http://www.jquirke.com.au Technical & personal postings Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:36:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Given how appalled I am by this whole attempt to "censor" the Internet, and for those who are having trouble accessing wikileaks, I post wikileaks list of the ACMA's supposed blacklist of banned sites. The original can be found here. Unfortunately I cannot test these links out as I'm not in Australia. The ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2009/03/24/australias-acma-secret-blacklist/ Now that my Dell Axim's USB dock has failed (which a quick forum search indicates to be the norm for this product), I need a way to ActiveSync it with my laptop. Bluetooth is one such option - and gives the additional benefit that I don't need to carry a ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/28/activesync-over-bluetooth-with-high-port-numbers/ Some photos from my trip to Bateman's Bay, on the magnificent New South Wales coast south of Wollongong. By coach it's about 2 hours from Canberra. http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/22/batemans-bay/ On various web sites today [boingbong, slashdot] it has been reported that the AACS (the copy protection scheme used in Blu-ray and HD-DVD) "processing key" has been found and the scheme has been fully broken. Whilst this is the next logical step after finding title keys the scheme is far from ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/14/aacs-processing-key-found-but-scheme-not-broken/ I, like many other people, have a bunch of USB hardware hanging off a hub. It's a powered hub, but one that can run without external power if you are running low current drawing devices. Since I'm on a laptop setup, this is great as it's one less power adapter ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/14/usb-hubs-malfunctioning-after-power-surge/ A look at the algorithm at the heart of AACS copy protection’s revocation scheme A lot of technical and mainstream media attention has recently turned towards the ‘cracking’ of the AACS copy protection on next generation media distribution formats Blu-ray and HD-DVD. In actual fact nothing has been cracked – all that ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/12/aacss-subset-cover-scheme-explained/ Last week Singtel/Optus announced it would be expanding UMTS (the dominant 3G standard worldwide) into regional/rural Australia, to compete against the "incumbent" (as they call Telstra). Let's delve into some technical details on this topic. Optus are investigating the possibility of deploying UMTS in the recently defined UMTS Band VIII (NodeB ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/09/optus-umts900/ As you may already know, Optus operate a UMTS2100 3G network in addition to their GSM900/1800 network. In fact those Optus 2G customers that have bought a recent UMTS-capable phone may have noticed that they are using the 3G network in many cases when in urban areas despite not actually ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2007/02/07/optus-umts-data-for-so-called-2g-users/ Being in South East Queensland at the moment, with limited access to dial-up, I decided it would be the perfect opportunity to try out Vodafone’s data bundles, which are described here . Now my standard provider I use for light GPRS usage, Optus, charges 0.55c/kB (decreasing to 0.33c/kB as usage increases) ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2004/12/29/vodafone-gprs-unlimited-pack/ If you happened to find yourself in an emergency situation, it’s quite possible that you, or someone with you has a mobile phone to call for help. But many people do not know that with GSM phones it is a little more complicated than dialing 000. In fact, there is ... http://www.jquirke.com.au/index.php/2004/02/18/mobile-phone-emergency-calls-in-australia/