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The disclaimers spammers add to their missives are sometimes bizarre, ranging from excuses to nonsensical “word salad” to, in this example found in today’s spamtrap haul, legal threats.

WARNING: ANYONE REPORTING ALLEGED SPAM TO ANY PERSON OR PERSONS, WITH OUT PHYSICAL PROOF OF SUCH A CLAIM IS GUILTY OF BOTH FRAUD & A CIVIL CRIME AND WILL BE PURSUED AND PROSECUTED TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE READ:
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/lis/legislation/spamlaws02.htm

Physical proof? Of something which exists entirely in the virtual realm of bits and bytes? Do you have to submit your hard drive as evidence, or is a paper print-out sufficient? Continue reading →

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From the Gnome 2.10 release notes:

In the past, while typing something into one application when suddenly your instant messenger offered a chat request from your friend, your words would be typed into the chat window. Imagine if you were typing your password at the time. This should no longer happen in GNOME 2.10.

In addition, if an application takes a long time to start, your work will not be interrupted when it finally opens its window.

About time someone fixed this! The window focus-stealing problem has plagued just about every desktop out there. I think Windows is the first one I noticed that attempted a solution (blinking the taskbar button instead of switching to the dialog box). And since I often fire up several programs at once, it can get really annoying when I start typing my password into one, hoping I’ll finish before the other window appears and drops the last three letters into my web browser or something.

Unfortunately I’ll probably have to wait for Fedora Core 4 to really use it, unless I want to go even more bleeding-edge than I already am.

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There’s been a lot of talk on the conservative side of the fence about “activist judges” and “activist courts.” There’ve even been calls to limit the 200-year-old principle of judicial review.

Of course, there’s also been a lot of talk about appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court so that, given a suitable legal challenge, they can overturn Roe vs. Wade and make it possible for Congress to pass laws banning abortion without resorting to a constitutional amendment.

So can someone tell me, how is this not judicial activism?

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Remember last year when I realized some net filter was looking at teentitans3.jpg, breaking the words in the wrong place, and concluding it must be adult content and therefore should be blocked? (It replaced the “offending” words with spaces, which get encoded as %20 in URLs.)

At the time I left it, since I figured anyone who installed a filter that brain-dead given the popularity of the Teen Titans cartoon deserved what they got. Well, the usability and “make the site work for the visitor” side of the debate finally won out (with a little help from “the people who use these filters aren’t the ones who install them”), and a few weeks ago I renamed the file to teen_titans_current.jpg.

Guess what? I’m now seeing hits for %20%20%20%20_%20%20%20ans_current.jpg.

Even when I give it word breaks, it can’t figure it out.

They’re lucky I called the file titans.html. Otherwise some people wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

Given this level of “quality,” can you blame librarians for opposing mandatory installation of filters on library computers?

Further reading: The Censorware Project, Peacefire, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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AOL TideAOL 9.0 Optimized CleanerI’d seen an AOL CD packaged to look like laundry detergent before (Tide, specifically), but this seems to take it a step further.

I think what makes it seem strange to me is the fact that they made “Cleaner” more prominent than “AOL.” Sure, you can’t miss it, especially with the running man icon, and of course they’re plugging their filters and bundled antivirus (to clean your computer), but it just seems like they’ve taken the metaphor a bit far in the design.

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I don’t remember when, where, or how long ago this was—or even which of us saw it—but I found it while cleaning the piles of junk off my desk this afternoon.

Nasty Boss. I'm looking for 6 people I can work half to death in the Promo & ent. ind. Pd training up to $500/wk to start. If you like to be kicked around...

I mean, what’s not to like about this position? You get to work half to death for a “nasty boss”—he’ll even kick you around! Such thoughtful consideration, especially to tell you about it up front!

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OK, that’s bizarre… I just read through the winners of last year’s Bulwer-Lytton contest (worst opening paragraph from an imaginary novel, named after the author who penned “It was a dark and stormy night.”) Naturally, much of the text is displayed in purple.

Now all the text on my screen looks green.

I think it’s time for me to get some sleep.