12.01.06
That spam thing
I admit it. I haven’t updated much lately. I’ve been working on other projects, learning new software which will put lots of bells and whistles on this site…and I’ve been swamped with spam. Every day I get half a dozen new spambot “comments” on this blog. I open a Word file entitled BlogSpamBlacklist.doc to add new keywords from the links the spambots are promoting, then save, copy, and paste into the blacklist for this blog. The file is also used for my other blogs, so when I update one, it is completely updated, not just with the terms that it has been hit with.
Clearly this is of limited effectiveness, since I keep having new spam show up in spite of my efforts, though I couldn’t imagine how much spam I’d be getting if I didn’t have hundreds of common spam terms and all of Russia and AOL blacklisted.
I am sorely tempted to eliminate WordPress entirely, and switch to something lower tech that can’t be manipulated by bot writers – or at least to totally disable comments on my blogs. It sounds severe, but the function is not working, and there certainly are other options I could use to receive comments totally outside of the WordPress comment function.
This isn’t counting the spam I receive in my email accounts, either. I recently read that a study commissioned in the European Union determined that 70% of email is spam. The number seems low to me. I’ve got yahoo accounts that get hundreds of spam a day, although they have hardly ever been used. My favorite is the one where yahoo sold my home email address to a spam clearinghouse the very first day my account was opened. They brag about the “bulk” folder, like it’s some kind of innovative method of handling the spam that they are responsible for me getting!
I’m not normally a person that gets into conspiracies, at least not the “conspiracies” that are often tossed around, and especially not the “meta-conspiracy” that ties everything together in a giant package and blames it all on somebody else – alien invaders, a secret cabal, the “liberal” media…
OK, I do believe in conspiracies, and this is one of them. I believe that the people in Washington are writing laws intended to allow big corporate donors to rip us off – personally and as a country – while lining the pockets of the neoconservative elitists. I believe that they are stripping us of our rights in order to make this easier. Soon they are planning on revisiting the First Amendment, and I’m sure they’re going to add provisions to make criticizing the government a risky thing.
What’s this all got to do with spam? I have this little theory. It’s called The Law of the Intended Effect. What it means is that it doesn’t matter what you say at all. It doesn’t matter what you say the effect of your actions ought to be. What matters is the effect of your actions. Not only that, it says that the effect of your actions is what you intended to happen in the first place, and all the bloviation you did was a smokescreen for your real motives.
My spam hypothesis is that there are lots of entities that could do something about spam. For instance, free bloghosts and webhosts could delete accounts that are used strictly for spamming and forwarding to spam websites.
There are lots of changes that could be made in the email system, too. It should a crime to forge email headers and use fake return email addresses. Email with fake return email addresses should go “poof”, it should not be delivered. They should track down these people and throw them in prison. They are a major drain on the economy and have effectively eliminated the effectiveness of electronic communication in this country and the world, costing untold gazillions to companies trying to maintain the integrity of their mail systems.
But they’re not doing these things. Why not? I suspect it’s because they all have their fingers in the pie, and in our wallets. That’s right. The people who are in charge of making laws could be doing something about this idiocy, and they’re not, so that means that Dubya and Cheney and every other corrupt politician are making big bucks from the spam deluge. We can’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Their actions speak louder than their words.
Publus said,
December 2, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Principal Quattrano,
I’ve read your critique of the corrupt politicians in Washington, and although I agree that our country is currently being run by a bunch of dishonest dunces (though perhaps less so since the last election), there is an even more evil conspiracy that I find substantially more alarming than the one that has Duhbya as its public face. I refer, Principal, to the conspiracy for which you appear to be one of the more articulate spokespeople.
One only needs to look at national trends to see what’s really going on. Thirty years ago, when men were the undisputed heads of the household, “female domination” was an almost unheard of fetish. It has grown in popularity over the years, and now “professional dominatrixes” can be found in every major city — commanding fees of hundreds or thousands of dollars per session. Meanwhile, females are attaining more and more power in the home, in the workplace, and in government. This last election, we saw the high office of Speaker of the House being assumed by a woman, and in the next election a woman could easily become President. It is not hard to see where this is all headed:
A FemDom revolution.
Slowly but surely, every major position of power in America will come to be occupied by a woman, and the view that men are inept in such roles will become more and more well accepted. Soon, positions of authority generally will be reserved for women alone. Police officers, managers, judges, newspaper editors, schoolteachers, and anyone else whose job involves any kind of authority will invariably be women. Men will be relegated to those tasks that involve heavy physical labor or to domestic or clerical tasks.
Even in the family, it will eventually come to be understood that the husband lives under the care and guardianship of his wife, who makes all of the major (and most of the minor) decisions for the family. The female-dominated state legislatures will put laws into effect to enforce this arraignment: A man will not be able to travel, access his bank account, drink alcoholic beverages, or do any number of other things without his wife’s written permission. If he is absent from his home from too long, a mere phone call will cause the police to locate him and return him to the custody of his wife. Corporal punishment will come to be an acceptable manner of resolving marital disputes.
And, of course, since the woman will be regarded as the head of the household, boys will be taught from an early age that they are inferior to girls and that they exist only to serve them. That message will be reinforced in schools, run by the likes of Principal Quattrano herself. As the saying goes, “the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.”
It’s happening all around us, so subtly that we can barely detect it. The men of America must take cover, for the revolution is coming!
– Publus
angela said,
December 7, 2006 at 3:32 pm
test
I have made some drastic template changes which should eliminate commentspam if I have done it right…after finding 25 spam comments today.