Re: Health-care organizations struggle with Wi-Fi rollouts (March 29)
To clarify a point in this article:
CAMH’s $400-million redevelopment will consolidate our four primary
sites in Toronto (i.e., our College Street site, our Russell Street site and our Brentcliffe Road site) into our Queen Street site as the hub of our operations with additional satellites planned for local communities. Our Queen Street site will be redeveloped and new buildings will be built in phases with decanting of the old buildings in order to minimize disruption for clients, staff and the neighbours. CAMH’s overall bed number will remain the same although there will be off-site beds in Peel and other places in Toronto in keeping with our mandate and to ensure that people receive services closer to where they live. As we consolidate, there will be some efficiencies in staff with a redirection of staff to front-line service.
Anne Ptasznik
Manager, Communications and Community Relations, Redevelopment
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto
Re: Seeds of dissent (March 14)
Keep up the good work, and keep doing what you’re doing in your articles. I am the manager in charge of our company’s computers and network, so I get what you are talking about. It is good you lay blame where it should be.
John Besner
General Manager/Controller
Glenwood Label & Box Mfg. Ltd
New Westminster, B.C.
Re: Seeds of dissent (March 14)
I have never been a “Letter to the Editor” type before but your article (and the way the day is going) has prompted me to send you the following:
I quite enjoyed this piece (as I often do with your writings), but I think that these sad times have already arrived.
Is it not now common to receive e-mail and faxes with a footer that roughly says, “If we sent this to you in error, let us know and destroy it.” I have received faxes to and from doctors’ offices and banks, and now to append my e-mails with a similar “warning.”
It is too late to close the barn door once you’ve seen the horses off in a truck, but in today’s litigious times, it’s never too late to sue.
Courtland Elliott
Re: BMO keeps backup data centre at a distance (March 10)
I must wonder at the wisdom of advertising the location and specifications of the new BMO back-up site and facility. With all due respect, Barrie is not that large, and how difficult will it be to locate a 325,000 sq.-ft. building on 24 acres of land known as the BMO Computer Centre? Parking for 500. Space to expand the building.
With the type of disasters that we’ve seen over the last number of years, they might as well paint a large target on the roof, too.
Sharon Polsky
President
DRIE West
Re: Spam by the numbers (March 10)
It is absolutely sloppy science to suggest a decline in spam volumes. In fact I would suggest just the opposite is true. We have certainly seen a dramatic increase in the last four years. The problem with the Ipsos-Reid online and telephone research is who they are talking to: users. Users probably do see a decline in the spam that gets through to their mail boxes because e-mail administrators are stopping it before it gets there. We stop between 20,000 and 40,000 spam messages per week (depending on the week) before it gets to an inbox, with anti-spam filters and software. That’s for a company that only has 150 full-time employees!
While it may be true that “. . . the average weekly number of spam e-mail messages dropped from 68 per cent in 2003 to 49 per cent last year” let’s not forget that drop is in what was delivered to end users, NOT what was sent.
The amount of time and money spent by IT departments to deal with spam and spyware is staggering. To suggest that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), has had any impact on the amount of spam sent out is ridiculous; most spam comes from offshore sources. If Ipsos-Reid wants to produce some meaningful statistics, it should talk to some e-mail administrators or IT departments and get some real information.
Peter Mills
Director, Information Technology
Orca Bay Sports & Entertainment
Re: Spam by the numbers (March 10)
What planet is Ipsos-Reid on? Here on earth, spam has increased.
Spam control measures have improved, but their lag behind the spammers unfortunately has not narrowed. For most of the companies that cannot keep changing their e-mail addresses to evade spammers, it has become necessary to employ radical server side spam control like Spam Assassin to pre-clean the mail before final cleaning by LAN or desktop spam control programs, in order to shield the work force from excessive spam.
Sure, to the end user it might appear that there is less spam. That only means that the IT department is getting better at trashing spam.
Helmut Morscher
CEO
Webby Inc.
Re: Spam by the numbers (March 10)
Interesting notion that spam is decreasing, but in fact I see it up about 100 per cent in the last year. I administer a network server system that provides e-mail services to some 2,500 clients (Campbell River Community Network). We use some very sophisticated software to block spam from getting to the end user, so yes, the end user is likely seeing less spam in the mail box. We (the system operator) on the other hand have seen the amount of spam we are blocking with our systems rise from an average of 45,000 pieces per day, to 90,000 per day.
Garry Griffin
Director
Campbell River Community Network
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