Note: This column represents the opinions
of the writer and as such, is not purported as fact
At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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A little over a month ago I sent
an email to the Minister of Communications,
Paul Swain, asking for his comments on the sorry state of DSL in this country.
After bypassing the inevitable fluff associated with the fact that Ministers
prefer to send printed responses to all correspondence, I eventually
received (yesterday)
this reply.
Guess what? Yes, that's right... it came as an MS Word attachment to
a brief covering note.
I'm not going to dwell on the fact that the Minister of Communications
seems to be well and truly ensconced in the Microsoft "standards"
camp -- but it's a right pain in the backside when, to read a simple
message (no pictures, no charts, no graphs), you have to copy
a file onto a floppy disk and then fire up the only machine in the place
that has a copy of MS Word -- and that's after checking for Macro viruses.
Open standards in government? Not a chance!
Why, oh why couldn't the reply have been a simple plain-text email??? After
all my time is money too and I'm not handing out points for formatting or
neatness of layout.
I wonder if the $10 million spend-up discussed in yesterday's edition might
be somewhat less crucial if the government, its ministers, and its departments
were better educated about the stupidity of sending messages as MS Word
attachments rather than in the body of the email.
Need Cutting-Edge Copy?
As NZ's longest-running online commentator, I'm looking for
extra syndication opportunities for this daily publication -- or I'm happy
to write casual or regular material specifically to order for print or
Net-based publications. If you're
interested, drop me a line
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But back to the content of the email.
I'm sorry but I can't help but feel that the RQ (rhetoric quotient) of this
response was disturbingly high. Yes, it is election year, but I'd have preferred
to see the poli-speak exchanged for some plain discussion of the issues.
However, the goals and objectives stated in Mr Swain's reply are laudable enough
and I don't think anyone reading this will argue that the steps being taken
are good ones -- but what about the timing?
The Telecommunications Commissioner won't be reporting on whether he thinks
Telecom's local loop service should be unbundled until the end of NEXT year!
A year and a half is an awfully long time in the world of 21st century
communications and relying solely on Telecom to provide reliable, cost-effective
DSL services in the meantime would likely see us slipping further down the
list of "connected" nations.
Perhaps the funniest piece of the whole reply is the claim that "Telecom said
that in December 2001, Nokia completed software upgrades on a core component
of the JetStream service. Telecom also said that it has reviewed all modem
settings, made appropriate configuration changes and that it was confident
these actions have resolved the 'micro-outages' problem."
The clear implication here is that the problem was solved long ago -- but
it most certainly wasn't.
I wish the Minister wouldn't take Telecom's claims at face value. If he'd
taken me up on my offer to provide links to other news stories on the matter,
or simply been better informed by his officials, he'd have read the IDG
story titled
Outages continue despite Telecom's claims,
dated March 5th.
While I could address the Minister's reply on a point-by-point basis, I'll
leave it up to readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own
judgments.
As always, your comments are welcomed. Please remember to select
"For Publication" if you want them included on this site.
Have your say.
IMPORTANT NOTE
Due to other higher-priority calls on my time and resources over the coming
days, the publication of this column may be a little erratic.
Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible however.
The Jet-Kart is For Sale
Check out the latest bid.
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.
The world-famous Jet-powered Gokart is up for sale by
way of an informal auction. Send me your bid and I'll post the current
highest offer on the bidding page.
As far as I'm aware, this is the only pulsejet-powered gokart in the
Southern Hemisphere -- I wonder why that is?
It may not be the quietest, smoothest, most comfortable or safest vehicle
in the world -- but it's sure different!
To place a bid, just drop me a line.
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