Broadband In Ireland Finally Gets Moving
June 28, 2008 (6 Responses)
THE IRISH BROADBAND market got a much needed shot in the arm today with the announcement that ComReg (the Commision for Communications Regulation) has directed Eircom to slash its LLU line share pricing by 65 percent, effectively droppng the wholesale price for LLU line share from €8.41 to €2.94 for other operators in the broadband market. Read more
CyberWar 2.0: China Is On The Offensive
May 5, 2008 (No Responses)
MANY MOONS ago I wrote an article about the first real (publicly at least) Cyberwar instance, that being the concerted electronic attacks on Estonia’s infrastructure. That was an interesting story in itself, but the key point is that it was a wake up call for the West, for NATO and for just about every country with an electronic infrastructure.
The message was clear - Cyberwar was a real threat, not just a clever term in some obscure science fiction novel or military think-tank paper.
Since then most governments have been rushing to shore up vulnerabilities and create cyber-defence agencies for both offensive and defensive options. China however seems to have been a busy little aggressor in this department.
However it turns out that Estonia was not really the first real Cyberwar because China has been on the offensive for over 18 months now. Read more
Beware: Paypal Scam Doing The Rounds
December 5, 2007 (6 Responses)
I RECEIVED the following email in my inbox this morning, which I immediately reported to Paypal and had confirmed by them as a phishing attempt to gain access to my credentials and password/financial information. It’s doing the rounds at the mo apparently.
I sussed it for a phishing attempt more or less immediately, but it was cleverly disguised in fairness, using all the right logos, language… hell if it wasn’t for the dodgy domain in the link address contained within the email I might have fallen for it. Well not really, given that Paypal would never ask for the details this email does, but still I’m sure there are folks out there who may be taken in by this.
Therefore I am reproducing the entire email here, including links, so that as many people as possible can be alerted to this phishing attempt. Please feel free to link to or cut/paste from this article if it will help avoid someone getting caught by the fraudsters behind this.
Original email follows: Read more
Can Someone Please Explain Virtual Sex To Me?
August 11, 2007 (6 Responses)
OK. LET’S START WITH the basics. Phone Sex - I get it. Your bored, probably lonely and missing your other half who is probably away on business. A phone call late at night turns into something a bit more… pleasurable. No problem - makes perfect sense to me.
Internet/Cyber Sex - I’m not completely down with it, but I think I get the logic of it at least. It’s back to the lonely thing again, and you meet someone over the net and suddenly the texting turns to sexting and away you go. Again, no issues there - not my thing but I get it.
But can someone please explain this latest Virtual Sex thing to me? G’wan - I dare you to try to make sense of it.
Perhaps I should clarify. I know that people lead a virtual existence online, on the ‘Net. This started out as having a persona, a kind of alter ego/identity which people used to post messages on forums, enter chat rooms etc. Technology improved, that then progressed to online gaming and eventually moved into the whole persistant universe thing (World of Warcraft being the largest example of this type of culture). The thing is I can kind of understand that to a point. I’m not really into it myself, but I play enough online games to understand the attraction of a permanent online community and persona. But this then gets too weird, even for me… Read more
Wordpress V2.2.1 Upgrade
June 22, 2007 (One Response)
I’VE JUST finished upgrading the site to Wordpress V2.2.1, so if you notice any weird and funky things happening around here (other than the usual insanity that is) please do let me know and I’ll sort out any issues ASAP.
For anyone who is interested the key features in this release (an update from 2.2) are summarised below. The full list of bugs fixed in 2.2.1 is available here. Here are some highlights.
Atom feed validation fixes
XML-RPC fixes
Widget backward compatibility fixes
Widget layout fixes for IE7
Page and Text Widget improvements
Some security issues also came to light during the Wordpress V2.2.1 development, making this a required upgrade which addresses the following security vulnerabilities:
- Remote shell injection in PHPMailer
- Remote SQL injection in XML-RPC
- Unescaped attribute in default theme
A Cyberwar By Any Other Name…
June 16, 2007 (One Response)
LANGUAGE IS A WONDERFUL thing, but it’s also a convenient way to mask the truth sometimes. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter yes? Are they prisoners of war or “Enemy Combatants” over there in Gitmo? When does Iraq become a civil war and not a police action? Actually when does a conflict become a war? The list is endless.
The use of language has always been a very powerful weapon in the politics of persuasion and the media generally laps it up and plays along because it’s all good press and sells newspapers and TV advertising slots. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship between the media, the politicans and the consumers. The politicians invent the lie, the media propagates it and the public eat it up willingly and convince themselves that they are “informed” as a result.
So how informed are you about the cyberwar cyberterror information warfare denial of service issue which occurred in Estonia earlier this year? Did you realise it was the beginning of the end? Have you started building your electronic proof bunker yet?
In April Estonia’s government moved a Soviet-era war memorial commemorating an unknown Russian killed fighting the Germans. Not a big deal you would think, but you’d be wrong. Estonia broke away from the then Soviet Union back in 1991 and has been making it’s own decisions and carving it’s own future ever since then. This seemingly innocuous decision to move the statue sparked off riots in the country between the ethnic russian communities and those who couldn’t care less about the “old country”. To make matters worse in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin very publicly criticized Estonia and demonstrators blockaded the Estonian embassy.
And that’s about the point when things started to go all cyberpunk and weird and the cyberwar broke out… Read more
Busted: CDWow Hit With €61M Fine, Future In Doubt!
May 30, 2007 (27 Responses)
THE FUTURE of online retailer CDWow is now in doubt after it has been ordered to pay the British and Irish pop industry a record €61 million in damages (£41 million stg). A High Court judge today found in favour of the British music industry against CDWow for alleged illegal imports of CDs and DVDs into the UK from Asia. They would then sell these imports at a lower price than standard retail outlets.
It looks as if the lads at CDWow were using this technique to pass on savings to online consumers and make a tidy profit in the process. They would then sell these imports at a lower price than standard retail outlets. Certainly CDWow has been a hugely popular online site here in Ireland, although the parent site is actually a Hong Kong based operation. They were able to offer savings of up to 45% compared to retail outlets in some instances. Albums which had an official list price of around £13 could be found for as little as £6.99 on the company’s website.
It remains to be seen if they can survive the imposition of such a huge fine on their operation, but if you have any orders pending with them folks, I’d be checking your accounts pretty quickly if I were you.
Rather quickly I’d suggest. 
