Category: Tech

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A while back I received a strange spam containing a quantum physics paper. At the time I wasn’t sure what to make of it, although someone suggested it might just be a randomly mailed document sent by a virus.

Someone else who received it referred to it as Idea Spam—spam designed not to sell or advertise a product, but to promote an idea. Basically, spam as a meme vector.

Another person characterized the paper (or rather, the paper’s author) as a crank. Apparently it’s not unusual for pseudo-scientists to indiscriminately send their “findings” to anyone they think might listen. My favorite quote from this discussion:

i heard that one professor (i can’t remember whom) has a folder in his cabinet titled “public relations” where he stuffs things from these maniacs. when he was asked why he didn’t just label the folder “nut cases,” he replied that “then they’d get mad. this way, they will feel like i might look at it later and just go away.”

And so the mystery is solved.

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I’ve got to start reading BBspot more often. I wandered in there via Mozillazine and found this post about Microsoft’s new antispyware program removing Internet Explorer.

“It shows how powerful our AntiSpyware program is,” said Weatherbee. “Not only is it able to remove spyware from the system, but also the source of most spyware. Our competitors can’t match that.”

Ah, techie satire!

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(Book cover)While reading an article suggesting Microsoft isn’t trying very hard to stop spam, I recognized the writer as the author of Spam Kings, the book I’m currently reading. It’s a fascinating and, surprisingly, entertaining read about people on both sides of the fight.

Thanks to Salon, I now know that Brian McWilliams has a Spam Kings Blog on which he’s been posting follow-ups to stories from the book, and, of course, newer stories in the seemingly neverending war on spam.

(via The Spam Weblog)

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Something that could help with the ever-shrinking window between turning on a new (Windows) computer and getting hacked by some automatic probe is to just make downloading security updates part of the setup process. I installed two Linux distributions this weekend, Mandrake 10.1 and SuSE 9.2, and both did this.

What I liked about the SuSE installer was the way the option was worded. The setup utility asks you if you want to “test your Internet connection.” It tests the connection by downloading the latest release notes and checking for updates! (Unfortunately, it somehow chose an old mirror of the SuSE site—not the one I used during the installation—and the process failed.)

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Three days ago I created a bunch of new spamtrap addresses at work and posted them in hidden places on websites where no one would actually see them. Today, two of them received requests for help moving large sums of money out of Nigeria.

Yesterday afternoon, I signed up a couple of sites with Project Honeypot. One of them has already been spidered 6 times (though two of those were Yahoo).

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Since joining BlogExplosion, I’ve noticed something interesting about surfing it. First, I tend to see many of the same blogs over and over. Second, when I’m actually reading these blogs, by the time I log out all my new credits have been used up by people looking at mine. This leads me to this conclusion:

The only people who see this site through BlogExplosion are the people who are logged in at the same time I am.

If you have a routine where you spend a half hour on BE every evening, or 1 hour every Tuesday, or whatever, chances are the same people are seeing your blog over and over again.

Just to experiment, a few days ago I took 10 minutes late in the day and logged in from work. I don’t think I saw a single familiar blog.

So what’s the answer? Vary your BE routine as much as possible. Don’t assign your spare points when you surf, pick a random time, log in for 1 minute and just assign them. Make a banner and assign points to it the same way. Talk someone into signing up with you as a referrer, and get a share of their points.

Otherwise, you’ll get the same audience every time… and chances are they’re either regular readers by now or they’re tired of seeing you.

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There’s a new anti-IE site on the web: Digital Proof [archive.org]. Rather than tell you why you should switch to browser X, or why you should pick one of browsers XYZ, it just collects links to other people’s articles about why you should switch.

The advantage I can see for this campaign is it can collect a wide variety of perspectives. After all, everyone who chooses to install something other than IE has their own reasons. Some want the security, some want the more modern capabilities for design, some want the better usability, some want to promote marketshare diversity, and so on. No one argument is going to work on everyone.

On the other hand, I suspect the target audience is unlikely to wade through all the articles available, even with a top-5-rated list on the home page.

(via Mezzoblue Dailies)

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