radio – Page 42 – Stilgherrian

20 March 201220 March 2012

Talking the death of passwords on ABC 105.7 Darwin

A story in the Fairfax outlets yesterday about work on cognitive fingerprinting for user authentication led to this conversation with Kate O’Toole on ABC 105.7 Darwin this morning.

I managed to include a mention of the voice biometric work by Australian company Auraya that’s based on technology used by Centrelink, and the concept of two-factor authentication.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:31 — 6.1MB)

19 February 201226 February 2012

Weekly Wrap 89: Storms and too many podcasts

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 13 to Sunday 19 February 2012.

I never did get around to writing that more reflective blog post, but you’ll cope. There’s enough here for you to be reading and listening to.

Podcasts

Patch Monday episode 125, “Blackhole: cybercrime toolkit of choice”. Jason Pearse, M86 Security Labs’ sales engineering director for the Asia-Pacific region, explains why Blackhole is so “good” and debunks some information security myths.
The 9pm Edict episode 18, which covers the NSW police lecturing parents and things.
The 9pm Edict episode 19, which covers idiot reportage of the Kevin Rudd swearing video and proposes a fix for the Canberra press gallery.

Articles

Blocking all .info domains is “censorship”: The Greens, CSO Online, 14 February 2012.
Mobile security a “game-changer” for Aussie telcos: Analyst, CSO Online, 17 February 2012.

Media Appearances

On Tuesday I was quoted in Harrison Polites’ Technology Spectator piece Five critical hacking myths.
On Wednesday night I spoke about copyright vs the internet on ABC Local Radio nationally.
On Saturday afternoon I spoke about Apple’s iMessage and Path’s privacy outrage on Sydney radio 2UE.

Corporate Largesse

On Thursday I attended analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s “ICT Outlook Press Lunch” at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Sandwiches and salads and cheese and cake were served. However the waiter never did bring the proffered coffee and had to get my own at the end of the event.

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: Fleeting mists. I know I linked to the picture last week, but I do love it. Such magnificent sights make up for the hassle of the storms.]

[Update 26 February 2012: Added an entry for the Harrison Polites story to Media Appearances section.]

18 February 2012

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 (Duration: 7:36 — 3.6MB)

16 February 2012

Talking copyright vs the internet on ABC Local Radio

Last night I took part in a nice long chat about copyright and the internet on ABC Local Radio across Australia — the program being Tony Delroy’s Nightlife.

Also on the program was Fiona Phillips, acting CEO of the Australian Copyright Council, so we had me as the technologist and her as the lawyer.

I think Mr Delroy was surprised to find that we were in broad agreement on most issues. We covered quite a bit of territory, including SOPA, Optus versus sport, new business models and the inevitable mention of Nine Inch Nails.

Here’s the recording of the whole thing, including the talkback calls.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:05 — 29.1MB)

I’d also like to thank everyone on Twitter who suggested other creatives who were successfully bypassing the middlemen and publishing straight to their audiences: musicians Radiohead, Amanda Hocking, Amanda Palmer, Jonathan Coulton and OK Go; writers Stephen King and Cory Doctorow; comedian Louis CK; and even the movie Red State by Kevin Smith. Have I missed any?

12 February 2012

Talking Optus versus sports on 1395 FIVEaa

The Optus TV Now decision continued to be “important” news throughout the week, with sports heavies trying to talk the government into a quick fix despite the Australian Law Reform Commission review already scheduled.

If you’re new to the story, well, there’s a summary and links in my post from Tuesday and my opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Last night I ended up talking about it on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa. I held the slight fear that I’d be on a sports program as token representative of The Evil Internets. But as it happens, presenter Will Goodings took us through a rather balanced discussion.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:26 — 7.6MB)

As an aside, I was amused to see how an editorial in The Australian described the federal court decision.

Last week’s landmark Federal Court ruling that Optus can record and re-broadcast sporting events “near live” without breaching copyright…

The court decided no such thing. It decided that individuals could make their “private and domestic” recordings using Optus’ service rather than their own equipment. It certainly didn’t give Optus permission to “re-broadcast” anything, at least within any meaning of the word “broadcast” used by people on this planet.

Still, hats off to The Australian for a lovely bit of propaganda in support of their sporting interests. Remember who owns the National Rugby League…

07 February 201208 February 2012

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper…

Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:06 — 11.1MB)

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

[Update 8 February 2012, 1015: The Sydney Morning Herald has published a follow-up piece this morning by rugby legend Roy Masters. Court has gambled with codes’ futures. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw me a diagram of what the fuck he’s talking about.]