23 December 2009

The Face of Spam



Thank you readers for your wonderful submissions of Spam success stories. This is a follow up to El Capitan's printing of your responses.

Since I asked our readers their experience with Spam. I thought I would do some follow up and really investigate this issue. So I set my sights on the Spam King, and the Can-Spam law. Did you know that 80% of Spam is sent by only 135 people? They may be small in number, but powerful in deed. (of course I'm not sure this limited to the US or World Wide.) So I'm not sure if there are 135 Spam Kings in the U.S. or in the whole world. either way this fits Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory that a small number of people are involved in most of the real action.

The official definition of illegal Spamming is sending e-mails from other people's accounts, usually by means of a virus or an unsecure network, crafting messages to disguise the origin, falsifying the headers, or creating five or more e-mail accounts with fake names or five IP addresses and spamming from them.

So if you want to avoid the CAN-SPAM Act, four is the golden number for your Spam operation.*
Four e-mail accounts and four IP addresses. Of course if you limit yourself to four, you probably won't be sending billions of Spam e-mails or making $18,000 (a year in US dollars).
(from http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/security-bytes/japanese-spam-king-arrested/)

Not all Spammers that get caught, are just your basic white collar criminals.

for a morbid and somber Spam King story: see.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/24/20080725_C6LO_BENNETT/

On that, Spam is just a slight hiccup when considering the positives of new technology.

Thank you, Internet for we take the good with the bad, allowing us to gain inheritance from dead relatives we never knew we had or helping out a stranger with a winning lottery ticket. Thank you for the free stuff. Free Porn. Which in my opinion has completed screwed up a generation of young men. Free news articles (so we can help the newspapers go out of business, and force alcoholic journalists to find a job that pays more so that don't have as much to gripe about when they go to a bar).

So Thank you, Al Gore. (j/k). Really, thank you Bill Joy and others lucky to be born in 1954-1956, nerdy, and willing to forgo sex with hot co-eds in the seventies (when everyone was just giving it away), to put in over 10,000 hours of programming (in front of awfully slow computers) to make the internet what it is today.

I might be wrong about the sex, I'm basing my judgment solely on my impression of computer "geeks" from 80s movies, like "Revenge of the Nerds." Well, maybe the computer guys weren't forgoing sex. Perhaps, in the seventies there was true equality, and even computer nerds got laid... (just during the day, when they were not programming.)

*Four besides being the ideal number for Spammers is also the number of wives you can have in Muslim culture (definitely the biggest draw in converting to Islam... at least for guys.) of course you have to wake up at dawn, pray throughout the day, live with people that only know the Koran and nothing else, rely on handouts from people that sell oil and might have to kill your daughter if she doesn't wear the right clothing, gets raped, has sex or even just goes on "dates" without your consent.

and I'm not even mentioning that you have to live and submit to the rules of completely nuts, power hungry undeserving dogmatic and delusional fellow Muslims. They might be using Russian (Soviet Union) or US made arms to intimidate or kill you, because they see you as a rival, you forgot to follow one of the Islam's rules or they were just having a bad day.

but you get four wives! tough call. maybe there are many Muslim men out there, completely reasonable citizens of the world: for peace, conserving the environment, social justice, educating the young, that just going along with the fanatical religion thing, oppressive government, etc. because they have four hot or at worse still attractive wives (at the same time). and they know that with all our freedoms, in the United States, you get in trouble if you have more than one wife (at a time).

or you could live in the Muslim world for a few years get married (four times) and move to GB (Great Britain). Do you think they have just one bride per wedding at a time? or do they sometimes double or triple-team it, or even go for the whole shebang all at once?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/columnists/fergus_shanahan/790620/Columnist-Fergus-Shanahan-Bed-hoppers-are-screwing-us-all.html

Peace out.
GCNOF.

22 December 2009

RIP Frank McCourt


I just realized Frank McCourt passed away this year. July 19, 2009. I wondered if I missed it at the time or just forgot? It was the weekend of my Tahoe Swim Relay.

I read his ob piece in the New York Times.

here it is...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/books/20mccourt.html


I enjoyed his books tremendously. I read all three. Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, and Teacher Man.
If I ever write a memoir it will be because of him. (ok, a little melodramatic; exaggerated.)
I also like how he writes about his teaching. To McCourt! If you haven't read his work you're missing out. No one does childhood or adult life, quite like the Irish. And McCourt captures it beautifully and memorably.

And remember to share with us at Georgetown Tales, your Spam stories. (Georgetown Tales is not liable for any harm to persons, possessions or computers, resulting from investigations into your Spam e-mail. You do that at your own risk. We especially caution against traveling to Nigeria to gain inheritance or to attend funeral proceedings for dead relatives [that are not on your family tree]). Nonetheless, we relish in hearing your stories.

21 December 2009

Spam: Internet Success Stories


I write today. First I would I like to thank all our anonymous readers out there, for making it seem like we have more readers than we actually do. Even if you just are trying to get us to by Viagra, or separate us from our money for no worthwhile product. We really need to make it look like this blog is the blog to read.

So (as long as you count on our counter) Spam away!

[I was like 8 comments on my blog. I don't know if I have eight friends that read this blog.]
(as if) R.I.P.B.M.

We, here at Georgetown Tales, know that hot girls (not married to us) don't really want to see us. Unless, we spend lots of money on them or are Tiger Woods (I think even he had to spend lots of money on them, but maybe that's just a rumor). People do not want to give us money for nothing. Nor do they want to give us "free laptops", "free ipods" or "free trips to the Bahamas". Bill Gates doesn't want to help the economy, simply by giving away his money to all Americans. That's just not his style.

People may make $200/day working for home. But I'm not sure how that works. and somehow I know I would wind up on the shorthand of the stick or maybe I would become another Spammer. Besides, I already work for "the man." and the worst part is that my particular "man" isn't doing that well in this economy.

I don't want to try products for free. Because I have a tough enough time ending relationships as it is. and I don't want to go to the hassle of canceling after receiving your product. Plus there is the off chance, you'll charge my credit card. (and thanks S C D), it happened once and took me two months to clear the charges.

But Spammers, Spam away. We have a symbiotic relationship. Readers, if something seems so good that besides your better judgment you have to check it out, go ahead and click on it!

From personal experience, just don't give away your e-mail address and use a public computer. That way if you get a virus, you'll cause problems for a whole public computer system, at the library or a school as opposed to your own.

But don't do it at work, you might get fired.

So Readers, we, at Georgetown Tales, are having a world-wide search.

If you have ever soliticited hot girls, and actually met them or gotten a free product in response to a Spam e-mail. Please let us know. How many other products did you have to buy? how long did it take?

We, here at Georgetown Tales, are very curious. if you are making $100-$200 a day from your home, please let us know how that's going and what you actually do. Gotten money from Bill Gates for buying a Windows product? or gotten a free vacation? or gotten to test and keep (for free) the latest in electronic gadgetry?

And of course, I'm forgetting the big ones: who's been generously given a winning a lottery ticket or sent money from a dead relative? (that you didn't even know you had) preferably one that was living in Nigeria. please share your success story. what are you doing with the millions of dollars?

Loyal readers, in my next week's column I'll write some of internet Spam's success stories. The lottery winners of the internet age. They didn't even need to buy a ticket!

Of course, if you've had a Spam disaster, please tell us to. What happened, what are were the consequences?

You can read our Spam success stories and learn where you went wrong. Maybe you too can meet hot, local, young women or get to test and keep a new flatscreen TV.

Find out what it is exactly that separates Spam disaster from Spam success in next week's column.

(no guarantees, when that column will actually appear).

-GCNOF