“In this upcoming round of ACTA negotiations, the U.S. delegation will be working with other delegations to resolve some fundamental issues, such as the scope of the intellectual property rights that are the focus of this agreement. Progress is necessary so that we can prepare to release a text that will provide meaningful information to the public and be a basis for productive dialogue. We hope that enough progress is made in New Zealand in clearing brackets from the text so that participants can be in a position to reach a consensus on sharing a meaningful text with the public.”
Commentary
12
Apr 10
US confirm status as ACTA transparancy stopping block
9
Apr 10
The DE Bill, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tor
Folks, we’re basically screwed; The Digital Economy Bill recieved Royal Accent on April 9th and is officially now Law.
So after barely three days of parliamentary ‘debate’ where only 20-ish MP’s actually spoke on the subject (but somehow 189 MP’s decided it was a good idea anyway), our civil rights have been sacrificed infront of the alter of copyright.
31
Mar 10
4 Dimensional Game promises to be a mind-frak
I came across this earlier this morning on XKCD and while there is very little information on the developers site at the minute, I’ll be coughing up for it regardless.
31
Mar 10
Kids Sing Portal “Still Alive”
The Gifford Children’s Choir performs “Still Alive” by Jonathan Coulton.
I freaking love this song, and there’s something reassuring that in years to come kids will be singing songs from video games about science instead of nursery rhymes about war and disease, and violent chants.
PS, JC is coming back to do the music for Portal 2, which look brilliant since they’re letting you ‘out of the lab’.
PPS, one of the best viral marketing/augmented reality campaigns I’ve ever seen…
Update (31/3/10) Fixed youtube embedding
3
Feb 10
Shamed
I am shamed. I’ve let this blog slip in the midst of coming back to the real world of Uni.
A week without something useful going up! Terrible… *stands in corner*
Fact is I’ve been experimenting with so many different things that nothing cogent has come out of it yet.
Some of the things I’ve been working on:
- Virtual Lab- Walk through of the setup and playing with of a virtual computer lab using VirtualBox including Windows, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, Fedora, and Debian servers/clients
- Write up of my automated downloading system and the scripts associated with it
- Exploration of Setup of a VPN using the WRT54G or my MyBook
- A first-timers walk through of setting up Google Adwords campaigns
And somewhere in between all that I’ve been working and getting back to Uni…
Joy.
17
Jan 10
Are we on the brink of War?
Recent events in the cyber-security world have got me feeling paranoid. Between Estonia, Georgia, and the ever-increasing focus on Chinese cyber-political-warfare, geo-political entities are starting to realise that the whole ‘lets stockpile enough weapons to blow up the world enough times for the number to be rendered pointless‘ may not have been the best plan.
China has caught everyone off-guard with its recent, albeit ‘hush hush’, displays of force (while not entirely getting off scott-free), and we should probably be alot more afraid of a cyber war than of flaming pants or security-crossed lovers.
I think there has been something ignored in this most recent spate of Chinese infiltration, is that if there is a bomb on a plane, or at an airport terminal, it blows up, theres horror, theres death and distruction, but if you’re a few miles down the road, your safe, but probably in need of a fresh set of briefs.
This is the list of companies and industries identified as potential victims of the Chinese attacks….
- Yahoo
- Adobe
- Dow Chemical
- Northrop Grumman
- Symantec
- RackSpace
Just think about that for a second. Dow Chemical, nice big conglomerate of manufacturing and government supply. Nothing to go wrong there, right?
Designer, systems integrator and manufacturer of military aircraft, defense electronics, precision weapons, commercial and military aerostructures.
Yeah, nothing to worry about there…
If you’re on this page, then I probably don’t need to explain the implications of having the worlds biggest source of knowledge ever, one of the most popular network security vendors, and the biggest email provider for the non-web-literate (i.e most vulnerable to phishing attacks) compromised. But I will anyway.
Unless you’re a Schneiner-level security guru, these companies probably have, between then, more information and control over your life than you would like to have given away to anyone, let alone a hostile foreign dictatorship.
There’s two potential actions: Shut Down or manipulation.
Its at this point that I actually want to get back into the security field. Cus frankly, if your not scared, you should be.
Update:TechCrunch has a great article on the financial cost of Google changing its previously politically permissive stance in China
25
Nov 09
Peter Mandelson… TV Producer, Spin-doctor, Politician, Tosser
For a man who’s title is currently Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade and Lord President of the Council, educated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and is hotly tipped to become a major part of the Lisbon-Treaty-generated-unelected-cou-detat-european-super-parliment, you’d think the power-addicted, peace-process screwing, ‘shreud loaning‘ rat would leave well enough alone.
You’d be wrong.
Under the Digital Economy Bill, Peter… Sorry, BARON Mandelson has been given unlimited powers to extend penalties to (suspected, theres no real trials) illegal filesharers or copyright violators online. Similar to the much discussed and eventually culled french ‘three-strikes’ rule on filesharing (that Mr Sarkosy would fail), its once…twice…three times a bitch, as £50,000 fine would fall through your letter box (to be noted, this is per household, so thats one movie for mum, a e-book for dad, and a tune for Ann, and poor little timmy foots the bill). But Peter ‘The Baron’ Mandelson isnt done yet.
His powers, under this bill, are extended to that he can appoint whoever the hell he likes to keep an eye on you and your internet usage to catch right’s infringers (i’d say they should look inward for right’s infringement…) , and oust you from the network. No Trial, no Jury, hell, as far as I can read, you dont even need to know you’re under suspicion until your under-arrest. Then you don’t need to know exactly what your charged with, then you have no realistic way of knowing what potential punishment ‘The Baron’ will cook up.
And I mean ‘cook up’. In the bill there is no limit on fine amount or potential jail-time.
The icing on the cash-filled cake is that the the Government have already assured it’s success, by stating that ISP’s who are caught-not-catching copyright infringers will get (at least) £250,000 fines.
This kind of racketeering is shameful and pointless, and to add insult to injury to the internet-generation, the bill says nothing about providing computers for schools, guaranteeing broadband access for disenfranchised families and low-income areas, increasing governmental openess, adoption of Open Source Software in the public sector, cracking down on spams, scams, or credit card fraud. Nothing. Not a bit.
With such pressing matters already pushing Britian’s economy into the under-flab of international competition, what does this bill concern itself with? Ofcom is told to ‘observe’ more (umm, i thought that was their point?), Channel 4 gets public-service broadcast responsibilities (yay, more crap!), and expanding mobile broadband investment (because that’s going to be great for service in already served areas, such as LONDON).
And to finish the whole shambels off, a nice little ditty on compulsory age ratings on all video games…
To quote Cory Doctorow
why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?
Stop the world, I want to get off.
13
Jul 09
Delayed Post: LENOVO ROCKS
I’ll try and keep this as short and sweet as possible.
From the looks of my google analytics page(if anyone has a blog or site, i hightly recommend it) people were very interested in my experiences with lenovo, and I’m sorry for not updating.
About a week after my previous post, the problem continued to get worse until it simply wouldn’t boot. I called Lenovo Ireland and (after a suprisingly short hold time) as soon as i said the magic number “2100″ I was asked for my product and serial numbers and an address i wanted the new hard drive shipped to. Now, there was a slight hiccup where the outsourced phone operator recorded my serial number incorrectly, but that was fixed very speedily.
That was on a Friday at around 4:30. By 10am Tuesday, a fresh and shiny harddrive was on my desk.
Something that I should point out is that I got this machine from Lenovo America, with no extra fancy warrenties or anything, and they STILL gave me a great quality of service. I dont want to come across as ‘glowing’ or anything, but my next machine after this is going to be a Lenovo.
My only qualm about the experience was that there is no realistic way to ‘restore to factory settings’ for a blank drive on a machine with on Disk Drive but I wanted to try out Windows 7 RC anyway and installed it from USB. But thats for a different post.
14
Apr 10
Facebook Group Library
I am sick and tired of seeing ‘so and so joined SOMETHING COOL EVERYONE SHOULD SEE‘ only to check out the group and see its behind a join-wall. so I’m starting my own library of pointless Facebook joinwall groups along with alternate source material and a brief of what is behind the joinwall. Affectionately known as FGL. Check it out and let me know what groups you want exposed.