The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.
Friday, September 28
Pollies Gone Wild
In case you haven't been following Australian politics of late (and I wouldn't blame you one bit), our federal government - specifically, the Attorney General, Nicola Roxon - has been floating a trial balloon to collect unprecedented amounts of information on the people of Australia. Between ASIC and the AFP - roughly equivalent to the FTC SEC and FBI in American terms - they want to record all online communications and phone calls of everyone, and keep all the data forever.
In case you haven't been following Australian politics of late (and I wouldn't blame you one bit), our federal government - specifically, the Attorney General, Nicola Roxon - has been floating a trial balloon to collect unprecedented amounts of information on the people of Australia. Between ASIC and the AFP - roughly equivalent to the FTC SEC and FBI in American terms - they want to record all online communications and phone calls of everyone, and keep all the data forever.
I estimate that to be around 5 exabytes per year, and growing at about 50% per year. Hardware costs for the storage alone would run about a billion dollars a year, never mind the expense of managing and maintaining it all.
Meanwhile, Telstra, the country's largest phone company and ISP, has been giving out customer information to everyone from the local council to the RSPCA. And similarly, Origin Energy have been giving smart meter data out to a disturbingly broad variety of third parties in Australia and overseas.
I have two things to say.
First, everyone involved in this criminal idiocy should be removed from office at the first opportunity.
Second, time to invest in VPN companies.
iiNet (my ISP) also made the point that such a database will be an irresistible target for hackers, and given the government's plans to foist the operation expense onto the individual ISPs (of which there are several hundred), it will get hacked.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:29 AM
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Monday, September 10
A Nation, Friendzoned, Part N+1
VMWare have released an update to their Workstation product, version 9. Main feature seems to be support for Windows 8. Also better remote management (not much of an issue for me) and USB 3.0 support.
VMWare have released an update to their Workstation product, version 9. Main feature seems to be support for Windows 8. Also better remote management (not much of an issue for me) and USB 3.0 support.
They've also updated the price from $199 up to $249.
They've also created an Australian store, with prices 40% higher than the US store.
I upgraded to version 8 because it was on sale for $70. It would cost me $175 to upgrade to 9, and honestly, I can't be bothered.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:17 PM
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