trusty cyberpig and fly to the Moon, leaving behind a chemtrail of glitter and Bitcoins.

But look, headless chooks are the important bit. The more rushing around and screeching you can manage, the sooner the cyberpig lifts off. And quite frankly, Obama’s first term was a big disappointment as far as glitter showers go.

By comparison, I imagine that on weekends Hillary Clinton pumps out a steady stream of glitter. Like a Queen Ant, kinda.

Nyan Cat was DARPA’s prototype for that. DARPA’s main challenge was making it come out as glitter. When Hillary gets steam up, there’s no telling what it’ll be. Hummus, sometimes. Whipped cream.

One day it was just mangoes. Whole mangoes. Three a second, hour after hour. Secret Service guys took the whole weekend to clear the mess.

Then they had to figure out a cover story. Why were there mangoes smeared all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue? Eventually they decided just to tell everyone it was Madeleine Albright’s fault, so the press corps obviously bought that.

There’s a reason trams never took off in Washington.

[Photo: Mangoes by Flickr user umstwit, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.]

05 June 201305 June 2013

Weekly Wrap 156: An excess of Sydney, with smog

My week Monday 27 May to Sunday 2 June 2013 was rather different from how I first imagined it.

I ended up spending much of it in Sydney, covering the CeBit Cyber Security conference and recording all manner of conversations — the results of the latter to appear over the coming weeks.

Articles

Security goes military at CeBIT, iTnews, 30 May 2013.
Australia, your lack of cyber transparency disturbs me, ZDNet Australia, 31 May 2013.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday morning I spoke about the National Broadband Network (NBN) on Radio Adelaide’s breakfast program.
On Tuesday evening I spoke about the alleged Chinese hack of ASIO on the BBC World Service program World Have Your Say.

Corporate Largesse

On Tuesday I covered the CeBit Cyber Security conference, so as usual with such things there was food and drink.
On Wednesday I had lunch at the Customs House Bar with some folks from Sourcefire, and they paid.
On Wednesday night I was a guest of Kaspersky Lab at their dinner with Eugene Kaspersky at Aqua at Milsons Point. There was fine food and drink, a water taxi there and a Cabcharge voucher for the ride back.

The Week Ahead

Since it’s already quite late on Wednesday afternoon, all I’ll say is that I plan to head down to Sydney tomorrow, Thursday, for an interview recording — at least once I’ve got my ZDNet Australia column out of the way — and what happens for the rest of the week and the annoyingly-positioned long weekend will then depend upon circumstances.

And that’s not all I’m annoyed about.

[Photo: Night falls over Sydney, looking towards the CBD from Camperdown on 29 May 2013.]

27 May 201315 June 2022

Clive Palmer, “Fisting the Future”

Photo of Clive Palmer and colleagues, fists raised: click for original story at The Australian

Do billionaire arsehat and political candidate Clive Palmer and his colleagues really think that this is the best hand gesture to make in 2013? “Fisting the Future!” Jesus wept.

27 May 2013

Weekly Wrap 155: Chemtrails, elitism and much thinking

My week Monday 20 to Sunday 26 May 2013 was spent returning from The America, and then reading, writing, planning and generally trying to focus on the future.

If that sounds vague, it’s because it was vague. And it felt vague. It was all very, very vague. But the next week will be less vague. By at least fifteen percent.

Articles

Decoding NetSuite’s anti-SAP bravado, iTnews, 20 May 2013. This is the first story I’ve done for iTnews since 2010, when I visited Microsoft’s War Room and took photographs, and the first since the redoubtable Charis Palmer became editor.
iPhone, therefore I am … a selfish disruptor, ZDNet Australia, 24 May 2013. I’m completely sick of the word “disruption” being used, in and of itself, as a positive term for progress. It turns out I’m late to the theme of private shuttle buses as a symbol of the emerging Silicon Valley elitism, however — and I’ll return to that theme this week, somewhere.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None, which I suppose counterbalances last week.

The Week Ahead

On Monday I’m doing the day trip to Sydney to catch up with Peter Coffee, Salesforce.com VP and head of platform research, for a chat about The Future. This is, I think, our fourth attempt at meeting up since we met at the Dreamforce event two years ago, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Tuesday is mostly a day of writing and research back at Wentworth Falls, although it kicks off with at spot on Radio Adelaide talking about the differences between the broadband policies of Labor and the Coalition. That’s at 0745 ACST / 0815 AEST.

Wednesday sees me heading into Sydney again, for interviews with Eugene Kaspersky of Kaspersky Lab and Chris Wood from Sourcefire, and then in the evening a long dinner and drinks event with Mr Kaspersky. I suspect I’ll be staying overnight in Sydney that night. If I survive the experience at all.

And then the rest of the week is about writing and podcast production. Probably. You known how my weeks go. Disorganisedly.

[Photo: How they make chemtrails, photographed at dusk over San Francisco International Airport. They’re just so blatant about it these days. While this photograph was taken on the evening of Sunday 19 May 2013 local time, it was already Monday 20 May Australian time, so I’m allowing myself to use this photo this week.]

26 May 201326 May 2013

Infosec at AusCERT 2013: the media coverage

Here’s a list of the news stories I’ve found this morning that have been written about the AusCERT 2013 information security conference.

The theme for this year’s conference was “This time it’s personal”:

[The theme reflects] the growth in attacks and unauthorised disclosures of online personal information. Motivated by illicit financial gain, cyber criminals obtain unauthorised access to personal information, but more and more, we are seeing data disclosures being posted publicly by attackers for political motives, rather than financial gain.

Hence the theme will resonate within the information security community and remind us that the online environment provides opportunities galore to capture personal information; of the impact these breaches can have on the lives of individuals; and the importance of information security to prevent these attacks. AusCERT2013 will explore these issues and bring experts from Australia and around the world to provide insight and solutions to deal with these challenges.

Items are arranged alphabetically by masthead and then chronologically. If I’ve missed anything, please let me know. Indeed, I daresay that some more articles will be published on Monday or Tuesday, so if that happens I’ll update this post appropriately.

There’s a lot here for me to read, so if I’m going to write a reaction piece some time then it’ll be… later.

Continue reading “Infosec at AusCERT 2013: the media coverage”