Open letter to Jonathan Margolis

Dear Mr Margolis

I have always appreciated your low-tech approach to the internet in the Financial Times "How to Spend It" magazine. However one of your recent columns left me quite seriously
annoyed.

First of all you complained about web sites without a credible contact address. I could sympathize with you, until I tried to send you an email with my comments. You come up frequently in articles, but no contact details. Even the FT site only has a "Letters to the Editor" option. In the newspaper the columnists publish their email address, but not in the magazine.

I have to admit that this was only a problem once I had reacted to your other comments.

You went on to state that spam is dead. I can assure you it's not. As system administrator for a small company, I estimate that over 90% of all incoming mail is spam, and at least 75% of outgoing mail despite a "business use only" written IT policy. Perhaps my definition of spam differs from yours.

The last straw though was your complaint about the country list on registration pages. "How many visitors do they get from Afghanistan?" "The major countries should be at the top of the list" Let's see. Major countries.... That would certainly make life easier for the Chinese, Filipinos and Indians. We could use population, land
area, birth rate etc. If we search hard enough, we might find some where Britain is still in the top 10.

That obsession with British superiority doesn't get you very far once you cross the channel or the pond.

Then it occurred to me, you don't know how to use that list box! Click on the box and you get the usual 'Afghanistan...' list. Press 'U' 4 times. Hey presto "United Kingdom". That's not too hard is it? Or press 'P' and use the down arrow like we do in Portugal. As far as I am aware, that list is a standard feature provided by Microsoft, so it is natural that everybody should use the same list.

Yours sincerely


Harry

PS. I'm not posting my email here, so you'll have to leave me a comment, which doesn't require you to register, for now.

Google this!

Couldn't resist passing this on one, which I found here: shut up! i know!

Just Google for the word failure

Technical stuff

Got my first hit from a search engine today - msn.co.uk - so I tried finding my posts on other services. Yahoo.co.uk also finds my Ota airport posts. Google does not.

Puts a bit of a dent in my blind faith in Google's superiority, especially as blogger.com is a Google service!

Firefighting for cash

The wildfires rage on all over Portugal. The strangest part is how they start. Fires appear after midnight or in remote locations where nobody would go by accident.

Occasionally the authorities catch suspected arsonists. What are the consequences? None! They are usually released with a caution. I'm not usually in favour of citizens doing justice with their own hands, but here I could make an exception due to the arbitrary and grave threat caused to whole populations by the irresponsibility of a few.

More serious are allegations that the companies hired by the government to provide air support to the firemen have been seen setting fires. These companies invoice per hour flown, so for them the more fires the better. The annual flight time budget was exhausted at the end of July, but the government has no choice but to sign up for more time.

Perhaps this is an area where the government could show a tangible return on investment, buying planes and helicopters, training ground support personnel and providing an alternative for the pilots who leave the Air Force for better paid private sector jobs.

But such a scheme would not suit the private sector lobbyists nor the politicians that benefit from their attentions...

Are cars a deadly weapon?

The worst e-mail I received this week was a rant from somebody (anonymous) against the extreme lengths that the police are going to in order to catch drivers who break the law. They have radars, unmarked cars, databases and heavy fines at their disposal, which he thinks unacceptable. He doesn't even dream of the lengths gone to in other countries. Imagine his reaction to investigating accidents properly with a view to prosecuting those responsible for manslaughter or assault with a deadly weapon. We will get there eventually.

Portugal has a ridiculously high death and injury rate from traffic accidents, not because of the law, but because there continues to be a minimal chance of being caught. Prominent people go on TV regularly to criticise lack of safety, but then go on to say that their larger, safer, more expensive than average cars are a reasonable exception.

The author of the e-mail gave the example of a friend who had to sell his car to pay a fine - perhaps if he received such a high fine he wasn't a fit person to own a car.

Something has to change. If "extreme" policing techniques can help I'm all for it. The self-styled intelligentsia must take note too - what they need is a high profile prosecution of a jet-set figure for a traffic offence.

This source of national shame has to be dealt with, and the sooner the better.