Technology

I suggest the government abandon its misguided plan for web filtering, and instead launch an information campaign and instruction leaflet to ask parents to use the free service OpenDNS to monitor and block sites on their children's internet connections. Parents can put a password on their router so that DNS settings can not be changed. There will then be the same level of security as the government's proposed solution. The kids might figure out how to use IPs directly (typing IP addresses directly into the browser) or other DNS traversal methods, but this free filter is no worse than the government's expensive filter.

This solution will keep everyone happy - people that don't want filtering don't need to use it, as well as this, children will be protected (to the same degree as the government's solution). As has happened before, any filter the government sets up can be bypassed by people that have the time and motivation to do it.

I would then appreciate the government making a donation to OpenDNS, as well as giving me a $450k job for my worthwhile advice.

A federal court decision was handed down today not to compel ISPs to pursue their customers use of the BitTorrent protocol to download content illegally.

How they find the users
The film industry capture the IP addresses of users that are using BitTorrent to download their movies. They do this by setting up fake bittorrent trackers that pretend to host the content. One way around this is to use PeerBlock - this blocks film industry bittorrent trackers.

Legal systems can and do work
The Apple iPhone apps store has shown that legal software can work, if:

• it is easy to use and download
• it is priced at a level that most users are willing to pay

I remember that the full version of Microsoft Office used to cost around $900. This was blatant profiteering by Microsoft. I thought this was analogous to a rock band releasing a music CD, charging $900 for it, and requiring all businesses to buy it.

Once again, the movie companies just don't get it. Ever since content went digital and easily copiable, the game has changed fundamentally. The movie companies should follow Apple's lead and get back in the game.

The Australian Government is well intentioned, but hopelessly misinformed in its continuing intention to apply web filtering technology. The government will not stop the type of people that want to access extreme illegal pornographic material.

People that want to look at the illegal extreme pornographic sites can bypass the government web filtering technology using encrypted VPNs (Virtual Private Networks).

Ironically, forcing these people to use VPNs will make it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect illegal activity. Also, inevitably once an automated cross match between an Australian Government sanctioned DNS server is done with an external DNS server, perverts will have a handy list of illegal sites to visit, kindly selected by the Australian Government!

Learn from past experience?

Example 1. When Facebook was blocked in Vietnam recently, many users just changed their DNS settings (eg OpenDNS).

Example 2. The Howard government's million-dollar expenditure on its "net nanny" software available for free download to the public. This quickly became embarrasing when a teenager cracked the software soon after release. On one estimation, the taxpayer-paid software ended up costing hundreds, if not thousands, per installation.

Example 3. High definition DVD decryption was cracked despite the industry's best efforts.

Last week when I logged into Facebook, I saw a privacy dialog come up. Not having time to read the dialog, I clicked through, assuming that as I had not changed my security settings, that none would be made.

Guess what! Facebook has changed its privacy settings to default to profiles being visible to the public internet. Users now need to specifically tell Facebook to keep their profile private. This is a sneaky and underhand method by Facebook to expose more of its users' content to the public internet, increasing Facebook's search engine results. Facebook should have learnt from the last security uproar when it tried to change its Terms of Service to state that all users' content was owned by Facebook. Facebook fails to understand that one of the core reasons its users use it rather than MySpace is because of privacy reasons.

Along similar lines, Google's Eric Schmidt has stated that privacy should only be the concern of users that have something to hide.

It seems that George Orwell was right, privacy cannot be left in the hand of corporations or it will be abused. Please keep vigilant on this.

For every bad programmer, two good programmers are hired - to fix what the bad programmer has done. How you write code represents how well your brain is ordered, and how clearly you like to communicate to others.

A tutorial on how to confuse your code is at this link. You can use this to learn what not to do.

'Option Explicit

Sub Export_PAB_to_vcfs()

Dim myOlApp As Outlook.Application
Dim objContact As ContactItem

Set myOlApp = New Outlook.Application

Set olns = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")

' Set MyFolder to the default contacts folder.
Set myFolder1 = olns.Folders("Sean O'Reilly")
Set myfolder = myFolder1.Folders("Contacts")

' Get the number of items in the folder.
NumItems = myfolder.Items.Count

' Loop through all of the items in the folder.
For i = 1 To NumItems
    Debug.Print myfolder.Items(i).Class
    If myfolder.Items(i).Class = 40 Then
        Set objContact = myfolder.Items(i)
        Debug.Print TypeName(objContact) + ":" + objContact.FullName
        If Not TypeName(objContact) = "Nothing" Then
            If Not objContact.FullName = "" Then
              strname = "H:\Personal\Contacts\" & TrimALL(objContact.FullName) & ".vcf"
             objContact.SaveAs strname, olVCard
            End If
        End If
    End If
Next

MsgBox "All Contacts Exported!"

End Sub

Install this and when you play songs in Windows Media Player you can view the lyrics as well - http://www.lyricsplugin.com/

The ownership of core and vital telecommunications infrastructure by Telstra has long hamstrung telecommunications/internet competition in Australia. The icing on the cake was the choice of the despisable and despicable Sol Trujillo as CEO of Telstra.

On the other hand, in the 1990s we saw Telstra and Optus both laying their own coaxial cables in the same streets for pay TV. This was misapplication of competition policy.

Although I am concerned about the debt our Federal government is racking up, I am glad it is taking a strong stance against a recalcitrant Telstra in regards to the national broadband network (NBN).

The critical thing with backup is low or no maintenance. You may think you will remember to back up every week, but the laws of human nature predict that as backup is not normally "front of mind", and so you will forget.

I use all of the following:

1. RAID 0 (mirror) for my data disks.
2. Sync with external HDD.
3. Carbonite (offline backup). The other benefit is that you can access your files through a web browser if you need to.

Most users should use online backup such as Carbonite.

Email is now so ubiquitous in the corporate environment that many employees are reluctant to speak to their fellow employees face-to-face or on the phone. It is surprising how many times in the office something could be resolved or explained better on the telephone, but instead there has been a barrage of emails that then need to be filed or deleted.

For this reason, both traditional email and chat clients should be introduced in corporate environments to improve productivity. Google's Wave appears to be the first attempt to combine the two. The idea makes sense.

But just because something is a good idea does not mean that it will catch on. We will see.