Tag: podcast

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Weekly Wrap 126: Wattle, sniffle and SCADAgeddon

Monday 29 October to Sunday 4 November 2012 was a busy week, made slightly less busy by the need to recover from the throat infection identified last week and then, because I was run down, fatigue that was probably a mix of a cold and hay fever.

Hence the photograph of the wattle I’ve posted here. It is to blame.

Dear Plant Kingdom, if I spread my genetic material all over you the way you do over me, I’d be arrested! Please behave yourself.

[Update 1545 AEDT: I am reliably informed that the hay fever is unlikely to be caused by wattle pollen.]

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Also, the Sydney Opera House has posted the video of my Festival of Dangerous Ideas panel, I Share Therefore I Am. I’ll write more about that in due course.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday evening I had a few beers with Michael McKinnon from AVG Australia and New Zealand, which they paid for.
  • On Tuesday morning I attended the breakfast launch of Windows Phone 8 at the Blue Bar,level 36 of the Shangri-La Hotel, overlooking Sydney Harbour. Microsoft paid for that, obviously.

The Week Ahead

Next week is pretty much all about Singapore. On Monday I’ll head down to Sydney and get some writing out of the way. Then on Tuesday it’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ212 departing Sydney at 0905 AEDT and arriving in Singapore mid-afternoon local time.

Wednesday is Verizon Business’ APAC Media Day, a five-hour meeting followed by cocktails. On Thursday I’m visiting the hospitality tent at the Barclays Singapore Open golf tournament as Verizon’s guest. Friday through Sunday has yet to be finalised, but there’ll be at least two articles to write and a podcast to produce.

Oh, and a social life.

My flight back to Sydney SQ231 leaves Singapore at 45 minutes past midnight Sunday night — so technically that’s Monday morning.

[Photo: Wattle near Railway Parade, near Wentworth Falls, one of the causes of my hay fever this week.]

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Talking data retention (again) on Balls Radio

My regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio this week was a conversation (yes, another one) about the Australian government’s data retention proposals.

Here’s the audio of my segment. As you’ll hear, it’s much the same argument as in my last post about the Patch Monday podcast, with random asides about the meaning of misogyny and what should be done with real estate agents.

Yes, there’s a few audio dropouts. Welcome to the joys of using Skype over Telstra Next G mobile broadband while 1.5 kilometres into the eucalypt scrubland.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:38 — 6.4MB)

If you’d like more Balls Radio, have a listen to the full episode. You can subscribe over at the website.

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Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?

There aren’t many places in the world where you can openly accuse the nation’s top police and intelligence agencies of having an attitude problem, as I did on Monday, without being visited by the men in the van with the canvas sack. Which is a good thing.

In this week’s Patch Monday podcast, embedded immediately below for your convenience and CBS Interactive’s traffic logging, I departed from the usual format to present a personal opinion.

Data retention for law enforcement is one of the most important political issues relating to our use of the internet now and as far into the future as we care to imagine, I said, and it’s being mishandled.

The Australian government’s current one-page working definition (PDF) of what constitutes communications metadata (which can be requested by law enforcement agencies without a warrant) as opposed to communications content (which generally does require a warrant) is, to anyone with a technical understanding of how the internet actually works and is evolving, virtual gibberish.

“Dangerously immature” is how I described it.

I also raised three points where I think the version of reality being promoted by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is wrong.

  • This is a push for more power. We conduct so much more of our lives online than we ever did on the phone, and that means the balance of power is changing. We need to have a conversation about this.
  • The AFP says quite specifically that they’re not after our web browsing activity, but I don’t see how the working document supports that argument. And other agencies, including the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), are after that stuff.
  • ASIO and the AFP constantly talk about the powers being needed to catch the terrorists and pedophiles. But the law will probably be modelled on the current law for the phone, which provides access to communication metadata to many other agencies with far less stringent accountability rules for many other, far less serious, crimes.

Please have a listen and tell me what you think.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (21.5MB)

The podcast stands on its own, but I want to emphasise the thing that still disturbs me…

Continue reading “Insulted, ASIO? That’s not really the problem, surely?”

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Weekly Wrap 124: Dirty dog, dirty martini

My week Monday 15 to Sunday 21 October 2012 was marred by the black dog, who decided to visit in strength with his friend back pain. Productivity was very low.

It’s a shame. I have the workings of several quite good articles in various stages of assembly on the computer, and invitations to take part in a variety of interesting unpaid projects. At least half of them will progress no further.

Podcasts

Articles

None.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I had lunch at a North Sydney cafe with Marc Brown, managing consultant of Trustwave SpiderLabs in Australia, along with members of their external PR team. They paid. I believe I had smoked salmon salad.

The Week Ahead

It’s a busy week of writing ahead, after the usual Monday scramble to complete the Patch Monday podcast. At this stage it looks like I’ll be in Sydney on Wednesday and overnight into Thursday. The weekend is currently unplanned, but that will be fixed later today.

[Photo: Manhattan at the Carrington, an essential part of yesterday’s return to normality. For some value of “normal”.]

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Talking Microsoft Surface on Balls Radio

My regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio this week was a conversation about the new Microsoft Surface tablet and related matters.

I’d previously spoken about Microsoft’s new gadget in an episode of the Patch Monday podcast the day it was announced, with the deliberately provocative title “Microsoft? Is that still a thing?” I was thoroughly amused by the lack of critical thinking from the zealots who infested the comment stream, but they’re zealots after all.

Or perhaps it’s more that they’re so deeply embedded in the Microsoft worldview, so busy operating the ship, that they can’t see that the ship might not be headed in the right direction.

This week’s news included some Australian pricing, interesting in the light of the parliamentary inquiry into why IT seems to cost more in Australia. The industry body thinks that’s a distraction, but then they would say that.

We also spoke about the new Windows 8 interface, which I’ve previously discussed in an article and a podcast. I still reserve my judgement on that. As I say in this podcast, I understand Microsoft’s argument but I’ll wait and see how things unfold.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, have a listen to the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:10 — 7.0MB)

The program is no longer broadcast on FM99.3 Northside Radio, it’s purely a podcast. You can subscribe over at the website.

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Weekly Wrap 123: Food, drink, virtualisation and snow

My week Monday 8 to Sunday 14 October 2012 was yet another exercise in chaos, but this time with added snow.

Virtually nothing in the schedule actually happened when it was originally planned. There was too much moving around, and then Friday’s snowfalls almost derailed the week’s close.

Still, it was my first-ever encounter with actual snow at close range, so there were a few childlike moment of joy. And then I decided to spend the weekend in a SEKRIT hideaway.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 158, “Partitioning porn from PowerPoint: VMware’s virtualisation vision”. VMware’s vision of a virtualised future extends far beyond their existing desktop and server virtualisation products, to include virtualised mobile devices, and even software-defined data centres (SDD).

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I was a guest of NetSuite at Sydney’s Aria Restaurant, where of course they paid for the food and wine. We also received gift vouchers from some of NetSuite’s customers: Avago ($100); SkincareStore ($75); and WineMarket.com.au ($75).
  • On Wednesday I was a guest of Alcatel-Lucent at the Australian Internet Industry Association’s NSW branch forum Customer Centric Services, held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney.
  • On Friday afternoon I was a guest at MooresCloud’s press event, held at the City Hotel, Sydney. There was food. And drink. And mysteriously flashing lights.

The Week Ahead

On Monday I’ll be producing the Patch Monday podcast and having lunch with someone from Trustwave SpiderLabs before returning to Wentworth Falls. I’ll spend the week up in the mountains catching up on many, many loose ends of both media work and general geekery.

[Photo: Waratah in the snow, not the same specimen of Telopea speciosissima as seen last week, but another one at Bunjaree Cottages.]