[geeks] Now for something completely geek

[Michael Parson]

On Thu, Aug 24, 2006 at 11:00:41AM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> Thu, 24 Aug 2006 @ 08:20 +0300, sammy ominsky said:
>> On 24/08/2006, at 06:50, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>>
>>> I avoid ever having to waste my time, and go on with life.
>>> How would you "get on with life" if this happened all the time?
>>
>> It's a minor annoyance, but yes, it is annoying.  I don't know how to  
>> tell them to stop in a way that they'll understand.  "It's just an  
>> SMS that you don't pay for, and maybe you'll like the deal!" is the  
>> response I've gotten.
>
> That's pretty typical.  Not much different from the spammers who say
> "just hit delete".

*grumble*

> On that note, has anyone noticed a huge increase in SPAM, especially
> SPAM that gets past filtering, in the last month or two?  I'm getting
> hammered and am starting to have to spend a lot of time deleting it on
> at least two primary accounts I use.

I had to go searching for some new rulesets for SpamAssassin about 6-8
weeks ago, I started to see an increase in the stock spams, the new
trick is to include sections out of really old books that you can find
on the Gutenburg project and attach a set of GIF images that assemble
into a stock-pump ad.  They were getting SA scores of just under 4.0,
which is where I have my limit set to.  SARE was able to give me some
rules that now catch that.

>>> When people put up with this kind of crap, the rest of us get stuck
>>> with it too.
>>
>> I agree.  I never said I *like* receiving these SMS ads (Actually
>> MMS, with graphics), just adding to what you said by pointing out
>> that they're already here in some parts of the world.  In one way
>> you're fortunate in the US not to have a real 3G network with all the
>> benefits and drawbacks.
>
> I'm not sure if that's true or not.  We now have a lot of cell phone
> networks selling broadband, television, and other services over the
> cell networks.

I just read in the past week or so that the TV on the cell phone is not
taking off like they thought it would.  Who would have guessed that no
one wants to watch TV on a 1.2" screen with a scratchy speaker? =)

> Is that part of a particular generation?
>
>>> I don't care if the air time is free or not, *MY* time isn't free,
>>> and neither is my sanity and privacy.  I also don't like a world
>>> where I'm bombarded with ads all the time.  It already sucks, I
>>> don't want it to get worse.
>>
>> Bad news.  It's only going to get worse.
>
> Probably, but it doesn't have to.
>
> I think if it gets worse for us, we should work hard to make it worse
> for the other side as well.

I'm all for the backlash.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org