Sponsor's Message

I refer to a quote from executive director Peter Macaulay in this story published by IDG today.

IDG quotes Macaulay as saying "We shouldn't be targeting the spammers themselves, they're just ratbag kids with too much time on their hands. It's the companies that buy their services that are the problem".

Hasn't Peter read the numerous stories published by leading US newspapers and business magazines which indicate that spamming is very much a high-income business, predominantly operated by real grown-ups -- some of who are even middle aged?

He goes on to say "If they [the advertisers] weren't paying, the kids wouldn't be sending out a million emails a day.

Well for a start -- the real spammers send more than a million emails a day and they often get paid a commission on each sale or response generated -- so to take his argument further, it's not the advertisers who are the problem, it's the idiot customers who actually buy spamvertised products or services.

I suspect that Mr Macaulay might not understand the term "joe job" either.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed not to be invited to the recent breakfast discussions on the spam problem -- it's not as if I've paid no attention to the issue or don't have any ideas and opinions is it? Perhaps I'm just a little too outspoken and critical of government inaction to be considered worthy of inclusion.

The ADSL Saga
I guess if getting an ADSL connection was easy then everyone would have one.

In an effort to keep things as simple as possible I decided to get an XTRA/Telecom ADSL connection organised for my new abode. The only reason I opted for XTRA as the ISP was because I figured that if/when there were problems I'd be dealing with the same entity. Rest assured that I'll shortly be looking at alternative ISPs, with the sponsor's service high on my list of course :-)

Well initially, things appeared to go fairly well with Telecom, a cheerful tele-op taking all my details and advising me that there'd be no problems in providing a DSL service to my new address.

She promised that I'd be sent an email with all the relevant details and I gave her my yahoo.com email address.

Shortly after I arrived I got a call advising me that the DSL circuit was now active and everything should be fine.

After a fair amount of box-diving, I came up with a computer, DSL modem/router and the necessary cables -- so I wired it all up and tried to make it work -- but to no avail.

The promised email from Telecom had not arrived so I rang the helpdesk to ask a few questions.

To their credit, the guys on the ADSL helpdesk were excellent. Unlike those I'd spoken to on past occasions on the dial-up helpdesk, these guys seemed to know a lot about what they were supporting and within an hour or so we'd overcome the problems and things were working wonderfully.

So what were the problems?

Firstly, that email with all the "important information" never did arrive.

Secondly, I had not received my DSL user-ID and had been told that I should simply use my old dial-up password -- this was incorrect and the helpdesk had to fix this up for me.

Thirdly, it seems that I had been allocated an email address @xtra.co.nz that was totally unrelated to either my previous Xtra dial-up address or the new ID. It is to this address apparently, that any warnings about reaching my data-cap will be sent. Apparently you can't nominate your real email address for this purpose.

Come on Telecom -- this is pretty poor. If I were a tech-newbie the helpdesk would have had a real problem on their hands and it would have ended up costing everyone a whole lot more money.

Maybe the XTRA DSL helpdesk is staffed with very cluefull people because it has to be -- due to the blunders made elsewhere in the system.

If any Aardvark readers want to share an opinion on today's column or add something, you're invited to chip in and have your say in The Aardvark Forums or, if you prefer, you can contact me directly.

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