Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 14 Feb 2001
Note: the comments below are the unedited submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
From: Tom Vavasour
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Domainz

I went to domainz to check on a domain name and discovered
I could not use the site unless I had cookies enabled. In 5
years of surfing I have only accumulated around 5 sites I
routinely allow cookies for, so instead of enabling cookies
for domainz I accepted manually each repeated attempt to
set one only to discover that the only cookie they were
setting was "cookies enabled = true"

I suppose I should regard this as trivial, but for some
reason such unnecessary stupidity annoys the hell out of
me. I can't even look at the home page of the people who
manage nz domain names unless I let them write "cookies
enabled = true" to my computer

bugger that for a game of soldiers.




From: next2normal
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: freenet 10 free hours  please pay in advance

freenet 10 free hours  please pay in advance is this for
real whats wrong with 10 hours first then pay for more when
need dumping the free loaders pay by cheque and they want 3
months in advance i want my 10 hours please




From: Michael Foreman
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: The Question That Wasn't Asked

Hi Bruce

Re: The Question That Wasn't Asked

You mentioned that I should have asked the IRD whether it
had any future plans to use web-crawling as a method of
identifying tax dodgers in my follow up article in the
Herald.
You are absolutely right of course - I can only say in my
defence that I was disarmed by the frank and plausible
reply given by the IRD’s IT manager Tony Lester, who
offered to check why the auction site was being scanned.
However as your article did not name the site I could not
tell him which one was being referred to.
Perhaps the server owner could get in touch with Mr Lester
through your contact form or via the IRD’s website,
alternatively I’d be happy to pass the details on myself.
While I agree that the idea of the authorities using bots
to trawl web sites or other available online sources would
be alarming, I don’t believe this is happening in this
case. I belatedly managed to get a confirmation from
spokesman David Balham today that the IRD will “definitely
not” be using its crawler for this purpose. Apparently the
IRD now reckons the auction site was either scanned as a
link in connection with e-procurement or else it could have
been a simple mistake.

Michael Foreman
IT Writer, New Zealand Herald
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