In China, anyway..

I dunno. The Internet is such a fundamental part of the world (esp for those who work in IT) and is becoming such a key to the social aspects of peoples existence, that this one strikes me as a little bit of a sore point raised by those who work and live in other 'worlds'.

Its a sign of the times.

And whilst some people who are heavily involved in 'online' stuff may be disrupted if their access to the Internet is interrupted for a period of days, I hardly see them having a nervous breakdown over it.

Beyond that, I guess i'm an addict :)

The End of an Era. Or Something..

Found on Toyspeed and reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Facebookfail. For sure. And Hilarious.

Hafta admit that i'm not really up-with-the-play on xkcd; often find them amusing but don't often actualy go there unless someone points me at it.

Today someone did:

So true!

Stuff reports that "Thousands of Internet users are at risk of becoming embroiled in child pornography trafficking because of insecure security settings on their wireless connections."

Good grief.

Anyone with wireless who hasn't considered the ramifications of insecure wireless access points, needs to get a brain.

Even a token effort (WEP) gives you a huge layer of protection (in a legislative sense, if not from an IT security point of view). Someone breaking into your WEP is demonstrating intent to go around a security measure (a bit like breaking a window to get into your house, instead of simply walking through the open doorway.)

I have previously blogged about an incident in the UK which illustrated that leaving your wireless in an insecure mode was basically asking for trouble. In a world where the Internet Account Holder can be held responsible for the conduct of the people using it, do you really want Joe Public doing their dirty business across a line where the 'trail' stops with you?

[Police electronic crime national manager] ... said unauthorised access to a computer network was illegal. Those caught could be imprisoned for up to seven years under the Crimes Act.

This statement raises eyebrows in my view; i'm not convinced that 'unauthorised' can be determined by simply saying 'you don't have my verbal permission'. Most especially if the RF Footprint of your wireless device goes well onto public property - the footpath, the street! If you don't even make the token effort of adding basic WEP (an encryption system that can be cracked in minutes by a determined hacker, and yet prevents 'inadvertant' connections), you're basically issuing an invitation to the dozens of laptops, PDAs, iPhones and such like which are able to take advantage of WiFi where it's available, as an alternative to more expensive network access methods.

I hadn't noticed, but Ms Tizard's comments hit Stuff.co.nz earlier in the week.

This of course ties to my earlier Blog Entry - which is a must read, including the comments... i'm attempting to aggregate coverage I see on the matter just to see how much coverage this gets.

This is important: The New Zealand Copyright Amendments due to come into law very shortly. These should be scaring any and all Internet users in NZ.. hands down.

At the recent Software Freedom Day Barcamp and then the New Zealand Open Source Awards the issue of NZ's participation in ACTA, as well as the revisions to Copyright law, were mentioned. It also came up during the ICT Ministers debate. Enough attention was drawn, that Hon David Cunliffe, Minister for ICT, volunteered to set up a meeting with interested parties and the relevant minister, to discuss.

Colin Jackson blogged post his attendance at said meeting, as NZOSS's representative. There is also Colin's slot on National Radio (with Kim Hill) where he was able to make his views known. (Audio (.ogg) and Transcript available). Don Christie then documented the situation on the NZOSS Site.

In short:
- If you are accused 3 times of copyright infringement, your ISP will be obligated by LAW to cut you off.
- That's an accusation. No proof required.
- The scope of this really needs some thought for a minute.

I was fortunate enough to be in the studio audience at the Avalon TV Studios a few hours ago, when the first live televised/streamed Elections Debate for 2008 was held. ICT spokespeople from Labour, National, ACT and the Greens fronted up infront of Moderator Damian Christie and journalists Fran O’Sullivan and Russell Brown to discuss the issues of the day regarding Broadband, the Digital Divide, Online Privacy and more.

The rest of this article is a bit ramshackle, but I wanted to get this out in writing while it was still fresh in my mind. Apologies...

The history of User-Agent Strings. Hilarious..

This week I attended APNIC 26, one of the bi-annual meetings of the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, the outfit that issue IP addresses in the Asia-Pac and provide a bunch of other related services.

An interesting week, having met some interesting people from lotsa different places. Photos taken on my (old) digicam can be found in my Gallery - captioning isnt finished yet but those who were there will know what's going on, I imagine.

Today we played tourist, having visited this lovely place:

Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum, Wigram, Christchurch

There's photos from there too, both of a family bent and also a Military one.

Following the visit to Wigram we took a cruise across to Lyttleton and then up to New Brighton, as a bit of an exploratory exercise.

Whilst at New Brighton, though, we noticed something odd. Can you say WTF?:

Something's not quite right. Can you spot it?

Tomorrow we're going to check out some local markets and then meet up with an old OLD friend from the BBS world, who lives nearby. Should be interesting. Then back to Wellywood....

[Note: im having trouble uploading photos using Woosh Wireless. It may need to wait a day or so until I make it back home. Check back later....]