Sponsor's Message

Yes, it looks as if Sky has noticed that an increasing number of existing subscribers have had enough of increasing ad-levels, endless reruns and inflexible channel packaging.

These ex-subscribers have discovered that ditching Sky and renting DVDs instead is a much cheaper and more enjoyable way to spend their movie-viewing hours. I can almost guarantee that this move on the part of Sky will see the quality of movies on its subscriber channels fall yet again. After all, why give away as part of a subscription, that which you can charge an extra fee for?

They did it when they introduced pay-per-view and I'd wager they're going to do it again with this DVD rental service.

Are they really expecting the average Sky subscriber to plump up with another $40 a month on top of the $100 or so they're already paying?

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Power Trips
It's no secret that I hold little respect for societies, associations and other groups which purport to represent an industry or other group of people.

Nine times out of ten, these societies are run by a small group of power-trippers who are little more sorry individuals that couldn't even make it into parliament.

This is certainly the way the New Zealand Computer Society (NZCS) used to be and ISOCNZ wasn't too far behind.

I am pleased to say however, that ISOCNZ (now InternetNZ) seems to have cleared out most of that dead-wood and although it's still more of a reactive than pro-active body, it's far better than it used to be.

It's been many years since I followed the politics and activities of the NZCS however -- but it appears that if their proposed solutions to the problems of spam and porn (as reported by IDG) is anything to go by, not much has changed there.

Are these guys serious?

While I'm sure their goals are laudable, their solution is totally impractical and represents a move bordering on cyber-fascism.

This isn't surprising however, especially when you realise that they just don't have a clue about the true nature of the problem or the role that various factors play.

Need proof?

What do you say to this quote from the IDG story: "Such a degree of lockdown and advance configuration will probably be resisted by open source advocates, says NZCS, but some of the worst worms have been associated with Unix systems."

Can you say "20 years behind the times?"

Either the membership and administration of the NZCS are complete idiots or they're all working for Microsoft these days.

What do you think?

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