Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 8 August 2001
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.

From: Simon Garlick
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: CR/CRII comes-a-knockin'

[simon@tui simon]$ grep -c ":80" /var/log/messages
4581

That's four and a half THOUSAND http probes blocked at my
(linux) firewall since Sunday morning.




From: Alan Benton
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Proof there is no Knowledge Wave

Ahaha! I knew it: there is no real committment to the
Knowledge Wave, not by the Government, not by the general
populace, only by those who will get out there irrespective
of the opinion of everyone around them (that tends to be
people who read technology news online).

My issue is, for a mere start, is how buried in the sand
does your head have to be over this last few months to have
NO clue that the conference was on even!!! I mean
come on people, WAKE UP. However, a technician from IHUG, as
reported in the Herald of two days ago, and I quote, says he
has "No idea what the Conference was about .. didn't even
know it was on.". This from someone supposedly in the thick
of where this wave wants us to surf to ... yet, a Devonport
hairdresser did. Strange but true.

But even more galling: I tried, again, to send some emails
to IT employment agencies. Figured they could help out in
the area of IT, maybe. A futile attempt of course, however,
I wished to see whether they'd improved since the last time
I got fed up with them not recognising my skills (whereupon
I formed a Company and got more contracts than I needed
because of those skills they didn't think were relevant to
anything constructive).

Anyway, my question to them was: "Hello, I'm interested in
Part time work, and am responing to your advertisement
regarding "Database implementation for Web Sites" which
advised me to contact you for more information on what exact
opportunities in this area were available."

The response, the content of which I should have guessed
would come, and was hardly surprised at really: "Hello,
thanks for your enquiry, we recieved it this morning. What
kind of work are you looking for, Part Time or Full Time?
Plus, what opportunities are you intending to look for? ..."

Uh DUH. Looks like there's definitely No Knowledge Wave
here, or even reading ability. This reminds me of the time I
ended up having to teach a "Business Consultant" of a rather
large, so called IT Recruitment Company how to do their
job. This is the horrible truth: I spent 1 hour going
over what IT meant, what their Job description meant, how
they were basically supposed to know about the Industry,
what things like HTML was, and for good measure, how to
enter my CV into their crap Access database. Pretty much 100
Level Intro to Computers really. They had been at this
Company for 1 year. They'd been promoted from Office Junior
to Senior IT Consultant. Okay. I have a PROBLEM with this. I
assume they'd attended the requisite Staff Motivational
Courses, and got the required stars, so maybe it's alright.

If there is to be a knowledge wave, will the present crop of
people in these Companies go back to school, and resit
School C please!!! It's really pretty basic stuff: Put Your
Money Where Your Mouth Is. How the hell can this country
move forward if a) the people in the positions of power that
have the ability to move and shake things are, basically, as
thick as this speaker my Monitor is sitting on, and refuse
to acknowledge that obvious fact, b) that "recruitment
consultants" (a BIG insult to the term consultant I might
add, since I basically am one now through my own Company)
start recognising the fact that there are things called
transferrable skills and Microsoft is not the best software
in the world for Web projects, and c) that these people who
are supposed to recruit for technology-oriented jobs
actually KNOW about the job and the Industry itself
(believe it or not, it does help), so they can do useful
things like ADVISE, HELP OUT and PUT THESE FUTURE
EARNING PEOPLE IN PROPER JOBS. Yes, the ones who are still
leaving in droves.

We ask THEM about the Job, we don't expect to have to tell
them about it, or find we know more about the Job than they
do AND advise them how they can do their own Job. And
they're paid how much????

And NZers have really, really got to stop the penny pinching
attitude that goes on with implementing a Web Site. I
understand now why a friend of mine only handles US-based
jobs. There's no Dot Com Bubble bursting!!! Crap business
planning is crap business planning, end of story. And people
getting all hyped up about the cost of Web design, if they
do think it is really high, well they should stop signing up
for rip offs like certain Telecommunication companies Web
Site "solutions". By the way, that's both of the biggies.




From: Mudrat
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: CERT and GCBS

Is anyone concerned about the CERT proposal?

Lets pass a law that allows one group to legally hack and
then give then custodianship of all our e-commerce.

just coz you are paranoid doesn't mean they wont get ya.
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