Calblog

Yeah, I think what I said was that we could end spam if we simply killed all people who bought from the spammers.

But I didn't know I was talking about you when I said that. Now I have to reconsider.

Maybe we could just kill all the other people who buy from spammers . . .

Well, from what I understand, most spammers don't actually have a product that they are offering. The other thing I understand is that most spammers make most of their money from selling their lists to other spammers.

The biggest reason why I wouldn't buy from spammers, regardless of how sure I was that they were not scamming me, is that they're getting into bed with the virus writers now. More people buying from more spammers means more reasons to write virii, and since I don't want virii, I won't buy from spammers.

Patterico, you may have made the suggestion but I saw quick agreement around the table.

Justene: FYI, Patterico recently semi-rebuked Kevin M. for posting a joke about murdering O.J. on his blog. I can understand the distinction, though. Hacking your ex-wife and a random friend to death is one thing, and rewarding spammers is another.

The difference is OJ really murdered someone. Patterico has left me walking free. Let's not be too hard on him.

Actually, that's no difference at all. The joke was not about O.J. murdering someone, but about how neat it would be if some "pro bono hitman" would go out and murder HIM. AFAIK, O.J.'s still walking free, too.

I take your point. On one hand, I openly suggested mass murder of spam customers at a table full of people. On the other, I humorlessly distanced myself from my friend Kevin M.'s comment (clearly intended as a joke) approving of the idea of people murdering OJ. How do I reconcile that?

It's tough to articulate. I just think when a comment like that is specific to an actual person, and that person actually does truly deserve to die, then jokes about killing them run the risk of sounding like there is a grain of seriousness there.

I felt bad saying something about it, since I enjoy Kevin's comments and his blog and his point of view on things. I just felt like, given my chosen profession, I had an obligation to be humorless about it. Especially given that it was on my blog, which anyone could read (and misinterpret).

If he had made the comment across a brunch table, I might have high-fived him.

Maybe that makes me a hypocrite; maybe it just makes me overly sensitive about perceptions. Either way, I'm feeling humorless again. Dammit.

I wish I had Xrlq's talent for making points with humor, every time.

The text that brought me to making this post said spam offered something that tempted the previous writer to buy it and maybe it was the same writer who wrote "Americans don't like being sold to." (The wording of that last statement implied not much thought was put into its wording.) Another statement said spam often offered items not found anywhere else. That person must have their eyes closed most of the time or they believe anything sent to them. I have never seen anything, including the Trikke, that wasn't already offered elsewhere in a normal commercial fashion.

Can anyone deny that the United States is the most capitalistic society [meant neither in a negative or positive tone, merely as an adjective] on this planet? We sell and buy anything. It is rather how somebody attempts to sell us something that can make the promotion problematic. When somebody invades our personal email at our expense to make a profit, they are nothing more than intruders.

There is a normal give and take in most marketing promotions. To be explicitly clear, one may be either giving or taking something when considering one item in exchange for the opposite when considering the other item.

We will allow (GIVE our time to) commercials supporting TV programs we watch (programming we TAKE in return), because we are not paying for the program (leaving cable and dish systems out of this example). But if we pay (GIVE money) for internet service, why should we tolerate unsolicited commercial email (GIVE our time, action, and attention) we paid for as part of ISP cost?

Well spammers also double "take" us. We pay for our internet service provision in one way or another. Then spammers use the service we pay for to support promotion of their products.

I won't get into splitting hairs as to any difference between a spammer and the producer that is being promoted. On our side, they are a combined entity that takes advantage of us and the service.

IIRC, spam makes up approximately 50% of todays email traffic and its growth is still increasing.

There are many reasons why spam may be less than 50% of your incoming email. The primary reason may be that your ISP is filtering it before it gets to your in-box. Guess what; your ISP is not doing that for free, that expense is being passed on to every ISP customer like yourself.

Also consider the many devious practices used by spammers. Does anyone think the reason so many keywords are misspelled and contain numbers that visually resemble letters is because somebody is a bad typist? It is only the extremely gullible that believe they must have sometime signed up to receive all of these offers from so many different company names that don't even sound familier.

The email address I included with this message is obviously not real. I did that merely because spammers often get addresses from internet postings like this. Anyone who want to contact me regarding this will have to do a little work to decode a genuine address. Take the capitalized letters from sTEM sPIDer + (two zeros) + (atsign) + PACe + BELL + (dot) + NETherworld. This is almost as much work as the spammers go through to avoid being filtered.

I wish this blog author would post this message in a place as visible as the message I read that stated spam had something to offer.

RE: Trikke
This Trikke ad claims that Trikke has been "Rated as the safest vehicle on the road by the Los Angeles Safety Foundation".
I strongly suggest that you attempt to verify the actual existence of an entity named "The Los Angeles Safety Foundation" and attempt to get a copy of an actual "safety rating".