the indian wind along the telegraph lines

What Drives Spam?

Porsche.

And now you can drive the Porsche. Nice publicity stunt by AOL. Maybe it might deter people, other folks might just think “Spammers can afford Porsches?” and give it a try. Who knows?

We should make the spammers take massive doses of the penis-enlargment forumlae I’m so often offered. If it’s snake oil, let’s see what it does. If it actually works, make them keep taking it. Until they’re house- and bed-bound like the morbidly obese and incapable of an erection without sufficient brain blood deprevation to avoid unconsciousness.

If they’re women, they get to watch 12 hours per day of the porn spammers proffer. Keep it up for 5 years or so.

Or something. Not selling their Porsche.

Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life has shipped. This is the latest installment in the long running farming role-playing series from Natsume. If you don’t know about Harvest Moon, you should. It very well might change your perceptions of gaming.

Harvest Moon is a series of games with a very unique premise and a massive cult following. There is no fighting, jumping, racing, shooting or, really, any “action” to speak of. Instead, you as protagonist must successfully run an inherited farm, interact with other people in the village and make a life for yourself. You must tend animals, raise crops and form successful personal relationships. From the official site:

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life will span a lifetime on the farm and follow the drama that goes with it. Not only must you build and successfully run a farm, but you must also build a successful life with family and friends! This new Harvest Moon experience will take the best qualities of the series and add more

The Internet Is Dangerous?

“Is the Internet becoming a little more hazardous? The Bagle virus took a turn for the worse yesterday, with some variations now able to infect PCs without any user intervention,” says an article on the Motley Fool today in response to Bagle worm variants.

The Internet is safe, people. I’m sitting here on my MacOS X machine with no worries about Bagle. So are Linux, *BSD, Solaris, BeOS, QNX and users of every OS except Windows. The problem is not the Internet. The problem is not a virus. The problem is that there is code in use by the majority of computer users that will allow executables to run with no user intervention. Here’s the corrected headline:

Is the use of Microsoft’s Windows operating system becoming a little more hazardous? The Bagle virus took a turn for the worse yesterday, with some variations now able to infect PCs without any user intervention.

Error Will Robinson

We’ve all been in the situation where a tech support person says, “Can you read me the exact error message?”

Think these messages will help?

Thanks to pal Jotham for turning us onto this one.

The British Underclass

[submitted on behalf of nessuk]

Whilst reading through the Daily Telegraph on my way to work recently…I came across the following article, about the burgeoning British Underclass (a humorous guide). This lead to the following website, detailing the ways to ‘spot’ said British Underclass. I live in Kent….therefore the local reference for so called underclass is “Chavs”. Is this unique to the British Isles…and is there something similar in the US? : )

Sure, we call them “rednecks.” – mneptok