Sad News: Peter Jennings and Bad News: Spam
Saddened at the news of Peter Jennings death. Medicine has made remarkable advances in cancer treatment but lung cancer is still almost always fatal. When Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw were battling for news supremacy, many of us chose one or the other for less journalistic reasons. In my case, when I got to see the 5PM news (I work until 6PM), it was Jennings and ABC because the reception from our local ABC affiliate was better in our metal building than the local CBS or NBC affiliates. No cable for our workplace.
OK, so Dateline spends big bucks just to get an apology out of one porn spammer. How much Dateline spent to find him is not mentioned. It may not have cost millions as the Quote of the Day suggests but it surely cost more than most people have at their disposal for that sort of thing. How much it would cost to do anything about it is also not mentioned. So, what’s the point? The relatively low cost of doing business as a porn spammer, or any kind of spammer for that matter, ensures that they will be around forever. Laws won’t catch up with them but technology eventually will (Blogs are doing it fairly effectively). We have to just bide our time until then. Free advice: Most spam filters can identify and block most of that stuff. Get yourself one or more spam filters (I use Eudora’s built-in junk mail filter and Norton’s Anti-Spam filter) but also get used to the notion that a handful of them will get through. Just delete them when they do and wait until a better solution comes along.
11 days until Ya Boys Auction (Go Erasers), 20 days until CFFL Draft Day (Go Ragpickers), and 31 days until football season (Go Saints) begins...............
Quote of the Day
If you can find the real person without an army of lawyers, without millions of dollars of research staff and investigators, if you could find the individual who actually clicked that mouse and sent that message — it would be a sight to see.
Ray Everett Church, Spam Fighter
Blog of the day here.
Quote from said blog: "A foul-mouthed parrot previously owned by a lorry driver has been banished from public areas in a British animal sanctuary after telling visiting dignitaries to f**k off."
It's sad about Peter Jennings, 67 isn't that old anymore.
And about the spam, my earthlink blocks most of it. I have to go through some in my suspect email but it's far better than it used to be.
From a news consumer standpoint Peter Jennings kind of irritated me so I didn't watch him much. I wouldn't wish his illness or any other on someone though and it's sad that he passed away at 67. Like Andrea said, 67 isn't that old anymore.
I saw the Dateline piece too and kind of laughed at it. My last job I had a couple of sysadmins working for me who did a really good job managing the expressions lists. Once it was spun up we spent maybe 5 minutes a day updating it. Some crap always slips through but it was pretty minimal. It was probably a nice paid-for trip to Canada though.
Oh, and I'm seriously thinking about getting a Macaw.
Andrea,
That's about as well as it can be said. 67 isn't that old any more.
Dave,
All of them irritated me and most of the current crop irritate me. The only anchor I like at all is Bob Schieffer. All of the rest are a bit too melodramatic for my tastes.
I think Dateline is just a little behind the curve on this. Gee, there's porn on the internet? Who'd have thunk it?