gold coast – Page 3 – Stilgherrian

30 August 201330 August 2013

My tweets from TechEd Australia 2012’s keynote sessions

This is the log of my Twitterstream from the keynote sessions at Microsoft’s TechEd Australia 2012 conference last year. Why? Because on the basis of these tweets, Microsoft has banned me from TechEd Australia 2013.

I’ve highlighted in bold the tweets which I think were most, erm, problematic. I’ve also fixed minor spelling mistakes. To provide more context, I’ve also uploaded a CSV file containing all of my tweets for September 2012.

Continue reading “My tweets from TechEd Australia 2012’s keynote sessions”

02 May 2013

Talking the dark web (ugh!) on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logo On Tuesday morning I did another radio spot, this time about two web-related issues: the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web, and the so-called “dark web” and the denial of service attack against The Silk Road.

The presenter was Bern Young, who I’ve spoken to before on the Drive program, but it seems she’s doing the Breakfast shift now.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.7MB)

15 May 201216 May 2012

AusCERT 2012: What’s changed since 2011?

I’m currently on the train down from the Blue Mountains to Sydney, en route to the AusCERT 2012 information security conference on the Gold Coast, and I’m thinking about what stories might emerge.

Here’s what I wrote last year when, just like this year, I was on the ZDNet Australia team:

AusCERT 2011: Firms ignore ID theft risk, in which Bennett Arron explains that police forces don’t yet take this stuff seriously enough. Has this improved? I’m seeing talk but no action.
AusCERT 2011: Son of Stuxnet within a year: expert, in which Eric Byres explains why the Stuxnet worm — the presumed US-with-Israeli-help anti-SCADA attack on Iran’s nuclear program — would spawn a wave of copycats. This didn’t happen. Why not?
AusCERT 2011: Black hats and whitegoods, a story which was provided with the year’s best headline by CBS Interactive’s Brian Haverty where I discussed how the Internet of Things and a billion smart appliances would be the vector for a new wave of attacks. This hasn’t happened — yet — but is it still just around the corner?
AusCERT 2011: Bank theft goes truly mobile, in which Amit Klein, chief technology officer at Trusteer, predicted third-generation anti-banking malware on smartphones by Christmas. Did this happen? Well, not really. Why not?
AusCERT 2011: Silent victims thwart cybercops: Qld Police, in which Detective Superintendent Brian Hay, head of the Fraud and Corporate Crime Group of the Queensland Police Service, bemoaned the lack of hard data. I know how he feels. Do we have any yet?

The feeling I get from scanning those headlines is that there’s always a lot of scaremongering but the threats often don’t materialise. Are the threats over-stated? Does pointing out the threats trigger an effort to counter them, thus defeating them? Is it all just a bit too screechy?

And over the last year there’s been so much talk of imminent cyberwar. Is that just this year’s fashionable scary thing on a stick? I intend to ask a few questions. And I’ll plug it again: Thomas Rid says we shouldn’t believe the hype.

I haven’t yet looked in detail at the conference program but will do so over the next few hours. What do you reckon I should be investigating?

[Update 16 May 2012, 0625 AEST: Changed second paragraph to emphasise that I am covering the event for ZDNet Australia this year as well as last.]

05 February 2012

Gold Coast again, for Kickstart again

Oh dear. It’s that time of year again. The annual Kickstart Forum on the Gold Coast is coming up at the end of February.

This is a start-of-year get-together for IT journalists and the vendors who wish to spruik to them. There is also drinking. Allegedly. I’ll be there along with the usual suspects from Sunday 26 February.

08 October 2011

Talking Steve Jobs on ABC Gold Coast

My Crikey piece on the death of Steve Jobs was written in just one hour, and yet it seems to have struck a chord. I ended up doing four media spots — and this one for ABC Gold Coast was the first.

The presenter is Tony Johnston.

He chose to top and tail the segment with extracts from Jobs’ much-loved 2005 speech at Stanford University. You can watch the video or read the text. It’s worth it, even if you’re not a Jobs fan.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (4.2MB)

The audio is Â©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them. Broadcast 6 October 2011.

01 October 2011

Talking smartphones and time zones on ABC Gold Coast

This was unexpected. A call yesterday from ABC Gold Coast to talk about whether smartphones were smart enough to properly handle the change to daylight saving tomorrow — or, more correctly, to deal with the situation when the Gold Coast doesn’t change time but locations just across the border in NSW do.

The short answer, of course, is “It depends”.

The long answer was what I discussed with Bernadette Young, whether the phone is set to get its time automatically from the network or from the tome zone manually set by the user.

We also mentioned that stuff-up in 2006 when Victoria changed the end date for daylight saving at the last minute to make life easier for Commonwealth Games attendees, and confusing for everyone else.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.9MB)