TOURBUS: Thursday, November 28, 1996
DRIVER: Patrick Crispin
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP:
Spam!Happy Turkey Day, y'all! (For those bus riders who may not be in the States, every fourth Thursday in November is Thanksgiving, a holiday where we celebrate the one day in history that we were nice to the Native Americans. People in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving by consuming vast quantities of turkey (my parents are currently cooking a 20 pound bird to feed our family of four), followed by the ritualistic watching of football (by the men) and the final approval of tactical war plans for the Christmas shopping season (by the women))
It is customary for the turkey growers of America to give the President of the United States a free, live turkey. It is also customary for the President to grant the turkey a Presidential pardon and to place the turkey in a petting zoo. This year, however, while President Clinton was making up his mind about the pardon and the Republicans in the House were debating a continuing resolution to override the President's pardon and to condemn the President for being soft on poultry, the turkey died of old age.
All kidding aside, its time for us to pay some bills ...
*-------------------------- MASS MUSIC ------------------------------* More Music For Your Money! Over 185,000 Titles -- Just A Click Away. Sign up for our FREE Weekly Music Zine Now! Buy 7 Get 1 FREE Everyday. Try the Treasure Hunt for a Chance to win. *-----------------( http://www.Mass-Music.com )--------------------*Since today is "turkey day," I figured it would be appropriate if we talked about the *REAL* turkeys of the Internet: the "spammers." On the Internet, the word "spam" has two meanings:If you want a good overview of the second definition, I recommend that you take a look at ROADMAP workshop lesson 9 (Spamming and Urban Legends). You can retrieve this lesson for free by sending an e-mail letter to LISTSERV@UA1VM.UA.EDU
- A canned luncheon meat with the shelf life of gravel, and
- Inappropriate e-mail letters, oftentimes advertisements, that are sent to hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet.
(that's "you-ay-won-vee-em") with the command
GET MAP09 LESSON F=MAILin the body of your e-mail letter. Lesson 9 gives you a little longer definition of what a spam is, and it also tells you what you should do if you ever see a spam.There are two types of "spams": deliberate spams which are mostly advertisements that are posted to thousands of LISTSERV lists and Usenet newsgroups, and inadvertent spams which are e-mail letters that sound true and which readers decide to forward to all of their friends.
The inadvertent spams are the hardest to spot, because they seem to be legitimate. Here are some of the most prevalent inadvertent spams on the Net today:
THE BRAIN TUMOR BOY MYTH: A child dying of a brain tumor wants to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most business cards/ post cards/ get well cards sent to him. TRUTH: The boy's name is Craig Shergold, he is alive and well (the tumor is gone), he made it into the Book of World Records years ago, and he DOESN'T WANT ANY MORE DARNED CARDS!! This would be an innocent story, but a while back someone decided to change the story so that instead of asking that the cards be sent directly to Craig (in England) they should instead be sent to the Make-a-Wish foundation. So now, Make-a-Wish (an organization that grants the dying wish of children with terminal diseases) is being flooded with cards for a child that is no longer sick and who doesn't need or want any more cards. Even if you do not agree with some of the things that Make-a-Wish has done in the past, considering the damage that this spam is causing to the mailroom at Make-a-Wish, I think that everyone will admit that the BRAIN TUMOR BOY is the cruelest, sickest, spam/urban legend on the Internet today. THE GOOD TIMES VIRUS MYTH: E-mail letters that have the words "GOOD TIMES" (or "DEEYENDA" or any of a host of other words) in their subject lines actually contain viruses or trojan horses that destroy your hard drive once you open the e-mail letter. TRUTH: It's a lie. You CAN'T get a virus or a trojan horse by reading an e-mail message. It is flat out impossible. You can, however, get a virus or a trojan horse from launching an executable file that has been attached to an e-mail letter. How can you protect yourself from virused attachments? Simple. NEVER launch a program or file (especially a Microsoft Word file) that you receive from ANYONE without first checking that program or file with an up-to-date virus checker. THE $250 COOKIE RECIPE MYTH: A person is charged "two-fifty" for a cookie recipe, he thinks that "two-fifty" is $2.50, and he decides to get revenge by sending the recipe to everyone he can. TRUTH: Its a lie, and the cookies suck. You can find a MUCH better cookie recipe at http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/ cookie.html MAKE.MONEY.FAST/WITH FAITH (OR SEX) ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE MYTH: By forwarding an e-mail letter to 5, 10, or 20 of your closest friends within 96 hours, you will make $50,000 a month, become really lucky, or "become REALLY lucky." TRUTH: #1) These are the Internet's version of chain letters. They are not legitimate, and their claims are totally false. #2) Most Internet service providers have explicit rules prohibiting chain letters. If you decide to forward a chain letter to your friends and someone complains to your service provider's postmaster, there is a pretty good chance that your service provider may limit or even cancel your Internet account. #3) Most Net "gurus" (including me) respond to chain letters by forwarding the letters (along with really angry replies) to the sender's postmaster. #4) Forwarding a chain letter to a LISTSERV list or Usenet newsgroup under the assumption that "the chain letter said that if I forward the letter to 10 people I will become lucky -- so sending the letter to a list with 2,000 subscribers will make me REALLY lucky" is foolish, and is a really great way to get yourself banned from that list for the remainder of your life.With that said, if you want to see what each of these spams actually looks like, you should check out http://www.suck.com/dynasuck/95/11/15/This page gives you links to everything you could ever want to know about spam (both the "meat" and the net abuse), and it also has a special feature that allows you to spam yourself. :)
You might also want to check out Yahoo's urban legends page at Mythology_and_Folklore/Urban_Legends/
Finally, to protect yourself against accidentally spamming the Net, remember this one simple rule: if you receive an e-mail letter that asks you to forward the letter to others, the only person that you should forward it to is the sender's postmaster.
*----------------------* Be A CyberGourmand! *----------------------* Give a gift of good taste for the holidays, shop at Twin Peaks Trading Post for all your gourmet desires. Cornucopia of pleasurable edibles! *------------------------( http://tpeaks.com )-----------------------* +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | Win a Color TV by playing Where in the World? at WorldVillage | | http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/gamezone/html/where.htm | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ -------------------------------- TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE DAY -------------------------------- ANOMALY (phrase) - My usual practice. Usage: "Anomaly drink Dr. Pepper, but ah'll have a Pepsi few don't mind." (Special thanks goes to an anonymous TOURBUS rider ("deroldad") for today's wurd.) YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD HOMEPAGE AT http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html