Rob the Geek

Random Musings: a blog of technology things

  • Expiring Passwords

    Today there was a question pitched by one of the guys at work as to why we bother having such things as a password expiry / enforced change. My answer (in true Rob fashion), rambled a little (ok, a lot) but I’ve consolidated it below and made it generic to suit anyone facing the same […]

  • ASUS Garmin A10

    I got one of these phones when they first came out – they were pretty awesome back then, however over time they have been orphaned on older, vulnerable iterations of Android and they simply don’t have what it takes to be a primary device any longer. Because of this – I’m currently looking to root the phone and install upon it a modified ROM which will give me *just* what I need to turn this into a useful device for sitting in the car.

  • Authenticating Users – The Struggle to Raise the Bar

    Interesting quote from an article that I was reading this morning: “When creating a patient portal that provides access to electronic health records, healthcare organizations must educate patients about the need for authenticating their identities, says Sharp HealthCare CIO Bill Spooner. […] Spooner notes that some patients have complained that the authentication method for its […]

  • Interesting developments in the connectivity world…

    The Australian Government has just dropped the ban hammer on Chinese Telecommunications equipment company Huawei and it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out across the Tasman here in New Zealand… Given the traditional “copy our West Island cousins” approach versus the “but they’re part of a free trade agreement” view of […]

  • Going Dark…

    You may have noticed that I took the main page of this site offline yesterday and replaced it with this one as part of the Anti-SOPA protest… this post is not related to that action. Following a conversation yesterday, the social networks, communities and “non-standard” contact channels that I am active in will now see […]

  • The sky is NOT falling (is it?)

    The Summary Version: The impending Android Malware Apocalypse is overrated, over-hyped and overused to sell more apps and extend control onto mobile devices. That said, it is a perception widely pushed by the media who copy and paste vendor news releases thus the public are beginning to accept the threat as being real. My opinion […]

  • What’s the view like where YOU work?

    Wow… Check out this amazing time lapse shot from onboard the International Space Station between August and October 2011. Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo. Imagine having a view like that from your ‘office’ window 🙂 (Thanks to Steve for the Link)

  • Ubuntu Upgrade Day: 11.04 – 11.10 ‘Oneiric Ocelot’

    Yay! My favorite Linux distro gets a facelift today with Ubuntu 11.04 making way for the newly released version 11.10 ‘Oneiric Ocelot’. From past history lessons, I do tend to stray on the side of caution, so only one of my machines will be getting the upgrade treatment this week and I’ll hold off with the […]

  • The best exploits are old exploits

    Last week I had a really interesting meeting with one of the Security Advisors from Microsoft prior to the release of their Security Intelligence Report (SIR) – Volume 11. While we were specifically discussing different things in this meeting, one of the side conversations came back to the issues surrounding legacy software and it’s ongoing […]

  • Getting Ubuntu to Boot *AFTER* installing Windows 7

    From Google, and the various Linux community forums, this is a fairly common problem so, in an effort to be more useful than those who simply post a link to the GRUB man page, or an article which spells out how dumb it is to install Windows AFTER Ubuntu – I thought I’d drop my […]