"Could your business be paying for a proprietary program when an open source alternative exists? Take a look at our guide as we count down the most popular open source products."

This round-up on ZDNet of some of the most common Open Source products that are floating around the net is an excellent resource for anybody who wants to save a buck.

There's the usual linux distro's but there are also a few unheard of products that are very very good. It's great to see a personal favourite Open Source product of mine called FreeNAS getting a mention. Unfortunately no Firewall products were listed but they can't mention everything!. Have a read of the Round-Up and you may be surprised to find something very useful.

Google has finally released Google Street View to Australia. This is by far my fav website of the week.
As per usual there are plenty of people who are in an uproar about privacy and the usual stuff, but I say get over it.
This is fantastic technology, the amount of data that Google must store to generate seamless images is mind blowing. This adds another string to Google's bow in their dominance of the internet and the Web 2.0 era.

Security firm Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) -- the same company that discovered the first iPhone bug last year -- has successfully compromised a fully patched Apple MacBook Air at the CanSecWest competition, winning them US$10,000.

Although the competition recorded the hack taking eight minutes, Charlie Miller, a principal analyst with ISE, told ZDNet.com.au that it took just 30 seconds and was achieved using a previously unknown flaw in Apple's Web browser Safari.

A Fujitsu laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate was finally hacked 3 days later, when comp rules were reduced, by a previously undiscovered flaw in Adobe's Flash.
Finally a Sony Vaio laptop running Ubuntu survived the conference to come out unscathed.

I reckon it's about time the Mac Guy came of his perch and realise that a Mac is now no safer than a PC if it can be hacked within 30sec's....

The stated objective of FTTN is to provide 98% of Australians with internet speeds of 12 Mbps. The hard question most ask when the subject of FTTN is raised, is - "OK, but how much am I going to have to pay for it?".
This news article on the Internode website raises some interesting views on FTTN technology. Personally I'm hanging off going to ADSL2, as I'm waiting for the FTTN to be rolled out, as the cost to churn to ADSL2 doesn't appear to be worth it at this stage. But when FTTN is roled out, who is to say that you'll be charged at a premium price anyways.

The article can be found here.

The Node are set to raise their prices at the beginning of July. Why you may ask? - YouTube and Torrents are apparently to blame. That to me, as a loyal Internode customer sounds like a Telstra style excuse. I honestly don't see how downloading data within your monthly quota should warrant an increase in prices. If I go over the quota I get shaped which is my own fault. I find that I manage my quota per month very easily but by the looks of it I'm getting painted with the same brush as users who abuse their monthly alloted GB's, but that is their right to do so.

One price raise is ok Internode but another will be pushing the goodwill that you have built with me and your other customers.

You can find an article on ZDNet about the issue with some interesting reader's comments.
The full Internode briefing can be found here.