Digital Roadkill on the Information Superhighway.

My favourite quote (from Heinlein in “Time Enough for Love, 1971)  and something I truly believe:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

I have not planned an invasion but I have planned a response to a fire; I have not conned a ship, but I have conned a fire appliance; I have not written a sonnet, but some prose has escaped from my pen.

I have not yet had cause to set a bone, though I know the theory; I have not yet been asked to die gallantly.

I have managed to tick the other boxes. I guess I’ll keep working on the ones I have not yet done until the need for the final tick arrives.

My answer to Facebook’s exit question:

Facebook seems to be a place for inadequately matured individuals to spout crap at each other without giving due thought of the consequences of their verbal diarrhea. I’ve had enough. People who feel the need to stay in contact with me can use e-mail or, gods forbid, the telephone.

Sums up my feelings fairly well.

This is my second time deactivating my account. The first time I reactivated it, though I’m still not entirely sure why. I just don’t see the need and the level of crap is becoming overwhelming. Don’t even start to talk about the security and privacy issues involved.

Being debated, or rather quietly discussed, today in Parliament was the new legislation covering paid parental leave, a first for Australia. Both sides of Parliament had agreed that the legislation would pass without drama, though the Liberals felt that their version would have been better.

But then dim wit Fielding gets up and grand stands, pushing his always-on-the-front-burner anti-abortion rhetoric. Again.

“Drug addicts and welfare cheats can go out there and get themselves pregnant and then after 20 weeks have an abortion and still pocket the Government’s cash,” Fielding said.

Fielding wants a stricter definition of a mother’s eligibility in the event of a late-term abortion – to ensure those women are not eligible for any paid parental leave. Not satisfied with assurances by Labor Senator Ursula Stevens that a medical practitioner must certify that a stillborn child was delivered before the Government payment is made, Fielding stated “We don’t need assurances, we need to make sure this is in the law”.

“There may be mums out there who want to cheat the system in an horrific way.”

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce Fielding a “minor pawn” playing politics in “the most base way”. Joyce, an often outspoken Senator, said “I question the motives you have.”

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young accused Fielding of “dirt politics”.

I like Greens leader Bob Brown’s comment most of all, describing Fielding as “almost irrelevant”.

Though I still have a preference for using the term “Dick Head” myself. Senator Steve Fielding, I hereby award you with the coveted Golden Penis.

Y’know something that gets on my goat? It’s something simple really, something of no great consequence in the greater scheme of things but nonetheless… I find it annoying.

Probably more so because most people would not even be aware of the issue, let alone care about it.

It’s a local radio station. Tripple-M, or 2MMM, have had this theme music for som 30 years; a guitar solo “played” by a graphic character who looks very similar to the devil, with hooves, wings and a tail. They call him Doctor Dan and the theme goes by the same name.

Doctor Dan and his theme have languished for a few years as MMM experimented with newer genre of music but now they are returning to the more basic rock-and-roll style. In keeping with this they are returning Doctor Dan to centre stage and in honour of this they are re-recording the theme, played by Slash no less, for our entertainment.

My problem is this: the theme is actually a steal grab from an album called Tarot Suite by Mike Batt released in 1979. The track in question is track 1: Introduction – The Journey of a Fool and the grab is from 3’09 to 3’37. 2MMM very rarely acknowledge the parentage of this theme; it has always been promoted as “theirs”, though their latest writings thankfully tell of it’s origins. None of their on-air hosts seem to know the history though. Of course, most of them are younger than Doctor Dan…

Men At Work got crucified for “stealing” about 3 seconds of an Aussie folk song called “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree” and using it as part of a flute solo in one of their most popular songs: “Land Down Under” in 1981 – it was a pretty long bow to draw but the courts upheld the claim. That judgement cost them millions in royalties; I wonder how much 2MMM paid for the use of 28 seconds worth of Mike Batt’s music for over 30 years (and counting)?

Folks, sometimes we forget that the obvious isn’t always so.

When you start using the Internet, especially these days, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer ease of access and the plethora of applications available out there.

Google is a prime example. At last count they have over 30 applications that can be linked to a Google account! That is amazing when you think that you can store information from almost every aspect of your life online, all accessed by one account. Fantastic!

Oh, wait… is that really so great? What happens if someone gets a hold of my account details?

Yes, that’s right. Your personal life, business life and probably the lives of your friends have just become the property of a stranger.

If you are lucky they will simply use your account to spam everyone to whom you have every sent an e-mail, delete everything that they can, and then abandon your account after on-selling all of those e-mail addresses to other spammers. If you are lucky. If not, be prepared to see random aspects of your private life appearing in strange places on the ‘Net.

So how does this happen? Hollywood would have us believe that some secretive hacker is pouring over records stolen from your garbage looking for clues to your password, using well-crafted code to try and sneak past your security, and using your account to blackmail you or your friends. Unfortunately the truth can be a little less exciting.

Quite often we will set up an account and be sent a randomly generated password. Of course, being randomly generated and thus frequently very secure we find that these passwords are much too complex to remember so what is the first thing we do? Change it to something that we can remember easily. After all, that way we don’t have to write it down, do we? ‘Cause writing down passwords is bad, isn’t it?

Almost everyone will, under the pressure of the moment, choose a password that is a word or simple phrase that is meaningful to themselves; unfortunately that usually results in a very weak password; one that can be worked out with a brute force attack by a 14 year old dweeb from a third world country with badly written code.

Add to that if we set up multiple accounts with other providers, such as Windows Live or Yahoo, we tend to use the same or very similar passwords. Guess where the dweeb is going to go next?

It is really very simple: Do not use single words or simple phrases as passwords. If you must, use random capitals and replace random characters with numbers and punctuation. Not by replacing every ‘oh’ with a ‘zero’, that would be too simple. Replace one ‘oh’ with a zero and leave the others: better. Replace another ‘oh’ with the word zero? Even better; add random punctuation for good measure. You get the idea. Think about the password before you start the process of changing it; that way you are not suddenly confronted with trying to work one out at the last minute.

Regardless of what sort of password you use, one rule remains inviolate: Do not store personal or business information that you wish to remain private online. Ever. Nothing that can be accessed from the Internet can be considered truly safe. Unless you use one of those one-use-only randomly generated digital keys thingies and are accessing the information via a VPN tunnel that is set up better than the DoD you are essentially putting your private life in a box on the sidewalk secured with packing tape.

Train like their lives depend on it; they do.

We must train until we drop, teach until all know and instruct until God Himself stops us.

And when He comes for us on our last call He will have no problem recognizing us… for we are fire fighters!

Okay, so it is fixed now; but not by them. As a matter of fact, it was fixed in spite of them.

My domain came up for renewal. I attempted to do so, to find that the account still held my old credit card details. Easy: update the details and carry on. Okay, not so easy.

NameScout attempted a $1 transaction to prove that the card details I had entered were legitimate. My bank (Commonwealth) saw that as a suspect transaction and blocked it, locking out my card and telling me so by SMS. No problem, a simple phone call (at about 10PM!) and it was sorted out, with the card being released immediately. NameScout however responded to the card lock by suspending my account telling me I had to prove that I was the owner of the card before they would restore my account.

The only proof that they would accept was a faxed photocopy of both sides of my credit card. This in direct violation of my bank’s rules regarding security of the card.

My protests went unheeded – in fact they didn’t respond at all, just kept the account suspended. In the meantime I lost access to this web site and my e-mail account and my son lost access to a web-site he was developing for a commercial venture.

In the end I simply waited for the suspended, and now unregistered, domain to drop off the AuDA lists and re-registered it with another registrar, Dotable, that we use for the other domains that my wife and I control. As for my NameScout account: I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what they do with it. I have no domains left with them any more so they can go and suck vacuum for all I care.

NameScout, please note: asking for proof of identity in a form that violates a bank’s security requirements is not smart.

Dickheads.

The giant gears beat out their doleful rhythm to the ancient miner chiseling his fate into the midnight rock deep below the earth’s surface. He worked like some monk of long ago, interpreting the word of his uncaring God by the light of a single feeble candle flickering in air that tasted of dust, death and decay.

His hands saw the hammer and chisel, never missing. His ears felt the rock, his blows exclaiming its shape and strength in sharp notes. Lessons leaned under the scourge of pain since childhood, drawn in the scars filled black over the years, ensured his aim remained true.

In the harsh light of the surface sun others would note the crushed red earth and fractured shards of stone adorning his every aspect, if those others noticed the man at all as he shuffled past.

The miner’s awareness encompassed only his feet as he watched the earth move beneath them, carrying towards him the oblivion of his silent hut. Long since empty, his wife departed in the need for living companionship, no sound broke the shadow beckoning from its door. Jennifer, she of the wheaten hair and star-lit smile, had gone in the night taking with her all light, love and the child whose face he could no longer remember.

The miner coughed quietly, almost apologetically, red spittle forming jewels in the dust at his feet.

Always, beneath all, the giant gears tolled the passage of time.

Yeah, you lot.

Please stop spamming my site. It will do you no good; I never approve comments without checking them and this means that your stupid, irrelevent and frequently moronic messages will never see the light of day.

The tools I use to moderate the comments allow me to quickly and easily flag and delete the crap you try to get posted so you are not creating any sort of heavy workload for me; you’re just being a nuisance.

Idiots.