According to IBM's Global Business Security Index Report 2004, 70% of all email traffic last year was spam. 70%. But someone must be buying something, otherwise they wouldn't bother - it's not like the virus field, where people do it for notoriety, curiousity and arrogance. (Or at least they did, before organized crime took over.)
I remember when this was all newsgroups, as far as the eye could see...
(Actually, that's a complete lie. When I started taking notice of this stuff, Mosaic was already available - I guess that merely makes me middle-aged (in internet terms), rather than a true oldie. But I know plenty of oldies... ;)
I wonder how long it will be until text messaging is unusable in NZ because of spam.
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Of the things that I've overheard in my office that are contenders for 'most representative slogan for the room', the current frontrunner is probably: "Whoa! Check out the enema equipment!"
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I have very mixed feelings about making links pop up new windows - but that's probably because I've set my middle mouse button to do it by default. I know there are plenty of tab-using people out there, too, and I don't really want to dictate their browsing experience. Plus, it's more typing unless I can somehow make it a default via the style-sheet - and if I were going to do that sort of thing, there's plenty of tweaking I'd play around with before getting to new windows. (Like resetting the link styles and colours to the defaults, for example.) I suspect that laziness will win in the end... sorry, Phreq! :(
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I booked movers for a time that nicely overlaps the period I've got to be at home, waiting for the Saturn cable guy. (Most likely waiting in vain, if my past experience with Saturn is any guide; but you've got to go through the motions, I suppose.) I was going to sign up with Contact, but there's been several discussions about different electricity providers on our internal mailing lists - looking over them, people seem to have had significant and persistent problems with Contact, so I went with Genesis instead. It was a slightly weird experience - I rang, pushed '3' for a new account, settled in to wait... and after one ring, I was connected to an actual, helpful and cheerful person! There was an unexpected added bonus, too - as I'd already had an account with them (back in Ellice St), my existing credit rating meant I didn't have to have a bond. So - is avoiding a semi-expected cost the same as actually getting money? Bank-balance says no, but desire for goodies says yes! :)
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All of the above was written on Friday, on and off - this is written on Saturday. I'd tried to concoct a reasonable excuse not to be in today, but I didn't manage it, so here I am - trying to make sure that a swap of hardware will be suitably painless on Monday, and trying to work out how to reintergrate a couple of tables that hold basically the same information, but have drifted apart through usage. It's all a bit of a pain in the bum, but there's a big deadline for the end of February, so here I am, trying to streamline part of the process on this sunny weekend afternoon.
On the upside, next week I won't have as far to come in; and before long, we'll have rotten weather, and it won't matter that much if I'm not able to get out on the weekend. :)
Three days until settlement.
Posted by svend at February 11, 2005 2:03 PMWell *I* remember when it was all bulletin boards. And the screen was 14" and wrote only in orange.
Ah, bulletin boards. I was a member of one called "Steven's Studio". That's about all I can remember of it. But bulletin board and sysops featured large in my young imagination.
God, that must have been when I was still in primary school! Bejeezus.