Australia's first spam prosecution

It's good to see the first prosecution under the spam act, the big question now is to see what penalty Justice Nicholson imposes. The Spam Act allows the court to "The Court may order the person to pay to the Commonwealth such pecuniary penalty, in respect of each contravention, as the Court determines to be appropriate." So the fines could be anything from a dollar to the tens of millions.

Whether Wayne Mansfield has any money to pay these fines is another question. This case can't have been cheap to defend, and Wayne has lost in the courts before. Although with industries like unsolicited email and other Internet based scams it never ceases to surprise me how much money can be made.

To be fair to Mr Mansfield, he probably hasn't made billions. His spam seems to have only promoted his own businesses. He's certainly not accused of hijacking South Korean mail servers and pumping out billions of messages promoting dodgy investments and viagra. His mistake is that he just doesn't understand how much unsolicited email irritates people.

Interestingly, Wayne has his own blog where he shares some of his wisdom. Sadly, he doesn't give us his point of view on the proceedings. Although he does have some interesting links such as the one to Ivan Levinson's website.

This site has some terrific tips on writing advertising copy and emails, one of the first is "How to use e-mail to fire up sales (without getting flamed)". In it, Ivan describes what he finds to be spam at it's worst. It's a shame Wayne didn't read this article before he discovered unsolicited email.

Tech support blues

One of the most common whinges we hear from small businesses and home is "we can't get decent tech support".

It's true, they can't.

But they only have themselves to blame. Imagine you owned a car that you never serviced, never checked the oil or water and, when it did break down, you picked up the Yellow Pages to find the cheapest mechanic that could do it now. That's exactly what people do with their IT.

I had a client call at 8.00am this morning, Easter Thursday, who's moved offices and finds their computers won't work. They need them fixed now. We can't get anyone to them.

The problem I face, along with the entire industry, is that this idea of picking up the phone and hollerring for a tech just doesn't work. I can't employ staff if I don't know how much work I'll have on next week. Equally, you can't expect to get 24/7, two hour response support unless you are prepared to pay for it.

Australia falling behind?

Charles Wright's Bleeding Edge blog raises the issue about Australia's failure in communications policy, specifically in the area of broadband access.

While I agree that Australians are being ripped off by a government that understands little and cares even less about IT or communications broadband, it is only one part of a much bigger picture where we are being let down by the people we vote to be our leaders.

There's very little point in having super fast broadband if our industries don't need it. Graeme Phillipson keeps pointing out that our governments just don't want to buy Australian technology preferring to buy foreign than to support local developers. The situation is probably no different in the corridors of big business.

An even bigger problem is education. Even if we had a vigorous IT industry with super-fast broadband, it would be starved of skilled workers. We're just not offering our kids the education to compete in the high-tech world.

Of course if we did educate our kids, it would make no difference anyway. A school leaver choosing a career in science either has to immigrate or take a vow of poverty. It's much more lucrative to become a builder, property developer or commercial lawyer.

It seems to me Australians made a decision some ten or fifteen years ago: We'd rather not compete. It's much easier to be the lucky country riding on the back of wool, wheat, bauxite, iron ore, uranium, gold or whatever commodity is booming this year. Creating new and innovative technologies is something other people can do.

Charles is right in decrying the lousy state of broadband in Australia, but I can't help think the great Senator Alston was right, all we'd do with real broadband is download porn and pirated music.

More on Windows Vista

I'm a great fan of Robert Cringley's column and this weeks raises a very good point about Vista's slippage. He blames Dell. According to Cringely, Dell require six months to test a platform prior to release which they wouldn't have had with a Christmas release.

Previous articles have claimed HP were worried about Dell beating them to market. HP's channel based distribution can't get product out as fast as Dell's direct model. It sounds feasible that both the big boys were worried about Microsoft's timetable.

This is actually good news for Vista. Had MS rushed this to market, we'd have seen Vista shipping at best on second tier PC's. At worst, a lot of those PCs would have been badly tested and put together giving the new Windows distribution a bad name.

It also means more time for us to digest the new features. New operating systems are always a traumatic period for computer techs. Although nowhere near as stressful as when the customer comes to pay the bill.

Rebate madness

Today's Crikey has a good poke at HP and Officeworks about rebates. Correctly, in my view, pointing out that advertising a product for $599 that actually retails at $699 and requires the customer to harass the manufacturer for a $100 refund is deceptive advertising. Crikey goes further to look at the process which involves finding the form on the website, downloading it, filling it in, posting it off and waiting months for the rebate to arrive.

I noticed the number of rebate schemes on offer at Ingram Micro's Expotech last week. It seems these are going to become common popular in Australia this year. This is not good for consumers.

Why would a manufacturer go to the effort of setting up such a scheme? Handling rebates involves all manner of costs in processing the claims, paying the money and dealing with complaints. Why not just knock a $70 or $80 off the wholesale price?

The reason is many, if not most, buyers won't claim the thing, an article two years ago in PC World claimed up to 60% of customers don't apply for available rebates and of those that do, half have problems. Of those that do, a good number will either mess up their application or the processing company will. Either way, the headline price is not what many customers end up paying.

Rebates a rotten idea. They rip-off the customer and they damage both the retailer's and the manufacturer's reputations. Careful shoppers and resellers who care about their reputations should avoid them.

A Dell Phishing Scam?

I received an email from Dell this morning warning me the warranties on my Dell systems are expiring and they are offering extensions for a cheap price.

The only problem is I've never personally bought a system from Dell.

This looks suspiciously like phishing. A quick Google brings up a few previous attempts using Dell, but not using warranties. It is the sort of thing that a canny scam merchant would do.

The links appear to be valid, as do the half a dozen service tags mentioned. If the mail is a scam, it's a well put together one. Although it wouldn't be the first to do a very good job of fooling the likes of me.

It looks like a call to Dell is in order to see if the thing is real. If it is, I'm damned if I know how my email address ended up on someone else's service tags.

Update: It turns out to be legit, the Dell communications manager seems a bit bemused that it could have been mistaken for a phishing scam.

I'm still not sure how my email address became associated with someone else's service tags.

More on Internet filtering

Electronic Frontiers Australian has a well reasoned critique of the proposals to filter Internet access. It makes a number of excellent points. The point where I would differ with the EFA is that it could be done.

It would take a massive increase in resources for the ABA and major changes to the laws and regulations governing Telcos and ISPs, but it could be done.

Knowing Canberra, any attempt would just plonk massive compliance costs on businesses while not really doing anything to fix the problem.

I guess as long as it plays with the voters, nobody really cares.

Seniors and computers

Next weekend's Sydney ABC computer spot topic is seniors and computers. This was an idea of June, Simon's producer. It's a good idea with NSW Seniors week starting on Sunday.

The problem I have is how not to sound patronising. The fact is most seniors I know who use the net are probably more knowledgeable than the teenagers and twenty somethings. The idea that computers are only for the young is, at best, plain stupid.

It still surprises me how many people think computers are complex to use. Compared to the reflexes and dexterity required to drive a car, computers are easy. The biggest problem I find is that some people are genuinely scared of them.

So, what do I talk about? My idea is to start with the fact that I find many older users to be as good as the kids and computers are not only for Generation Z. From there, go onto talk about the advantages, learning and security.

The problem with the security angle is that we'll be also discussing Internet Explorer's latest security holes. So I might be confirming in some people's minds computers are not for them.

What's a bloody sense of humour?

The Tourism Australia's "Where the bloody hell are you campaign" seems to have been a success in at least generating some media interest, but it seems TA lack a bloody sense of humour.

Setting the lawyers onto a small media company for creating a spoof is a over-reaction of the first order. The fact I'm typing this only shows how counter productive that tactic was. I notice there are now slightly over 20,000 views the UTube clip as I write this, the Chaser send-up seems to be doing well too.

Somewhat less funny is the lawyer's attempting to use the IP angle to close it down. Exactly the same lame tactic used to close down Richard Neville's site. We're seeing this too often from the big end of town.

Speaking of big end of town lawyers, it's funny how Tourism Australia's homepage has a "please read disclaimer" note. There's no link there, but their Terms and Conditions are a commercial lawyer's wetdream. No doubt whoever wrote these T&C's earned enough for a nice month in Tuscany, more of our taxes at work.

Smarthouse claims 60% rewrite of Vista

Rewriting 60% of an OS?

Someone has either been sold a dummy or they are seriously misguided.

I'd love to know who is David Richard's source is. Maybe he or she could buy me a drink at the Judgement Bar or Pickled Possum. If they think you can re-write 60% of the next Windows OS in six months then they are good for at least nineteen J&D and Cokes on a Saturday night.

Despite the headline, I can't see where in the quoted email it actually says that 60% of the Vista code will be re-written. There's heaps of worthy words but nothing that actually says what's promised in the headline. I'll call BS on this one.

This isn't the first time David Richards has bought attention to himself. Last month we had the bizarre posting in his newsletter about his stoush with a Hi-Fi retailer.
While Richard was quite right to be upset about being accused of plagiarism, the fact he chose not to attribute the original article only left him open to such an accusation.

I enjoy David's daily Smarthouse News email. It's a useful and enjoyable newsletter. I just hope Richard can attribute a few better sources to his 60% rewrite claim.

Liberals join the porn war

It seems that Labor's porn filtering idea isn't to be dismissed out of hand at all. While the Sydney Morning Herald seems to want to credit the little known Senator Barnett of Tasmania for forcing the issue, it's much more likely an opinion poll suggested that voters thought it was good idea. Personally, I like Whirlpool's comment although the imagary of Senator Coonan and Kim Beazley doing trapeze acts is something I wish had never entered my imagination.

The War on Satire

It's good to see the Australian High Tech Crime Centre fighting the "war on satire". It was undoubtedly important that they stomped on Richard Neville's johnhowardpm.org site before comedy sleeper cells across the country leapt out to do their evil deeds.

Just to show the battle aren't over, the comedians of Melbourne IT, notably CTO Bruce Tonkin claimed "that particular agency has damaged their credibility". Like all good comedians, Bruce has an element of truth in his spiel. The Feds have damaged their credibility, but nowhere to the degree Melbourne IT has.

The message is clear: No Australian can have confidence that Melbourne IT will not cut their website off without notice. All it takes is some nebulous "advice" from a government department.

The question remains why Melbourne IT didn't check the site was falsely registered themselves. Richard Neville claims he paid for the registration by credit card, so it would have been easy for them to check the name of the registration and the provided contact details. Melbourne IT's jumping the gun shows that their priority isn't to look after their customers.

A few more bigger and important questions are also raised by this. How many other Australian registrars would act without question on "advice" from the High Tech Crime Centre? Also, does the AFP have so many resources it can spend time investigating every suspicious domain registration, or does it only jump when it receives "advice" from an irritated drone in the PM's office.

The lesson though for Australian website owners is clear: Unless you absolutely need an address in the .au space, register it overseas. Not only will you save money, but you'll be a little less prone to the whims of Melbourne IT and the High Tech Crime Centre.

Windows Vista running late. Surprised?

Microsoft's announcement to delay the release of Vista might have come as a surprise to the stock market but it's no surprise to those of us who remember the releases of Windows 95 and XP. Microsoft never release things like this on schedule. Experienced Microsoft watchers take any schedule from MS with a very large grain of salt.

More of a worry is Jim Allchin's reported comments that the delay was due to "performance, drivers, testing and security". Gee is that all? This is an operating system that was due for release at the end November and they haven't got this stuff under control in March.

This is more reason why early adopters should avoid Vista, or any other OS release, until it's 1.1 (or Service Pack One in Micro-speak.)

It's a bit of blow to retailers and manufacturers who were looking at Vista giving a spark to the pre-Christmas shopping rush, but for those of us that support these things, we're breathing a sigh of relief that something severely buggy isn't going to be rushed to market.

Hello from Planet Canberra

Who'd want to be an Australian voter? First the Liberal Party enhances it's small government credentials with 300 pages of regulations to help make employment laws simpler. Not to be outdone, the Labor opposition decide to ban Internet porn.

The Internet porn ban is an old, and easy target, who doesn't want to protect the children from the pornographers of the net? The Liberals toyed with this idea some years back and, finding it too difficult, decided to setup the Net Alert and strong armed the ISPs into the "Ladybird" program. Both are good, if under publicised, services with useful resources.

Kim Beazley's dopey proposal has all the hallmarks of an "idea" where the only thought involved was to get the attention of the morning radio talk shows. For this proposal to work it requires the Australian Broadcasting Authority and to licence the international Internet gateways. This would only cost a few hundred million, another hundred or so public servant and few more phone books of regulations.

Of course, when it comes to issuing phone books of regulations Kim and his gang of aging factional warriors have nothing on the current mob holding the keys to the ministerial dunnies. The Liberals have announced another telephone book of regulations to help "guide" us through the maze of their new workplace laws, all of which can be changed on the whim of the minister. I guess we small business owners should be thankful the low taxing, red tape cutting, small business friendly Liberals are in power.

Firefox 2 alpha released

For those who seriously live on the bleeding edge of technology, the next version of Firefox is available for download as an alpha release. While we're great fans of Firefox at PC Rescue, we don't trust beta software, let alone alpha releases. We'll leave that to people like Charles Wright at Bleeding Edge who actually looks forward to the pain involved.

Apparently the Mozilla people are less than happy with this being publicised. Their view is this is just another nightly release as part of the software and they'll announce an official alpha when they are good and ready.

Continuing the theme of early adopters, Slashdot reports the recall of nearly 12,000 plasma screens. The linked USA Today article goes on to point out a whole list of recent high tech snafus. The point being (I think) that technology companies are rushing products to market.

There's certainly more than an element of truth here. One of the banes of running an IT support company is the amount of software and hardware that fails to come anywhere near meeting what was promised. The competitive pressures seems to favour rushing new stuff to market, regardless of any bugs in the product.

The rapidly changing market also messes up retailers. I was chatting to a salesman at Harris Technology about this last week, he was complaining about the confusing and rapid changes in the desktop and laptop market. You can't be too optimistic with your stock levels when the manufacturers are going to supersede everything within two months.

I guess another issue is just how long the manufacturers keep spare parts for these things. That's another reason why a three-year manufacturers warranty is essential for state of the art equipment. At least that way the manufacturer carries some risk.

Windows Vista: A sense of Deja-Vu?

An article in today's ZDNet had me thinking how often I've heard that the next version of Windows will be more secure. I'm sure if I really exercised my mind I'd remember Microsoft saying something similar about DOS 6.22 or Windows 3.11. EVERY version has been marketed as more secure even when they've left gaping holes open across every platform.

The ZDNet article has some strange claims, does Joris Evers seriously believe more than 75% of Windows boxes are infected with Spyware? While spyware is the biggest security threat to Windows users, grossly exaggerating the problem does nobody any good. The real figure is probably around 15-20%, which is still an outrageous number.

Another weird comment is "spyware has been able to haunt users of XP." I guess Joris doesn't know anyone running earlier versions of Windows. It was the difficulty of cleaning spyware from Win9x boxes which lead us to declare the death of Windows 98 some months back. A badly infected ME system is in reformat territory, which is pretty well an admission of total defeat from an experienced tech.

Being younger than me, Joris probably doesn't remember the success of Microsoft's earlier attempt at bundling an anti-virus with their operating systems. It doesn't fill me with confidence when the MS Antispyware tool is choosing to ignore some of the notorious spyware programs. While Defender and OneCare will help, they won't be putting Symantec and McAfee out of business yet.

The biggest plus for Vista is that users will no longer be running as administrators by default. This should have been done with Windows XP and if MS had have done this, the spyware plague would probably not have happened. I suspect the reason they didn't was because so many MS apps require admin rights.

If Vista does restrict users by default, then we'll see a lot of older programs not running. The problem we are going to see is some users will get used to giving Admin rights to every dialogue box that pops up. Worse, we'll probably see some vendors recommend changing user rights to administrator level.

This last point is why the average user needs to ignore all the hype about Vista. Even if it gets released on time, it will be this time next year at the earliest before we techs have figured out how to use it properly. The early adopters, as usual, will be our crash test dummies.