* Posts by pingudownunder

8 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

Australian Banks ask permission to form anti-Apple cartel

pingudownunder

The big banks are protecting their EFTPOS baby

Richard,

One of the Big 4 banks in Australia, ANZ, already supports Apple Pay, and has done for a while. Your article mentions the other three who don't. Can't remember if Adelaide/Bendigo is owned by NAB, Westpac or not, losing track of their slurps.

I suspect the real driver is the proprietary EFTPOS system built, and owned, by the Big 4. As it doesn't use EMV (it's still on magstripes and I'd say similar to Switch in the UK), of course it's AU only and I'd imagine a nice source of direct and indirect revenue. Apple are quite right not to support it.

ANZ going to Apple and Google Pay has annoyed the other Big 3 banks.

I'd say this is about the Big Banks getting all pisssed off at the industry not "recognising" or "thanking" then for being protectionist, profiteering, lazy and a bunch of sour grapes. They took the same behaviour when attacking the business model of the Credit Unions (e.g. locking them out eftpos, or persuading retailers to disallow using the Credit button when paying using a Visa Debit card because it bypasses the eftpos network, increasing per-transaction costs to non-eftpos banks). They also try attacking the smaller Tier 2 banks who customers churn to them for much better service, but it's easier to just buy them out and plunder.

S

Australian Parliament issues summons to Apple, Microsoft, Adobe

pingudownunder
FAIL

hahaha #auspol's self-importance strikes again

Hillarious.

As usual, those in Canberra who idolise their counterparts in the US and UK think that they have some sort of power over large multinationals such as Apple, Microsoft and Google.

They forget that to these companies we are a little drop in the ocean. More people live in London, New York or Istanbul than in the whole of Australia.

Australian Pollies, with their self-importance, is like an annoying scratch to these companies. What'll end up happening is that they'll withdraw from the Australian market, just to get rid of the annoyance. And who loses out ultimately? The customer.

Fail.

Singers set to swing with cloud boom

pingudownunder
FAIL

Singers or Singas?

Thought this article was going to be about the sewing machine company; until you mentioned it's about Singapore (abbreviated to Singas in this part of the world).

Looking forward to winning more gold medals than you in the Olympics.

Lots of love,

Australia

Data encryption and the Cloud

pingudownunder
FAIL

Why focus on Encryption?

I'm apparently an Information Security Professional. And concerned about Cloud; not because of the technology or technical impacts - just like PKI - it all seems to be fine. I'm more concerned about the non technical aspects: risk, accountability, reliability, legal and privacy implications (just what killed off "Big PKI").

I have one of my auto-rants around this topic at http://www.pingudownunder.com/2011/05/04/simon-harveys-answer-to-what-are-common-concerns-about-adopting-cloud-computing/ and and more than happy to stand corrected.

A recent CIO.com article quoted this is the cruicial point: "This is what shared responsibility implies—both parties have to step up to the security aspects in their control, and failing to do so means the application is not going to be secure. Even if the CSP does everything correctly for portions of the cloud application within its control, if the application owner fails to implement its security responsibility correctly, the application is going to be insecure. "

My issue is that given the immense hype, marketing and over-simplistic sales pitch by Cloud/IT Vendors, they ignore their own responsibilities. And the market they are selling to - CEOs - incorrectly assume that security is no longer their issue. At least with traditional IT Outsourcing, the Rs & Rs was clear - contractually - about who is responsible for what. I have yet to see this in the Cloud world.

Looking at the Amazon Web Services downtime over Easter, the default compensation from AWS to customers was 10 days hosting credit. I wonder if this fully compensates the the business loss incurred by their customers - and how many of them had DR/IT BCP plans in place.

Don't get me wrong ... similar to other "innovations" like SOA, BPO, BPM, Outsourcing, NearSourcing, Offshoring, NearShoring, and so on; I do like the promise of "Cloud" and can see many benefits; i just don't like its execution by the IT Industry.

And I strongly believe that you cannot assume, or belive the marketing hype, that Security becomes a non-issue. Ultimate responsibility for security and risk management remains that of the Customer - and they need to select the appropriate CSP which provides them with the most appropriate level of controls to their needs (insurance, contractual limtations/compensation, technical and policy monitoring/evaluation, etc).

Case in point: El Reg's reporting of the Virgin Blue downtime seems to indicate that they have good contractual obligations on Navitaire - i.e. the airline is due to be fully compensated for actual losses, including compensation given to VB's customers, plus additional charges on their IT Service Provider. I can't see anything approaching near this in the "Retail Cloud" space (e.g. Amazon, Google, Rackspace") ...

The Register and Australia-New Zealand

pingudownunder
Go

g'day mate

+1 for an Aussie Icon, love the idea of a 'roo with "WTF Mate?" above his head. And we better acknowlege our little brothers across the Tasman, maybe they can have a Kiwi bird with "sweet as, bro" or something.

An opt-out of local stories would be a good option too, we have a very amateurish, overhyping local commercial media (Channels 7, 9, 10, Fairfax and News Corp) who pander to the somebody-think-of-the-children brigade rather than objective and balanced news reporting. So we hear enough about our clueless pollies and their mad policies.

Our Government doesn't have a clue about ecommerce, the internet, law enforcement or anything such like. Probably because our PM is Welsh and our "Minister for IT" Chief Censor Conroy is a nutter from Oxford. Because we make them live in Canberra, it plays with their heads and sends them nuts.

Oh and to the commenter from Little England ... erm I mean Perth, here in Queensland we don't have any problems with Sydney. As long as its stays as far away as possible. (Except of course when we whip them again at State of Origin).

:-)

Telstra stirs NBN pot with 4G/LTE deployment announcement

pingudownunder
Thumb Up

Better the devil you know?

I'm a Pom by origin, but escaped the country and came to 'straya 7 years ago after a four year layover in La Republique du France. So I suffer mental scarring from the poor customer service and high prices of the privitised telcos of BT and France Telecom (avec l'orange).

Telstra have always followed in their footsteps. Proactively trying to destroy the information economy at the Consumer level by consistently high pricing at rip-off rates. Pricing of course is made up by rich suits in the Melbourne CBD, and mad CEOs who claim we are racist (Adios Amigo! Its because you're American ;-). But to be fair, they have an ageing infrastructure that has suffered from a lack of investment over a country the size of mainland Europe (ish); and have had to roll out the 850MHz NextG network at significant cost.

But you do get what you pay for. I am one of many who, in the CBD of Australia's third largest city (Brisbane) have been suffering at the hands of Vodafone whos crappy network and even worse customer service has been going downhill for the past two years, way before the "Infinate" plans were thought of. Optus/Virgin also have the same issues but have improved slightly.

Luckily after a polite letter or two, and making it known I am a signatory to www.vodafail.com, I've been released 22 months early from my contract; and I feel very dirty to have the word "Telstra" on my phone, but their wireless network coverage is reliable and acceptable. Hate to say it, but after the Vodafail experience, you do get what you pay for.

POTS-based ADSL is a joke in Australia; overly congested and most exchanges are oversubscribed. Multi-channel delivery of a full Fibre-based NBN and wireless network is the only way to go.

Until of course Senator Conroy (another Pom, from Oxford or somethere) forces through his draconian internet censorship plan and kills off what is left of IT investment in this Great Southern Land ...

New Aus PM may dump comms minister

pingudownunder
FAIL

Lundy is unlikely to replace Conroy :-(

as per this mornings media:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/217702,ludlam-change-in-comms-ministry-unlikely.aspx

and current ministerial allocations:

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/members/minlist.pdf

This is because of the recent NBN / Telstra "win" to leverage their existing infrastructure and ducts for the network.

Conroy still has the hearts and minds of the somebody-think-of-the-children and let-me-enforce-my-religious-and-family-first-views-on-you brigade, mostly out of Canberra and the local sensationalist media. He is also the primary reason why, IMHO, Australia is a laughing stock in the internet, e-commerce and IT industries.

I would be really keen to repatriate him to his country of origin.

Welsh yobs clobbered by cross-dressing cage fighters

pingudownunder
Happy

now i know why i left Britain

because there are drunken inbred twats around like those two. And they only got a 4 month cerfew. Probably will also get a trip to Centreparks thanks to the neer-do-well-bleeding-hearts brigade.

They should have got at least 20 years for the unforgivable crime of drinking cider. I stopped drinking that when i was about 12.

Whilst not one for vigilantes, i gotta also admit that justice is sweet in that case. The cage fighters should be given a knighthood.