Planet Linuxchix NZ

Brenda Wallace: OLPC shipped in Niue

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:30:54 +0000

From Pia Waugh's blog:
http://pipka.org/blog/2008/08/16/olpc-in-niue/

In late July I was very privileged to help roll out the world’s first 100% saturation of OLPC XOs to the country of Niue, in the Pacific near New Zealand. There are around 400 students, and every single one got a laptop!

She also took many photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/piawaugh/sets/72157606725170843/

The OLPC Niue wiki page has more info

Various press:
BetaNews | OLPC laptops now blanket the Pacific nation of Niue
Niue Gives OLPC to Every Student - - Digital Trends
Laptop-Computers: OLPC Conquers Niue Island
OLPC hits 100% in Niue
OLPC provides one laptop per student in Niue
Niue: One Laptop Per Child for every kid!

More news results on http://news.google.co.nz/news?q=olpc%20niue

Brenda Wallace: Software Freedom Day in Wellington

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:24:55 +0000

http://www.softwarefreedomday.org.nz/

Come along and work on whatever you like, discuss what you're
building, and learn about free software projects that the Wellington
community contributes to.

You will need to bring your own laptop.

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.

Brenda Wallace: Catalyst is hiring

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:48:26 +0000

See jobadvert for new shiny gadget playing job

Brenda Wallace: meanbot.

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 04:15:43 +0000

I made a new twitter bot on the weekend:

http://twitter.com/meanbot

It's a little bit.... mean.

Penny Leach: homesick

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:30:19 +0000

it's so weird the things that make me feel homesick.

I just watched the video for 'Wandering Eye' by Fat Freddy's Drop and the fact that John Campbell and Carol Hirschfeld were in it ordering Fish & Chips made me crazy homesick.

Brenda Wallace: hacking gadgets at town hall

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:40:58 +0000

hacking gadgets at town hall, originally uploaded by this is emily

oooo .. i'm inimitable :-)

Brenda Wallace: Summary of pipe's talk

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:59:39 +0000

Stephen Judd has written up a good summary of Pipe's talk on browser/webclient security - read the original for more explanation - but here's his summary quoted:

Traditionally, security focussed on protecting servers, and assumed that clients were not desirable targets.

This isn’t true. Your PC is a desirable target:

You use your PC to do things of interest (like online banking)

Your PC can be used to attack other PCs.

Your browser runs code (JavaScript) from untrusted sources.

Browsers carefully run this code in a “sandbox”, with no access to your computer’s disk or to memory outside the browser, in the belief that this will protect your PC from malicious code. This won’t work:

First, your browser can do interesting things like make naughty requests to hack into other PCs.

Second, there are plenty of things that you do care about in your brower’s memory (like your online banking session) which are totally accessible from within the sandbox.

Many sites (wrongly) allow users to inject Javascript into pages other people can see. That Javascript can seize control of your browser when you visit such a site. (This is called “cross-site scripting”).

It is no use expecting sites you visit to protect you. Even when the owners are told about cross-site scripting problems, they often can’t be bothered fixing them. Among them are plenty of high-profile sites which you might well visit.

That injected Javascript can:

“phone home” to a master server;

upload any data accessible from within the sandbox;

make naughty requests of other computers;

download further instructions from the master.

There are already automated tools out there to do all this.

Conclusion: any time you run a browser with Javascript on, and you visit a site with injected Javascript, your browser is no longer under your control. It will cough up details of any existing secure sessions and make requests elsewhere on behalf of its new controller. YOU ARE PWNED.

Brenda Wallace: Who owns your snapper trail?

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:09:51 +0000

That big pile of accumlated data from years of using your snapper card, who owns it?

Snapper card are smart cards in use by wellington buses. You use these for payment for your trips, and all other fares except the one trip cash fares have been phased out, so if you commute you gotta use snapper or start paying a forture / carrying cash.

CC licensed photo by Alan Macdougall

Imagine all the bus trips, the shops you go past, the amounts you spend/topup. Google have proven the value of such information in their targeted adverts. Amassed enough data, it has a value, and who owns it? Can they sell it? Need they tell you if they sell it?

Today the New Zealand Privacy Commision told snapper they ought to revise their privacy policy (computerword.co.nz)

There are incentives to register your card -- being able to see an audit trail and claiming lost funds when you lose your card -- but even if you take the risk and don't register they're still building a good profile of nameless you and your movements.

My own thoughts: We can't be complacent and assume someone else is looking out for our prvacy. While I might trust the folks who run snapper today (and I don't yet), do i know for sure i'll trust the folks who buy them out in 2 years time? For myself I would rather they collected no information at all -- beyond a short period of time (maybe 4 weeks), then I want my data gone, erased, unretrievable and/or completely unable to be matched up with me, because it's proven even the most trusted can screw up. In much the same way no-one can find out who voted for New Zealand First last election (though that's possibly a bad example).

Then there's nothing to lose, and nothing to sell.

Brenda Wallace: culture shock impending

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:19:09 +0000

in the first week of September, i'm flying up to Auckland. There's a Girl Geek Dinner there as part of Microsoft Tech Ed. It's free if you have a tech ed ticket, or $90 if you don't.

Microsoft were kind enough to give me a free ticket to the whole conference, so i'm checking them out.

First bit of culture shock was this statement:

Speaker shirts can also be collected from the Speaker Preparation Room. Speaker shirts must be worn at all time. Black trousers or Chino style pants are required – no jeans please!

I don't own either black pants (that aren't jeans) nor Chino style pants. I really didn't think geeks owned these things. Even at my most formal it's jeans + business jacket.

So what to wear?