Jim Louderback, until recently editor-in-chief of the prestigious PC Magazine in the US, used his last editorial to speak the unspeakable. After more than 15 years a devoted fan of Microsoft, he's considering giving up on the operating system. His reason? One word: Vista.

"The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled!"

Amongst the "kinks", Louderback lists a sleep mode that won't kick in or, when it does, won't wake up again, network obfuscation, random connection problems and mysterious network dropouts. ("I've configured every PC on my home network to share drives and printers, yet owing to some undiscovered element, there's no guarantee that any of them will be visible at any given time.")

He concludes, "I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won't bore you with the details... If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux."

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:10 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 7 )

The latest Commerce Commission quarterly Telecommunications Key Statistics report is out, and frankly the figures are a joke. New Zealand continues to languish at or near the bottom in both fixed line and mobile phone charges (figures below) with little prospect of improvement.

Honourable mentions: TelstraClear's HomePlan, Talk 24/7 plans for fixed line high residential users were the only ones cheaper than or equal to the OECD average.

Dishonourable mentions: Telecom's Go Prepaid Mates' Rates mobile package came out at 198% of the OECD average price. With mates like that, who needs enemies? And users of Vodafone's Base 20 and Base 60 packages shouldn't feel too smug. While they ranked close to average, here's what the ComCom had to say about them: "Vodafone’s Base 20 plan has an extraordinary number of restrictive conditions, including a two year contract term, heavy early termination penalties, no handset rebate and no international roaming, which is likely to make it unattractive to the vast majority of mobile phone users." And Base 60 "has the same restrictive conditions as the Base 20 plan."

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 2 )

...and on the fifth day of the ninth month of 2007 the tide of spam did cease and the multitude were glad thereof. Yeah, right! But today is the day the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act comes into effect.

What effect is it likely to have? Not much, according to Bruce Simpson: "...don't expect a bunch of half-arsed, poorly thought out, unlikely to be upheld bunch of red tape is going to slow down any real kiwi spammer or any of the idiots from GodZone who pollute your mailbox with ponzi schemes."

According to Computerworld, a series of bureaucratic wrist-slapping wet bus tickets have been prepared: "The [Department of Internal Affairs Anti-Spam Unit] encourages voluntary compliance with the act, but if someone carries on spamming that business or individual will receive a formal letter saying the spammer is breaching the act. The next step is a formal warning and, if that doesn’t work, court action will eventually be taken..."

Would it be churlish to wonder just were those formal letters will be sent? The spam I get doesn't seem to have physical addresses attached.

There are provisions for fines of up to $2,000 per infringement, but with the vast bulk of spam coming from offshore, don't ditch SpamAssassin yet!

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 5 )

Most people don't realise how  their browsers betray them. It's not so bad at home, but in a work context it could cost you your job.

Yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to be surfing, you're supposed to be working. But who's going to know, right? Actually, practically anyone in the office. All they need to know is what to click. Try this: left-click the little arrow head beside the address bar and you'll get a comprehensive list all recently entered addresses...



Then there's my old favourite, the History bar. Hit <Alt + H> on most browsers and you'll get a comprehensive listing of every site visited in the last three weeks...



Both tools are occasionally useful if you've forgotten an important address, but if you're using a work PC they're also useful to your colleagues -- and the boss. You might think you're being discreet signing in to TradeMe or Facebook when no one's looking, but your browser's faithfully recording each and every visit.

(Of course if you're using a work PC, every address you visit's almost certainly being recorded by network software too. But that takes a little effort and expertise to obtain. Browser betrayals are available to anyone with access to your PC.)

Still, there are a couple of things you can do to be a little more discreet. Change the History settings for a start.You'll find them under Tools / Options / Privacy in Firefox and Tools / Internet Options in Internet Explorer.



I mean to say, do you really need to record details of three weeks of web activity, everything you've downloaded and the stuff you enter in forms and the search bar? I'm sure you boss'd be interested too!

Firefox has a brilliant privacy extra, the Always clear my private data when I close Firefox option in the same window as the History settings...



Hitting the Settings button gives you even finer control ...



When it comes to browser betrayals, you can't be too careful!

(Footnote: All screenshots are from Firefox 2.)

Posted by Geoff Palmer at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 4 )