Colin Charles Agenda

Reading Dave Hall’s experience with 3, I can attest to their horrendous service. I never looked at Virgin offering cheap rates, but from their website, it seems that on a post-paid account, I can get 300MB of data for $10/month. I’m currently paying 3 $29 for 200MB of data (and yes, they’re cheaper than what Optus can offer).

Which certainly has me interested in becoming a Virgin post-paid customer. From their website, it seems that if I just want a SIM, I’ll be a pay as you go customer. Which works out well for me, as all I really want is data + any excess (at 1.5c/KB).

However, what Express Card can I buy outright or via eBay, that will work with Linux (and preferably, OS X)? The Novatel Merlin U530 that Dave has is a PCMCIA card, not something that most newer laptops have. What are my ExpressCard options? And does Virgin charge for roaming rates? 3 charges you extra if you’re not within their 3 Broadband Zone and are Roaming [via Telstra]. 3’s advertised MobileBroadband card now apparently offers an Express Card option.

Technorati Tags: data, 3g, virgin, 3, expresscard

When it came to an OpenOffice.org related presentation, my slide deck always contained a mention about security. However, as it gains in popularity, and a more bloated (read: MS Office-compatible) feature set, security alone is not going to be a selling point. In fact, when it comes to OSS advocacy, the word “free” (or the idea of zero/minimal cost) is also not a large selling point, neither is the “you can view the source code” (erm, yeah, so what do I do with it?). But I’ll save that rant for another day.

It seems there’s an OpenOffice.org worm in the wild, that affects Windows, Linux and Mac OS X systems. BadBunny as it has affectionately become known, comes to you as an OpenOffice.org Draw file, which displays a man in a bunny rabbit suit engaging in sexual intercourse. While you see this, its launching mIRC or XChat (on OS X and Linux) and forwarding it to other IRC users. Assuming you don’t have IRC installed, this shouldn’t do anything, right?

Apparently, not only does BadBunny come with some StarBasic, it also has got some other evil components that use JavaScript on Windows, Ruby on OS X and Perl for Linux. I wonder, why they just didn’t use JavaScript across the board? Why Ruby on OS X (Perl would’ve sufficed). Seems very odd, the choice of multiple languages.

This is largely a proof of concept, but it just goes to show that no matter what you’re running, its a good idea to practice safe computing practices. What peeved me though was a quote from Sophos in heise Security:

If the BadBunny developers had any financial intentions, they would have selected a more popular software structure and not included bizarre images, Sophos adds.

Is OpenOffice.org a non-popular software structure? I highly doubt it. Writing virii is like a coming of age present for some, and while OpenOffice.org was ignored as a suitable platform, its being recognised now. Mohandas Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” I think OpenOffice.org is at stage 3 (not just because of the virus writers, but also because of the plight towards ODF).

Technorati Tags: openoffice, openoffice.org, badbunny, worm, macro, starbasic, cross-platform, windows, linux, macosx