Slashdot Mirror

The Coral Sea Cable System (CSCS), being funded largely by Australian Government is replacing the build Huawei was initially planning on building. CSCS is being built by Vocus/Alcatel.
https://www.coralseacablesyste...
https://www.submarinecablemap....

This new cable also has branches to PNG/Solomons (and everywhere else), its being pushed by the same guy who did Hawaiki, which is AU-NZ-US
https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

You can put a chips under an electron microscope, but it won't help you:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

Even the government appointed overseer of the government is concerned. https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

Thank you!

Here is mine... pity I sent it before Krebs wrote https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...

This is a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review of the Telecommunication and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 [0].

Chinese surveillance society [1] offers a chilling vision of a society I never want to live in.

Just as Apple differentiates itself [2] clearly from Google and Facebook by saying we will never sell your data (you aren't the product), I think Western democracies ought to clearly differentiate themselves from China.

Currently we're heading towards a local optima that will look more and more like China. Because of certain problems (paedophiles, drug dealers, terrorists), government wants weak encryption. Then in large part because of weak encryption, we can't use Chinese components in our networks [3].

Well, the truth is that paedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists will all wake up to the fact that comms on common services can be intercepted, and will use their own encryption (routed over TOR or similar, so you can't tell who the endpoints are). Phantom Secure is evidence that this horse has already bolted[4]. Though I guess you might make any private encryption technology illegal? Why not?!!

The net result being that only people with "nothing to hide" will be using services that you can surveil.

Thinking more broadly, if drugs such as marijuana and MDMA were legal, then probably 95% of the so-called encryption problem goes away. And lots of other problems as well... Count on certain relatively benign recreational drugs being legalized soon after self-driving cars become common.

And then I'd argue that you catch the paedophiles and terrorists with creative policing[5]. You don't absolutely need this kind of legislation to then get into their phones [6].

In summary, a much better approach would be to support strong encryption (the global optimum), and say clearly we don't want to follow China. With strong encyption right across our telecomms networks, we'd be able to source equipment from Huwaie and ZTE ... Of course, there's the additional concern that the Chinese could stop packet transmission entirely (ie a kill switch), or make it unreliable, but that's a different problem to "they might read our stuff".

The real concern would then be any laptop server[7] or phone made in China (ie most of them) - the terminal devices where stuff must be decrypted for the user to see.

Of course, the problem is that embracing "strong encryption" is anathema to the received wisdom from the rest of the Five Eyes [8], and you need to take a broader perspective to realise it is the right choice for an open society.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliam...

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com...

[3] https://www.itnews.com.au/news... https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

[5]

Here is mine... pity I sent it before Krebs wrote https://krebsonsecurity.com/20...

This is a submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) review of the Telecommunication and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 [0].

Chinese surveillance society [1] offers a chilling vision of a society I never want to live in.

Just as Apple differentiates itself [2] clearly from Google and Facebook by saying we will never sell your data (you aren't the product), I think Western democracies ought to clearly differentiate themselves from China.

Currently we're heading towards a local optima that will look more and more like China. Because of certain problems (paedophiles, drug dealers, terrorists), government wants weak encryption. Then in large part because of weak encryption, we can't use Chinese components in our networks [3].

Well, the truth is that paedophiles/drug dealers/terrorists will all wake up to the fact that comms on common services can be intercepted, and will use their own encryption (routed over TOR or similar, so you can't tell who the endpoints are). Phantom Secure is evidence that this horse has already bolted[4]. Though I guess you might make any private encryption technology illegal? Why not?!!

The net result being that only people with "nothing to hide" will be using services that you can surveil.

Thinking more broadly, if drugs such as marijuana and MDMA were legal, then probably 95% of the so-called encryption problem goes away. And lots of other problems as well... Count on certain relatively benign recreational drugs being legalized soon after self-driving cars become common.

And then I'd argue that you catch the paedophiles and terrorists with creative policing[5]. You don't absolutely need this kind of legislation to then get into their phones [6].

In summary, a much better approach would be to support strong encryption (the global optimum), and say clearly we don't want to follow China. With strong encyption right across our telecomms networks, we'd be able to source equipment from Huwaie and ZTE ... Of course, there's the additional concern that the Chinese could stop packet transmission entirely (ie a kill switch), or make it unreliable, but that's a different problem to "they might read our stuff".

The real concern would then be any laptop server[7] or phone made in China (ie most of them) - the terminal devices where stuff must be decrypted for the user to see.

Of course, the problem is that embracing "strong encryption" is anathema to the received wisdom from the rest of the Five Eyes [8], and you need to take a broader perspective to realise it is the right choice for an open society.

[0] https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliam...

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com...

[3] https://www.itnews.com.au/news... https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

[5]

Even the government appointed overseer of the government is concerned.
https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

Hyperthreading is at least partly to blame for the serious security flaws in nearly every processor produced over the last two decades. The 9900K still has it because some people value speed over security.

https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

no that was speculative execution where it would guess what the code was going to do do it then throw it away if it was wrong but want actually trowing away and would reach into restricted parts of memory. hyper threading is more like task switching.

Hyperthreading is at least partly to blame for the serious security flaws in nearly every processor produced over the last two decades. The 9900K still has it because some people value speed over security. https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

Perhaps the one that was publishing iPhone leaks for months?

Nah....

It looks to be mostly about getting IPSs to help the government conduct man-in-the-middle attacks rather than backdoors (initially).

There is better coverage of it at itnews;
https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

Three types of notices;
1. Request for Voluntary assistance
2. Technical assistance (within their current capability, eg handover known keys)
3. Technical capability notice (build/provide new capability)

The third type is obviously most dangerous, especially the following can-of-worms;
  - Substituting, or facilitating the substitution of, a service
  - Removing one or more forms of electronic protection that are, or were applied by, or on behalf of, the provider
  - Facilitating or assisting access to whatever law enforcement wants: a facility, device, service and any software used in conjunction with those things

And ISPs have to wear some of the cost, and do their work;
  - Assisting with the testing, modification, development or maintenance of a technology or capability
  - Notifying particular kinds of changes to, or developments affecting, eligible activities of the provider

Kinda like wifi?

> I just deactivate IPv6 at all dual stack machines, that should fix this...

Wrong. If your ISP doesn't support IPV6, you can still get IPV6 via a "tunnel broker". Packets get tunnelled over an encrypted connection to IPV6-land. I know this is Slashdot, but please RTFA https://www.itnews.com.au/news...

> The researchers developed proofs of concept with tunnel-based IPv6 transition tools over
> IPv4-only, or IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networks, that were able to pass traffic undetected by
> common network intrusion detection systems (NIDS) such as Snort, Suricata, Bro and Moloch.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/...

ABS ditches in-house plans in favour of outsourcing.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has opted not to build its own private cloud to host the 2016 eCensus, instead awarding a $9.6 million outsourcing contract to existing partner IBM.

This would be the same IBM that one of the states of Australia has blacklisted from IT contracts for the government.

Yay consistency.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/...

ABS ditches in-house plans in favour of outsourcing.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has opted not to build its own private cloud to host the 2016 eCensus, instead awarding a $9.6 million outsourcing contract to existing partner IBM.

Australia’s national statistics agency first offered Australians the option to avoid completing the Census via its traditional paper-based form with a web-based eCensus in 2006.

It partnered with IBM in a $9 million deal in 2005 to develop and support the web-based eCensus application - which is hosted on IBM’s AIX operating system and a WebSphere application server, out of the company's Baulkham Hills, Sydney data centre.

But the agency later virtualised its server infrastructure (with VMware’s vSphere) to create its own private cloud with the intention of hosting the 2016 eCensus.

Running the Census in-house would help address security perceptions arising from the data being handled from a third-party, the ABS said at the time. It said it also made sense to outsource the project to a third-party rather than deal with the one-off high traffic spike internally.

The agency became 95 percent virtualised after cutting 300 physical servers to 70, which hosted 1500 virtual machines.

But the Bureau of Statistics today confirmed it had decided to once again partner with IBM for hosting of the 2016 eCensus in order to ensure the expected high volumes would be properly managed.

The ABS expects the percentage of Australians completing the census online to double in 2016, forecasting a 65 percent take-up compared to 33 percent in 2011. For the first year of the eCensus, 10 percent of Australians submitted their form online.

“The ABS virtualisation project was successfully completed providing a very efficient platform for ongoing ABS operations, including supporting a number of components of the digital Census in 2016,” a spokesperson said.

“However, due to the peak volume of the online form during Census 2016 it was decided that contracting IBM would provide the best value for money and management of operational risk.”

Duncan Young, head of the 2016 Census within the ABS, said IBM had been contracted through a limited tender after proving it could offer the best value for money.

“This contract capitalises on the investment in the existing online Census system,” Young said in a statement to iTnews.

“Our existing solution has shown itself to be robust, and can be expanded to manage increased volumes. Using a known platform will reduce the risk of costly development and integration issues.”

The IBM contract will expire in October 2016.

http://www.dshield.org/diary/G...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.networkworld.com/ne...
http://www.computerworld.com/s...
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/g...
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/S...
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.c...
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/...

APK

P.S.=> Next is DNS serving up malware & abused by malware to do it (acting as C&C data transfer + more etc.)... apk

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://news.softpedia.com/news...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...
http://threatpost.com/ultradns... restored_after_ddos_takes_out_dns/
http://www.dshield.org/diary/I...
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://news.softpedia.com/news...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/P...
http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...

APK

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

* Want MORE? Ask "& ye shall receive"...

APK

P.S.=> More are coming, lol... apk

They're being bought by the second worst ISP in Australia: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/401960,iinet-board-seriously-concerned-about-culture-post-tpg-buy.aspx, http://www.afr.com/technology/iinet-shareholders-hit-out-at-board-over-tpg-m2-takeover-battle-20150507-ggvyow.

They've already destroyed several large players in the infrastructure space (PIPE Networks for example, AAPT is in progress), and now one of the highest ranked customer service ISPs (if not the highest) is about to be consumed in a primarily cash-based deal, leaving the original team with no control or say in the combined company.

There's little chance of TPG allowing anything to continue that costs more than the bare minimum. Where you previously had people who knew their stuff proactively supporting many-thousand-$-per-month corporate fibre WANs and the like, you now get a bored dude from the Philippines working through a residential ADSL support flowchart, he wouldn't know a VLAN if it was trunked right up his bum.

iiNet/Internode/Westnet/etc are the last service-oriented consumer ISP in the marketplace. Their legal defence of their common-carrier status and their continued protection of customers is just one example. It would be a shame if they were absorbed by a company that is their exact opposite.

(What's the worst ISP though? I reserve that title for Dodo).

http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

http://www.dshield.org/diary/G...

https://threatpost.com/en_us/b...

https://threatpost.com/en_us/b...

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

http://plus.evozi.com/204/mala...

http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

http://www.zdnet.com/linkedin-...

http://www.zdnet.com/linkedin-...

http://www.zdnet.com/au/optus-...

http://www.zdnet.com/dutch-dns...

http://www.computerworld.com/s...

https://isc.sans.edu/forums/di...

http://it.slashdot.org/story/1...

http://www.dshield.org/diary/g...

http://www.dshield.org/diary/N...

http://www.dshield.org/diary/L...

http://www.dshield.org/diary/D...

http://www.networkworld.com/ne...

* "Read 'em & weep" STILL more are coming (since that's only partial on my end, and the future WILL SHOW MORE without doubt)... & that's only SOME of the exploits DNS has experienced, I don't have them all but those will do!

(Simply facts supporting my former posts on the subject of DNS issues -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... AND http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... as I promised in it, to show the RAMPANT EXPLOITABILITY of DNS vs. my program AND WINDOWS protecting hosts perfectly...)

APK

P.S.=> You can't win, accept it... apk

sectokia: "I like bias... they don't mention that the labor party all voted it through as well. Greens only opposed it after they learned labor wouldn't, so they would get to claim moral high ground, while it sailed through with bi partisan support. The two year data retension has been in place since the first ISPs started as an industry code of practice decades ago. This law is just formalising and making it clearly mandatory. The meta data has been available and used for decades."

Do you have any verifiable citations for that? What part of timothys' synopsis do you deem biased? Please provide specifics.

"Despite hearing months of evidence that the mandatory data retention proposal is dangerous, expensive and open-ended, the Labor Party appears to have caved", Scott Ludlam

From a news report of ITWire from the 17th of September this year.

Privacy, resourcing hurdles for Brisbane 'robocops'.

Queensland Police’s chief commissioner remains unconvinced about the benefits of cameras pinned to the chests of police officers, despite his southern counterparts pledging $4 million to the technology.

Qld chief commissioner Ian Stewart yesterday told Fairfax radio he still wasn’t fully satisfied that privacy, resourcing and value-for-money issues had been ironed out to the extent that the QPS could proceed with a full rollout of body-worn cameras, beyond limited use of the devices planned for the G20 summit in November.

“It is not quite as simple as putting a camera on a body,” he said, describing privacy as one of the biggest hurdles still to be overcome.

“There are issues such as police walking into a domestic violence situation, where children are involved[or] having the camera on when they are dealing with a sexual offence,” he said.

He also raised doubts about whether the debt-laden state government could afford such an enterprise.

“There is a huge cost behind this. That is about the storage of the information and it is about the classification of the information and the amount of time that the officers are going to have to spend at the end of a shift downloading it and putting into secure storage."

“We are talking about a significant impact on time out on the road,” he said.

Stewart, who has overseen the Queensland Police’s pioneering iPad scheme did, however, concede that the era of “the robocop” was on its way.

“Ultimately I think it is coming, butit still comes down to the human being behind that camera and them doing their job professionally.”

Stewart’s southern counterparts in the NSW Police force have already signed off on the purchase of body-worn cameras for officers, but NSW Police Minister Stuart Ayres declined to comment on the concerns raised by Stewart.

Police unions in both states have vocally backed the technology.

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers told the Courier Mail in July the cameras should be thought of as “the modern equivalent of the police notebook”.

The Police Association of NSW said “it has been shown the presence of this type of video can often defuse potentially violent situations without the need for force to be used”.

Read more: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

Thats why a new net tax is needed to help with the costs.
"Secret government briefing admits metadata law cost and warns of 'internet tax' campaign" (October 30, 2014) (video)
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...
AFP will use data retention to fight piracy (Oct 30, 2014)
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
""Generally they do this in real-time, so the two years of holding this data probably doesn't make a lot of difference. That process of resolving an IP address to an account name is relevant, and it happens all the time.""
Government introduces data retention bill to Parliament (30 October, 2014 )
https://www.computerworld.com....
"source of communication, destination of communication, date, time and duration of communication, or of its connection to a relevant service, type of a
communication, or a type of relevant service used in connection with a communication, location of equipment, or a line, used in connection with a communication"
Thats not "web browsing" history :) Just most details surrounding the content :)

Under Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... any message in and out of 5 Eye nations and friends can be reconciled with a start and destination ip.
If your still chatting, a back door or rootkit would get the rest.
Anything encrypted just attracts interest until decoded or a plaintext way in is found.
Then its the hops of friends, friends of friends and all networking usage.
The only way around such systems is the number station or correct use of the one time pad.
With data retention in other nations like Australia that ip is going back to a real user as discovered. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/... (Oct 30, 2014)
"Generally they do this in real-time, so the two years of holding this data probably doesn't make a lot of difference. That process of resolving an IP address to an account name is relevant, and it happens all the time."
The history of the UK RIPA, SIGINT Modernisation Programme efforts can be seen even after new changes.
Thats the details surround a message to, from, when where, sent from and connection (gps or a house).
Its getting very easy for gov and mil to put the internet back together over days or years.

Is this a big IT project that actually worked? Where's my fainting couch???

Here's another one. Wonder what they have in common?

What Immigration did with just $1m and open source software

The Department of Immigration has showed what a cash-strapped government agency can do with just $1 million, some open source software, and a bit of free thinking.

Speaking at the Technology in Government forum in Canberra yesterday, the Department's chief risk officer Gavin McCairns explained how his team rolled an application based on the 'R' language into production to filter through millions of incoming visitors to Australia every year.

Despite working for one of the largest bodies in Canberra - and one of the most security conscious - McCairns put his endorsement firmly behind the use of open source.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

I'm going to wager that the open source project successes are more due to the people involved than open source itself. Usually when somebody does that they have an open source cheerleader in a position of influence and a staff already familiar with open source. So you end up with a project led by somebody who is invested in the project's success at a level beyond "this will make the bosses happy". From my limited experience, the proprietary implementations result from those influential people going "we don't know how to do this, but this is what everybody else seems to be doing, and these guys we are paying to tell us what to do are saying to do that". The open source project is much more likely to have implementers and architects with more of a "let's figure this out" attitude instead of "this is what people say to do".

Is this a big IT project that actually worked? Where's my fainting couch???

Here's another one. Wonder what they have in common?

What Immigration did with just $1m and open source software

The Department of Immigration has showed what a cash-strapped government agency can do with just $1 million, some open source software, and a bit of free thinking.

Speaking at the Technology in Government forum in Canberra yesterday, the Department's chief risk officer Gavin McCairns explained how his team rolled an application based on the 'R' language into production to filter through millions of incoming visitors to Australia every year.

Despite working for one of the largest bodies in Canberra - and one of the most security conscious - McCairns put his endorsement firmly behind the use of open source.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

Does the thing run only on Windoze 8 ?

Window anyway.

It's a VB6 program running on a single PC, supposedly for security reasons. The system is highly manual and failure prone enough that they're probably too embarrassed to release the code.

The system was developed internally by the AEC in 2001, when an upgrade to Windows 2000 rendered an existing COBOL-based application the commission was using to tally-up union elections incompatible with its standard operating environment. It was re-written as a Microsoft Visual Basic application and runs on Microsoft SQL.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/...

Actually isn't it that around 25% of a device cost goes to royalties/patent costs?

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...

> He trusts the internet will deliver the packets.

With the NSA impersonating facebook's servers, looks like even that minimal level of trust is misplaced.

... but they're also taking care of the citizens screwed by the XP-end-of-life:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/...

.

There are plenty of vulnerable technologies out today (SCADA systems for one) but hackers aren't so interested in disrupting these systems

I'm sorry, what was that you were saying?

Sadly I don't think you have any rights - at least not in Australia - where I come from, and which has very similar customs laws to those of New Zealand.

It would appear that they can take any and all of your electronic devices and storage equipment - including laptops, smartphones, usb keys - and they don't have to explain why or state what "reasonable suspicion" they have that you might have something illegal. On the whim of the customs officer, they can keep it for 14 days, or longer if they feel they have cause to.

At most all you can do is lodge a complaint...

14 hours ago, itnews.com.au runs a story (promptly picked up by /.) about how the social networks are staying with MySQL. In the article, it is suggested that the switch to MariaDB by some Linux distros is a "political move", and that Google's switch might be a retaliation against an unrelated lawsuit from Oracle. Also, it's mentioned (twice, with the same wording) that the Mozilla foundation is "upgrading from MariaDB to MySQL 5.6" (emphasis added).

7 hours ago, itnews.com.au runs a story (promptly picked up by /.) about how Oracle's 12C database will be 100x faster, despite the fact that we only have Oracle's CEO word for it.

Now that's what I call an Oracle-friendly site (or two?)

"The Australian Attorney-General Department's pig-headed push for Internet data retention were rejected by an Intelligence Oversight Committee for being vague and violating civil liberties. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said the government needs to get the message and drop the scheme, and warned data retention could be used by PRISM. Head Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says data retention is off the agenda for now, though when the last AG made a similar promise they caught everyone off guard and passed new laws 12 days later"

http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/06/24/national-security-inquiry-declines-to-endorse-data-retention
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/06/24/keane-a-debate-we-had-to-have-on-security-measures
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/465679/data_retention_needs_oversight_inquiry/
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/465152/australia_suspected_prism_data_ludlam/
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/roxon-puts-web-surveillance-plans-on-ice-20120809-23x9l.html
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/312771,senate-passes-lite-data-retention-laws.aspx

The government is expected to lose office
Yes they are, but the opposition hasn't ruled out doing the same thing.

The real problem is probably that you believe everything you read. Somebody probably told the reporter that he got into trouble hacking XP Professional at his high school when he was a senior, then the reporter writes "senior", "IT", "XP", and "Professional" in his notes and before you know it he's a "senior IT Professional". If you read the first article and follow the denial link, his company makes clear that He was a low-level support tech who was on a three-month probation,” Wurth said. “He had no access to any type of customer data apart from support tickets. That will be cleared up with the AFP. This is just some unimportant kid trying to sound important, and reporters willing to roll with it to sell papers coupled with a gubber'mnt mule who sees an opportunity to "get a big fish".

What the AFP claims is a total lie.

"He was a low-level support tech who was on a three-month probation,” Wurth said. “He had no access to any type of customer data apart from support tickets"

So essentially a script kidding working a low level tech support job. Not exactly a criminal mastermind.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/317816,us-authorities-bust-microsoft-support-scam.aspx

More importantly - here's 1 of the "tricks" they try pull that I noted:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/257822,how-the-microsoftlogmein-support-scam-works.aspx

* They TRIED to pull the EventLog one too that THIS article notes, & I was like "wait a second - are you REALLY trained in this? Those are merely eventlog entries, not errors of a serious nature!" - guy was quick too, & asked IF there were any "warning" ones (there aren't ANY here... almost never, that is).

That's when he "moved on" to the .inf file one I noted in the 2nd link...

LMAO, & I just "played along" UNTIL they wanted ME to go to (I won't spell it 'unified' so nobody gets burnt here by it) w w w . a m m y y . c o m ...)

APK

P.S.=> I put that into my custom hosts file, & that was that... blocked off, for good (they called again & I told them I was an agent of law enforcement - they hung up then, instantly!)...

... apk/b

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/317816,us-authorities-bust-microsoft-support-scam.aspx

More importantly - here's 1 of the "tricks" they try pull that I noted:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/257822,how-the-microsoftlogmein-support-scam-works.aspx

* They TRIED to pull the EventLog one too that THIS article notes, & I was like "wait a second - are you REALLY trained in this? Those are merely eventlog entries, not errors of a serious nature!" - guy was quick too, & asked IF there were any "warning" ones (there aren't ANY here... almost never, that is).

That's when he "moved on" to the .inf file one I noted in the 2nd link...

LMAO, & I just "played along" UNTIL they wanted ME to go to (I won't spell it 'unified' so nobody gets burnt here by it) w w w . a m m y y . c o m ...)

APK

P.S.=> I put that into my custom hosts file, & that was that... blocked off, for good (they called again & I told them I was an agent of law enforcement - they hung up then, instantly!)...

... apk/b

But only 1GB/s is recorded: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/310769,computing-for-the-large-hadron-collider.aspx

http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Intellectual property: Patents against prosperity | The Economist

Why abolish software patents - software patents wiki (en.swpat.org)

When Patents Attack! | This American Life

Johanna Blakley: Lessons from fashion's free culture | Video on TED.com

Do music artists fare better in a world with illegal file-sharing? Times Labs Blog

The Coming War on General Purpose Computation - Boing Boing

US patent trolling costs $29b: study - Strategy - Business - News - iTnews.com.au

Patents | Electronic Frontier Foundation

http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/

Zynga might be too close, but the vast majority of games actually copy each other so much that they create a GENDRE for god's sake. And that has been alwways a good thing for gaming in particular. The truth is that yes, there are indeed assholes, there will always be, but they seem to be on both sides and the question remains to where do they cause the less damage.

As far as being non-creative, I'm not sure who you mean. Personally, I develop new software for a living and I was curiously enough working on my novel when I got your reply.

"Unless and until Huawei becomes a stand-alone widely held listed company with employees free to trade their shares and without a controlling shareholder, these suspicions and allegations will likely continue,"
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/175946,analysis-who-really-owns-huawei.aspx

Well there is this, story carried by slashdot: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/cell-carriers-see-uptick-in-requests-to-aid-surveillance.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all and this in Australia: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/308218,govt-mulls-cloud-social-intercepts.aspx And recently Telstra was caught channeling all of their traffic via a US organisation for "checking", apparently to provide a service in the future where users can purchase the option to have their internet access filtered for nasties. Via the US.... where everything is legally able to be seized, requested, call it what you want, under the Patriot Act. I'm just saying...

Despite the fact that twitter played a part in several "revolutions", twitter never had freedom in its DNA. Just look at some of their actions:

Country specific censorship controls

Purchase and subsequent shutdown of Whispercore, an android build used for secure communications in Egypt

I also have a friend that was an organizer for OWS in NY during its inception, and he claimed that several of his tweets were removed.

LS

The UN has been promoting internet censorship lately. No help to expect from them.

Unfortunately and shamefully many Aboriginal Communities in the outback have health and other standards that are 3rd world.

Here are a couple of links:
* http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/304648/olpc_boosts_outback_education_laptop_deployment/ (2012)
* http://www.itnews.com.au/News/300029,indigenous-communities-get-olpc-boost.aspx (2009)
And some research by Gina Milgate to put it into context.

A good way to compare these countries, given that we're talking about a radio astronomy project, is to look at their radio astronomy facilities. Trimble & Ceja did a study of the citation rates of papers based on data from different telescopes (as a measure of how significant the rest of the world thinks the results from those telescopes are). Numbers 2 and 3 are the Australia Telescope Compact Array and the Parkes Radio Telescope, also in Australia. (Number 1, by a large margin, is the Very Large Array in the US.) There's only one South African radio telescope, and it's lumped under "Other".

It's also a bit surprising that you cite South Africa's strengths in mining (when Australia is China's primary source of raw materials), heavy engineering (Australia's shipyards are busier than South Africa's) and defence (Australia is collaborating on the JSF). It's particularly amusing when you say that Australian universities have a few hand-me-down computers - presumably like the Pawsey Centre, which is on the top500 supercomputer list - and that's only stage 1, with 7% of the final installed capacity. And what's it being used for? Radio astronomy.

The only cogent point in your post is Australia's limited nuclear experience - which would be really relevant if the SKA were nuclear-powered. (Hint: it's not.)

Basically in the first areas where the NBN has been deployed the biggest complaint from the customers was about the need to have battery packs inside their homes and the fact they will need to be replaced periodically.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/276366,nbn-users-complain-about-battery-backup.aspx

Although some people or businesses may need to have working POTS during a black out I'm not convinced that it is appropriate to have it in all premises, particularly in a country like Australia where everyone has a mobile phone anyway.

However it is currently a requirement for the NBN installation that the phones work during powercuts. Stopping the mass installation of batteries and instead requiring people to keep their copper lines until either a better plan or smarter requirements can be implemented seems quite sensible to me.

TFA may have a point about prices - but no one is forced to choose Telstra. I'll be sticking with iinet and getting twice the data allocation and about six times the speed that I'm currently getting on ADSL.

No mention that HTC sued Apple and attempted an injunction against most Apple products. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/267160,htc-sues-apple-over-patents.aspx Because only Apple sucks, right? I think the only real story is Slashdot is so predictable.

But they're now in bed with trolls. So I wouldn't insist on this distinction.

And today, Apple lost leave to appeal to the High Court. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/282786,galaxy-tab-101-heads-to-christmas-shelves.aspx

The 10.1 is scheduled to hit retail outlets this Monday.

Even were it to happen, it seems that the methane released by the Arctic permafrost would have an effect equivalent to doubling the levels of CO2. It is certainly serious, but it would not be an immediate extinction event, although there could certainly be localized loss of life through droughts and famine. Of course, I am just a layman and certainly not a climatologist, so my initial, and admittedly superficial interpretation could be way off.

If some floods isolated in Thailand causes worldwide harddisk shortages, can you extrapolate what it would be when such floods will become more pervasive? When the current generation is highly dependent on FaeceBook (by extension: communication; not that this communication helps them dealing with the problems) and self-reliant to a minimum?