44137183
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Debate 'down under' has started to rage surrounding the importation of 'temporary' IT workers on so-called '457' visas, with the Prime Minister promising to bring in tough new restrictions on foreign workers in a pre-election pledge despite evidence that there are insufficient numbers of Australians to fill the skills 'gap'. Some quarters argue the foreign workers are necessary to drive growth in Australia's IT industry, while others have cited examples where large Australian companies have imported workers needlessly, displacing qualified Aussie personnel.
What do you think? Is Big Technology only trying to improve its bottom line? Or are qualified Australian / American / Canadian etc. IT workers an endangered species?
42919213
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Telstra is planning to begin throttling P2P traffic during 'peak periods' as soon as later this week in an effort to improve the performance of its network for casual web-browsers.
Telstra executive director Michael Lawrey has previously stated (in 2011) that he wished the small number of users who used the vast majority of Telstra's available bandwidth were somebody else's customers, and that Telstra would consider taking action against those deemed to be violating Telstra's 'fair-use' policies (although presumably still operating within their contract's data transfer limits.)
40202249
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
"Click Frenzy", a website designed to provide "one day only" bargains to Australians in an effort to promote Australian retailers and discourage overseas web-shopping, failed instantly under load once it launched at 7pm Tuesday night, and only returned after the website owners migrated the entire site to Amazon several hours later, embarrassing the Australian IT industry and leading to rampant cynicism on social media.
39483809
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
I think I may have just uncovered a crazy bug / exploit in Slashdot’s moderation system.
If you click ‘Parent’ on the post you wish to moderate, you can then moderate the posts inside that sub-thread without immediately losing any moderator points, if you then go back to the home screen (by clicking on the Slashdot logo) after you moderate the comments.
It appears that the system does catch up with you periodically, and then deduct the points you spent — but during that period of time it seems you can go quite far into negative deficit. For example, I ‘spent’ my last moderator point today five times (strictly for research purposes; I don't plan on doing so again. That would be bad.)
Checking again, I'm indeed now out of moderator points, but my 'over-mods' seem to have stuck. Perhaps others with moderator points can help verify this bug?
Although, I really wonder if this is a 'new discovery', or if this 'exploit' is already commonly abused... But that's just my cynical side showing through.
38904845
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
A former police officer in the Australian state of Victoria has called on law enforcement to prosecute creators of hate pages on social media following Facebook's decision to close down a page mocking Jill Meagher, the 29-year-old Melbourne woman abducted and killed last month.
Susan McLean, who spent 27 years with Victoria Police before launching her cyber safety consultancy three years ago, said police have the ability to prosecute the creators of pages that are in breach of Australian laws but appear to be unwilling to use it.
"There have been many cases in the UK where these people have been hunted down and charged and jailed. We need to do that in Australia."
Ms McLean claimed police already have powers to pursue posters of such content. Under section 474.17 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, it is an offence to use "a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence", punishable by three years in jail.
38295605
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Fairfax is reporting that a recent Ipsos-MacKay survey of Australian residents is showing a cooling attitude to Facebook.
''A key complaint amongst some was the culture of narcissism and self-absorption that appeared to be rife on Facebook,'' the survey said.
Facebook users also complained that the constant flow of status updates is becoming ''time-consuming and tiring'', with some saying they wanted to close their Facebook accounts but felt they had no choice but to remain a user if they wanted to stay in touch with friends.
''Participants also felt that much of what others posted on Facebook was either trivial or obsessively repetitive and that the boundaries between what is public and what is private have blurred."
36995603
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Australian crowd-funding site Pozible currently has an eyebrow-raising project: the producers of the proposed TV programme 'Wrecking Ball' are offering tickets into raffles to those who 'donate' for, amongst other things, a 50" Samsung television and a vacation.
Despite the high-likelihood of running afoul of local gambling laws, it appears Pozible elected to permit this strategy to be employed on their platform anyway. One wonders if, should they get away with it, this could become a new trend amongst other crowd-funding websites.
Obviously, if you wanted to fund your project faster, this would be a no-brainer. There's no risk, since you only have to cough-up if you reach your 'target', and you can just increase your target to cover the overhead of the raffle.
35846453
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
An Australian court has banned a man from using Facebook for two years after he created a page 'rating' the sexual 'performance' of women in the central regional area of the state of Victoria.
Joshua Turner, 22, of Kangaroo Flat (yes, that's a real place) invited people to rate their past sexual partners and published hundreds of comments online. He pleaded guilty to using an online service to publish objectionable material and using a carriage service to offend.
35699049
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Australian ISP AAPT has confirmed that hackers stole customer data to protest proposed laws which would mandate the storage of Internet users' web histories for two years.
AAPT CEO David Yuile told Fairfax Media that the ISP is investigating the breach and will contact affected customers.
The proposal to store Web histories is being considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, but Internet freedom advocates argue it could expose Australians to numerous privacy risks.
35541879
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Many Aussies across New South Wales and South Australia had a bit of a shock this morning when they received an SMS threatening them with assassination.
Although somewhat varied, the messages have typically read, "Someone paid me to kill you. If you want me to spare you, I'll give you two days to pay $5000. If you inform the police or anybody, you will die, I am monitoring you", and signed with the e-mail address killerking247@yahoo.com.
Police and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have warned that the messages are almost certainly fake, and that no dialogue should be entered into with scammers.
35450355
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
A masked gunman has shot dead at least 14 people and wounded up to 50 others at a premiere showing of the new Batman movie in Colorado.
A man wearing body armour and a gas mask began shooting during the screening at a mall in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
One person has been taken into custody as police sweep the theatre and determine whether a second person was involved.
35416481
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Cyber warfare is potentially one of the most serious threats to Australian national security over the coming decade, the head of one of Australia's most secretive spy agencies has said.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Nick Warner, Director-General of ASIS, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, says there have been dramatic changes in the security environment in the recent past, and the situation is likely to become more volatile and dangerous in the years ahead.
Mr Warner says "considerable resources" are now being directed at the growing challenge of internet warfare.
"The field of cyber operations is one of the most rapidly evolving and potentially serious threats to our national security in the coming decade," he said.
"Government departments and agencies, together with corporate Australia, have been subject to concerted efforts by external actors seeking to infiltrate sensitive computer networks.
"Developments in cyber are a two-edged sword for an agency like ASIS.
"They offer new ways of collecting information, but the digital fingerprints and footprints which we all now leave behind complicate the task of operating covertly."
35056401
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
A fake advertisement for the chief executive's position with a Melbourne, Australia-based charity was posted on seek.com.au over the weekend, saying the well-known organisation was in "desperate need" of a new CEO. It went on to list the attributes not wanted in a new CEO, implying that the current CEO was, among other things, sulky, self-centred, dishonourable and disrespectful of staff.
Revenge is a dish best served on-line?
34551707
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Facebook has been silently changing users' default e-mail addresses to their @facebook.com address in a move that Facebook claims was 'to protect users' and to create 'consistency', but has been blasted by many bloggers and news outlets as "Facebook's Lame Attempt To Force Its E-Mail Service On You", and even characterised the move as a Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack on users' private correspondence.
From TFA: 'Many articles characterized the change as a ham-fisted way for Facebook to push its email system, which it first announced in in late 2010. At that time the company said its goal was to integrate conversations across multiple channels of communication — text messages, Facebook chat, email, etc.
Facebook seemed surprised by the reaction. "We basically defaulted to show your Facebook address as we rolled this out, just to keep it consistent for everyone," said Meredith Chin, Facebook's manager of product communications.
"I'm seeing this whole meme around the idea that it's us pushing for people only to use facebook.com addresses," Chin said. "That was not our intention. We want people to use whatever's easier for them."'
34493973
submission
beaverdownunder writes:
Computer-aided design programs are tipped to solve the supersonic-over-land problem that prevented the original Concorde aircraft from flying over land.
Clive Dorman of 'The Age' reports that, "London to Sydney in four hours, they were saying, in the run-up to next month’s Farnborough air show outside London in the UK, which is one of the aerospace industry’s main annual sales jamborees.
Importantly, the boffins were talking about the technical details of breakthroughs in computer-aided design that they reckon can finally overcome the biggest obstacle – Concorde’s inability to fly supersonically over land."
Projected to be in commercial use by 2030, do you think such an aircraft will ever materialise?
