Weekly Wrap 64: Unexpected schedule changes

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. The balance of the week felt right, but Mistress Insomnia certainly made her presence felt.

My schedule also changed a lot this week, and I ended up spending the entire time in Sydney. I return to Wentworth Falls tomorrow.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 102, “Political, economic hacking needs attention”. An interview with Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee, and author of Revealed: Operation Shady RAT (PDF), which exposed a hacking operation that had compromised 72 organisations.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Wednesday I spoke with Keith Conlon and John Kenneally on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa about the 20th anniversary of the web and what the future might hold.
  • On Thursday I spoke with Bernadette Young on ABC Gold Coast about the resignation of Steve Jobs. The recording failed part-way through, so I haven’t posted it here. But I will if you want me to.
  • Also on Thursday I spoke with Tom Elliott on Melbourne radio 3AW, also about Steve Jobs. I’ve already posted a recording.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the Security 2011 Expo & Conference at Darling Harbour. As is usual for when one has a media pass to such events, I was given free food and drink.
  • Also on Wednesday I went to Text 100’s Christmas in August Event. Text 100 is a PR firm, and Christmas in August is where their clients show off their new consumer gadgetry that’ll be on sale for Christmas. The food and drink was free. And copious. Too copious. Way too copious.

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: Leichhardt Town Hall, Sydney. I wasn’t in Leichhardt at all this week. This photo was taken on 17 July 2011. I didn’t have any photos from this week that were suitable.]

Weekly Wrap 63: I’m lichen it a lot

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This week was closer to normal than some others, assuming that I have normal weeks. And this post is only one day late.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 101, “There are no NBN apps: Turnbull”. Malcolm Turnbull discusses his Coalition plan for broadband.

Articles

Media Appearances

None. Well, my presentation at the Local Government Web Network conference on Thursday was sort of a media thing, but not quite. And in any event I will post the thing here some time later today.

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.

[Photo: Lichen on the platform at Lawson station in the Blue Mountains, around 95km west of Sydney.]

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.]

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.

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.

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.