Note: This column represents the opinions
of the writer and as such, is not purported as fact
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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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An "anonymous coward" claiming to be a worker on Xtra's help desk
has taken a swipe at the company's attitude to informing customers about
deficiencies with its DSL service.
The posting
was made on the very popular
SlashDot geek news site
and was moderated up to a score of 4 (out of a possible 5).
One can't help but wonder if there'll be a witch-hunt going on this morning
in the wake of this exposé.
While it should be remembered that the poster has provided no proof of their
claims, and it could simply be a hoax by a disgruntled customer or competitor,
the allegations would seem to support recent media coverage of the situation.
Aardvark's Web-site Survey Service
If you're launching a new website, upgrading an existing
one, or just frustrated that your web-presence isn't performing as it should then
maybe you need an Aardvark Site Survey.
Read more...
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More e-Government Stupidit-e
Yesterday I received an email from a reader who had sent email to
a government address and was a little dismayed by the resulting
response.
Their email contained a digital signature, included as a MIME-compliant
attachment, as is the practice. Unfortunately, the government seems
unprepared for such sophistication and they received the following
response:
From: Postmaster@govt.nz (postmaster@dsw.govt.nz)
Subject: DISALLOWED ATTACHMENT
Your attachment unknown.multipart addressed to
[suppressed] is not an allowed type of attachment and has been blocked by an
automatic process.
Oh dear... how sad.
But wait, there's more!
When the user replied to the postmaster@govt.nz in an attempt to ask why
digital signatures were being blocked -- thus eliminating evidence that
effectively verified the sender's identity, the following response
was received:
This message could not be delivered to the following
recipients:
<Postmaster@govt.nz>:
No host named govt.nz. (#5.1.2)
Reporting-MTA: dns; bouncemessage.net
Final-Recipient: rfc822; Postmaster@govt.nz
Action: Failed
Status: 5.1.2
It would seem that we're still a long, long way from having a government
infrastructure suitable for e-anything and, if
this story from IDG
is anything to go by, holding your breath is not advised.
Have your say.
Aardvark's Garage Sale
It's time to clear out the closet here at Aardvark's country residence so I'm
having a bit of a garage sale. I need to spend a whole lot more time
and money on my jet engine R&D activities (now that the defense industry
has shown a very real interest) -- so I'm trying to scrape up some more cash.
First up -- I'm selling my pulsejet manufacturing business. This would be
perfect for either a semi-retired engineer/machinist who wants to earn some
pretty good money building these things and exporting them to the world -- or
an established engineering shop who want to break into a new (very export
oriented) market.
I can provide an ongoing stream of orders through my website and since
I've run out of time to meet the demand, the sale will include a growing
"waiting list" of new customers ready to place their orders.
Second up -- I've still got 30,000 7am.com shares (representing about 30% of
the company) that I'm looking to unload. I'm afraid I can't offer much
information on the state of the company -- they haven't spoken with me for ages
so it's a bit of a pig in a poke. However, they survived the most critical
part of the dot-com crash and are now claiming to have nearly 250,000 websites
in their ticker network so that's got to be worth something. Any sale would
be subject to other shareholders exercising their preferential rights --
but all offers will be considered.
Thirdly -- I have an RC model helicopter here that I have built but never flown.
It's a Robbe Mosquito Basic with a JR X-3810 radio, JR piezo gyro, OS46FSH
engine and a Dave Brown flight simulator. Everything was purchased brand-new
a couple of years ago and is in pristine condition (having spent all that time
in a box in the storeroom). Since I haven't had any
time to fly it in the past two years I figure there's little chance I'll find
time to fly it in the next two years, so out it goes.
Anyone interested in any of these things should
drop me a line.
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