Leefe rates the world…

SECURITY experts are alarmed that a company with links to the Chinese military is bidding to supply equipment to the national broadband network, warning that the equipment could be used to spy or launch cyber attacks on Australian governments and businesses.

THE US government is reviewing an Australian program that will allow internet service providers to alert customers if their computers are taken over by hackers and could limit online access if people don't fix the problem.

INTERNET and cable TV service providers that do not get an offer from the national broadband network company to buy their infrastructure say they will compete with it.

The planned roll out of a privately funded super-fast broadband network in Brisbane will not result in cheaper prices to access the National Broadband Network than the rest of the country, according to the federal government.

If Australians do not opt in to the national broadband network (NBN) as it is rolled out they will lose their fixed-line phone service unless they pay a one-time fee of about $300.

THE Brisbane City Council has announced its own breakaway broadband project, promising residents and businesses they will have their own high-speed fibre network within four years.

Saying Labor's $43 billion national broadband network would take too long to arrive in Brisbane, the Liberal lord mayor, Campbell Newman, said yesterday that his network could be delivered without cost to ratepayers through a deal with a private company, i3 Asia Pacific.

An illustration of of what the movie industry says happens, what it says should happen, and what actually happens

The ACCC today released a discussion paper on the number and location of initial points of interconnect (POIs) where NBN Co’s network will handover traffic to the networks of wholesale and retail service providers

THE Coalition has adopted a high-speed internet policy that would render redundant the proposed National Broadband Network. The policy accepted by the joint parties meeting would separate Telstra into two companies – a retailer free of onerous regulation and a wholesaler, possibly named CANCo, enjoying regulated pricing required by law to provide all Australians with broadband at a minimum speed of 12 megabits per second (Mbps).

The headline on the Credit Suisse analyst's note about Singapore Exchange's takeover of the Australian Securities Exchange said it all: ''Gonski?'' For the ultimate corporate charmer, the ASX chairman, David Gonski, to be missing from the spotlight on the exchange's big day on Monday was hard to miss.

Singapore Exchange's $8.4 billion takeover of the Australian Securities Exchange faces a new hurdle as key political leaders voice concern over the deal, sending ASX shares sharply lower. Greens leader Bob Brown said he will not support the foreign takeover of the ASX, citing Singapore's lack of respect for Australia.

Tough luck if you’re a Windows 7 fan. The nation’s largest airline Qantas yesterday announced it would go Apple-only in its frequent flyer lounges around Australia, giving travellers access to “the latest generation Macs” in a national rollout.

The communications regulator is set to overhaul Australia's telephone numbering system after noticing an increase in the use of internet-based phone calls, as well as general consumer apathy about the cost of calls.

Australia's biggest brands have been named and shamed in the 2010 Shonky Awards, which recognise the "shonkiest, meanest and silliest rip-offs and scams".

Video gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment has reportedly labelled Telstra as the biggest roadblock in its way to setting up dedicated Australian servers for its popular World of Warcraft and StarCraft II games. – I t appears they have tough requirements on space for their servers.

Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens has waded into the debate about whether Australia needs a strong home-grown IT sector, claiming the nation hasn’t been disadvantaged by failing to grow one since the dot-com bubble burst a decade ago. He thinks we are doing well enough on commodities. Perhaps not considering It services export?

The Australian dollar is expected to stay above 90 US cents throughout 2011 as the Reserve Bank continues to raise interest rates, a leading forecaster says. Australia's resource sector is also tipped to prop up the domestic economy, replacing stimulus spending as a key driver of growth.

Tech support for plebs. Telstra is trialing a new support system where the support person takes over your computer to fix the problem. But how much do you trust support people? What procedures/ethics are there for client confidentiality in the support world? And what if they decide to install something else?

HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension produced as a collaboration between The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It encrypts your communications with a number of major websites.

t's extremely common for websites to protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but surprisingly uncommon for websites to encrypt everything else. This leaves the cookie (and the user) vulnerable. (This Firefox plugin allows you to access wifi cookies and hijack sessions.)

It seems like every time Facebook amends its privacy policy, the web is up in arms. The truth is, Facebook’s well publicized privacy fight is nothing compared to the vulnerability of all unsecured HTTP sites — that includes Facebook, Twitter and many of the web’s most popular destinations.

Starbucks in the USA has implemented a new wifi/portal system which is written in HTML 5. This is because most customers who use the network use an iPhone or iPad.

Privacy advocates are calling for charges to be brought against Google after the internet giant admitted it unwittingly collected emails and passwords when it gathered data for its Street View network. (But all those unencrypted wifi networks are still there broadcasting info to whoever wants to collect it.)

Five months after “mistakenly” collecting “fragmented” data from home networks via its Street View cars, Google has confirmed that private emails, Web addresses as well as passwords were among the data captured.

In a recent blog post, the search giant admitted to “failing badly”, noting that in May, Google had not analysed the data and did not know what information was included in the collection.

ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel has outlined the competition regulator's desire to have final say on undertakings submitted by Telstra and NBN Co, without facing the prospect of court appeals.

Senator Stephen Conroy has welcomed an Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) report which found the rollout of high speed broadband like the National Broadband network would be a boon for Australian businesses.

The ALP lost a lot of votes to the Greens at the last election. And if recent pols are to be believed the slide has continued. It appears that the Australian political spectrum is moving to a 3 party system (Libs and Nats count as one party).

Singapore's stock exchange is poised to offer a premium of up to 40 per cent to acquire the Australian Securities Exchange, valuing the Australian bourse operator at about $8.5 billion, in a move to create an Asian trading hub. While the SGX company is worth more than the ASX company, the value of the Australian market is almost 3 times the size.

Governments across south-east Asia are following China's authoritarian censorship of the digital world to keep political dissent in check, the Guardian can reveal. Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines have all moved or are moving towards monitoring internet use, blocking international sites regarded as critical and ruthlessly silencing web dissidents.

Mom videos child and uploads it to YouTube. Universal Music issues take down notice. Mom takes them to court for not allowing fair use.

In interesting, balanced, piece about the war between Stephen Conroy and The Australian about the National Broadband Network.

Man drops mobile phone down the toilet, then gets stick trying to retrieve it, requiring a rescue working to get him out. But how did he call them?

The new Australian government is hanging in there courtesy of a couple of rural independent MPs and a following breeze. A secure administration it is not, but that hasn't prevented Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard chancing her arm and re-igniting the passionate debate about centrally-imposed Internet censorship. Martyn Warwick reports.

After two and a half years of requests from member states and campaigners, last night’s final session at the European Parliament was scheduled to debate the controversial Anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (Acta) treaty. Negotiated in secret, the treaty could precipitate the imposition of a new range of rules on computer software piracy and sharing. Opponents say it will limit free speech, while the music industry claims it is essential if their business is to remain viable.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy didn’t have to wait long to see the The Australian's reaction to his Lateline tirade against the paper for its reporting of the cost to consumers of connecting to the NBN.

It may be entirely appropriate that NBN Co deliver the Federal Government ongoing cost-benefit analysis around the national broadband network rollout: so long as stakeholders understand how to interpret the results, writes David Havyatt.

Moving your data into the cloud creates a raft of security challenges, but according to information security specialists, those challenges are less about hackers and more about data availability and signing the right contracts.

There has been a lot of bellyaching of late about whether or not the National Broadband Network (NBN) will be a viable proposition or not. Certainly, the purported cost of $43b is a lot of money, and when dealing with a sum of that magnitude, a certain level of caution is very obviously quite prudent.

An unmistakable strain of compassion runs through Cindy Cohn's voice when she talks about the plight of Internet users she says are wrongly accused of copyright violations or tech companies she believes are being abused by large entertainment conglomerates. "Don't confuse these litigation business model people with the actual people thinking about copyright law in the digital age. These other people are just the seedy underbelly of litigation. They are just shaking down a whole bunch of people for money that they put in their own pockets." -Cindy Cohn, EFF

The OpenNet Initiative has documented network filtering of the Internet by national governments in over forty countries worldwide. Countries use this network filtering as one of many methods to control the flow of online content that is objectionable to the filtering governments for social, political, and security reasons. Filtering is particularly appealing to governments as it allows them to control content not published within their national borders.

Article discussing the practice of suing people in a court nowhere near them, making it too hard to to appear and be represented in court, so they choose to settle.

Due to bad coding, Facebook apps are passing on 'personal identifying information to dozens of advertising and internet tracking companies'.

An article about how working 'Mothers' should still find the time to make healthy means for their children. This ignores the fact that many Fathers these days are also responsible for dinner, a point made be many of the comments.

Across the world governments are trying to push down the value of their currency to improve export. Australia as a result has the booby prize of having its currency pushed up. Is this bad or a good thing? And does Australia have any control over the situation?

Default passwords for may routers, network devices and other things.

If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Odour-free underwear has become the latest advance in space exploration, thanks to researchers at Japan Women's University in Tokyo.

Koichi Wakata, the country's first astronaut to live on the International Space Station (ISS), has donated his body to science and is currently putting the high-tech textile through its paces.

When taking photos to advertise your rental property, remember to think about what the other people in the shot are doing (or look like they are doing). It is

Did capitalism save the Chilean Miners? Or was it responsible for the predicament they were in in the first place?

A leading Australian expert in infectious diseases says people who use display iPads and iPhones at Apple stores are risking serious infections and the company should do more to maintain hygiene.

Article about the confusion politicians have, or try to make, between RC and illegal material, and how it should apply to the proposed Internet filter.

A school authority has agreed to pay $US610,000 ($621,000) after admitting it spied on pupils in their homes through the cameras on their laptop computers.

An angry passenger who set up a website called 'I Hate Ryanair' has been ordered to hand over the site's name to the airline he despises. (Although it was set up again with the .org variant of the domain)

Consumers are unwittingly passing much of their most private personal data to strangers when they discard mobile phones, with intimate photos and credit card numbers and pins frequently left on handsets, according to new research. (ie remember to do a factory reset on your phone before trading it in)

Should radio stations be charged and extra fee for broadcasting on the Internet? Or is it covered by the fee paid for radio play?

Even if you delete incriminating photos on your Facebook profile, the company is keeping them accessible to anyone online for up to 30 months.

Whether as a model, movie star or mother, Resident Evil's Milla Jovovich sets a killer pace, writes Donna Walker-Mitchell.

Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with everything that is going on. Here is a summary of the news items we shared this week on Twitter.

Perusing Domain.com.au I noticed the perfect apartment for someone that doesn't spend much time at home. Who just drops in occasionally to freshen up. Then off