Special Interest Group on CRAP

I went back to look at the spam that is sent out by ACM trying to get me to buy a membership. It turns out that it is sent out on the 11th of each month, right on schedule. I guess that means there is a cron job someplace that is firing off [...]

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Just think if the Internet had been designed by the telephone companies:

We would have four different internets, with gateways that restricted what could flow through them.
You would have to buy your computer from your ISP, and you couldn’t switch ISPs and keep the same computer unless the remainder when you divided the MAC address by [...]

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Today I got another spam from ACM, plus a spam from “World Scientific Publishing” that tries to look like they are acting on behalf of Purdue University. I have appended the one from World Scientific Publishers in the hopes that it will shame them into avoiding spam in the future. Why would Purdue [...]

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Has anyone else noticed how the airlines have steadily devalued frequent flyer miles over the years? I just cashed in some miles to fly to Boston on United, and after much hassle with an arcane web site, managed to secure some economy seats. United has something called “Economy Plus”, but in reality, they [...]

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I got another spam from Cambridge University Press today. Apparently this is their new strategy for success as a tree-murdering paper publisher.
They provide an opt-out link at the bottom: http://listserv.cup.org/t/49324/239073/2681/0/ which obviously contains campaign information in it, but apparently they were too incompetent to encode my email address in there because the form asks [...]

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Today I received spam from Cambridge University Press, using an email address that I used to register for the ACM Electronic Commerce Conference in 2006. It appears that even supposedly reputable organizations cannot resist the temptation to send spam.

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Everyone probably gets these emails telling you that you have a long lost uncle who was an official in Africa who left you $21 million, and if you’d just send $1,000 to them then they will wire you the money. They are called 419 scams. About once a year I also get an [...]

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I’d like to know what the hell happened to the “do not call” list. Why are assholes always calling me trying to get me to extend my warranty? Actually I know – they are slimy scammers who will sell you absolutely anything you are willing to pay money for. Still, why do [...]

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I’ve been wondering whether I should just let the blog die, or whether I should revive it. We all look for outlets for our writings, but blogs seem pretty dead to me lately. Maybe some day…

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I’m as tired as anyone of the economy suffering one hit after another. The parade of bad news has turned into a constant drumbeat, and there is no end in sight to the fall of the economy.
At the same time, I’m getting really tired of hearing bailout news for every big company that gets [...]

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