* Posts by Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

331 publicly visible posts • joined 5 May 2013

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Pirate Party leads Icelandic voting intentions poll

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Yarr!

No matter Iceland's size, to me the fact that a sovereign nation currently considers The Pirate Party the best option is notable. as someone who makes content for a living, I struggle with some of the Party's positions. But I've also read its policies in Australia and find they make mainstream political parties appear even more mealy-mouthed. Beneath the silly surface, there may be some substance

VMware wants amicable end to 'meritless' Linux-lifting lawsuit

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: A nice donation?

VMware can find that kinda cash behind the sofa. Add several zeroes to get to pain. But a fine idea!

Dream job: Sysadmin/F1 pit crew member with Red Bull racing

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: "...for a complete tyre change and fuel top-up"

Fixed that up. What I know about F1 can clearly be written on a postage stamp.

Tired of IoT hype? Internet of SLUGS and SPIDERS is the reality

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Former?

Nope. Dan just headed in different directions

Intel's Atoms gain new (cosmetic) X-Factor

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: oops

Told you so ;-)

Former Mrs Dotcom hooks up with Xbox 'toyboy'

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: WTF?

WTF? It's very unusual for a figure from the tech world to make the pages of a goss magazine. I thought it might be fun to bring that to readers' attention, in the slot (0700 GMT) we use for slightly siller stories.

BLOOD STAR of the NEANDERTHALS passed close to our Sun

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: 0.8AU or 0.8 Light Years?

Oopsies. Light years. Sorted. Silly me. Last story of the day before I headed out for an interview. No excuse, of course ...

Torvalds turns to Sir Mix-A-Lot for Linux versioning debate

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: I hate to be a whining prude...

Fair call. I may have taken the Sir Mix-a-lot thing to a stupid conclusion

Mozilla's Flash-killer 'Shumway' appears in Firefox nightlies

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Also on Linux

You're right but so am I! I'll amend the story so it makes it plain that the Firefix nightlies only run on certain Windows and OSX.

Microsoft's patchwork falls apart … AGAIN!

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: A patch that breaks powerpoint?

Fair point and one we did consider. But hey - some users in the Luvvie Dept are going to be really upset by this.

TITANIC: Nuclear SUBMARINE cruising 'Sea of KRAKENS' may be FOUND ON icy MOON

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Have they planned for

Let's just assume Bob Howard gets a ride on the mission to take care of that, shall we?

Rumours of on-premises software's demise greatly exaggerated

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Image?

Damn. Forgot about the alt tag. Silly me. Anyway I like the pic.

ZX81 BEATEN at last as dev claims smallest Chess code crown

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

>> (Hmm, how long would it take the ZX81 to do what Tianhe-2 does in 4 hours?)

Until the heat death of the universe. The envelope with the calculations is just over there ...

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: 20/20

Pfah! It was easy to ridicule at the time. Flimsy. Unreliable. Hard to do anything meaningful with. Stricken by hardware problems - remember how you had to get the RAM pack balanced just right?

Yes, yes, yes ... it was also miraculous for its time. But it was a wretched thing to use, ergo worthy of ridicule.

That's my $0.05. And I ended up with a Spectrum, a Spectrum+ AND a Spectrum 3. So it's not like I'm anti-Sinclair.

Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

I think this outage is a bit more than squeaky wheelers. The thing went down. In prime gaming time. Acceptable?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Er ... no. No decision. Are you having a better experience?

NBN Co, Turnbull, issue contradictory broadband speed promises

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: NZ says hi

Better beaches? Lousy water temperature.

Uber surge pricing kicks in during Sydney siege

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Missing info

Ordinary cabs are presumably running their meters. As required by law. Uber, on the other hand ...

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Erm...

Yes. That would be correct. FWIW flying solo here at Vulture South today. Oopsies. Apologies. Am flagellating self with a thesaurus now.

Crims at vendors could crock kit says ENISA

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Wilkommen zum 1984 !

Your rants have been noted ;-)

Just kidding.

Really.

Who is taking the hyperconverged piss at Simplistic.io?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Pffft!

Turnbull should spare us all airline-magazine-grade cloud hype

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: He's missing the obvious then.

I don't think Malcolm Turnbull has a problem paying for his lunches.

Join The Reg in Sydney for beers, ideas and Christmas cheer

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Hemmes is indeed a big bad booze baron. But it's a good venue, well-priced and well-known. Happy to take suggestions for alternatives.

HP's pet lizard is feral peril says wildlife group

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Like crocodiles, green iguanas make appealing pets when young

Oh come ON! This little fella - http://regmedia.co.uk/2013/10/05/wsc_crocodile.png - is awful cute. The croc. Not the Reg hack. Story here for context: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/05/wacky_racers_ithe_regis_guide_to_2013s_solar_challengers/

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Sick 'em Ralph!

Thanks for posting that. It's time the world saw it.

Windows XP market share fell off a cliff in October

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Graph? what graph?

Dodgy iFrame. Fixing with actual normal boring file in 3 ... 2 ...

Voyager 1 now EIGHTEEN LIGHT HOURS from home

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Three light minutes a week?

Those two tweets are about a day apart. I got the three minutes from looking at the weekly logs.

NASTY SSL 3.0 vuln to be revealed soon – sources (Update: It's POODLE)

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Yes. Gird. This is what happens when the US has a Bank Holiday, I have a writer on leave and I go to too many briefings on the same day ...

Australia's Digital Tech curriculum looks to be shelved for another year

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

we did FOI ACARA last year to learn about feedback on the curriculum. I'll use FOI again if something is being hidden. Right now I don't think that's the case. But once the report emerges I'll be all over whoever it was that reviewed the tech curriculum.

NICTA man explains why he volunteers for CSIRO's ICT in Schools

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Age Range

Good on you MH! Do let us know about your adventures.

S.

Yes, Australia's government SHOULD store comms metadata

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Re: Most insane argument on ElReg in a loooong time...

That's not what I say. I say there needs to be lots of oversight, but that the government should do the storage.

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Re: So, lemme get this straight...

Wasn't the sub wrote the headline - it was I. And I also wrote the subheadline explaining that data retention is not a good idea.

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Re: So, lemme get this straight...

No it is not my assertion that the government should invade privacy.

It is my assertion that if the government decides to do it - which I oppose - that it should not place the burden of storing that data on ISPs.

Got it?

S.

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Re: Most insane argument on ElReg in a loooong time...

I don't say the government should store it because it can. I say that if the government decides it must be stored, it and not ISPs should store it.

Subtle but very important distinction.

S.

All of "Frontline" now on YouTube - what other Australia TV classics are out there?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

All of "Frontline" now on YouTube - what other Australia TV classics are out there?

All of the classic Working Dog current affairs mockumentary "Frontline" is now free on YouTube.

I'll be burning up my Chromecast with it in coming evenings for sure.

Is there any other classic telly out there for free Reg readers need to know about?

Oracle to pay $130,000 plus costs in staff sexual harassment suit

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

There are certainly pockets of old-fashioned values in Australia. Right now, several examples are in Cabinet.

Airbus promises Wi-Fi – yay – and 3D movies (meh) in new A330

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: Re: It's all very wonderful

Cliff,

fair point. My back just gives me headaches. Not your nastier symptoms.

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: It's all very wonderful

I don't buy the painful aspect of air travel. We cross oceans or continents in days. Sure, we get a bit squeezed and the food is dodgy. But people have never been able to travel so far, so fast, for so little. A little discomfort is worth it. And I'm a hefty 6'3" with shoulders wider than an economy seat, aka the bloke you don't want to sit next to.

Microsoft's Lumia 930... a real HANDFUL

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Re: er, specs?

I've billed this article as a "first fondle" because that's what it is, as opposed to a full review. I expect we'll get to that soon, at which point you'll get all the data you could want.

World Meteorological Organization says climate data is uncool

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

Admitted? That's an opinion piece, linking to a third-party analysis of data that does not disclose what data was used or the methodology used. That's hardly an admission IMHO

Tell us about your first time ... on the internet

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Tell us about your first time ... on the internet

This week, as we've noted here, Australia celebrates the 25th anniversary of its first internet connection. We want to know what your first time was like. Was it gentle?

I've explained my formative, fumbling, dialup experiences at the link above. Do let us know how you went the first time, too.

Apple tax on new iMac: fair or foul?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Apple tax on new iMac: fair or foul?

Apple launched a new "budget" iMac overnight, as we've detailed here.

The $US price is $1099 and the $AUD price is $1349.

So let's fire up the old gouge-a-tron and see if us Australians are being worked over again.

Our gouge-a-tron methodology is simple: we take the $US price and add Australia's ten per cent goods and services tax, to reflect the fact that in the land of the free local taxes aren't included in headline prices. Ten per cent is a bit above the average sales tax, but when trying to calculate Australian parity pricing it works as well as any other number.

Once we have the $US price plus ten per cent, we convert it into $AUD at the current rate - $0.94 today - and then subtract that figure from the Australian retail price.

Here's how that pans out:

The new 21.5 inch 1.4GHz iMac sells for $US1099 and $AUD1349. The $US price with GST is $US1208.90, or $AUD1286 on a strict currency conversion for a premium of $AUD62.94.

The 21.5 inch 2.7GHz iMac sells for $US1299 and $AUD1599. The $US price with GST is $US1428.90, or $AUD1520.11 on a strict currency conversion for a premium of $AUD78.89.

The 21.5 inch 2.9 GHz iMac sells for $US1499 and $AUD1849. The US price with GST IS $US1648.90 or $AUD1754.15 for a premium of $AUD94.85.

So it looks like an Apple tax remains in place. Apple says price differences like these come about because of higher transport and local costs.

I've never accepted the transport argument: surely Apple doesn't need to ship from wherever in the far east its kit is made to California and back to Australia? Even taking into account volume discounts, surely it is cheaper to ship on the shorter routes to Australia?

Over to you ...

What's more scary? Downtime or hackers?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

What's more scary? Downtime or hackers?

I'm at Gartner's IT Operations and Data Centre summit today, and analyst Joe Skorupa just mentioned a client that has left its switches un-patched for FOUR years.

He said the user is more afraid of unplanned downtime than hackers, so he can wear the risk of not implementing patches if it means the network remains stable.

What's your view? Is this user pragmatic? Mad?

How do you balance the two risks?

Jupiter's Great Red Spot becoming mere pimple

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Re: Are we sure it's disappearing?

If this is the Alistair Reynolds reference I think it is, well played sir.

Game of Thrones written on brutal medieval word processor and OS

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Re: WYSIWYG is the problem

What do Reg writers use?

I use OpenOffice 4.0. Previously I used Lotus Symphony. Once that code went into OpenOffice and MacOS X Mavericks borked Symphony, the jump was easy.

I spent years in MS Word: it crashed very regularly about six hours into my work day, mangled text formats, was horrible to use with columns or images and generally made my life miserable if I tried to do anything more than just type. In other words, WYSIWYG made my life hell.

Having said that, I no longer try to do any WYSIWYG. So maybe OpenOffice is just as bad once I push it beyond basic text.

Is ASIO stupid? Or playing stupid to be clever?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Is ASIO stupid? Or playing stupid to be clever?

As we reported last week, Australia's Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is hiring sysadmins.

The ads for the jobs mention the technologies the successful applications will wield.

I wonder if that isn't a cunning misdirection: surely ASIO is smart enough NOT to leak details of its infrastructure to would-be attackers in a job ad.

Our new Australia-based security expert Darren Pauli thinks I'm paranoid: stuff like this happens all the time, he thinks.

What do YOU think? Is ASIO cunningly misdirecting attackers? Or has it leaked information that attackers will enjoy knowing?

CeBIT 'Straya 2014

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

CeBIT 'Straya 2014

Sydney's Darling Harbour Exhibition Centre is currently a smoking crater, so CeBIT Australia 2014 has re-located to Olympic Park.

To me, the event seemed very downbeat. Not many people. Not much buzz. Conference rooms that were too small and hard to find. And tired-ish content: how many times do we need to hear about the social mobile internet of things cloud?

Maybe that's my nasty, cynical journalistic brain at work.

What do you think? Did you go? Do you wish you had? Are you regretting the visit?

Training in Australian Signals Directorate security practices

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Training in Australian Signals Directorate security practices

Fancy a couple of weeks in Canberra during the coldest time of the year?

It may be worth your while because the SANS Institute is bringing what looks like a very interesting course to town. It's called "Implementation & Auditing of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) Top 4 Mitigation Strategies".

The instructor isn't an ASD person, but is coming to The 'Berra wearing a SANS Institute hat. The Institute doesn't make it to 'Straya very often, so this could be a handy moment for infosec pros to skill up.

Details here.

And before you ask: No, we're not paid to put this up. It just looks interesting so we thought it was worth a post.

Worst ... conference ... format ... ever?

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Worst ... conference ... format ... ever?

Yesterday's Amazon Web Services summit in Sydney had a very weird format for its breakout sessions.

On every chair in the breakout rooms was a pair of radio-connected headphones.

Speakers were miked up but were not amplified: unless you sat in the front row the only way to hear them was by wearing the headphones.

Everything else was conference as usual: a chap on stage, slideware, lots of buzzwords and content of dubious value.

The reason for the odd format is that Sydney's convention centre was detonated earlier this year: we're building a bigger and better one. That means IT outfits looking for a somewhere capable of handling a few hundred people are scrambling to find venues. Yesterday's venue didn't have dedicated breakout rooms: they had to be curtained off. So the weird headphones arrangement made sense as a way to ensure the venue didn't turn into a horrid tunnel of competing noise.

It was still odd. In fact I'm willing to declare it the weirdest ... conference ... format ... ever.

If you were at the summit, what did you think? Or have you been to a weirder conference?

Enterprise social - show me the money

Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor

Enterprise social - show me the money

I'm at Salesforce's World Tour in Melbourne today and after listening to its keynote/infomercial for an hour if anyone says "Cloud/Social/Mobile" to me things might get unpleasant.

The ray of sunshine during the event was Ted Pretty, CEO of Hills Industries, who poured a decent-sized glass of the Salesforce Kool Aid but also tipped a bucket on it by saying HIlls has adopted in-house twitter clone Chatter but said he doesn't really care for it.

"The social stuff is nice but at the end of the day all I care about is making our number," he said.

The cynic in me loves that line: I get the cloud/social/mobile spiel SO OFTEN it's become tiring.

The grudging realist in me says the likes of Salesforce and Oracle would not be going so hard on social if it didn't make a difference and that it's a bit antediluvian to ignore it.

And you?

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