PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Broadband, Networking, PC Security, Internet & ISPs => Topic started by: Clive on January 13, 2004, 13:08
-
The Register
By Verity Stob
Posted: 12/01/2004 at 13:22 GMT
Stob: I leave the A12 a few miles after Chelmsford and am instantly deep in rain-soaked countryside. Half an hour of nervous driving on slushy narrow lanes I come upon a vast, newly built mock-Tudor mansion, grandly set up in many acres of sodden lawn. A nameplate screwed to elaborate wrought-iron gates declares: "DunRo@ming". This is the place.
I park the car on the verge, but then linger inside listening to the radio instead of getting out, dawdling like a can-I-pay-by-cheque merchant at the front of the Five Items Or Fewer queue. I am not looking forward to meeting my interviewee.
You?ve seen his work of course. We all have. Not for nothing has he rocketed up to #4 in The Sunday Newspaper?s ?Top 100 Most Hated People in Britain? list, leaving quiz show cheaters and corrupt Tory ex-MPs for dust.
I am off to record for The Reg the first exclusive interview with Mr Samuel Osborne, the notorious purveyor of penile pills, a semi-recluse who lives, it is said, in fantastic luxury with his wife and common law dogs.
I am off to meet England?s first spamillionaire.
I get out into the rain, hoist my jolly orange brolly and look for a bell pull. Just inside the gates, an overalled gardener with a gentle face is poking insincerely at the dripping rhododendrons with a pair of secateurs. There is a small ironstone statue on a brick plinth by the gate. Eros, inevitably.
Remembering Philip Marlowe in The High Window, I pat its damp little head for luck.
"Can I help?"
The ?gardener? has stopped pruning and come up to the gate. He says, in an educated voice: "You must be Verity Stob."
I admit it.
"Good morning, Ms Stob. My name is Sam Osborne. Come inside out of the rain. I have such a lot to tell you."
[To be continued] ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34817.html
-
Maybe no one got the pun clive ;)
-
I'm amazed she got away with it! ;D
-
Me 2
-
Sorry, but am I the only one who doesn't get that? :-\
-
Sorry, but am I the only one who doesn't get that? :-\
Come and sit in the blonde corner cos I don't get it either, and it bugged me so I've been looking for the next bit :lol:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34840.html
whats it all about alfie
-
Sorry, but am I the only one who doesn't get that? :-\
Come and sit in the blonde corner cos I don't get it either, and it bugged me so I've been looking for the next bit :lol:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34840.html
whats it all about alfie
It's a spoof on "interview with a vampire" ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
It's a spoof on "interview with a vampire" ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Oh, right. :clever:
-
Also look what Miss Stob's name is if you spell it backwards. ;D
OK, by popular demand, here is part 2.
Stob (Previously: Verity Stob has travelled deep into Essex to meet Sam ?The Spam? Osborne, England?s first spamillionaire.)
Inside the house, I expected a typical wealthy Essex businessman?s abode: crossed sawn-offs over a granite mantel, 300 inch widescreen TVs in every tennis court, more fake marble than you could shake a building society branch at.
But it wasn?t like that at all. The place had an institutional quality to it: glass doors opening on tidy little offices, a server cupboard filled with blinking LEDs and air conditioning noise, a disabled loo. Osborne led me to a large room containing 10 or 20 people, all seated at PCs.
"Before we go in I should warn you that? that we have a policy of giving jobs to folks who haven?t been as lucky in life as we have. Please don?t be alarmed by anything."
I was alarmed. I nervously followed Osborne into the room.
"Come and meet Helen. She?s our longest serving employee."
Osborne indicated a frail-looking, middle-aged woman sat at a PC in the far corner. Even as he pointed, she gave a faint groan and collapsed forward, head lolling gracelessly on her keyboard. Appalled, I started towards her, but Osborne put out his hand to stop me.
Nobody else took any notice at all.
As I drew breath to express outrage, the woman called Helen twitched, sat up, gazed at the screen blearily for a moment, and then continued typing.
Osborne said quietly into my ear: "Narcolepsy. Quite safe, in this form. Helen prefers that we ignore her 'interludes'. It seems like the kindest thing. Come and see."
We tiptoed up to Helen, and gazed over her shoulder at her screen. She was composing an email. It could not be said that her condition did not interfere with her work. She had typed:
Absolutely No Doctor's Prescription Needed!
Phentermine, Viagra, Soma, Ambien, Floricet, Imitrex, Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft...
leeuwenhoek xqpfbviztf x d r naqzzgqkkjt tfqjatcc
and many many more prescription drugs!
"Oh," I said, suddenly enlightened, "is this why one so often gets whole lines of gobbledygook in spam? Because Helen has, erm, encountered a pause? I thought it was a dodge to defeat checksum-based spam filters."
Osborne said, "You?d be surprised how many people think that. But do come and meet Michael." He tugged me towards another corner of the room.
Michael was about 30 years old and rather overweight. He wore a shell suit and the pleasant, guileless smile of a person disadvantaged by learning difficulties. He smelled of wee, but no worse than the people who sit next to you on the Tube.
"Hello Michael," said Osborne. "This lady has come all the way from London to see you do your typing. Will you show her??
"Michael type good," said Michael. He furrowed his brow, protruded a furled tongue and with unbearable deliberation picked out an email:
ADD I.NCHE.S WITH OUR P.I.L.L!
STIL NO LUCK E*N*L*A*R*G*I*N*G IT????
Our pr?oduct will work 4U!!!!!!!!!!!
"Well done Michael," I said enthusiastically. "That?s very good. Is it true you like sweet things?" And I gave him the chocolate bar that Osborne had quietly passed to me while Michael was struggling to find his eighth consecutive shriek-stop.
I asked Osborne: "Can we talk about this somewhere?"
"In a moment. First let?s see what Mr Bank is up to."
Mr Bank was a thin, grey-haired bald-pated man in a velvet jacket. He was typing rapidly.
Osborne put his mouth near my ear and whispered: "Thinks he?s Jane Austen reincarnated. Not our most productive worker."
By this time the report of the accident had spread among the workmen and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted; at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report.
ARE YOU ASHAMED OF YOUR PENIS?
To some of the best-looking of these good people Henrietta was consigned, for, though partially revived, she was quite helpless; and in this manner, Anne walking by her side, and Charles attending to his wife, they set forward, treading back, with feelings unutterable, the ground which so lately, so very lately, and so light of heart, they had passed along.
THIS REALLY WORKS!
I said: "But I was sure that was to defeat Bayesian blocking. I never thought?"
Osborne silenced me with a finger. "Come into my office and we?ll talk about it."
[To be continued]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34840.html
-
Bots Ytirev? ??? I'll get me coat! :-\
-
Bots Ytirev? ??? I'll get me coat! :-\
I'll download the audio book! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
-
Just the bots Simon. Bots send out spam. ;D
-
Ah, I thought it was scumbags! ;D ;D
-
Ah, I thought it was scumbags! ;D ;D
:lol:
-
Today's thrilling installment: Actually I think it's rapidly going downhill and could even be heading for the DZ.
Stob: Why men buy blue pills
By Verity Stob
Posted: 14/01/2004 at 13:04 GMT
(Previously: Sam "The Spam" Osborne, the notorious spamillionaire, has improbably represented himself as a philanthropist.)
Time for the interview proper. Did he admit spamming was immoral?
"Spamming? Immoral?" He was amazed. "You?ve seen my operation. I?m providing a public service!"
In what sense, I wondered, was it a public service to send out 10 million emails per day tempting the unfair sex to buy wildly expensive and dubiously effective drugs to enlarge/stiffen their dangly bits?
"You need to understand men, Ms Stob." He leant back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. "We are inhibited. We are not, to use Californian jargon, 'in touch with our own feelings'. We?d rather die than take these problems to the doctor, much less talk to a friend. An approach by a supposedly random bulk-email message is the only way to overcome the barrier of male bashfulness."
He paused a moment, to let this idea sink in.
"And anyway, our pills are absolutely harmless?"
Absolutely harmless? Did this mean he admitted that his drugs had no effect? Didn?t that make it fraud?
"Not at all. It?s medically proven that erectile dysfunction and size perception problems are nearly always psychological. The best treatment is some kind of placebo. Let a man take a pill and he feels he is doing something ? and that?s half way to being cured.
"Yes, you are right: the pills have no intrinsic effect. As you programmers put it, that?s a feature not a bug. They won?t poison the patient if he overdoses in a fit of, um, excitement.?
So why did these sugar pills, or whatever they were, have to cost £35 per bottle? He could hardly claim that he was deferring the cost of expensive medical research.
"It?s the psychological angle again. If it weren?t expensive, it wouldn?t be convincing. The more these men pay for my pills, the more successful the treatment.
"Besides, we have done some research. Our survey has shown that mine is the most successful non-prescription treatment available. Much more successful than the most popular non-prescription treatment."
And what, I wondered, was the most popular non-prescription treatment?
The corners of Mr Osborne?s mouth pursed in disapproval. He put his folded hands on his blotter. He looked like a country solicitor reading out a controversial will where all the money has gone to the black sheep with a gambling habit.
"Putting a bit of talc on it after a shower," he said gruffly.
[To be continued] ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34870.html
-
Final installment:
Stob: You have opted in
By Verity Stob
Posted: 16/01/2004 at 09:55 GMT
Stob (Previously: Notorious spamillionaire Sam "The Spam" Osborne has been giving poor Verity Stob the run-around.)
Louis Theroux would never put up with this. It was time to get tough. I asked Osborne about the recent EU spam legislation.
"Terrible. Terrible. A truly wretched thing."
It was forcing him to close down his operation?
"Oh no. Quite the reverse. I?ve actually saved money and doubled throughput since the spam laws came in."
"Thing is, I?ve had to outsource my email servers to India and, sad though I am to say it, they give me a much better service. Those boys can sniff out an open relay like a pig after a truffle.
"I am a patriot, Ms Stob, and as you have seen I like to plough the money I earn back into the local community. As usual, I have been prevented from doing the right thing by an interfering government that kowtows to Europe and simply doesn?t understand business needs. It really makes me angry."
Astonished by this brazen attempt to claim the moral high ground, I furiously and unprofessionally asked Osborne why I had to get 400KB of spam every day?
"Do you? That?s terrible. I can assure you that you get nothing from me. What do you use for spam filter software?"
I told him.
"Well, there?s your problem. That?s a load of old junk. If you used our SpamItOff for Windows, you could wave goodbye to spam forever."
I said, "That?s outrageous! The only reason people need spam filters is because you send them spam. You are driving the need for your own product."
"Ms Stob, you keep getting emotional. This is a technical matter, not an ethical matter. Who knows the most about spam? Me. Therefore who is best placed to block it? If you think about it, I?m sure you?ll see it makes sense."
"Tell you what. I really haven?t got any more time to spend on this interview right now, but as a gesture of good faith, I?ll let you have a free copy of SpamItOff. I?m afraid we are all out of CDs at the moment, so I?ll have to email it to you. What was your address again?"
I sat across the desk, looking at this calm, professional man with his kind face. For all my doubts, surely he couldn?t be responsible for all the frustration, anger and disgust that spam caused?
Surely he hadn?t flooded the mail servers of the world with filth, turning an elegant piece of trusted software engineering into a crippled, suspicious, clumsy mess? Surely it wasn?t him?
"Well, Ms Stob?"
"It?s drew_cullen_17820@aol.com."
----
Tell England. Tell the world. Discover the truth. Start reading your Bible. Stop suffering in silence. Make her scream. Be a sex machine. Be young again. Make a fortune with Ebay. Get the cheapest Home Loan possible. Pay no cable bills. Pay less when you pump. Block all spam. Eat yourself thin. Don?t forget the family. Make it a Ray Charles Christmas.
Eat up your spam? or click here to unsubscribe.
VS, with apologies to DLS. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34932.html