DjMagra’s stuff ‘n’ stuff

You may remember back to last year, when Estonia, one of the most internet savvy, connected countries in the world, came under a widespread and well documented cyber attack, originating for the most part in Russia, and in response to some political moves that were being made in the country at the time.

I’ve just read an interesting paper, written in non-technical terms on the background and implications of the event, both on Estonia, and also on the wider world as we face into a new era of potential cyber warfare. If this sounds of interest to you, I suggest that you take a read.

Ever wondered how to build a submarine fibre optic cable? PIPE Networks are a large carrier / IXP here in Oz, and are in the process of building a much needed submarine cable between Sydney and Guam. I’ve met with Bob, their Network Architect and he told me about some pretty crazy and cool stuff that they are doing, and it looks like the project is going to be a huge success for them.

They have decided, rather unusually for such a project, to be very open and transparent about how they are going about it, and you can find lots of details over on their website which includes a blog that you can subscribe to in order to stay up to date with the project!

I now work in a predominately MS Windows environment. Yes, I still have UNIX servers to look after, and Cisco kit all around the country to play with, but, most of the users here are Windows users. To that end, I’m currently install Windows Vista on my laptop! The thought of doing that makes me shudder a little, I’ve heard nothing but bad about Vista, and, given I haven’t used Windows hands on as my main OS in about 5 years, I’m not looking forward to figuring out all the bugs and problems that I encounter! Hopefully I can at least use my experiences to make migrating any users here to Vista a lot easier.