Note: This column represents the opinions
of the writer and as such, is not purported as fact
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It's time for more flotsam and jetsam from the backwaters of the web.
What do you do when
blowing your nose is
not enough? What a wonderful idea. I wonder if they have a cure for
water on the brain as well?
Now that you've cleared your head you might be ready to ponder the hidden
difficulties of providing a reliable flow of toilet paper. You'll be
amazed at the complexity of the
algorithms
involved.
But maybe all that preparation still won't help and you'll find yourself
with a blocked head and in urgent need of a comfort stop while far from
home. Racing to the nearest facility is not advised or
this
could be the result
A Collection Of Bits
I've received unconfirmed reports out of Australia that the Internet Name
Group have laid off staff and are closing their doors.
Their website still appears to be operating
and I'm trying to get more info to confirm this report.
If this is true then I'm sure nobody around here will be shedding a tear and
maybe some will even be having a quiet drink in honour of this news.
Another reader tells me that he signed up to the
"Your Telecom"
service as a way of paying his cellphone bill over the Net.
After finding that there appeared no payment facility, the reader clicked on
a contact link and found it to be
a secure form.
Assuming that an encrypted (SSL) form meant the information typed in would be kept
confidential and secure, a credit card number was entered with a request that
it be used to process a payment for the cellphone bill.
Uh-oh...
The next day the reader received confirmation that his bill had been debited
to the credit card information provided -- but the reply email was in
plain text and included all the credit card details originally submitted through the
form!
Someone ought to tell Telecom's staff that it is most certainly NOT a good
idea to send anyone's credit card details via plain text email!
That's very bad Telecom.
However, I have to say that Telecom have been very helpful in trying to sort
out my noisy rural phone-line woes.
A dialog is underway that I'm hoping will result in at least some improvement
to the near unusable state of the phone line I had installed specifically
for Net access. The ironic thing is that of the three lines I have (phone, fax,
modem) -- the modem line is the noisiest and the voice line provides the
best modem throughput.
This means that if I really want to stay online for more than 3-5 minutes at
a time I have to tie up my voiceline with an internet call -- which means
I'm getting absolutely *ZERO* value for extra rental I pay for that modem line.
A lot of other rural readers have emailed me expressing great interest in the
results of a possible modem shootout and asking me to provide more information
on how they can improve their own situation. If the various modem providers
are prepared to cooperate I'll do a feature on this next week.
In the meantime I'm going quietly insane here as just about every attempted
upload or download ends up in failure with either a dropped carrier or
"silent death" from the modem link.
Have your say.
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