Month: June 2005

Categories
Security

SAA = Stow Away Aboard???

I was not going to post any comment on the story of a stowaway hiding in the wheel-well of an SAA aircraft flying from Johannesburg via Dakar to New York City, and then I realised I had to. There is a profound security issue here. The fact that the stowaway managed to get that close to the plane is very scary and SAA should rethink their security at dodgy airports (I’m assuming that Dakar airport is dodgy). Hell, in a post-911 world, heads should roll and big fat fines should be handed out.

What is the point of scanning me down to my underpants inside the airport building, taking retina scans, fingerprints, stealing my nail clippers – name your invasive technique, when someone could potentially just walk up to the wheels of the plane and do their evil deed. I guess this fits right in there with Bruce Schneier‘s comments on Billions Wasted on Anti-Terrorism Security.

Think about it – replace one times frozen stowaway with one times time-delayed bomb and that plane could have “Lockerbied” all over Long Island and JFK airport. That would have been rather grim.

Categories
Entertainment

YaWN – Yet Another Wedding Night

In truth, Saturday evening’s wedding of two new friends of mine at L’Aquila near Pretoria turned into a lot of fun. It started a little late because the brother of the bride went missing, but in the end it all turned out very well.

I even had the opportunity to practise my “langarm” and “sokkie” skills… (a high-paced, high-energy dancing technique made popular by Afrikaans South Africans – think ballroom dancing on speed without the accuracy in footsteps and with a lot less grace).

This “windsurfing”, as I prefer to call it, is extremely popular and any South African male will probably be initiated into this style very early on in life. If he isn’t, he’d better steer clear of the dance floor – it’s a war zone out there – and like me, will have to catch up as soon as any friend who is Afrikaans gets married.

Categories
Entertainment Music

Saving Silence at Charelli’s

Last night’s adventures turned into an unexpected treat – Brad and I went out for what was supposed to be a quick drink at Charelli’s – and discovered a great rock band playing there. Saving Silence is a 5 piece outfit boasting powerful melodic rock, solid acoustic guitarwork and a few edgy twists in their set too.

Highlights of the performance were the ballad written for a cousin’s wedding (unfortunately the lead singer tended to mumble the song names), the funky reggae tune where they bring on the rapper, and a cover of ACDC’s Thunderstruck on acoustic. Very good stuff. Their album is due out around August.

As a side note, I like the idea of a good black rapper heading up a straight-laced rock band. Serious rock with just a hint of funkiness through rap, kwaito, R&B and soul could do very well in South Africa, targeting the right combination of audiences. This sort of collaboration has to be done right, in the same way it was with “Can you feel it building?” by Tweak, Pro-Verb and Josie. Artists, are you listening?

Categories
Computing

Level 2 LPI Certification Achieved!

I’ve just received news that I passed both my LPI level 2 exams I recently wrote at LinuxWorld. That rocks!

Feel free to verify my certs here.

Categories
Computing

Bold Office Moves – The Empire Strikes Back

So according to the folks at Channel9, Microsoft has just announced their new XML-based file formats. This goes a long way towards finally reaching a documentation standard for all office suite vendors. No doubt OpenOffice will be able to read these documents (the idea for zipped XML was swiped from them anyway) , as will KOffice and AbiWord et al.

What worries me now is that in effect Microsoft has very cleverly made themselves the standards-owner for XML documents. Notice that they did not fully comply with any third party XML format – they made their own. By opening their format to a “friendly XML format” and using the weight of 400 million users they can now more easily dictate what happens in this space, and others will feel compelled to be compatible because the format is an open one.

Very, very clever Darth Sidious. Now quick, go build a DEATHtoSTARoffice.