- Site menu:
- Latest Discussions
- Latest Newswire
- Archives
- Submit Story
- Story HOWTO
- Syndicate
- E-mail Alerts
A Comedy of Spam
Today, I got an e-mail addressed to the LXer editors, to the effect of "we couldn't find your website." The author(s) were apparently concerned that, since they couldn't find us, neither could our customers. Given that LXer drew over 12,000 unique visits on Christmas Day, and our average is even higher, I just want to ask them where they went looking for us? I don't know if they can find us over at BabySearch.com (don't know if that really exists), or some other specialized search engines, but our customers seem to be finding us just fine. While I'm on the topic, I even spam myself these days. Why, I usually send myself at least 10 messages a day trying to sell myself sexual aids, herbs and even sending myself winning lottery notices! I love sending myself winning lottery ticket notices - it makes me feel good, even if only for a moment. I even make sure to Lottery notices from Russian, Chinese, and Eritrean lotteries, just to make sure I never run out of winning tickets. Oh, that's right. It's not tickets - my e-mail account won. The irony is that my e-mail account gets richer while I keep getting poorer. And don't you just love the foreign language spam? I mean really, doesn't everyone speak Slavic? Yes, I, the great Don Parris can speak more languages than that android on Star Trek - what's his name? I'm surprised I haven't gotten spammed in Romulan or ewok-ian (Star Wars). Obviously, some people have entirely too much time on their hands. Honestly, given my circumstances, I spend most of my time writing and working on other projects to keep my family afloat. I barely have time to kiss my wife goodnight as I get home from work and start the next project. If spammers are making such big bucks off of their spam, the least they could do is contribute a few thousand bucks to the "Save the Parris Family Foundation". In fact, that ought to be what the government does with spam money - donate the fines and other penalties to the poor, hungry, huddled masses. At least that way, we can turn something evil into something good. I know, I'm just ranting. O.k., I'm "thru" ranting now. |
|
Comments (28)
The solution to spam
Might as well get some use out of the stuff.
6 earlier comments in the full thread.
So American males really do buy 2lbs of viagra a year ;-)
My father had a real problem wrapping his head around that simplicity. It (discount software) was advertised, he wanted it, why shouldn't he buy it? I think the part he didn't get is the cost of the spam. To him it's a minor nuisance, but he only got one copy. At the sending end where millions of copies are going out, it's a massive theft of someone else's paid-for bandwidth, so you have to assume the ad is crooked because it's sent by a crook. He didn't see it that way. I think this is a good example of who buys and why.
Crooks at best, and degenerate crooks at worst. In any case, why would anyone want to respond once they understand that. It's very frustrating to see that some still think this has value.
Well, someone's paying the spammers to spam. It can't be all for the credit card info. There are much better ways to get to credit card info then peddling fake viagra (e.g. porn, dating sites).
That woud be totallie co01!
Hmm, anyway, we all know Microsoft and especially the people using Windows are part of the problem. Couldn't all internet routers be reprogrammed to ban all Windows users?I mean, if 87% of the mail is spam, 87% of the energy used to route mail is wasted. Ban the Windows users! (Because, then I could spam Don even faster!) Oh, and I really should write that "virus" that installs a decent firewall and virusscanner at that zombie boxes. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to lose all that spam. It makes me really feel important to receive mail from all over the world (though only about 4 topics, but anyway, you shouldn't complain when 80 people a day send you a 'hello' message because they care about you, should you?)
But don't go away mad. I bet, if you stuck a WAVfile header-set (just RIFF, WAVE, fmt_ and data) on some of these spams, treating them as 8-bit-unsigned sample streams, they'd make the most interesting background sounds... You could do that with sox, no Perl needed.
Especially the Viagra spams.
Well, for those you don't chomp the line-endings off, They're more rhythmic that way.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w # # spam2wav --crb3 30Dec06 # # how many spammers does it take to recreate the soundtrack to # Katamari Damacy? filling in bycts after all is saved to disk # allows for piping concatenated spam in via STDIN (-e operator # might not like pipes). # $riffsize=$databyct=0; $samrate=11025; # a comfy samplerate, ~5KHz bandwidth $bytrate=$samrate; die "no output WAVfile specifiedn" unless defined($outf=$ARGV[0]); open(W,">$outf") or die "can't make outfile $outfn"; &write_headers; while(defined($ln=<STDIN>)){ chomp $ln; # unpleasant periodicity removed $databyct += length($ln); print W $ln; } $riffsize=$databyct+8+16+4; # takes in other headers seek(W,0,0); &write_headers; # this time with real sizes close(W); sub write_headers { $headers=pack("a4Ia4"."a4IvvIIvv"."a4I", 'RIFF', $riffsize, # hoping the native endian is vax/intel 'WAVE', 'fmt ', 16, # fmtcnt, size of 'fmt ' args 1, 1, # channels $samrate, $bytrate, 1, # bytes per sample-block 8, # bits per sample 'data', $databyct ); print W $headers; } (LXer's CMS removed indenting, and backslashes on string-ending newlines.)
You must have a higher-quality spam than me. I get quantity instead, like a meg a week -- or maybe that Vib Ribbon one went to the bitbucket already. I knew I shoulda coded spam2wav right after I got done with the sinewave Morse generator!
>I get quantity instead, like a meg a week
You may have to change your handle to Hormel.
> You may have to change your handle to Hormel.
Well, I am a licensed amateur radio operator, does that count?
Ouch.
Not the most useful 'life-extension', but... <sigh> It's spam. No matter what it promises, or what your intentions are, you'd get better results with fewer nasty side-effects by wishing on a star for some Nanniichuan.
I felt the same way about the "get laid tonight" spam, but I asked my wife, and she insists that I'm not missing anything. :)
You saw it here first, don't try to patent it ;-/
He is not alone. If non-spamming companies, esp. the big ones, would make it a habit to not behave like crooks and treat their customers fairly, perhaps the difference would stand out more clearly.
Wow!
:)
It is pretty sad though, how similar the behaviors are of the "reputable" companies to the malware ones anymore.
Oddly, I haven't been getting much spam through my system lately. It's kinda weird to look at my filter logs and only see that 20 or so spams got fried.
I was surprised (a) that she really existed, and/or (b) that she had actually sent the message. I called the company from which the e-mail was sent, and discovered that she actually worked there. They even transferred me directly to her! The timing, in conjunction with a similar message, was uncanny, and I could just see our inboxes getting a flood of new spam. All I can say is, Whew! If my guts had been proven correct, we would have been in for a real nightmare. Fortunately, my gut-level instincts are sometimes just plain wrong.
A Tale of a Spam
Post a comment
A free account is needed to post. Write your comment here first: your text is kept in this browser while you sign up or log in, and is waiting for you when you come back.
Your message:Sign up and post (it is free) or Log in and post