Rob Cockerham of Cockeyed.com (home of the fascinating How Much is Inside? series) noticed the same model showing up in a lot of his spam (often wearing the same dress). He collected the advertisements, and linked them together in what he calls An Unsolicited Commercial Love Story.
Since he first wrote it up, other people have spotted the same model on banner ads, MSN articles and even a kiosk at UCLA. Where will “Alicia” show up next?
Aren’t stock photos fun?
(Via SpamBlogging)
Across the street from the Irvine Civic Center:
This brings back memories of days in UCI’s student housing. There were rabbits everywhere. The complex was right next to a big empty field, and rabbits would hop through all the time. “Oh, look, a rabbit!” “Yeah, yeah, same old, same old.”
But this is the first time I’ve seen a road sign. Of course, given that even the people in Irvine can’t stick to crosswalks, I expect there will still be problems with jaywalking (jayhopping?) rabbits!
After four drive-bys, I finally managed to get a picture of the Gondor street sign. It was far enough away that it’s barely readable (this is the native resolution on a 5 megapixel image — it’s not shrunk, it’s just cropped). Eventually I ought to turn onto a side street, park the car, and walk to a nice vantage point instead of just holding the camera with one hand while zooming by and hoping I get an image.
I’ve updated Living in Middle Earth.
You know how you see some numbers in one context so often that you think of that meaning when you see them somewhere else? Seriously: If you’ve spent a lot of time on the web and you notice the clock reading 4:04, or a price coming up as $4.04, etc., chances are you find it funny, right? It’s like realizing that someone’s initials are A.T.M.
Well, I was looking at the Star Wars Trilogy on Amazon and noticed it had 1394 reviews:
I saw that number, and my mind instantly thought “Firewire.”
(Yes, the question of the day is, “How can I make a post about Star Wars even more geeky?”)
Amazingly, Hurricane Ivan is back [note: originally linked to CNN; replacement link found via Wikipedia]. The remnants of the storm drifted back out to sea, which got them going again… and Ivan was again classified as a tropical storm.
Flood warnings are in effect in Louisiana and texas. Again.
Here’s another one. First the notice they sent me:
Subject: VIRUS (Worm.SomeFool.P) IN MAIL FROM YOU
VIRUS ALERT
Our content checker found
virus: Worm.SomeFool.P
in your email to the following recipient:
-> ADDRESS REMOVEDPlease check your system for viruses,
or ask your system administrator to do so.Delivery of the email was stopped!
And now my response:
Subject: BOGUS ALERT (sent to wrong address) IN MAIL FROM YOU
BOGUS WARNING ALERT
My BS checker found
bogus warning: notice sent to known-forged sender
in your email to the following recipient:
-> MY ADDRESSPlease check your virus scanner for better notification options,
or ask your system administrator to do so.All modern email-based viruses forge the sender address. Additionally, since your virus scanner was able to identify the specific virus, it can determine on its own that this virus always uses a forged address.
By notifying the supposed sender of a message when you know that sender is forged, you are knowingly sending virus warnings to people who are, in all likelihood, not using an infected computer. Messages like these are just noise, and the more of them that are sent, the less attention people will pay to *real* warnings. Additionally, it also runs the risk of causing unnecessary concern among the less tech-savvy (and extra calls to tech support about the nonexistant virus they fear they have).
(Feel free to re-use my response. I partially quoted myself anyway.)
I’m contemplating building a “hall of shame” and actually posting the sources of some of these. Any thoughts?
From a recent abuse report:
Hello. The spammer below is either using your resources to send out BULK, unsolicited, S.P.A.M. or is deceptively trying to make it look as if from your server as the ISP.
I’ve seen similar wording before, mainly on reports via SpamCop, but this really made me wonder.
I know what SPAM is (processed lunch meat), and I know what spam is (unsolicited bulk mail), and while many people get them confused, this is the first time I’ve seen S.P.A.M. Obviously they meant spam, but what if it was an acronym?
So, what should S.P.A.M. stand for?
