If you've got the Macromedia Flash plug-in installed on your computer and you use Internet Explorer as your web browser then it's time to update.

No, it's not a feature upgrade -- it's yet another security hole. It seems that a smart programmer could exploit the hole to insert some malevolent code into a Flash file such that it could be executed on your computer and do all manner of damage.

Maurice Is The Man, Not!
You can tell there's an election coming up but you have to wonder about the sanity of some parties.

According to this story from the Stuff site, National's IT spokesman Maurice Williamson is trying to convince the industry that his party will give the knowledge economy a "kick start."

How come Maurice still has the job of IT spokesman for National?

Has anyone in the party actually checked his references?

John Davy's background might have been questionable -- but we know for sure that Maurice was the most ineffectual IT minister this country has ever seen.

It may be argued that the current administration could have done more to push NZ into the knowledge economy -- but at least they made some effort. Under the guidance of Williamson, the last government simply sat on the sidelines and fed us all a long line of rhetoric.

I doubt anything will have changed.

National -- find yourself an IT spokesman who knows the difference between talk and action please or I suspect you'll find attracting votes from the IT community to be more than a little difficult.

Readers Say (updated hourly) Nothing Yet Have Your Say

There Are No Problems On The Xtra Network
As regular readers are likely well aware, I've had some quite significant issues with Telecom Xtra's ISP service of late.

On two separate occasions Xtra users have found this site unreachable -- yet customers of TelstraClear and a number of other ISPs have had no difficulties.

Similarly I can reach the site using FTP and I can traceroute (verify the link) from my PC to the Aardvark server -- yet attempts to display any pages from the site produce an error.

Despite some very creative excuses from Xtra, I've not been given a reasonable explanation as to why this is happening and why other virtual servers I run from the same computer remain accessible while Aardvark is not.

Some readers have suggested that the apparent blocking of access to Aardvark may be related to my recent harsh criticism of Telecom and Xtra -- but I doubt that my opinions carry enough weight to worry them so have discounted this as a possibility.

However, that only leaves "technical problems" -- and, given that the server is working, the route is intact and FTP traffic is being passed, I can only attribute the problem to the lame web proxy I've been complaining about for so long.

The rogue caching web proxy also continues to hold pages from a large number of sites well after they have expired and been replaced on the original server. Examples of sites affected include the Sydney Morning Herald, The Washington Post's NewsBytes site and the NewsLinx site.

I know that at least one of these sites is investigating the copyright implications of Xtra's unauthorised archiving and republication of their content and will keep readers informed as to the status of that investigation.

The biggest problem with Xtra appears to be that they don't know, and often refuse to accept that they have a problem.

Now I know there are some good folks in the technical department over there -- I've spoken with them, however I have a feeling that somewhere along the way there are a few "weak links."

If you need proof -- take a look at the status report that was displayed on the Xtra help page last night.

Can someone please tell Xtra that the rest of us are already in the 21st century.

Have Your Say
As always, your comments are welcomed. Please remember to select "For Publication" if you want them included on this site.

Have your say.

Add Aardvark To Your Own Website!
Got a moment? Want a little extra fresh content for your own website or page?

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!