Posts by Rich of Observationz

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  • Cracker: Welcome Home?,

    I've occasionally wondered if the coca bush would thrive in a New Zealand forest?

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: About a Cat,

    Cats understand English (and often other languages) but choose not to speak it.

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Speaker: Two Ticks,

    There are various politicians whose speeches have been remixed into dance records: Lange, Kennedy and Martin Luther King, maybe others.

    When I heard Obama's speech following the primaries, I thought he was similarly remixable. You couldn't remix Huckabee into anything.

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • OnPoint: Things I know,

    Good tip on the burgers - especially since Wellington BF caught fire over the hols, so we might not be getting much from them in the short term.

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: The Daily Embarrassment,

    Just want to give a big thanks to Russell for posting *actual content* during the silly season.

    And Happy New Year to everyone!!

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: Rockin',

    I like the ThaiIndian.com headline - Major damage reported after massive earthquake rocks New Zealand.

    Do you think they share subs with the NZ Herald?

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: Freely-exercised contempt,

    Yes yes I know I could choose to only accept those emails to myactualname@myemailaddress.co.nz, and block the rest, but I know that way I'd miss emails from quite a lot of legitimate "group" email lists that I receive stuff from

    Set a rule that moves email to *.myemailaddress.co.nz into a "not me" folder. Put this behind your rules to gather stuff from mailing lists in common folders. Take an occasional butchers in the "not me" folder to make sure you aren't missing anything.

    Anyways, I think this has been done to death, but I'd just add one thing. The conventional groupthink is that DRM enforcement by legislation is unjustified, right? The music industry is losing heaps of money from copyright violation, with no doubt knock on effects into the general public. So why do they not deserve statutory protection, whilst the ISP business does?

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: Freely-exercised contempt,

    s/Russel/Russell

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: Freely-exercised contempt,

    in other words, the "Bad People" (TM) should be just left to get on with it, and fcuk everyone else, they should get better mail servers?

    No, I'm not saying that. Now we've got the law in place, I wouldn't suggest repealing it as it doesn't interfere with anyone's rights. I just think that it wasn't the #1 priority to pass in the first place, and we shouldn't have an amendment bill every few years to try and keep up with every nefarious trick people try (like banning adware, comment spam, social network spam, etc)

    And in the case of Russel's assertion that spam was to blame for killing Ihugs mail servers, I was making the point that blaming it on spam was easier than saying "basically, we're spending the minimum possible until we sell the business - so any failures are to be expected. You get what you pay for!". Which may have been closer to the truth.

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

  • Hard News: Freely-exercised contempt,

    The MAAWG figures imply that an average account sees around 10 spams and 2 real emails a day. That suggests that a lot of people have accounts that are very lightly used. I suspect that a lot of totally unused accounts (like my Xtra account) skew the figures. If everyone got 20 emails a day the spam figure would be 30%.

    90 billion spams a day would imply the existence of 9 billion email accounts to be consistent with the MAAWG figures. Does everyone on earth really have 1.5 email addresses?

    I think a lot of wet finger waving is going on.

    Anyways, these numbers (equating to a million daily emails from 100,000 subscribers) aren't hard to handle with decent hardware and software. I've heard from various sources that the previous owners of Ihug basically didn't invest in *anything* - and it's of course easy to blame your problems on Bad People than on your own poor systems.

    I'm in the IT biz (in case you hadn't guessed) and used to work for one of the bigger email security players. I'm of the view that a professionally operated telecoms business (which needn't have the scale of Google) doesn't need to have much trouble with spam. Unfortunately, a lot of companies want to run an ISP out of a garage on the smell of a wet rag - and then expect the government to help them out in doing so.

    PS: Christ I sound Tory! I'll post something more anarchistic soon, I promise

    Back in Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 5550 posts Report

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