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Thread ID: 82245	2007-08-20 22:04:00	Yahoo/Xtra bubble - your questions please.	Jan Birkeland (4741)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
583187	2007-08-21 04:48:00	Probably they same reason that Telecom keeps waisting millions on Ferrit (while trying to compete with Trademe...:lol: :lol: ) They are a "me too" style monopoly rather than an innovative company, but that would probably be too much to ask for a Telecom service provider.	winmacguy (3367)
583188	2007-08-21 07:17:00	Yeah, here's a question. Ask them how much did Yahoo pay them and are they going to use this money to improve their "service" or are they going to spend it on advertising and pr? Why bother, they are just a bunch of ****s as far as I am concerned, wouldn't touch their over-hyped excuse for a "broadband solution" with someone else's bargepole, I can tell ya. In the world of service providers small is better. This is something "big business" will always fail to understand.:illogical	JackStraw (6573)
583189	2007-08-21 07:21:00	Looks like Campbell Live will be asking Telecom a question or 2 regarding the debacle.	winmacguy (3367)
583190	2007-08-21 07:58:00	If you have any questions you'd like me to ask Yahoo and Telecom on Friday, post them here and I'll do my best to get them answered at the event. can we get a technical answer to "what went wrong?", more than "technical problems..." why was this not tested or rolled out to a few dozen users per day over many weeks? (less pain) why was there not a call to rollback the change? why is it all hosted in AUZ ? will hosting in AUZ end up pushing much more data over the southern cross cable? will be be stuck without email if the southern cross cable has issues? why where the users given such short notice of the change?	robsonde (120)
583191	2007-08-21 08:04:00	Yeah if the cable went down, I think you could probably kiss all you email goodbye. But if it went down, almost all sites, anywhere in the world except NZ would become too slow or simply unavailable.	beeswax34 (63)
583192	2007-08-21 08:06:00	can we get a technical answer to "what went wrong?", more than "technical problems..." Jan, when you ask the question be sure to let them know that the your web site readers are more up to speed with tech jargon and acronyms than Theresa Gattung gave us credit for. We drink Java with a sprinkling of ajax and php for breakfast followed by a little bit of xml for lite reading.	winmacguy (3367)
583193	2007-08-21 08:19:00	I would suspect that the old webmail had reached the end of it's use by date as it was quite old. Its spam filtering was very poor. The new webmail is far more modern, and is supposed to include both spam and virus filtering. Hi Robby I'm not having a go at you, but this is something I simply don't understand. Just because something is (relatively) "old" doesn't make it defunct. I can't recall how many times I have heard "because it is old" as a reason for dispensing with one system in favour of another. IMO that sort of reasoning is fundamentally flawed, and in the cases where I have seen that line of argument employed, it is usually because the person in question either had a barrow to push or they didn't understand some aspect of the software (as I mentioned before, I'm not having a go at you). I still use software I developed in 1996 that was designed to run on a Windows 95 PC with 16MB of RAM - I use it every other day. Yes it looks 11 years old but it still works and has all the functionality I want. I have a client that still uses software that was designed to run on a DOS-based system - it was written in 1991, but it still works fine! Age / old isn't the issue, because a lot of the older software was actually very well written given the constraints that existed in the day. IMO quoting "age" is a rational / bull**** reason for an irrational decision. Anyway, insofar as I could see there was nothing wrong with Xtra webmail. It (used to) work every time I used it from within NZ and abroad, it had spam and virus filters, the spam filters worked well (in my experience) and I had no problems whatsoever with webmail, until they disabled it. The issue for me is Xtra not providing their customers with a choice. (I believe they still provide the webmail service for customers with domain names, but not the average customer). That is heavy-handed & arrogant. For peoples e-mail to stop working and then to remove the one tool they could have used to temporarily circumvent the problem shows a certain degree of idiocy I didn't think existed. It looks like I was proved wrong. Right now it is very tempting to change ISP but I vacillate..... I see BM provided what appears to be a handy link - has anyone else use that service? Cheers Andrew	andrew93 (249)
583194	2007-08-21 08:25:00	I suspect in Telecom's case there is a large dose of PR spin on the reason for shifting. Having said that it wouldn't surprise me if Telecom's hardware was straining under the growing torrents of email, SPAM and malware filtering.	winmacguy (3367)
583195	2007-08-21 08:59:00	Hi Robby I'm not having a go at you, but this is something I simply don't understand. Just because something is (relatively) "old" doesn't make it defunct. I can't recall how many times I have heard "because it is old" as a reason for dispensing with one system in favour of another. IMO that sort of reasoning is fundamentally flawed, and in the cases where I have seen that line of argument employed, it is usually because the person in question either had a barrow to push or they didn't understand some aspect of the software (as I mentioned before, I'm not having a go at you). I still use software I developed in 1996 that was designed to run on a Windows 95 PC with 16MB of RAM - I use it every other day. Yes it looks 11 years old but it still works and has all the functionality I want. I have a client that still uses software that was designed to run on a DOS-based system - it was written in 1991, but it still works fine! Age / old isn't the issue, because a lot of the older software was actually very well written given the constraints that existed in the day. IMO quoting "age" is a rational / bull**** reason for an irrational decision. Anyway, insofar as I could see there was nothing wrong with Xtra webmail. It (used to) work every time I used it from within NZ and abroad, it had spam and virus filters, the spam filters worked well (in my experience) and I had no problems whatsoever with webmail, until they disabled it. The issue for me is Xtra not providing their customers with a choice. (I believe they still provide the webmail service for customers with domain names, but not the average customer). That is heavy-handed & arrogant. For peoples e-mail to stop working and then to remove the one tool they could have used to temporarily circumvent the problem shows a certain degree of idiocy I didn't think existed. It looks like I was proved wrong. Right now it is very tempting to change ISP but I vacillate..... I see BM provided what appears to be a handy link - has anyone else use that service? Cheers Andrew With internet security the way it is, old versions of software do get insecure, and possibly the vendors of the old web mail no longer fully support it. It is years old and I found the spam filtering terrible . They also have to keep up with other ISPs in terms of features, it's called competition. With unlimited email storage, I wouldn't think it would be possible to provide this feature by hosting it in NZ and without yahoos expertise. I mean you can't really use windows 3.11 or 95 these days with the internet, and be 100% secure against all the nasties, as microsoft no longer provide patches. I have an issue with businesses using an xtra.co.nz email address, and not having a backup email system in place. Businesses should really have their own domain based email, where they easily change providers if they need to, without losing their email address. I have no sympathy with businesses who say that they have lost money because they couldn't check their email. If this was the case they should even have their own mailserver if email is mission critical. Don't get me wrong, xtra have dropped the ball by not letting their customers know early enough. Also not having covering all potential failures of the system and having redundancy in place in case of a problem with people being able to register into the new system. Also I am annoyed that xtras support initially denied any problem at all.	robbyp (2751)
583196	2007-08-21 09:20:00	With internet security the way it is, old versions of software do get insecure, and possibly the vendors of the old web mail no longer fully support it. It is years old and I found the spam filtering terrible . What does the webmail interface have to do with SPAM or Virus filtering? The last upgrade to Xtra's email system including the webmail interface was June 2006. This was said to have cost $20M. m-net.net.nz Maybe you attract a different variety of SPAM but the filtering was OK here. My Yahoo account got more junk than the Xtra one. Edit: Maybe Xtra could explain why they threw that $20M down the drain?	PaulD (232)
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