Summer Holidays - We’re Closed

Yes guys… I have gone underground!  It’s that time of the year when I get to take a nice break & recharge my batteries, so I can better serve you in 2009.

To all my clients, I would like to wish a Happy & Safe Holiday Season!

Our Office will be closed:

19th December ‘08 - 5th January ‘09

We are available in case of website failure or similar emergencies.  If you have any non-emergency problems you can still get assistance at the TOLRA Community Forums.

Now is a great time for you to look at marketing & pushing your website out there.  This economic downturn is the time to start focussing on your branding, so that when it starts to recover you are in the best situation possible.  Make your website work for you!

So until I see you all again… take care, stay safe & I hope you all have a great holiday (I know I will!)

Clean Feed is a Waste of Time & Money

There are many things about the governments proposed Clean Feed Filters that just scream wastes of our money.

What about instant messaging systems such as common ones like Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo etc, will that content be filtered?

If those services are filtered then what about the case where private instant messaging networks are created. Using free software such as www.igniterealtime.org and a low cost VPS it is possible to create private instant messaging networks around the Jabber protocol. These networks can connect to Google Talk with near zero configuration and with the addition of the appropriate gateway software connections to MSN and Yahoo networks is possible.

Therefore if the VPS is outside of Australia then these inter network connections will not be filtered. If a secure connection is formed from inside Australia to the VPS then how can content be filtered? Files, pictures, text etc can all be passed through the network.

One option would be to block all Jabber ports but then how would businesses interact on legitimate networks. Plus if the Jabber ports were blocked it is trivial to use port 443, the normal port for secure web traffic are they going to block all secure traffic because it can’t be filtered.

SSH

Web professionals require SSH access to servers outside of the country in order to run their business, it is trivial to have the web browser pass requests through a SSH tunnel to the remote server.

Therefore the content being downloaded can’t be filtered as the data flows encrypted between the server and client, again what are the government going to do block all SSH traffic? If they did then those businesses would need to move off country or again move SSH traffic to port 443.

The information for setting up a SSH tunnel for web browsing is freely available for most computing platforms.

For Linux, the command ssh -D 9999 user@sshserver creates a tunnel from the local machine to the remote server. All that now needs to happen is Firefox connection settings need to be changed to use a SOCKS proxy and now web browsing takes place from the remote server with data flowing encrypted between the client PC and the sshserver.

With the availability of VPS for less than $10 p/m any semi intelligent person could follow the instructions and have unrestricted net access.

VPN

Virtual Private Networks can be set up allowing secure connections between PCs. The creation of these networks isn’t hard with the availability of products such as LogMeIn Hamachi makes it almost a point and click exercise.

Again the data flowing through these networks in encrypted so while well know providers of VPN services could be blocked what about lesser known networks and if blocking well known VPN providers what about businesses trying to use them?

Other

All data flowing over SSL, port 443, is secure that is they can’t filter the data therefore what stops the use of proxies for browsing restricted sites?

Secure FTP also exists and may be utilised by companies moving sensitive data between branches, so again data can be moved unfiltered.

Sum Up

In this day and age many businesses have employs or are working with people from all around the world, limiting secure communication between these dispersed groups would result in businesses having to use local only staff which would then lead to cost or personal availability issues.

Therefore realistically the blocking of secure connections is not an option and they have to be accepted as needed in order for the IT industry to function.

If these technologies are available for business then there’s no reason your average school child can’t make use of these technologies to view the content they want.

So filtering my stop some content but it’s trivial to circumvent, therefore if parents assume the content filtering works they are taking less interest in their childs online activities and therefore in my opining increasing the risk of the child encountering unacceptable content or individuals.

My personal opinion is forget filtering and spend the money on educate parents in their responsibilities, that is to guide their child to adulthood in a well balanced way knowing right from wrong, knowing the dangers in the world and not shirk their responsibilities to some sate run robot that may or may not work. Finally how do these adults that have been sheltered from the undesirable side of the web cope should they ever be exposed to it?

WA Web Week 08

Well here I am having survived a most exhausting WA Web Week 08! While I was subject to all kinds of technical problems & the victim of a car break in, the week of events was definitely one to keep open on calendars in the future. Organized by a relatively small group of people within the Australian Web Industry Association [AWIA], it was flawless from beginning to end and they should all be congratulated.

While Perth didn’t turn on the weather for our VIP’s & guests from overseas, I hear the committee more than made up for it with their hospitality.

Scrumptious food & beverages were provided through the week at various events & kept many a tired person awake. WiFi provided the means for everyone to blog & Twitter away throughout the week.

The conference itself balanced just enough geekdom with generalities to keep it interesting for code or business monkeys. One of my personal highlights was Derek Featherstone’s attendance.

WebJam was awesome! I really enjoy seeing what the locals have been up to, as I think that Australia is bursting at the seams with IT talent (not to mention a few comedians too!).

I only did the Information Architecture [IA] workshop, and it was good to see so many education & government webbies interested in getting it right.

Never believe that geeks don’t party hard! The WA Web Awards 08 were a grand affair with the men looking scrumptious in their best formal attire. Guests poured out of limos holding bottles of champagne as they arrived! Food was delicious, the drinks were plentiful & loud cheers were heard from all supporting tables. People were Twittering, chatting, blogging and keeping everyone who didn’t attend informed of the evenings events & winners. Many still partied hard afterwards at nightclubs in Perth, and taxis were in high demand!

As the week starts to settle down I’ll gradually post some of the week’s events & my thoughts on them. If you are in the Web/Internet industry in Australia consider becoming a member, & be part of a great industry!