Archive for September, 2009
Bullying ‘mostly old school, not cyber’
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Film studios drop more of iiNet case
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009in brief The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft's (AFACT) legal action over iiNet's alleged breach of copyright took a further watering down today as the film studios removed the "primary" copyright infringement claim.
iiNet said in a statement that the dropped claim alleged that the ISP made copies of the films and demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of internet technology and operations.
A spokesperson for AFACT said that the authorisation claim, not the copying claim, has always been the main focus of the case for AFACT and that AFACT is so confident in the authorisation claim that it feels it doesn't need the subsidiary claims.
The ISP said it will be seeking costs for today's withdrawal and was "ready and eager" to have the case heard. The start of the hearing is set for Tuesday, 6 October. AFACT did not respond to a request for comment.
This is not the first time a claim has been removed by AFACT in this case, in May a claim of conversion was dropped.
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Police officer distributed data
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009in brief A NSW police officer has been charged for illegally accessing restricted data on a police computer system and passing it onto a third party.
The senior constable was attached to Sydney's North Western Metropolitan Region, but police said he had been working with the Northern Region stretching from the Central Coast to the Queensland border.
"It will be alleged that the officer accessed and obtained details from a police computer system and provided that information to a third party," police said in a statement. "The officer has been suspended from duty."
He was issued with a court attendance notice on Monday for accessing and distributing the restricted data. He will appear at Gosford Local Court on December 15.
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Mac Uni nabs CIO from Objective
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Macquarie University has nabbed Marc Bailey, the chief technology officer of content management software Objective, to be its new chief information officer.
The CIO role was created after the university's existing IT director Mary Sharp left earlier this year to take up a similar role at the University of Newcastle. In a statement, Macquarie University chief operating officer Peter Dodd praised Bailey, saying the institution was "extremely fortunate" to have secured him for the role. He will commence his role on 6 October.
"IT is of critical importance to Macquarie's 32,000 students and 4000 staff, and the many user groups have quite specialised needs — from campus Wi-Fi and online lectures to resource-intensive research databases," said Dodd.
"The role has been expanded to include responsibility for overseeing records and archives," Dodd added. "This acknowledges its important role of providing information services to, and organising historical information for, the university as a whole, and ensures that the need for adequate archiving of electronic records will be addressed in information planning."
Bailey has two decades' worth of experience in the IT sector, working at all levels of government in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales, and even the European Union. He has also provided consulting services to various large organisations such as Cisco Systems, Apple, Microsoft, Telstra, optus, American Express and GlaxoSmithKline.
His appointment comes as Macquarie University has been highly active in the past few years in developing its IT infrastructure.
For example, in July Macquarie contracted Avaya to provide it with a 6000-seat IP telephony roll-out, and in late 2007 the institution took the brave step of becoming the first university in Australia to roll out Google's online email and office software platform to students.
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New pacemaker can SMS the doctor
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Harris Farm replaces 25-year-old system
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Harris Farm's 25-year-old in-store integrated retailing system was "creaking at the joints", it said this week, prompting the grocery chain to modernise, moving to a newer Microsoft platform to manage its whole supply chain.
Harris Farm CIO Mark Hudson
(Credit: Mark Hudson)
The chain had 10 more stores than the old system could handle, according to Harris Farm CIO Mark Hudson. IBM, NCR and electronic scale manufacturer Toledo had worked together between 1981 and 1983 on a system that could connect a cash register to a scale. The code developed for that AS/400 mainframe-based system was the code the firm was largely running on now, according to Hudson. "It was 10 years ahead of its time," he said.
The problem was that the stores started carrying more and more food outside its normal fresh fruit and vegetables, increasing the number of product lines to 5000 or 6000. There were also problems because the purchasing was being carried out in a very ad-hoc manner: either suppliers would arrive at the store and notice that their goods were out of stock so they would deliver some, or managers would call or SMS. There was any number of mistakes which could occur, according to Hudson, such as double ordering.
Harris Farm put out a request for proposals, and decided in the end to go with Microsoft's Dynamic NAV platform, which was being offered by Microsoft partner Hands-on Systems. Hudson said Hands-on Systems had experience with Macro Whole Foods (since bought by Woolworths) on its resume — a company considered to be very similar to Harris Farm. Harris Farm also liked the fact that Hands-on Systems was offering Microsoft, which gave the company the feeling that it would bend over backwards for it.
The new system will handle Harris Farm's whole process, from stocktake, merchandising and sales to warehousing and supply chain, Hudson said — giving the company full stock control. Business intelligence at the desktop would give the company a view over purchase and sale prices as well as orders. In-store staff would be able to interact with the system via handheld Windows Mobile devices, three to four for each of the 22 stores. Purchase orders would be received electronically at the warehouse.
Hudson has three of his five IT staff working on the project as well as two contractors and 10 to 11 workers from Hands-on Systems. The system and integration deal has cost the company $900,000 and he expected to spend at least that again on his side, bringing the cost of the implementation to around $2 million. Hudson believed the company would achieve return on investment in two years.
As yet, Hudson has only implemented the financials portion of the system, but is already seeing some benefits. Staff — instead of entering information manually into the AS/400 platform as well as into MYOB — now only have to enter the information into the old system, which has been integrated with the new financials. This has meant less mistakes made because of illegible or ignored notations.
The next step is to implement the purchase order part of the system, which will bring the most benefits. It will start with a pilot in the next few weeks, followed by implementing the system for the warehouse products in October, then that for fresh products and in store integration, which are both scheduled to start in November.
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