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There’s something delicious about irony in spam. Yesterday, the spamtraps netted an advance fee fraud scam message that started out like this:

Let me be honest with you. This information is just for you alone [emphasis added]. I would suggest that you try to fix it instead of making any trouble with it as my job might be put on the line here.

Your name has been on an awaiting list of payment roaster submitted by the Nigerian Government For your lottery/inheritance reasons of no banking particulars on which transfer should be made to until two days ago when the paying Bank personnel brought in another payment roaster for the replacement of the former that had your name on it.

The funny part? (Well, aside from the “payment roaster.”) There were about 300 recipients in the To: line.

Gee, I don’t think all 300 people have the same account info…

Most spam doesn’t run into this problem, since it’s generated by special programs that don’t even bother filling in complete headers. But from what I understand, a lot of 419 scams are still sent by people sitting in internet cafes, copying and pasting bits from templates. So it’s easy to imagine someone pasting their list into the wrong field. Kind of like the classic “Reply All” fiascos.

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With the recent rash of Trackback spam, I finally bit the bullet and am now experimenting with Akismet in addition to Spam Karma. I’m not sure how well they work together, or, at this point, which plugin processes the comment first. Update: I’m trying Akismet on its own for now. Or, more precisely, Akismet as the sole second line of defense. Bad Behavior is still holding the front line.

Update (Feb 14): I’m now back to using Spam Karma 2, but with a plugin that uses Akismet as one of the score components. This seems to be working well, as SK is able to block the ridiculous stuff (100 porn links in one comment, etc.), and Akismet is able to catch the trackback spam that’s been passing SK2 by temporarily including an inbound link.

The big problem I had with Akismet was that aside from the age of the target post, the blocked comments weren’t sorted or filtered in the admin interface. I was having to look through ~30 comments a day for false positives. Spam Karma will show only the borderline comments by default, and uses a table structure that makes it easier to skim.

This way, though, I get the proverbial best of both worlds.

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Okay, I really have been out of it the last few days. I hadn’t heard that Microsoft was planning a hostile takeover of Yahoo!.

I have to agree with this Google blog post: this would be bad. Yahoo! seems to “get it” (where “it” is an open Internet) much better than Microsoft does.

Actually, it reminds me a little of Disney vs. Pixar in the past decade. Pixar, in adddition to mastering computer animation, had a great sense of story—something which Disney lost track of in the mid-1990s. They saw Pixar’s movies doing better than their own, and while they were still getting a cut, they didn’t understand why they did better. They thought it was the 3D animation, when really, it was the fact that they were churning out forgettable animated films like that cattle movie whose name escapes me, while Pixar was doing Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

Actually, the only way I can see a Microsoft takeover of Yahoo! being good for anyone but Microsoft would be if it went down like the Disney-Pixar merger, and the Yahoo! people ended up in charge of web services. Not that I expect it to be likely, and even if they were, I’m sure the higher-ups would cripple them. I get the impression that sort of thing is going on with the IE team as it is.

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Tomorrow morning at 9:00 PST, rooms in the convention block go on sale for this year’s Comic-Con International. I was going to write up a bunch of tips last week, but CCI beat me to it by launching their own blog, Staying In San Diego. Visit it today, because it’ll probably be swamped tomorrow. (Though if it’s actually hosted by TypePad, direct visits may not take it down.)

Update Wednesday Morning: Well, I made it through. Oddly enough, in exactly the same amount of time as last year. I had the confirmation number at 10:04. Weird.

Once again, I was completely unable to get through by phone. The website was hit and miss, and actually crashed at one point, serving up only a “500 Server Busy” error. Right after I entered my name and address for a reservation. Nice. The current blog entry is filling up with complaints from people having similar or worse experiences.

Update 2: The Beat has a growing comment thread as well, and notes that the con hotel blog is making noises about trying to get Travel Planners to fix the problems. I think having an official place where they can read exactly what people are going through is helping convey the fact that the reservation system is broken, and that it’s not just the imbalanced supply and demand for rooms. (end of update 2)

I’m going to repeat some of my criticisms about the actual website, which seems designed expressly to make it bog down under this load: Continue reading →

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Today’s “Super Tuesday,” on which a whole bunch of states hold their primary elections. We still have have Democrats running against other Democrats and Republicans running against other Republicans, hoping to get their parties’ nominations for this fall’s Presidential election.

So it was weird last night to see an ad for Republican Mitt Romney contrasting himself against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Unless he’s changed party affiliation, he isn’t running against her. We don’t know if he ever will run against her. The Republican party hasn’t opted into California’s open primary system, so only registered Republicans are eligible to vote for Romney today, and they’re not likely to have considered voting for Clinton in the first place.

So who the heck was the ad aimed at?

Keep in mind that I don’t watch much TV, so this sort of thing might have been going on for a while, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

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Perfectly Cromulent GiftsCatching up here on some stuff I saw in stores last December during (and after) Christmas shopping.

The “perfectly cromulent gifts” is my favorite of the bunch. The Simpsons display was found at a Borders bookstore, probably the one at The Block at Orange.

Black Santa Hat labeled Bah Humbug

I love the fact that the “Bah Humbug” hat is actually labeled as a “Santa Hat.” I think someone’s got their wires crossed. Found in the clearance aisle at the grocery store.

Tomato Soap

These bars of tomato soap (not a typo!) were at the World Market at The Village (the one that used to be Orange Mall, not the apartments across from the Spectrum — though I think they use the same font for their logos, which is kind of strange. Better than the apartments that use nearly the same font as the logo for The Prisoner, though!)

Preschool Laptop toy

I think the reason I get such a kick out of this toy is that laptop computers didn’t exist when I was in preschool (or if they did, they certainly weren’t affordable to anyone who didn’t absolutely need one for business). A laptop meant the top of someone’s lap. And now, in the grand tradition of transforming the everyday objects of the adult world into toys for infants (cars, telephones, bubble pipes), we now have something that vaguely looks like a folding keyboard and screen.