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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I'm going to do my best to steer clear of issues related to politics and
the upcoming election but I'm also really worried that the anonymity
and power of the Net is going to be misused in the coming weeks.
Yesterday I covered the Greens plans (reported elsewhere) to introduce
their spam-an-editor system. This drew
a response from the party
which I invite everyone to read. I guess we won't know for sure exactly
what they're up to until the new site is launched.
A more worrying event however, was the appearance of
a spam obviously designed
to discredit the ACT party.
The email was written in a manner likely to imply that it was actually
from ACT, right down to the links at the end. However, ACT MP Stephen Franks
denied that the party had sent any such email and it certainly seems
unlikely that they would publish something so self-critical.
Or was it simply a double-clever move by ACT to make their opponents look
bad? After all, ACT continues to behave in a totally irresponsible manner
when it comes to its own bulk emailings that continue to solicit recipients
to sign up others without their knowledge or permission -- very bad form!
It seems that the sender of yesterday's spam may have over-estimated the level
of anonymity offered by the Net however, and reports indicate that the email
has been traced back to the ISP used. It should be a trivial
matter to identify the individual responsible from there (privacy laws
not withstanding).
The email may not be illegal, although I suspect a claim of fraud or
passing off could be implied, but it sure is unethical.
What next I wonder? Denial of Service attacks against political websites?
It's so nice to see that our politicians and their supporters are setting
such a fine standard -- NOT!
IHUG To The Rescue
Well here I was, packing up my archives and getting ready to free up the
"Aardvark" space on my hard drive when a sponsor popped out of the woodwork at
the 11th hour with an offer to help offset the costs associated with
publishing this column.
I'm sure I speak for all Aardvark readers when I offer a big thanks to
IHUG for their
kind contribution to keeping Aardvark on the Web.
I must also thank the 100 or so readers who offered to cough up $50/year
to subscribe and I suggest that you spend at least some of that money with the
new sponsor as a token of your appreciation for their support of this
column.
Of course there will be some changes to this page as a result of the
sponsorship deal -- but rest assured that the hard-nosed editorial style will
remain unchanged.
Checking DSL Usage
Now that virtually every DSL plan has a usage cap associated with it,
the need to be able to check just how much traffic you've consumed
has become very important.
I've received quite a few emails from DSL users who claim that the
their usage page is consistently out of date -- and sometimes not
even available.
If you're in the same boat, please drop me a line and let me know
the details.
It could be time to bang some heads.
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.
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