Tag: patch monday

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Patch Monday: There are no NBN apps: Turnbull

Last week I interviewed opposition spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull about his broadband policy, an alternative approach to Labor’s National Broadband Network (NBN) and I was surprised by one comment. Apparently he can’t see any real use for data speeds above 12 or 25Mbps.

“It’s certainly very difficult to think of many applications that are of interest to residential users that would not be perfectly well serviced by the speeds I’ve described,” Turnbull said.

I’d have thought there’s an application staring us right in the face. Video. Multiple streams of video, possibly in high definition, being sent as well as received.

I’ve written about this before at Technology Spectator. There’s a piece coming out at ABC’s The Drum soon, perhaps today. There’s a piece at ABC’s The Drum, Turnbull’s curious high-bandwidth blind spot. And the government has made a little film. But Mr Turnbull does not agree. Or so he says.

In any event, the conversation is well worth listening to, because he raises some excellent points about the NBN, not the least of which is that is you delay capital spending you can save a lot of money.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Update 7.25am: Edited to include link to ABC piece.]

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Weekly Wrap 62: LinkedIn and Hacking edition

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, one day late and without a picture. I find it hard to get excited about creating these posts, but I suppose they’re useful.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 100, “Cybersecurity: past, present and future”. A conversation with Dr Paul Nielsen director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, parent of CERT.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None. Again.

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.

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Patch Monday: Cybersecurity: past, present and future

Last week I had the very great pleasure of interviewing Dr Paul Nielsen, director and chief executive officer of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburg. This week’s Patch Monday podcast is that entire interview.

SEI is the parent organisation of CERT, the original computer emergency response team set up with US Department of Defense funding after the Morris Worm scared the bejesus out of everyone.

Before joining SEI, Dr Nielsen had a 32-year career in the military, reaching the rank of Major General. For a time he commanded the US Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he managed an annual research and development budget of more than US$3 billion. We got on rather well.

For Patch Monday we talked about everything from worms and hacking to password management, the problems that local police face when prosecuting online crime, why Apple has so far had a better security experience than Android and dealing with security issues when the internet is populated with so many different kinds of devices.

We even talked about the evolution of hacking, and I’ve pulled out that part of the conversation for a story at CSO Online, LulzSec, WikiLeaks, Murdoch: hacking’s fourth wave.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

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Weekly Wrap 61: Exhaustion in the forest

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets, two days late and without a picture. After the intensity of the previous three weeks, I’d predicted a slow-down, and here it is. I was simply exhausted last week, and spent a couple of days staring at the eucalypts from Rosella Cottage.

Last week also marked six months since I moved from Enmore. Living at Bunjaree Cottages was originally intended to be a temporary measure, or so I thought. I’ve ended up settling into the routine quite well, though I’ve found it impossible to save money for moving house. That said, I’m really not sure where I want to live now. But that’s a story for another time. Maybe later today.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 99, “When apps go wild: beyond the SOE”. Dr Paul Ashley from IBM’s Gold Coast Security Development Laboratory talks about their new technology that sniffs packets to identify applications, and Neil Readshaw, cloud security lead architect with IBM Global Services, talks about, erm, cloud security.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Thursday I appeared with Paul Wallbank on Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, an episode called Google Plus, Inside Out. I got to spout my anti-Google stuff again.
  • Also on Thursday, I made a small appearance on Phil Dobbie’s Twisted Wire podcast. The episode was called The battle for mobile dominance, and if I remember correctly I gave some sort of opinion about Apple iOS versus Android versus Nokia.

Corporate Largesse

None. What is going on here?

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.

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Patch Monday: When apps go wild: beyond the SOE

Businesses have lost control of the applications their employees are running in a process that’s been dubbed the consumerisation of the enterprise.

They use web-based tools like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube at home, they download any software they think will improve their lot, and expect to be able to do the same at work. Locking them into a standard operating environment (SOE) cramps their style.

At IBM’s Pulse 2011 event in Melbourne last week, which I attended as their guest, I spoke with Dr Paul Ashley, engineering manager at IBM’s Gold Coast Security Development Laboratory. He reckons the days of the SOE are pretty much over. His team been working on tools that can identify the applications users are running and spot any problems by looking at the network traffic they generate.

For this week’s Patch Monday podcast I also spoke with Neil Readshaw, cloud security lead architect with IBM Global Services. He says that over the last year or so, people started to understand the differences between public clouds, private clouds and hybrids, and what those differences can mean for security.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.