The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar
You Know You're DOOMED When...
your manager agrees to all your terms in your yearly performance review. He just agrees, and snickers under his breath.
You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.
This Crapolla is sponsored by...
In This Issue...
Free stuff that's too good to be true.
Take a Letter
Bobb writes ...
FeK
Devote the next issue to the top 10 people who obviously rendered sexual favors to attain/keep their position.
VP and oppressor of the working class,
Bobb
Top 10 People Who Obviously Rendered Sexual Favors to Attain/Keep Their Position
I feel like the White Rabbit. No time to say hello, good bye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!
I haven't had much sleep lately. You see, I've been without any significant TV a very long time. This weekend Mrs. Fek'Lar had to feed me soup through a tube because we bought a satellite dish, and she couldn't get the remote out of my fist. Mrs. Fek'Lar isn't worried. She says after a month, I'll be back to normal. She's a very understanding woman.
Because of my renewed relationship with my Sony, I haven't been writing. But I have been learning quite a lot. For instance, scientists now believe that what allowed humans to develop a larger brain was the introduction of meat into the diet. Herbivores need a large gut to digest their food. This takes a lot of energy. When humans began eating meat, their gut started getting smaller which left energy to operate a larger brain. It turns out in nature that carnivores develop the larger brains because of gut size and because they eat food that makes building the brain a whole lot easier. So to all my vegetarian friends out there I say, FOR GOD'S SAKE, EAT A BURGER! WASH IT DOWN WITH A DIET COKE! YOU'RE HOLDING THE SPECIES BACK!
Don't you think there should be a special tax on vegetarians who breed? I mean they're sopping up valuable resources but not helping evolve the human brain into a highly-developed reasoning organ that will build bigger and better bugs in software. I do! In fact, I think vegans should be double-taxed. I remember my days in The Sierra Club, there was one vegan hike leader asked people to brings snacks to share on the hikes, but no meat! As if someone would actually think of bringing an entire leg of lamb with mint jelly on an assault upon Monument Peak. So in fact I did. To hell with her! (If you hadn't noticed, there's a little bit of anger in the tone of my prose this time.)
I received this lovely piece of SPAM in the mail
FREE SATELLITE T.V. SYSTEM Watch over 500 channels of Digital Broadcast quality television on your own FREE satellite television system. These new Digital satellite systems use the new 18 inch satellite dish antenna. For a limited time we'll give you this top of the line Digital Satellite System for FREE! We'll even include Free installation and 3 FREE months of all the movie channels! This is the New Dishplayer 500. It has a built Digital 12 hour recording system so you can throw that old VCR away, built in WEB T.V. and interactive T.V and game systems, on screen graphics, 2 dual LNB's, stereo receiver and infrared remote. Normal cost for all these items is over $900 but we're giving it away for FREE! All you have to do is call us to arrange delivery and order the channels you want to receive. The monthly cost of satellite television is usually much less than cable T.V and satellite television offers over 500 channels of all digital broadcast video quality and CD audio sound. You even get local channels now. Don't miss this offer it's only available while supplies last. For your Free Satellite System call 888-514-6881 24 hours a day.
Okay, let's dissect this bit of SPAM. First, satellite dishes do not cost 900 bucks. In fact they top out at less than 500 if you're paying cash. However, it's real hard to get free programming legally. Not even for three months.
Further examination of this SPAM reveals the following in the headers.
Return-Path: nomorecable5@indiatimes.com Received: from proxy1.ba.best.com (root@proxy1.ba.best.com [206.184.139.12]) by shell5.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.sh) with ESMTP id NAA29408; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 13:33:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns.3dnet.fr (mail.3dnet.fr [212.208.143.69]) by proxy1.ba.best.com (8.9.3/8.9.2/best.in) with ESMTP id NAA11608; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 13:31:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smtp.indiatimes.com (ip169.ann-arbor4.mi.pub-ip.psi.net [38.27.133.169]) by ns.3dnet.fr (Netscape Mail Server v2.02) with SMTP id AAB216; Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:09:43 +0200
What we see here is that any nasty-grams complaining about this SPAM will go to the folks at indiatimes.com. India Times is a newspaper about India (you know, where they don't eat meat!). They don't sell dishes.
We also see that the SPAM did not come from indiatimes.com. It originated at ns.3dnet.fr who sent the message to ip169.ann-arbor4.mi.pub-ip.psi.net. I'm guessing psi.net is the provider for indiatimes.com. It's also possible that the SPAMMER hacked into the ns.3dnet.fr machine.
I see two possible reasons for someone sending this SPAM. It all revolves around that 888 number.
One could publish another company's toll free number to run up the company's phone bill. This is probably not significant.
My mentor at University always told me that in sports television, always point the camera at the money. (Except baseball which is very formatted, and thus boring television.) The other possibility is where the big money is.
So you call this 888 number. The nice person on the other side takes down all sorts of information about where the dish should be installed. Oh! And even though we are giving you 3 free months, we will need a credit card to bill for programming starting the fourth month. At this point you tell the nice person your credit card number and they tell you someone will be right over with HBO. You hang up, and they go to town with your credit card.
Think I'm paranoid? I admit I'm speculating, but what other legitimate reasons could there be? Would you really want to do business with people who tried so hard to lie about who they really are, and where they are from? (You know like those people who from 10-10-345 who act like they're a Mom and Pop operation but who are really AT&T!)
And Speaking of SPAM
So I've been sending some silly crap to various people (this is of course part of my job), and I get this little gem of a reject.
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