spoofedpacket

So April has rolled around again and it’s time for some new series - here’s some of the highlights, in no particular order:

First off the bat we have Code Geass R2 (April 7th?). This is probably the most anticipated show of the new season, I hope it delivers.

Then of course there’s, Golgo 13 (April 11th). Oh yeah. I believe this is the first TV outing for Duke Togo, he’s a good counterbalance to the glut of moe and dating sim shows this season I’ve been reading a lot of the Golgo 13 manga recently so I’m really looking forward to this one.

Macross Frontier (April 3rd) - We already had a sneak preview of the first episode back in December, the storyline appears to be direct remake of Macross 7. Episode 1 was pretty impressive and of course, it’s more Macross

Real Drive (RD Sennou Chousashitsu) (April 8th) : The latest Production IG/Masamune Shirow offering with some of the staff from the GITS TV series. Must watch:

“In 2061, 50 years after humanity developed the “Net society” that depended on information networks despite their security issues. To improve security, a new network called Meta Real Network — or “Metal” for short — was developed. People’s personal memories are reduced to information and placed within “protected virtual stand-alone organic cyber enclaves” called bubble shells online. The result was a virtual “explosion” of creative freedom as people felt safe enough to explore instincts and desires on Metal that they would not otherwise explore in real life. This “friction” between the Metal’s alluring lack of restrictions and rules-bound reality led to trouble and incidents that investigators known as “cyber divers” must handle. Masamichi Haru is one such cyber diver.”

Himitsu: Top Secret (April 8th).

“The story takes place five decades from now, when brain scanners have been perfected to the point that the government can retrieve up to five years’ worth of memories from people’s minds — even if they are dead. The investigators of the National Research Institute of Police Science’s 9th Forensics Laboratory must weigh the ethical choices in the ultimate invasion of privacy as they delve into people’s minds to solve crimes.”

Allison and Lillia (April 3rd): A World War II-type conflict has been going on for about a hundred years, two people set out to find a treasure (??) that can end the war. This looks quite impressive.

Toshokan Senseou (Library War) (April 10th): This is a quirky one, sounds like a cross between Fahrenheit 451 and Read or Die.

“Based on a light novel series by Arikawa Hiro, illustrated by Adabana Sukumo.

In the year 2019, the explosion of information and misinformation became a direct threat to society. In a daring decision, it was decided to create a new government agency dedicated solely to information management. Now some thirty years later, the government still monitors and controls information, suppressing anything they find undesirable, but standing against their abuses of power are the libraries, with their special agents called ‘the book soldiers.’”

Kaiba (April 10th): From the director of Mind Game and Cat Soup, produced by studio Madhouse (rock!).

“A sci-fi love story set in a world where digitization of memory made physical death obsolete. A world where memories can be stolen and altered, and replaced in a new human body. Kaiba wakes up in a room wthout knowing who he is. He has a pendant with the photograph of a woman he does not remember. After being attacked all of a sudden, he has to flee to space, meet various people, and rediscover the world.”

Kamen no Maid Guy (April 6th). Fist of the North Star meets He is My Master? This has the potential to be completely wretched or hilarious, or both:

“Fujiwara Naeka is a typical 17 year-old high school student. Or so we thought. She’s really one of two surviving heirs of a tycoon who has the right to inherit his mass fortune when she turns 18 in half a year. Fubuki, a young and beautiful maid, and Kogarashi, a big burly maid guy with a mask, have been assigned to keep Naeka and her brother Kousuke safe from those who would plot their demise, and to steal the fortune she would inherit.”

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the above series’, a more complete roundup can be found here (which the above is mostly based on).

So in North Dakota, you can apparently be prosecuted for conducting a DNS zone transfer:

“Ritz’s behavior in conducting a zone transfer was unauthorized within the meaning of the North Dakota Computer Crime Law.”

Interpreting that, it seems to say that you should not do a zone transfer without the expressed permission of the transferee (??) - whoever that may be. Many nameservers don’t restrict who can carry out a zone transfer, for legitimate reasons, but there’s no mechanism for explicitly getting the permission of someone in authority before doing so. Any such system would be unworkable.

But wait, there’s more, publishing the results of freely available whois data is also illegal:

“Ritz has engaged in a variety of activities without authorization on the Internet. Those activities include port scanning, hijacking computers, and the compilation and publication of Whois lookups without authorization from Network Solutions.”

The braindead statements above came from a court course filed by a spammer against the anti-spam activist David Ritz.

I gave a short 10 minute talk at the SAGE-IE meeting last night. It’s just a quick security update from HEAnet - what we’re seeing in the wild and some of the countermeasures we’ve been working on.

Move over iPod touch, the COLOSSAL mp3 player is the hottest accessory this Christmas. “YEAH I’M LISTENING TO MP3S!, YEAH..IT’S SHIT!”

Hot on the heels of the HMRC CD-ROMs-in-the-post incident earlier this week; AIB, BoI and Quinn Direct have admitted to sending customer details to the wrong people.

It seems to be catching…