Today, I received a notification that there was a “Post by non-member to a members-only list” on one of the mailing lists I run. This occasionally happens if a subscriber posts to the mailing list from the wrong address. It can also happen if the list address has been harvested by spammers – and the message in question is therefore spam. In today’s case, it was spam.
Read MoreARMX6 vs VirtualRiscPC – a totally unscientific speed comparison
Back in February, at the RISC OS Southwest Show, I purchased the new ARMX6 computer from R-Comp, which was seeing its official launch at the show. Once I got the machine home and set it up, my initial impression was basically “Wow!” – the speed improvement it shows over previous RISC OS computers is fantastic.
Read MoreAn “open letter” to an unspecified party
Yesterday, I felt the need to send the email below to a VirtualAcorn-list subscriber. I said (as quoted in the message) that I may publish this as an “open letter” to an unspecified party, and without any further comment but, in retrospect, I feel that some commentary would be appropriate – see after the quoted message.
Read MoreYou may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks
But what about new dogs and old tricks? A few days ago I saw a request for help on a usenet discussion group. The person was asking a question on behalf of someone else, who was using a free webmail service and wanted to be able to download emails from the webmail service to a directory on their computer.
Read MoreI think you want him, not me
I received an email this afternoon that read (in summary) “Hi Geoff, can you play ‘Are You Sure’ by So? It doesn’t get played on the radio often enough.” Out of curiosity, I looked the song up on YouTube and, ignoring the fact that my name isn’t Geoff, I played it.
Read MoreRyanair: a website and telephone support FAIL
This morning, I booked some flights with Ryanair on behalf of my parents, who don’t feel confident enough with computers and the internet to do this sort of thing themselves. This is something I’ve done many, many times for them (and I’ve occasionally booked flights for myself with Ryanair, as well) so I’ve been using their website for donkey’s years. I’ve seen it change from time to time, and I’ve often cursed at it (and the company themselves) for making it so damned annoying, insisting that I say at the…
Read MoreExcellent parking!
By parking this car where they have, the driver of this vehicle, who appeared to be visiting someone a couple of doors up, has cunningly avoided colliding with the car on the other side of the driveway they’re partially blocking – the car that is fully equipped with a cloaking device that makes it completely invisible to the human eye.
Read MoreReplies from the ICO about Sage and FindMyPast
While talking about the junk email I’d received from Virgin Media, I mentioned my previous junk emails from Sage and from FindMyPast. These are instances where I’d decided to report the emails to the Information Commissioner’s Office – and while writing about Virgin Media, it occurred to me that I should probably write about the responses I had from the ICO. So, in the order in which they happened:
Read MoreVirgin Media joins the ranks of spammers
As I’ve said before in a number of posts (such as this one about Sage and this one about FindMyPast), as a general rule if I have to give an email address to any kind of organisation or submit one on a website, it tends to be one unique to that company. If I’m submitting that address via a form (web or paper based), if there is a tick box that says (in effect) “I don’t want junk email” I almost always tick it. In those cases where I don’t…
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