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Being on the paying end of a Vodafone account, I note with gritted teeth the mobile operator’s promotions that are for PrePay customers only.

By Juha Saarinen | Auckland | Friday, 20 October, 2006

Top Stories

Bursting babbling bubbles

- Vodafone doesn’t heart its On Account customers
- Profits in quarters
- Smell of legally fried spammer

Mr Bunny’s guide to ActiveX

Dunno what this is all about but "ActiveX is just a new way of controlling your pixels," says Mr. Bunny. "Can you say 'pixel'?" is good enough for me.

- Mr Bunny

We love him too

“Everybody Loves Eric Raymond”, a web comic about the very real lives of Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds, depicted as accurately as comically possible.

- ELER

While you’re there, don’t forget to get the truth about Bruce Schneier:

- Bruce Schneier Facts

Where are the NZ channels though?

A huge selection of Internet TV channels from all over the world but good luck watching them. The NZ intarweb is too slow to stream stuff, unfortunately, but if you’re patient and don’t mind busting that data cap, here’s a taste of free Internet TV.

- BeelineTV

Vodafone doesn’t heart its On Account customers

Being on the paying end of a Vodafone account, I note with gritted teeth the mobile operator’s promotions that are for PrePay customers only.

Here we are, silly people who sign up for 12, 24 and 36 months offering Vodafone a good chunk of money for that period of time, but do we get any love? No, only the fickle PrePay customers who may or may not take their business away to the rival operator at the tip of a hand do.

Thinking I must be missing something I asked Vodafone if there was any point in being an On Account customer, given they don’t benefit from promotions and special offers. I expected Vodafone to respond that they reward long-term regular customers, and maybe be pointed towards a better plan but… no. Vodafone said that I should be on PrePay.

Looking at the difference, I would save just over $20 a month being on PrePay rather than On Account — and that’s without any promotions increasing the difference.

What’s with this step-motherly attitude towards regular customers, Vodafone? Surely you don’t want to encourage customer “churn”? Oh, forgot … there’s no other GSM operator here, which limits customers’ options.

Profits in quarters

Intel is still suffering from the ill effects of launching the Netburst processor architecture into what ended up as a contracting PC market. Well, that’s the analysis at least, which says the cooler and better-performing AMD processors came along and ate Intel’s lunch.
Still though, Intel’s not exactly making a loss despite a third fall in profits. The chip giants profits alone are the size of AMD’s revenues — US$1.3 billion in both cases. AMD in turn saw a US$134 million profit, and Intel’s revenues where US$8.7 billion in comparison (all quarterly figures).

Intel’s turned a profit on the back of new high-performance processors that are energy-efficient to boot, but also by laying off 10,500 people last month, or ten per cent of the entire company. That’s dual and quad hard core by Intel, but surely it would’ve been better not to go down the disastrous Netburst path a few years ago?

Defying shrinking PC markets, Apple’s doing rather nicely. Quarterly profits up by over a quarter — ka-ching! It’s not just the very PC like but Apple branded Macintoshes that are selling well, but also iPods. Congrats to Apple there.

- Intel profit falls 35 percent

- AMD tops estimates with $1.3 billion revenue

- Apple quarterly profit up 27%

Apple VXes

I’m not the only person thinking that blaming Microsoft just because you ship a virus is lame. Apple says:

“We recently discovered that a small number — less than 1% — of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.”

“Fewer than…” please, Apple. What sort of rubbish excuse is that though?

- Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus

- Trend Micro: WORM_SIWEOL.A

Smell of legally fried spammer

Good to see that Spamhaus has taken up the legal cudgel against e360 Insight, the spammers managed to bamboozle a US district court judge into thinking he had jurisdiction over the United Kingdom.

The case isn’t the first time a spammer has resorted to legal means to silence Spamhaus and other anti-spammers. Unfortunately, the legal system in the US leaves plenty of room for such nuisance law suits.

What is interesting here is how the Illinois District Court judge’s order to have the www.spamhaus.org domain (not the root spamhaus.org one though) suspended. If the court order is executed, it would rekindle already strong sentiment that the US should not alone control the Internet as is the case now through ICANN.

ICANN or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is ducking for cover in the case, saying it has no authority let alone ability to suspend domain names. US courts however may disagree with this, and decide to pressure ICANN into complying with their orders — in which case the situation would get very messy indeed, both legally and politically.

- Email servers will choke, says Spamhaus

- Spamhaus appeals possible shutdown ruling

- Spamhaus Register of Known Spam Operations: Brian Haberstroh/Atriks; Partner-in-Spam: David Linhardt/e360 Insight

- Spamhaus: Legal Answers & Updates