tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315750952026-03-08T01:44:32.345+12:00digital knowledge. digital culture. digital memory.thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.comBlogger80125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-73771548067791202672008-09-07T19:25:00.005+12:002008-09-07T19:52:30.219+12:00

I thought that I would post this piece that formed part of my half-day workshop on information security at PacINET 2008 in the Cook Islands. My slides were almost the same set that I used last year in Honiara. Historically speaking, information security is not new. There is evidence of people protecting and of course attacking information in all cultures as far back as there is a historical

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-15898162549125133372008-07-08T06:32:00.003+12:002008-07-08T06:40:28.597+12:00

A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads.The device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-79190400764269982762008-05-09T09:54:00.011+12:002008-05-09T23:09:23.220+12:00

IntroLet's be honest, Fiji's ISPs have room for improvement. The problem with residential broadband in Fiji is value for money. Value in this case means a combination of 1.) actual, as opposed to promised, speed, 2.) reliability of service, and 3.) monthly data volume. Why is this value lacking?WholesaleLast week there was a session on the Southern Cross Cables Network (SCCN) presented by George

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-12135148588546707492008-03-13T10:22:00.003+12:002008-03-13T10:27:51.308+12:00

There has been much said this week about the recent American report on human rights in Fiji. From the perspective of a Fiji blogger, it is interesting to see that blogs are explicitly mentioned several times in the report. Here are the relevant sections:Internet FreedomThere were no government restrictions on general public access to the Internet. However, the military attempted to censor or shut

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-1085885626868533232008-03-10T00:06:00.002+12:002008-03-10T00:12:21.872+12:00

Fijilive has run a story on email security based on interviews with Franck Martin of PICISOC and myself. Here is an excerpt.While email is an extremely useful technology, it is not very secure, warns Chris Hammond-Thrasher, the author of the Digital Fiji Blog, dfiji.blogspot.com . And he suggested that the best advice to follow is "to always assume that all of your emails are being read by others

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-71178697110169833242008-02-27T07:15:00.013+12:002008-02-28T09:49:18.674+12:00

Note to RFMF readers: I would be very interested in hearing your comments on this post.The Royal Fiji Military Force (RFMF) recently posted a document entitled Commander's Intent 2008 on the their website. This statement of intent forms sort of a strategic plan for the RFMF for 2008 and beyond. It is broken up into three main sections:One section dealing with "Good Governance in the RFMF",

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-48981316643439786162008-02-25T08:54:00.003+12:002008-02-25T09:32:10.913+12:00

2007 and now 2008 have not been easy years for the small Pacific nation of Fiji. Between a coup and ensuing political turmoil, an economic down turn driven by a drop in tourism visits, a couple of cyclones, occasional flooding, corrupt officials, home invasions, drownings, road deaths, typhoid, and water and power cuts; things have been challenging. And now, I sit down in front of my computer,

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-10660269829037055932008-02-19T13:37:00.002+12:002008-02-19T13:43:46.180+12:00

Since the 2006 coup, I have tried to chronicle the rapidly changing world of blogs in Fiji as they start up, shut down, climb to great heights, and then fall out of the spotlight. My comments even garnered some unwanted attention from the Human Rights Commission Director who, paradoxically for a human rights officer, seemed to be arguing against freedom of speech. While the interim government

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-38896208463903175822008-02-12T14:27:00.001+12:002008-02-12T14:56:16.131+12:00

UNESCO has formally announced the installation of the Koha open source library management system in the Nelson Memorial Library in Apia, Samoa. I was honoured to be involved in this project.Dear Pacific Library colleagues, The Communication & Information (CI) Sector of UNESCO, the University of the South Pacific (USP) Library, and the Samoa Nelson Memorial Library are very proud to

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-43437960398558967242008-01-27T13:20:00.000+12:002008-01-27T13:48:49.817+12:00

Complaining about your ISP is one of the most popular topics in ICT circles in Fiji. So I wanted to put the question publicly, does your ISP deliver what they promise?How often do you achieve the maximum throughput that you pay for?How often are one or more of your ISP's services offline?What is your experience calling customer support?Have you used more than one ISP? If so, was one better than

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-43533625633947971412007-12-24T23:05:00.001+12:002007-12-24T23:05:29.473+12:00

That's right, NORAD tracked Father Christmas by RADAR leaving the North Pole, then servicing Eastern Siberia, followed by the Marshal Islands, and then over our island home at around 9:30 pm Fiji Time. This year, NORAD is providing two interfaces to their Santa tracking. The one depicted below using Google Maps and... This one using a Google Earth KMZ file constructed by NORAD (get their KMZ

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-82562718274186424532007-12-17T16:03:00.000+12:002007-12-18T23:42:23.205+12:00

The history of secrecy is as old as the history of ideas. Whether for reasons of war, religion, power, jealousy, or, of course, love, people of every culture have always found reasons to keep secrets. Of course, keeping a secret is not difficult until you try to communicate it to someone else. What if someone overhears you whispering the secret? Or worse, what if the secret message is intercepted

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-45069104858918978342007-12-04T16:43:00.001+12:002007-12-04T16:43:53.961+12:00

The Google Online Security Blog posted an update to the monsterous corporation's ongoing battle against malware and made the following plea to well-meaning web surfers:Currently, we know of hundreds of thousands of websites that attempt to infect people's computers with malware. Unfortunately, we also know that there are more malware sites out there. This is where we need your help in filling in

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-70842403647042118682007-12-03T23:29:00.001+12:002007-12-04T20:39:53.959+12:00

UPDATE: The opening with the refreshments has moved to December 6th at 5:30pm.Art exhibit that is open to all - and note the free refreshments. I'll be there and would love to meet some more of the Fiji blogging community.Blogged with Flock

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-34155206383397511882007-11-28T15:22:00.000+12:002007-11-28T16:28:05.966+12:00

I was surprised to see Everyone's guide to by-passing Internet censorship for citizens worldwide as the first item under Information Management on UNESCO's Open Training Platform - an online repository of open license training materials.To quote from the source:This guide is meant to introduce non-technical users to Internet censorship circumvention technologies, and help them choose which of

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-62049532140650784182007-11-21T18:27:00.001+12:002007-11-21T18:27:52.568+12:00

Another notorious anti-interim government blog goes offline. Hyde and Seek, which went live in May of 2007, seems to have taken itself offline within the last several hours after around 400 posts and thousands of comments. As with the death of WFC, rumors abound about whether or not the bloggers took the site down willingly or unwillingly. If you want to see how the site looked in June and July

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-30010227128185130512007-11-20T12:50:00.001+12:002007-11-20T12:53:28.279+12:00

Let's be honest, it is difficult to spend $5 to rent a DVD for a day when you can own it for $1. Every year, hundreds of thousands of Fijians chose the $1 option. A FAVIA press release (with no supporting evidence whatsoever) claims that, "Fiji's piracy rate is about 98%." These numbers were rolling around in my head as I read a recent article by Nate Anderson on ars technica about a country that

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-16222110875608027792007-11-20T00:42:00.001+12:002007-11-20T00:47:02.509+12:00

Do you read your server logs? I admit that I only read them rarely. Let's face it, they are pretty dull and repetitive. Most sensible administrators - those who do not find reading syslogs eight times a day to be rewarding - will use some sort of log monitoring tool to let them know if anything interesting is going on. My favorite would be logwatch and I have also used swatch in the past. However

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-18669803368428299492007-11-07T20:46:00.000+12:002007-11-07T23:40:47.018+12:00

While I have not had time to write a great deal in recent weeks, I have tried to keep you on top of interesting ICT stories from Fiji and around the world with the dfiji Quick Links which you can see on the right hand side of this blog or via the RSS feed.A few interesting recent Quick Links include:The Oceanic blog comments on gross financial mismanagement at USP in response to a lengthy article

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-22010564368620000342007-10-25T22:32:00.000+12:002007-10-25T23:12:33.265+12:00

Lately, I have been thinking about library technology in the South Pacific region. This is mainly due to the fact that I was supposed to have submitted a paper on the subject to the new CODE4LIB journal about a week ago (don't worry editors, I'm still writing!). I though it might help to think aloud and to give anyone out there a chance to correct my facts or put me onto new ones. Feedback is

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-75678669463594466312007-10-12T15:03:00.000+12:002007-10-12T16:38:12.448+12:00

[Note to readers: Robert Martin and I have been having a blog2blog discussion about what he terms digital existence. You can see the start of the conversation here.]You raised one point in your last post that fascinates me - audited Internet services. Before I get to that let me dispense with a couple other discussion points in no particular order.Regarding Hushmail you wrote, Since I am paranoid

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-72088549284114225392007-10-05T10:26:00.000+12:002007-10-05T10:49:32.645+12:00

The October issue of Islands Business carries a very good cover story on Internet safety in the Pacific. There are some excellent comments from Rajnesh Singh, president of PICISOC:"What is required in the Pacific is a structured user-education and awareness programme," said Rajnesh Singh, parent, IT specialist and chairman of the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society (PICISOC), a

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-8028140764374447642007-10-04T12:28:00.000+12:002007-10-04T12:59:10.242+12:00

Big news in the Fiji blogoshere, notorious anti-government blog Why Fiji's Crying is offline. The Wordpress notice claims that the site was taken down by the authors. According to the metablog site technorati, the last post on WFC was approximately 48 days ago. There are no signs that this is an act of Internet censorship, although conspiracy theories abound.If you are feeling nostalgic or just

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-38196729213262097062007-09-25T12:46:00.000+12:002007-09-27T20:56:03.218+12:00

In my last blog2blog post to Robert W Martin, I asked him to explain why he wants to live his life online without needing his own equipment - something he calls digital existence.You gave a pretty decent answer, Rob. For me, one of the most powerful motives for seeking digital existence is that it is now technically conceivable to overcome the security concerns inherent in hardware independence.

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31575095.post-80722846199547825512007-09-20T17:37:00.001+12:002007-09-23T10:33:01.667+12:00

My buddy Robert W Martin (not the guy in the picture) wants to live his life online. But he wants to do it without owning any of his own hardware. To readers in Fiji, this may sound like a yaqona induced fantasy, but Rob lives in a large city in Canada. For about CDN$40 (FJ$60) per month, he gets a connection at home at a speed of about 512kb/s, up and down, with no practical usage limit. At work

thrashorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12208535828055935183noreply@blogger.com7