Category: Technology

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Hacking Humor Technology

Gauteng Department of Local Government Site Hacked

News of the day is that the script kiddies have gotten hold of the admin passwords for Gauteng’s Department of Local Government content management system and decided to add some Arabic flavour.  A message “Hacked by CeCeN Hack Team” now greets visitors to the previously unknown site. The message extends further with:

“Allahu Ekber! denmark israel asshole Americas – 45 thousand people will give account – Hooray Chechnya”.

I like the background music though – that was a nice touch! Visit the site here or a screengrab here if it gets switched off.

Elaborate hoax
Industry experts, however, are calling the hack “an elaborate hoax”. Some claim the “hack” is simply a carefully crafted “viral marketing campaign” to try and get the website its first visitor. South Africa, they say, with a mere 400 000 broadband subscribers, simply has not had the internet penetration that would see people visiting a bland local government website instead of getting their usual facebook fix, and so a drastic approach was developed to pump up the traffic to the government site.

Only time will tell if the approach works, or if the site will simply return to its previous anonymity.

Categories
Entertainment Freedom Music Rants Security Technology

MusicDNA Is MusicDOA [Audio Format Foolishness]

MusicDNA

It’s sprayed all over the SA IT media: “MusicDNA will rescue the MP3 from oblivion”, “MusicDNA to succeed MP3“, “MusicDNA predicted to rival MP3“, “MusicDNA: New digital file that is son of MP3 unveiled“. And it’s all a crock of shit.

MusicDNA should be MusicDOA.

Why? Well firstly, (Mail and) Guardian, file formats are female, in the same way that LPs are female. They always have been, and always will be – ask any geek. So, if MusicDOA is the son of MP3, then it’s not a welcome part of the music family.

But issues of gender aside, Apple has already invented MusicDNA – they just called it the “iTunes LP“, a much nicer name. Bundling additional digital content and interweb-link-crud along with the MP3 is not the revolution. It’s not even a warning shot over the bow. It’s more like “a tribute to the zip archive”. Yet some musically challenged business-moron (Stefan Kohlmeyer, the chief executive of Bach Technology, which has developed the file) feels that *this*, a rehash of MP3, will save the record companies?

C’mon, guys, it’s already over. The music label is done. Over. Archaic. Closed. Piracy does and always will prevail. Artists will make money from performing. Additional revenue streams will open up here and there, but the giant middle-man of music has been turned away at the gates, left to wonder (and wander) at how they ended up hat-in-hand, shunned by the masses.

We simply don’t need another audio file format. MP3 / FLAC / AAC is probably good enough, until we have flying cars anyway. And we especially do not need another proprietary format that is riddled with DRM and all kinds of consumer-abusing mechanisms (think tracking cookies, spyware, behaviour profiling). And of course alongside this “MusicDNA archive” will be the potential to literally hack the shit out of the consumer who buys and uses it. No longer will viruses be delivered by email, but by iTunes (or equivalent) instead. If we ever do need another format, it will be open source, patent-free and flexible, such as Ogg Vorbis.

So here’s to MusicDOA and the millions of stupid dollars spent developing an obfuscated zip file. Well fucking done, clowns. When you’re done pissing money away, please build me my flying car.

Categories
Computing Rants Technology

Namebench Shows iBurst DNS slowness

I just downloaded and installed Namebench, a new open source project that benchmarks DNS servers, with a view of seeing how well my DNS is performing these days. All of these developments stem from the recent launch of Google’s public DNS service and the sudden realisation that a large part of the reason for interweb slowness, if you’re not in Africa, is the length of time it takes for a DNS query to complete. I do most of my mobile connectivity via iBurst, so I guess I like them to be speedy, unfortunately as the results below show, my closest DNS provider, my ISP, iBurst, has really bad average DNS response times…


And it’s got fuck all to do with latency over a wireless link – the same connection shows an average DNS response time that is 217% faster from Datapro, and MTN just a little bit behind that. It’s the Windows servers iBurst is using to try run an ISP. Sad.

All I can say is I won’t be using iBurst’s DNS servers anymore, unless I *really* have to. But wait a minute, if I don’t need them to waste money on DNS infrastructure anymore, so why should I be paying them for it?
(Yes, I’m bitching and moaning – I’m tired of being served shit. I want more, better and cheaper).
Categories
Computing Technology

Google Launches Maps for South Africa [Officially]

“As of today, new detailed maps of many South African cities and towns, including Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and East London, are accessible on Google Maps through any web browser or via Google Maps for Mobile on dataZAmaps_logo_lg enabled handsets.  Although already available in South Africa, the map data has been improved dramatically and is now available with additional features.  In addition to searching online Maps, Google Maps users will now be able to find businesses and check driving directions.  Businesses will be able to add their own business listings for free via Google Maps Local Business Centre.

The map data includes a substantial amount of user generated content provided via Google Map Maker as well as thousands of business listings for South African cities.” Blah blah blah….

What the hell, let’s go check out the changes… maps.google.co.za.

Oh, and they have a “Google Maps stalker mode” too…

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Categories
Freedom Technology Web

The Big Broadband Battle Begins

Partial map of the Internet based on the Janua...
Image via Wikipedia

I can hardly contain my excitement: R145 for 5GB! Kick ASS! Competition in the broadband market? Cheaper prices? I think I just peed my pants.

I’m just posting it straight here: (source)

Afrihost set to shake up ADSL market with R 29.00 per GB ADSL service

Local hosting company Afrihost has released the proverbial cat among the pigeons with its R 29.00 per GB ADSL offering.  The company today announced that it has cut the price of its ADSL data bundles from R 57 per GB to R 29 per GB.

Afrihost’s 1 GB data bundle now costs R 29.00 per month while the company’s 2 GB, 3 GB and 5 GB ADSL data bundle pricing has been reduced to R 58, R 87 and R 145 respectively.  Data top-ups have fallen to R29 per GB and their prepaid data lowered to R49 per GB.

The ADSL bandwidth is provisioned over the Internet Solutions backbone and all accounts come standard with email accounts and webmail access.  The accounts are month-to-month contracts with no long term lock-ins.

“With our new offer we wanted to make as BIG a splash as possible and give the most value to our clients – so after much debating and calculating we decided to go as low as we can go,” explains Afrihost CEO Gian Visser.

Afrihost made it clear that it is a limited offer aimed at early adopters.  “Remember we can’t guarantee that we will offer this R29.00 deal forever – but what we can guarantee you is that if you are quick enough and signup in time then your price of R29 per GB will be locked in for whatever package you bought,” Visser said.

Existing Afrihost ADSL clients may be happy to hear that their subscription price has also been changed to R 29.00 per GB.

Thank you Afrihost. Much love. Let us hope others follow where you have led the way.

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