The Millennium Trilogy is a series of three bestselling novels written by Stieg Larsson. The novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, were first published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively.

The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory whose social skills are rather poor. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist, a celebrity in his own right, and has a history not totally dissimilar to Larsson's own.

The trilogy has been made into three films:

• The first Män som hatar kvinnor (literally Men Who Hate Women or as the book is known in English-speaking markets The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) is available on DVD, but in Swedish with Scandinavian and English languages subtitles only.
• The second, Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire), had a cinema release on September 18, 2009.
• The third, Luftslottet som sprängdes (literally The Air Castle That Exploded, but known in English-speaking markets as The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest) had a cinema release on November 27, 2009.

Larsson wrote about three quarters of a fourth novel before his sudden death in November 2004. His partner, Eva Gabrielsson, possesses the notebook computer with the manuscript; outlines or manuscripts for one or two more books may exist.^[1][2]

Interesting dilemma on the train this morning, and it didn’t have anything to do with the route being changed from the timetable route, nor that it had fewer carriages than what is the schedule.

No the dilemma has nothing to do with State Rail still fiddling with their broken timetable 4 months after introducing it and spending more of our money on their celebration parties.

On the ride this morning we enjoyed another passenger who was walking up and down the carriages begging for some of our ‘spare change.’ with the Guard station cutting the carriages into two disconnected cars, that’s 2 carriages he wandered up and down.

In the hustle and bustle of our lives, what do we have to offer those less fortunate. In what manner can we meaningfully contribute? Would giving cash hand outs contribute, or is it more practical to do something else.

The old guy seems lucid enough and isn’t seeking anything but money (and he knows his time on the train is limited until a guard finds out he’s riding free.) He’s bundled warm enough for the weather, for now during the day, but he’s got to have a base somewhere or he’s freezing at night. (Freezing to death at night seems more likely?)

Is our personal standards for ‘contribution’ too rigid a system, or do we just not have the flexibility to consider each applicant as they come?

Which homeless centre cares for this man? Which Church or private organisation disassociated from me helps this man? What will he have to eat this morning, day. Will he eat at all?

While we listen and focus on the human tragedy that is Haiti, what would you do on an encounter like this much closer to home?

The flight route was a little awry, handling four little kids at the airport means whatever time you have left to get to the gate, isn’t enough.

At Sydney airport Sesilia wanted to go to the toilets, so we split up after customs and ‘Ofa took off with Sesilia to find the toilets while I gathered what was left of the unpacked carry-on and shuttled the two elder ones to our gate (and geezzz how far away it was.)

Renovation work at Sydney International meant that we entered the ‘system’ at one end, to find the gate was at the ‘other’ end of the gate system.

They closed the boarding gate behind us, as the last travellers down the ramp.

In Auckland.

Disembarking in Auckland was another adventure with Sisitoutai needing to go to the toilet so we split again, going separate ways to find toilets.

After those niceties out of the way, the gate allocation doesn’t exist for the flight from Auckland to Tonga, but we observe a number of the ‘mob’ hanging around a general area.

Aahhh, this must be where the frequent flyers hang-out.

1st Night.

One has  but to experience each time, reminders are not enough.

Other than meeting the clan again, having a huge ‘umu dinner at 10:00 at night (wonder why Tongans are big?,) the memorable thing about returning was that first night-time shower.

I near dislocated my shoulders flapping my hands scrubbing like mad in the vain hope to fool my body into thinking that we were actually warm and the buttocks et. al. were not really freezing cold from the water.

There was a quick cure to laziness. Note to self: for the rest of the stay, revert to the hot water in bucket to warm up the cold water and bath from the bucket.

Lesson #1: Learn how to bath from a bucket in the comfort of your shower with running hot-water.

1st Day.

Were we supposed to have done something today ? Most things disappeared in a haze since we’re quite jet lagged from caring for the kids and the mad rush.

 

Had the obligatory visit to the clan coinciding with (surprise?) a huge ‘umu lunch and the obligatory spit-pig. Whilst those who can control themselves waited for lunch, the younger generation mum’s gorged themselves on the poor pig, leaving the other meat nice and intact.

The young kids were practising their dance for the gathering, although it seemed that at this rate, 100 dances will have been tried, and none known by the day. Music was hip to listen to.

 

We have the obligatory banana under the mango tree, and Sesilia was on our third trip to get more bananas when we had the uncomfortable experience of being snapped by one of the dogs. Mangy mutt masquerading as a nice dog snuck up quietly and took a big bite on my leg. Mangy critter didn’t even growl until after he’d taken his bite.

Fortunately the bite went on two layers of pants cloth and didn’t draw blood (or infect) but geezzz dogs have a strong jaw snap.

Lesson #2: Dogs that bite don’t always growl before they bite you.

2nd Day.

Quick Note: We’re tying up the dogs, and in the process we get a daylight snap.

Dog #2 takes another snap. Broad daylight attack, we’ve finished tying up the placid nice dog when another dog walks around me quietly and takes a snap.

Not as good a grab at me as the previous bite, but no pants in the way so this bite took some blood if not flesh.

Lesson #3: Wear long pants around dogs, something strong like corduroy/denim seems a good idea.

An interesting announcement in Tonga letting organisations register themselves online. Great new service feature although of what little I know of the business’ in Tonga the number of organisations who are capable of taking advantage of this new service has to be significantly and there are a number of alternative IT services that could have been instigated (at a lower cost) with higher value for both the Government and Private Sector.

Tonga’s Electronic Company Registry, 1st in the Pacific Goes Live Today

Tuesday, 01 December 2009 14:36 administrator GOVERNMENT - Ministries & Departments

1 December 2009

Today, the Ministry for Labour, Commerce & Industries announced …the launching of the new electronic company registry. The Registry, the first of its kind for a sovereign nation in the Pacific, simplifies business registration procedures and reduces the time it takes to start a business.

…

"The system makes it easier for business to register and, once they do, will house their records securely and safely online," …

Tonga is the first nation in the Pacific to have such an electronic registry, and this system is based on the same software used in the New Zealand Companies Office. Firms bringing in their registration documents will have the paperwork entered into the electronic system by Ministry staff …

To ensure all records are transferred online, the Tongan government requires all companies to re-register within six months. …

ENDS

Issued by the: Ministry of Labour, Commerce and Industries, Nuku'alofa.

Just to be pedantic.

IFC, financed by the World Bank and New Zealand, modifies software the New Zealand Government has already paid for. Implements this in Tonga as part of New Zealand’s and WB general Pacific Aid program. I hope this was a ‘grant.’

It’s good to see they’ve gone for implementing something that already ‘works’ and hopefully there were enough skills on both sides (from their side and our side, [however that’s defined]) to make sure the idiosyncrasies of the local populace are adapted into the ‘system.’ (And I don’t mean liliu faka-tonga ee ngaahi fo’i lea fakapapalangii.)

Security ? Did anyone mention Security ?

It seems the above package is such a great deal, they the Government of Tonga has to relinquish all control of the system and let it be operated in “New Zealand.” The press releases aren’t too clear on the details, but for some absurd reason recent hacks on Australian Government websites do not preclude me from thinking that just because the stupid thing is in New Zealand isn’t going to make it any more secure than the Tongans in New Zealand?

Did we not just get a security alert this month regarding Man in the Middle Hijack’s of HTTPS (SSL) connections ? Warnings only came out last month (November) has the ‘system’ been updated and tested.

OpenSSL TLS Session Renegotiation Plaintext Injection Vulnerability

A vulnerability has been reported in OpenSSL, which can be exploited by malicious people to manipulate certain data.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the TLS protocol while handling session re-negotiations. This can be exploited to insert arbitrary plaintext before data sent by a legitimate client in an existing TLS session via Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks.

Successful exploitation may allow e.g. sending an arbitrary HTTP request under an authenticated context if certificate-based authentication is used by the server.

English Translation: Secured web access is a fat dream until this is fixed.

When the next big vulnerability occurs, is there a reputable process for reviewing the risks and implementing a change process, or do we just cross our fingers and hope the whackers go somewhere else?

It would be sad to hear that Tonga also becomes the 1st country in the Pacific with it’s electronic Company Registry republished out of Russia.

Not that we’re too used with Government sharing information about the risks they' are taking with our private data, but this project is rather extensive in the private information they store and make available on the Internet. It may have been a good time to be ahead of the game in having some processes and audit systems in place ?

Australia and New Zealand have their ISO standard 27001:2006 that provides a framework to maximise security of the service and your private data. Do Tonga corporations deserve the same level of protection, or is it OK to let it slide in the Pacific?

Don’t worry, they won’t notice.

Very near and recent security breaches include:

Hacked: Ministry of Information, Tonga (Today Dec 1st) – Joomla website (nice and beautiful Web Content Management System, but seems to be high on the list of hackable systems with plenty of security alerts every week.)

Joomla seems to be the flavour of the month with the Government of Tonga at the moment (“it’s easy”) so hopefully the crude, rude statement above doesn’t start showing up on the rest of the unpatched systems for Tonga.

And don’t even go to one of those links to the site, just don’t do it until the site is fixed.

Hacked: Australian Prime Minister’s Website (September, 2009)

The prime minister's website has been hacked into in protest over proposed reforms of internet censorship.

The website, www.pm.gov.au, was brought down at about 7.20pm (AEST) on Wednesday night along with that of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, but both were back online about an hour later.

Hacked: JB Hifi (Today Dec 1st, 2009)

JB Hi-Fi's websites in Australia and New Zealand were redirecting customers to malicious web pages over the weekend in a cyber attack in the lead-up to Christmas.

The exact details of the attack are not yet clear as the retailer has refused to comment but users first started reporting problems on Friday night.

Visitors to jbhifi.com.au reported being automatically redirected to Chinese websites carrying malware. Similar issues affected JB Hi-Fi's New Zealand website, which is hosted on the same server.

Those with anti-virus software and fully patched internet browsers would have been alerted to the security issue upon visiting the page but people without up-to-date protection could be infected without even knowing.

Liability, Culpability

And what happens when after repeated concerns from company clients, data loss continues to leak and damage occurs to the a company through this data loss?

News this week points at Restaurants in the USA suing the vendor of a credit payment point of sale device that allowed identities of clients to be stolen costing these restaurants millions in penalties, operational reviews,

Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online

Restaurants Sue Vendor for Unsecured Card Processor

Seven restaurants have sued the maker of a bank card-processing system for failing to secure the product from a Romanian hacker who breached their systems.

The restaurants, located in Louisiana and Mississippi, have filed a class-action suit against Georgia-based Radiant Systems for producing a point-of-sale (POS) system that they say was not compliant with payment card industry security standards and resulted in an undetermined number of customers having their debit and credit card numbers stolen.

Something seems to have gone without mention on the globe. Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23075, as accounted for in the cooked roms from xda-developers.com … supports flash!!

Woo hoo, now I can just click through on my mobile to flash video content and just watch it there on my phone.

 

• Windows Mobile 6.5 build 23075
• Internet Explorer
  • ROMs HTC Elfin (Miky, AHEN)

No one seems to have made any noise about this, but the Zune HD browser doesn’t support watching videos (strange for a music/video/entertainment device) so here’s hoping that Microsoft will soon release a firmware update to resolve this abnormality.

Edit, (cue: some hours later) I guess I should get more intimate with mobile tech. It seems that what I am observing is not flash players, but some sort of integration of Youtube Player and IE. I tried one of my other online video haunts (http://www.stupidvideos.com) and things weren’t so moviesh.

The world economic crisis led by Bankers’ greed must have hit Tonga pretty badly this year.

The past week led to 2 visits by Tupou College ex-Students, apparently representing interests of another college in Tonga (Mo’unga’olive.)

Our first guests visited upon us a bag/tangai full of frozen cassave/manioke.

The economic downturn must really be bad in Tonga, ‘cause I can assure you that after hours of cooking that manioke, the thing was still as solid as a block of ice. I hope my dad didn’t pay as much for it as I expected.

Ko e manioke ni ia na’a mo e puaka ‘e hehengi ke kai mei ai.

The bag is in the deep freezer while we gradually whittle it down into our rubbish pick-up.

Our second visit was from a senior member of the Mo’unga’olive College, enroute to pester and bribe someone else.

Unfortunately for us he offloaded some smoked fish / ika masima, and dried octopi, feke momoa. To add salt to the injury, insult, he then turned around and said:

‘Oku fiema’u ‘eku Powerpoint, projector ke ngaue’aki. Keke feinga’i mai ee?

Tali: Mahalo ko ha lea ena ke ke fai ki ha’o fa’ee tangata ?

It’s a good thing the Minister came with others who respected him or he would have gotten a significantly disrespectful mouthful. By all accounts, something this Minister needs in quantity.

Food not fit for pigs = $100+

1 dried octopi, 5 smoked fish = 1 computer projector =~ $600 ?

How expensive has life become in Tonga, or more importantly how much is the cost of honesty?

If the church leads in amoral behaviour in Tonga, is the economic crisis, or political crisis less a danger?

From: Talanoa Oceania [mailto:talanoaoceania@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 05, 2009 10:40 AM
To: Tasilisili
Cc: jione havea
Subject: FW: An Old Monkey Story With A New Ending

Hange eni ha talanoa mei Initia!

A hat-seller who was passing by a forest decided to take a nap under one of the trees, so he left his whole basket of hats by the side. A few hours later, he woke up and realized that all his hats were gone.. He looked up and to his  surprise, the tree was full of monkeys and they had taken all his hats.

The hat seller sits down and thinks of how he can get the hats down. While thinking he started to scratch his head. The next moment, the monkeys were doing the same.

Next, he took down his own hat, the monkeys did exactly the same. An idea came to his mind.

He took his hat and threw it on the floor and the monkeys did that too. So he finally managed to get all his hats back.

Fifty years later, his grandson, also became a hat-seller
and had heard this monkey story from his grandfather.

One day, just like his grandfather, he passed by the same forest. It was very hot, and he took a nap under the same tree and left the hats on the floor.

He woke up and realized that all his hats were taken by the monkeys on the tree. He remembered his grandfather’s words, started scratching his head and the monkeys followed. He took down his hat and fanned himself and again the monkeys followed.

Now, very convinced of his grandfather's idea, he threw his hat on the floor but to his surprise, the monkeys still held on to all the hats..

Then one monkey climbed down the tree,

We got late to church by about 10 minutes on Sunday so whilst we walked in the congregation and choir finished off the 1st hymn and we walk into the introductory/evocation(?) prayer.

Looking around, it looks as if we are early with nearly half the space still available.

The ‘setuata’ (head steward) starts his prayer and after a few nods, he’s still going. At the end of the program, it seems quite real that this prayer was the longest thing out.

I remember, in an earlier life, walking into another church service, in another town. The congregation were ‘tardy’ in getting to the service, I think we had visiting speakers that day, and when the chair of the program started with prayer, he prayed on and on and on, until the church was filled up.

Must have been some powerful prayers that day. This day, no one came in after us. God must have been out ?

OpenBSD Fanboys woke up to this year’s NOC report from Defcon 2009 with some vindication, validation, and just general “whooo haaaaa”

Wired Magazine recently updated their ‘coverage’ of the network construction for Defcon 2009 Las Vegas under the title “Inside the worlds most hostile network”, a follow-up to 2008’s “A First ever look inside the Defcon Network Operations Center” with a clientele that lists:

* circa 10,000 hackers, crackers, feds, spies, corporates, and noobs

* 100 GB Internet download traffic in 2 days

To cater for the connectivity requirements of this hostile collection (excluding voice services, presumably.) The Goons set up:

* 50 wireless access points, each in their VLAN

* 25 wired VLANs

* Mirrored ports for general access to monitoring traffic

* Secured Toilet and Sink (critical)

* Physical separation of sensitive equipment

* Ceiling access (to place and secure the wireless access points)

* Cables

* Booz (better known as liquid refreshments)

The amazing thing are the people/Goons who put the system together, and their choice of tools shortlisted to being:

* 50 wireless access points, Aruba (AP-70 noted as the model for 2008)

* Aruba Rack (handles encryption et. al. for access points)

* OpenBSD pf – firewall

* Cacti for GUI monitoring

Whoo haaa