8bits Blog

Home
Blog

0

Bad Mailing Lists

recently received an email from someone trying to sell me a mailing list. The first thing that struck me was that they had just sent me an unsolicited email. I don’t know about you, but I tend to avoid buying anything from people that send me unsolicited email. In this instance they were trying to sell me an email list. I think there may be a clue there as to how they got that list.

The other thing about the email was the absence of a way for me to unsubscribe from their list. I had to reply to the sender directly and ask that they take me off this list and any others they have me on. Not surprisingly, I didn’t receive a reply. It’s illegal to send out mass emails without some way for people to unsubscribe. (See The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003.)

The Rise of Cloud Computing

The term Cloud Computing may not instill the same sort of fear and dread that Skynet did in the Terminator films, but for some it might be getting close. The very words ‘Cloud Computing’ make it sound like some sort of extra terrestrial techno magic that’s floating around with the Noctilucent.

What ‘the cloud’ really is are lots of boring data centre’s all very much anchored to terra firma. It’s a good thing they are boring, because they need to be reliable (and we all know boring equals reliable. Ask any Volvo owner). After all, the promise of cloud computing is that it will eventually take over from our desk and laptop computers. All we’ll need to use it is a very basic device that can hook into ‘the cloud’ over a reliable and ever present Internet connection. If the stuff that your connection is connecting you to is a bit too exciting, it may be unreliable, and that just won’t do.

I'd like some Flash with that

You’ve been bewitched by the moving pictures and strange sounds coming from a website. You descend into in a heightened state of excitement and want one just like it.

Maybe you didn’t notice that it took three minutes for the page to load. You didn’t notice the stylishly presented ‘23% loaded…’ indicator that seemed to crawl by as if time was standing still. You didn’t really pay attention to the missing navigation and the lack of any content whatsoever. All you saw was the bright moving pictures and cheesy ‘pinging’ sounds that sprang into life when the page finally loaded. Yes, you think you want a Flash site.