Welcome to New Zealand Scott... You just found out what we have been complaining about all along. And don't even try using mobile data roaming on your iPhone or instead of sucking dry "the pipes" it will suck dry your wallet.
And another one:
And then:
Oh, and if you are staying at the Skycity Hotel, like me - be prepared. They have "unlimited" broadband in the rooms, capped at 50 MB/day. Disgusting.
Seriously people, that's what tech visitors see when they arrive here.
The TelecomONE unconference
After attending this year's Kiwi FOO (1, 2) a few of the Telecom folks there decided to work and put together an internal unconference event.TelecomONE Innovation '08 is running for three days of October in Warkworth, in the same venue used for the Kiwi FOO events before. About 80 Telecom people, both technical and business types, will get together plus a number of invited external participants - including myself. Like the FOO camp attendance is by invitation only.
Invitees are all doing interesting work and are invited to network, share their works in progress, show off the latest tech toys, and tackle challenging problems together.
I am told Telecom CEO Dr Paul Reynolds is directly supporting this initiative.
Also like the FOO camp discussions you will find there's a rule - what happens there stays there. You might find some reports about the topics, but won't see many direct quotes or references. This is the norm, to encourage an open debate, even when it involves proprietary or confidential information brought in by participants - some sessions have very interesting topics and the openess brings a lot of proprietary and private information to the room.
I think this is a great initiative and I am really looking forward to be present and contributing to the discussion.
11 Security Bulletins From Microsoft
For the month of August, Microsoft unleashed 11 new Security Bulletins- 6 of them rated as Critical and 5 Important. There are vulnerabilities affecting a wide range of Microsoft technologies...
Software Freedom Day in Wellington
What is software freedom day?
Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to be held this year on 20th September 2008. Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business -- in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities.What's on in Wellington?
This year Unlimited Potential, CWA New Media, New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS), SuperHappyDevHouse, WellyLUG, Cafenet, Catalyst IT and Sun Microsystems have combined forces to organise a local event to be held at the Wellington Convention Centre - Civic Suites 1 & 2 in Wellington from 12pm - 6pm. There are two main parts to the schedule - an opensource barcamp and a hackfest. Register here and come along and celebrate Software Freedom Day by taking part. There will be free wifi, coffee all day at the venue, and pizza and beer as things wrap up at 6pm. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org.nz/ 
Is Security Over or Under-Estimated?
According to the results of an RSA survey, 54% of respondents have addressed a security incident but only 11% reported it. Based on what we see reported in the news,...
Why open source has a hard time in government
I wrote some time ago that open source should be the default decision for any IT manager, director and even individual. Proprietary software - due to its many disadvantages - should only be considered under exceptional circumstances and with a very g... (more in the full post)
Dell Inspiron Mini 9: Windows is worth ... nothing?
So, the widely anticipated new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is finally available, as was reported everywhere today, even here on Geekzone. When you take a look at Dell's web-site where you can buy and configure your machine, you can see that a mode... (more in the full post)
Council Approves Plan Change
No surprise: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/536641/2044170
With the plan change a sizable chunk of the airfield, including the area with all the hangars and control tower, the grass strip adjacent to the sealed strip, and I believe the eastern end of the field including what roughly appears to be the displaced threshold area are rezoned into various non aviation zonings.
I believe (although the document is hard reading) that almost all the sealed strip and immediate surrounds, right across to wigram road infact remains zone "A" for Aviation and the approach fans are in place still so technically it could still operate as an airfield, but naturally the developers can now use the fact that housing development will occur to basically the boundary as a convenient excuse to proceed with the shut down of aviation operations --- from there on it's a rubber stamp affair to get then remaining A zone changed into other zones (Living 1-3, Business, and Conservation) due to no aviation activity occuring.
Once again, the Christchurch City Council has failed the people who voted it in. For shame those councillors who voted for a plan change to which the people you are tasked with representing are quite clearly against.
Whilst I'm certainly not one to give up without a fight, I'm not sure at this point there are any ways in which we could have an effect, with the plan change approved the council has I expect let the cat out of the proverbial and wouldn't be able to put it back even if it could be convinced to do so.
I'm open to ideas though.
Flaw Found in Google Chrome;
Security Researchers have annouced the first flaw found in the much hyped Chrome browser from Google:
*** Update *** Flaw Demo included.
The issue exists in the way that Chrome behaves with undefined-handlers in chrome.dll version 0.2.149.27.
This crash can occur without any user interaction.
When a Malicious link is visited, that has a 'special' character after an undefined handler, The browser crashes, with a message "Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart Now?"
(source: http://evilfingers.com/advisory/google_chrome_poc.php , credit: Rishi Narang)
There is a demo of the working flaw at the source site.
Due to the Open source nature of the Chrome Browser, and the fact that its from such a prominent company I expect this flaw will be the first of many as coders and researchers alike tear it apart looking for flaws.
Mouse over the following link to crash Chrome CRASH CHROME
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