Tag: apple

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Weekly Wrap 103: Cold, cockatoos and codeine

My week from Monday 21 to Sunday 27 May 2012 saw me return to my usual writing levels — despite continuing pain from my shoulder and a lingering cold which, as I write this, threatens to turn into bronchitis. It’s been rather cold and windy here at Wentworth Falls.

Sadly that meant I didn’t make it to the planned paintball session with Eugene Kaspersky on Wednesday night. It seems that I’m fated not to spend any quality time with Mr K on this Australian trip. I daresay I’ll catch up with him another time. Is that a hint? Der. Of course.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 139, “War talk dominates AusCERT 2012”, the first of two episodes based on material recorded at the information security conference. The overall theme is that infosec is becoming militarised. We no longer talk about “information assurance” but “defensive cyber operations”. Click through for the full list of speakers.

Articles

There’s one more long story emerging from ideas presented at AusCERT 2012 that was filed late Friday. It will appear tomorrow morning at ZDNet Australia.

Media Appearances

None. Which makes up for last week’s heavy media load.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I went to a media briefing by Optus Business at Australian Technology Park. They provided lunch, and afterwards a couple of coffees. They also gave me an autographed copy of Peter Hinssen’s book The New Normal: Explore the limits of the digital world. No, me neither.

The Week Ahead

It looks like the coming week will be significantly less intense for me, with a more gentle workload and, with luck, better health.

The only fixed-schedule items will take place during an overnight trip to Sydney on Wednesday. That evening there’s a Sydney Talks seminar entitled It Won’t Happen to Me: Cybercrime Myths and Concepts at the University of New South Wales. (Does anyone want to join me?) Then on Thursday morning Samsung is launching… well, they won’t tell me what, but I suspect it’s their new Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone.

I may well be in Sydney on the weekend too, because Bunjaree Cottages is full up both for that weekend and the following Queen’s Birthday long weekend. Stand by.

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) and via Instagram. 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: A young Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus funereus) swoops low overhead at Bunjaree Cottages near Wentworth Falls.]

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Talking AusCERT 2012 and cyberwar on ABC Local Radio

My full output from the AusCERT 2012 information security conference has yet to appear. Stand by. But last night I did a half-hour conference wrap with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio.

We spoke about the conference atmosphere itself, cybercrime, cyberwar, the risk of Cybergeddon (yes, I know), and the claim by Eugene Kaspersky that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft when it comes to security.

Not that Mr Kaspersky would ever, like, troll the entire planet.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (15.5MB)

What we didn’t talk about, really, was the two stories that have been published so far:

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

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Talking the #iiTrial decision on ABC 702 Sydney

The big internet-related story in Australia today was the High Court’s decision in the so-called #iiTrial. I wrote the lead story in Crikey — read that now for the facts and my analysis — and just spoke about it on ABC 702 Sydney.

The High Court decided, as outlined in its summary [PDF], that internet service provider iiNet was not responsible for the copyright-infringing acts of its customers. But as explained in their full decision, that decision was based on “all the facts of the case”. That is, things might have turned out differently had the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) or iiNet handled things differently. We’ll never know.

Since I wrote for Crikey, my ZDNet Australia colleague Josh Taylor has been tracking the reactions. I daresay there’ll be more to come across the weekend.

Now when I spoke to the ABC’s Richard Glover just after the 4pm news this afternoon — that’s the audio you’ll hear here — the scene was set first by Glover’s slightly-misleading introduction involving pubs and then AFACT’s managing director Neil Gane. So I was working within that framing. I’m not sure how well I did.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.1MB)

Obviously time was limited. Had I had more time to speak, I would have said:

  • We do keep talking about the experience of the music industry, but that’s because they’re further down the path of replacing traditional distribution mechanisms with the internet. It might be worth the film and TV industries having a look at that and seeing what they can learn, rather than just being in denial.
  • Yes, the economics of making a big blockbuster movie are very different from making a music album. But the film industry decided to take the blockbuster path with all the expensive hangers-on that that business model entails. No-one is forcing them to do it that way.
  • With distribution costs tending to zero, those who run the traditional distribution models need one heck of a lot better argument to justify the amount of money they charge than “Oh no, it’s all different now”.
  • They talk about the industry being in decline, but that’s because they only count themselves. As a totality, people probably spend more on entertainment than they ever have done. It’s like the Myer and David Jones and Harvey Norman stores whinging about the decline of retail. No, retail overall is doing just fine. The bit that’s failing is them — the people doing things the same old way and not adapting to the change.
  • No business model has a right to exist. Maybe the age of big movies and big TV productions is over. It wouldn’t be the first time a form of entertainment had died because it was no longer viable, and it wouldn’t be the last.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

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Talking iMessage and Path privacy fail on radio 2UE

So I ended up going quick chat just now on Radio 2UE just now about Apple’s newly-announced iMessage plans and Path’s privacy outrage.

While Apple’s iMessage isn’t new, extending the application to the Mac’s OS X desktop is, as are some of the iCloud-linked services. In part that’s shoring up Apple’s cloud services. And it’s certainly part of the threat to mobile telcos’ revenue that I wrote about for CSO Online yesterday.

The Path thing is just arsehattery of the first water.

Anyway, here’s the audio. The presenter is Tim Webster and you’ll also hear his regular guest Trevor Long.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.6MB)

The audio is ©2012 Radio 2UE Sydney Pty Ltd, of course, but as usual I’m posting it here in case they don’t post it at their own website.

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Weekly Wrap 86: Linux, paranoia and a few rants

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.]

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Weekly Wrap 76: Slightly more settled, still chaotic

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. There wasn’t quite as much chaos as last week, but still sufficient.

The Patch Monday podcast ended up being published on Tuesday, and I delayed my return to Wentworth Falls until then too. And I ended up coming down to Sydney very early on Friday, on the 0609 train, to cover the Apple vs Samsung case in the Federal Court for ZDNet Australia.

So despite sleeping most of Wednesday, I was still short of sleep by the weekend. Sigh.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 114, “Everyday malware is everyday criminals”. Alex Kirk, senior researcher with the Sourcefire Vulnerability Research Team (VRT), explains that Stuxnet is probably not your problem.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had lunch at Quay Restaurant courtesy of NetSuite. We were also each given a copy of restaurateur Peter Gilmore’s book Quay: Food inspired by Nature.

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 Commonwealth Bank headquarters, Darling Harbour, photographed from Parkroyal Darling Harbour. Hey, if I’m going to stay in Sydney an extra day I might as well take a photo.]