Public Address - Hard News (Home)

More than a little odd | Nov 10, 2006 06:17

On Tuesday, Simon McCallum of Otago University's computer science department issued a press release critical of what he regarded as the unfair and anti-competitive "traffic management" Telecom Xtra was imposing on its new 'Go Large' broadband accounts. Yesterday his phone became unusable as it was spammed with repeated untraceable calls from a Telecom trunk line.

Let's let Simon tell it:

As of 2 pm today (9th of the 11th) my work phone has been ringing constantly. When I pick up there is no-one on the other end and within 30 seconds of putting the phone down it rings again. This has effectively put my telephone out of action. I have complained to our Information Technology Services (ITS) and they have reported that the calls are coming from a Telecom main trunk line with no caller ID. For whatever reason someone is attacking my phone!

On Tuesday I wrote a press release criticising Telecom, today I cannot use my phone!

Currently my phone is still ringing with no-one on the other end, within 48 hours of my press release my phone is being attacked. I am not a conspiracy theorist, but regardless of who is attacking my phone this is not a good situation. I did not believe that this sort of thing would happen from talking about Net Neutrality.

I'm travelling this morning, so I haven't been able to call Telecom and seek assurance that this really isn't what it looks like. Perhaps someone from the company could click the "Discuss" button below and put our minds at rest.

If it's for real, my assumption is that's it's some idiot junior employee rather than management. It's happened before.

Meanwhile, more little horror stories in our Ihug discussion thread. Nice to see a nod from the Herald. But what's up with the Herald website? It's been barely usable in the mornings for a couple of weeks now.

Spare Room comes up with some truly ghastly yet oddly compelling video. And you thought your work conference was totally lame.

NZBC is unkind enough to bring up some unfortunate predictions in the local blogosphere.

And, finally, a Public Address System discussion for the weekend: where are we at with the All Blacks? Tracey Nelson's England game stats might help focus your mind …

(42 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Good result | Nov 09, 2006 12:52

Well, that was exciting. With the web already awash with punditry on the Democratic victories yesterday, I won't venture too much, save to link once again to Rolling Stone's Worst Congress Ever cover story, which explains in persuasive, well-referenced detail, why the rotten Congress that has held sway in recent years needed to go, for America's sake.

There's still a good, lively discussion over at Public Address System. I'd like to thank everyone who pitched in there yesterday - it was good fun, and I didn't have to delete any posts for crossing the line. Best effort goes to Danyl Mclauchlan for this one after the Dems took the House:

Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House! What if she forces normal god-fearing Americans to marry gays? What if she starts handing out condoms, ball gags and capsules of amyl nitrate in public schools? What if she gets menstrual blood all over some crucial piece of legislation? What if she disbands the CIA and turns all their secret files over to Michael Moore? What if she dissolves the US government and declares Kim Jong Il dictator for life?

Dark days ahead for America . . .

Also, Andre and Danyl ventured over to Little Green Footballs, where responses have been, variously, comic, tragic and psychotic. Some correspondents were - I shit you not - actively looking forward to the inevitable terrorist nuclear attack now that the Democrats have won an election.

It seems I was wrong to focus on the monthly turnover of the apple.co.nz domain's registration to Renaissance. For some odd reason, all their domains are billed monthly. But, for reasons I dare not divulge, I'm sticking to my other predictions about Apple's future presence in New Zealand.

I'm right now grabbing the Daily Show/Colbert Report Live Midterm Midtacular, which by general blogosphere acclaim, was truly great. Torrent here, YouTube all over the gaff.

And finally, BoingBoing has the geek humour on yesterday's events. Priceless.

(1 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Ihug: still screwed? | Nov 08, 2006 09:47

So last week's Ihug email nightmare is all over, new servers are in place and everyone has all their email? If only. Two Hard News readers have been in touch to advise of continuing problems - and of email (contrary to the soothing statements from Ihug marketing) lost for ever.

First, Peter Todd:

The Ihug outage was a true debacle. I have had incoming email deleted off their server - lost forever. The lack of support from their tech team and obscure postings on their website on added even further confusion. For 4 days I did not know if my business email was coming in or going out.

There was a further 48 hour period when I couldn't send any email, which was only sorted when their tech support confirmed that I had to change some 'advanced sender options' in my Ihug account settings. Why this could not have been alerted on their website beggars belief.

Is it possible that Ihug have not invested sufficiently in their server infrastructure prior to their recent sale to an overseas company? I suspect it may be the usual story of the fast buck for today's shareholders versus investment in the future. It's just another reason why I am considering moving my business out of NZ.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct my home-based freelance medical writing business in a professional manner. I can't keep changing my ISP without looking like a dork. I used CompuServe for over 10 years before switching to Ihug. I'm not sure if using a .mac account is the right way for me to go.

Oh, by the way, the tech people at Ihug said that delayed incoming email (up to several hours at least) has been a regular problem for the last 2 months. This was communicated to me directly on the phone and appeared contrary to directives from their marketing people.

Then Mike Riddell:

Thought you might be interested in a bit of goss about what's happening at Ihug. You probably know that they had a meltdown about 10 days ago with the spam surge creating huge delays on their servers.

Well, despite assurances to the contrary on their website, the problem is still ongoing. I have several emails which have been sent to me but not arrived, the earliest of which began its journey on Monday 30th October - still not here. After numerous attempts to find out what's going on (Ihug's 'network status' says the problem is fixed), I finally discovered that they have two mail servers out of 15 which they can't get the mail out of. This after 10 days of trying - unbelievable! Do they even have any engineers working there? Anyway, I reckon the news should be in the public domain ...

I can report that I'm also trying to discover whether one or two important inbound emails have been sent but not delivered to me, and have also had at least one party (not on Ihug's network) to whom I have sent mail claiming not to have received it. Click the discuss button below if you have comment or reports.

Staying with the tech business … Shortly before midnight last night, the domain record for apple.co.nz was changed. Its registration to Apple Computer's present New Zealand distributor, Renaissance, had been due to expire as the clock ticked over. It has now been extended by exactly a month. Goodness. Was that little old me that brought that on?

My view remains that Renaissance will shortly be retired as the distributor and that Apple will soon directly enter the New Zealand market. Yesterday's speculation about an Apple Store and an iTunes Store for New Zealand stands. And I suspect we won't have to wait too long. Fee free to discuss this on the thread we set up yesterday, which has been quite lively.

And you can also feel free to keep up with and contribute to our mid-term elections forum on Public Address System, which already has plenty of useful information and savvy content. It'll run all day …

(44 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Something up with Apple? | Nov 07, 2006 09:56

My guess is this means something: staff at Renaissance, the New Zealand distribution agent for Apple Computer, have been asked to hand back their apple.co.nz email addresses. A quick whois reveals that the domain details were last modified on October 7 - and that the "date billed until" is November 7: today.

So what happens after today?

With music industry goss that the long-awaited iTunes Store for New Zealand may even arrive this month (the itunes.co.nz domain details were changed on October 17), are the Aussies planning to favour us with an Apple Store too?

In other long-running-saga news, Sideswipe may be coming out from behind the herald's "premium content" paywall, but APN management seems determined to keep the rest of the paper's voice locked up inside a misguided subscription service that virtually no one buys and anyone with half a clue can get around.

For goodness sake: you get a TNS-TV3 poll that puts the party behind and you personally ahead of your rival amongst your own voters, and you still sit on your hands? Go John, go! Quick, while he's away! What are you - a girly-man?

Gaydar alert! Poofs all over the place are claiming to be on Pink Alert after this blog ran pictures of Ted Haggard's (former) management team at New Life Church. What say your built-in sensors, gay Public Address readers? BTW, nitty-gritty details on who did what in bed, if that's the sort of information you're after.

Time to get a little nervous as the opinion polls tighten in the US mid-terms. Meanwhile, the now-familiar grab-bag of dirty tricks, voter suppressions efforts and stuff that's broken is expanding. Most notable: in a string of states, the Republican National Congressional Committee has funded tens of thousands of robo-calls that seem to come from the local Democrat candidates. The idea - and it seems to have worked - is that Democrat voters resent the intrusive and incessant calls and are deterred from voting. Evil doesn't come much more mundane than that.

Still, nice that they could get that Saddam death sentence out in time for the vote - even if that did mean announcing the sentence before the actual verdict, which won't be completed until later in the week.

And last but not least, thanks to everyone for the kind words on Public Address System - and more particularly for signing up and starting the talk. There are some excellent discussions in progress, including one on Tze Ming's scrutiny of a Herald story whose headline - alleging local support for the odious comments of the Australian cleric Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali - appears to be the result of something other than an unwavering concern for the facts. Also, verdicts on the new series of Eating Media Lunch (nice to see they've picked up on Gollee from bFM Breakfast, whose salty wit dispels any number of stereotypes about Iranian women).

A handful of people are having registration problems, which we'll look into, and others have made some useful suggestions about tweaks for the site, several of which have been acted on already. I'll post a big-ass new debate question soon, but in the meantime, perhaps you could share your views about the apparent movement on the Apple front by clicking the discuss button below.

(231 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Announcing: Public Address System! | Nov 03, 2006 09:59

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that we had something new in the works for you. Well, this is it: Public Address System, a community site designed to complement the one you're reading right now.

We've been soft-launching the site over the last couple of days and this morning we're fully public, so please, pop on over, register and enjoy. The warmest thanks are due to our developers, Matt and Karl at CactusLab, who have the ability to get what I'm on about, point out to me when I'm wrong and just make it happen.

When you visit their website (check out the clever little Halloween remix they did with style sheets) you'll see how busy they've been this year, so I'm very appreciative of the attention my little job has had in the past couple of weeks. (Oh, and I'm also loving that little Google-style "beta" note Matt's put on the new masthead.)

Anyway, a little about what's on the site:

The Public Address Café and Forum: Yes, finally, comments - although yer standard blog comments is precisely what I'm seeking to avoid. You'll need to register to post, our preference is for people to register and post under real names, and we will be moderating for quality. I'm keen to expand the pool of people engaged in online discussion and I think an atmosphere of respect is vital to that aim. For the time being, only our bloggers will be able to launch new topics, but I'm open to suggestions for those. As we proceed, I'll make a practice of inviting in people with knowledge and experience relevant to the question under debate. There are several topics running already, so get in there. You'll note there's also a "discuss" button at the bottom of this post.

Real Times: The Documentary Channel Blog: Which is what the title suggests. In the interests of transparency, note that its author, The Doctor, will often (but not always) be me, and that the Documentary Channel is paying us some money to appear on our site.

OurTube: A user-generated forum for New Zealand (and otherwise relevant) multimedia posted on YouTube and elsewhere. The opening crop includes Shortland Street's most famous line.

Monitor A little forum for the discussion of television. Again, feel free to add topics here.

Feeds: We've got 'em up the wazoo. There are RSS feeds for all parts of the site, down to the level of individual forum topics, and also inbound feeds from Scoop, the excellent New Zealand blog aggregator Planet of the Journals (BTW, I've been trying to contact the Journals guys as a matter of courtesy, but their email link seems to be broken), and Graham Reid's popular Music from Elsewhere. We may add more inbound feeds in future.

Public Address itself will continue to dish up good writing and opinion on a daily basis. I've conceived Public Address System as a site you can (and please do) visit throughout the day. Anyway, that'll do for now. We're very proud of our new baby and we trust you will love it too.

(59 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!