LETTERS
I enjoyed the feature "The New Spam" by Wanda Sloan in Database on January 10. Spam, for me, is not too much of a problem - what bothers me more is the stuff I am getting from friends.
Nowadays, when you give away your name card, you must be wary. It often happens that the new friend just might send you jokes on an open mailing list, whereupon the dozens of others on the list will follow suit. I delete gigabytes of jokes each day. Yes, I did enjoy jokes but that was before the Internet.
It is hard to put the wags on notice and few seem to understand how to close the list. You send it to yourself and then bcc: to everybody else.
The other problem is that I am using a simple narrowband dial-up system while almost everyone else is into ASDL. I sometimes get multi-megabyte files of family photos and cannot spare the time to download. People are not resizing their photos for email. One needs a photo-editing program or one of those small utilities that Wanda has written about.
All I am really asking is that folks kindly learn how to close their mailing lists and please send properly resized photos one-by-one at no more than 100 KB each.
FRANK LOMBARD
Satellite warning
I'm writing to warn your users against any temptation to sign up for CS Loxinfo's iPSTAR satellite "broadband" service in the hope of faster browsing out in the boondocks beyond the reach of ADSL. I used iPSTAR for 11 months on Ko Sichang in Chonburi province, and never had a single month of satisfactory performance.
Even when the whole system is working at its best, the delay in getting a page download going (apparently caused by some problem with the Pathumthani gateway) is so long that a good dial-up connection is just as fast. Once the handshaking is over, transfers of big files do go pretty much at the speed you're paying for, but that's the only time the connection's not infuriatingly slow.
Almost every week, rain or clouds or dew or something else interferes with the ground station in Pathumthani, or stops your dish getting a signal to the satellite, leaving you with no connection or one so slow most pages time out.
What took the cake for me, though, was the non-service when their equipment failed. The first time my "box" burned out, I had to wait two days and travel an hour and a half to get a replacement. When that replacement failed a few months later, it took three weeks of waiting and four or five phone calls to get a serviceman to our place.
CS Loxinfo acknowledged that I'd been without service for 21 days, then offered me credit for a week's service - B625 off the B2,500 monthly bill. Their staff couldn't explain why the refund wasn't pro-rated to the loss of service. They did eventually email to say they would look into it, but cut off my connection while I was waiting for their answer: they wanted me to pay out my year's contract first, and argue about the refund later. Good try!
If you have absolutely no other way to connect to the Net, iPSTAR may be the way to go. But if you can get even a bad land line from the phone company, don't think about it. Not for a second.
DAVID KNAPP
Linux help
Apropos Larry's WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) problems (Database, January 10), WGA was mandatory from July 2005 and from July 2006 it blocked certain applications. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowsGenuineAdvantage.
As for Larry's move to Linux, I run Mepis 6.0, Ubuntu 6.0.6.1, PCLinuxOS and PcBSD (not exactly Linux) on one Thinkpad, and can recommend both Mepis and Ubuntu. One CD contains hundreds of apps and is easy to install.
If Larry needs any help with Mepis, I'm happy to assist.
JAKE
(lotusburg@yahoo.com)
Satisfied user
When I was in Thailand for a holiday I used to live in a condo just around the corner from the Bangkok Post Building and regularly used to pop in and pick up a copy of the Bangkok Post. Now I am living in Thailand and I live the other side of Bangkok and have taken a subscription to another newspaper.
However, each Wednesday I pick up a Bangkok Post as I still regard Database as being an excellent read, full of information and your columnist James Hein is excellent with his very useful articles. The whole thing is read from cover to cover and usually involves me adding another useful site to my favourites.
Please keep up the good work.
ALAN LEWIS
Pocketmod suggestion
Wanda Sloan notes that a Post Database reader recently asked what has happened to the lovely little programs of the past which allowed one to keep and to print a pocket-sized telephone directory. Reader Paul Jones has reminded us of Pocketmod, a web-based program which helps you print and fold just such a pocket booklet.
It has full instructions on making such useful booklets for calendar planners, organisers, personal reference and more. It shows you how to organise material on a single page, helps you to print it and then gives explicit instructions on cutting and folding the page into a six-page booklet.
You can find PocketMod on the web at http://www.pocketmod.com.
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