Category Archives: Internet

Windows DRM breaks – declares all XP & Vista installs pirated

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Yet another reason to not bother with Windows or other DRM crippled software, Microsofts Genuine disAdvantage servers all crashed..

The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation — except possibly those with volume license keys — is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in. Installations which are flagged as counterfeit switch to a “reduced functionality mode” which results in features like Aero and DirectX being disabled.

Talk about Defective by Design..

Monster hack(ed)

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The BBC reports that social engineers hacked Monster.com looking for information to make phishing scams more credible..

It said confidential details of more than 1.3 million people, mainly Americans, were stolen by malicious hackers who carried out the attack. It said that servers in the Ukraine and hijacked home computers were used to mount the attack. […] The thieves got away with names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of Monster.com users. […] The attackers wanted to get hold of personal information in an attempt to make e-mails supposedly sent by recruitment firms more plausible.

Wanted: Linux Systems Administrator

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The Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) is looking for a Linux systems administrator to join our systems team working on grid computing.

  • Help build a grid across Australia!
  • Relaxed work environment.
  • Melbourne CBD fringe, easy access to trains and tram.
  • Salary around $55-60K+ (package contingent on experience)
  • Fixed term contract – 12 months.
  • Closing Date: 2nd August 2007

Reporting to the ICI Operations Manager, you will be working primarily in a Linux systems administrator role with Grid toolkits such as Globus and VDT. You will be involved in a National Project to provide Grid Based Computing available across Australia. The ability to work with and support our end users (typically scientific researchers and software developers) is very important in this role. Some national and international travel will be involved.

So if you think that it sounds interesting then please and go read the job advert on the VPAC website, or at least tell a friend! 🙂

Australian Internet Censorship pilot to go ahead

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So it appears the Federal governments attempts to censor the internet at ISPs is not dead after all..

Coonan said one privately funded trial had been cancelled, but the planned pilot managed by the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) will go ahead as planned. The tender for companies wishing to take part closed last week and three bids were received, according to the government.

What they are going to be testing out is..

Under the ACMA scheme, ISP-level filtering products will be tested on blocking “inappropriate and illegal content”, whether such products would clog ISPs’ networks and if such products have improved since the government last examined their capabilities in 2005-2006.

Page-store.com

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Today I noticed my site getting a thorough spidering by the user agent “Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; heritrix/1.12.1 +http://www.page-store.com)” and appearing to be sourced from what appears to be an Amazon Web Services IP address, 72.44.62.136 (domU-12-31-37-00-02-76.usma3.compute.amazonaws.com.).

The Page-store.com web site is minimal, with just a single page and a robots.txt that forbids all crawlers. It does describe what they are trying to do though, which is to spider everything and then sell some digested form of that gathered information onto new search engines so they don’t have to do the work themselves. In their words:

Page-store positions itself as a web wholesaler, supplying page and link information to vertical search engine companies on a per-use basis. The effect is to level the playing field between vertical search and general horizontal internet search.

If nothing else it scores highly on the buzzword bingo scale.

Telstra second from bottom in OECD broadband league

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Thankfully at least one Australian paper has picked up on the recent OECD broadband report so we can get some idea about what it says for Australia. Telstra comes out really badly (surprise surprise), for speed in the national carrier stakes..

In a comparison of download speeds offered by incumbent national suppliers such as Telstra in October last year, Australia pulled up second last with its fastest offering of a 1.5mbit/s DSL package. While speedier packages were being offered by other suppliers at the time, our national carrier lagged that of most other developed countries, pulling up in the second last spot just ahead of Slovak Republic, and behind Turkey.

For pricing in general across ADSL providers we’re about average..

In terms of lowest monthly subscriptions costs for a broadband package, Sweden claimed the cheapest package at $US10.79, followed by Denmark at $US11.11. Australia sat in the middle of the pack at $US21.10, but behind New Zealand, which had an offering at $US16.86

which surprised me..

Charlie Stross

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It gets a bit weird when in the space of a month you’ve been loaned a rather good Sci-Fi book he’s written by a friend in Melbourne, find he has an article on the BBC News website and finally give up and Google him and find has a page on Wikipedia.

Especially when the last time you’d heard of him you were crashing on his and Feorag’s futon in their lounge in Edinburgh and all you knew was he wrote funny articles on alt.peeves and alt.lang.intercal!

If you do like the idea of dark Lovecraftian geek humour being applied to a the murky world of esoteric spying written by someone who knows about tech (not just pretending they do) then check out Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross..