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The Weekly Round-Up: 22.08.03
Spam conspiracies, digital blunders and Keith Chegwin...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 22 August 2003

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes and spam." Those are the sage words of former US politician (as well as inventor, musician, printer, philosopher and scientist - people had so much more time back then) Benjamin Franklin. Actually, he probably didn't say that last bit but the rest is reasonably accurate.

Meanwhile, latter day US politician and Presidential candidate Howard Dean got into hot water this week after his campaign team spammed an undisclosed number of people with unsolicited political ads. Start as you mean to go on, Howard.

Despite the ensuing hoo-ha Dean remains opposed to unsolicited email and blamed the spamming on two contractors who had promised to contact only people who had specifically requested to receive the advertisements. Dean has since dispensed with the services of the contractors responsible.

The email message touted Dean's accomplishments and asked for political support and donations, saying: "We are going to win this nomination and defeat George W Bush in 2004." (So he's not all bad then.)

The blunder was made all the more ironic after a Newsweek cover story last week said Dean "is revolutionising political fund-raising with his clever cyberstumping," while Dan Gillmor, a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, proclaimed that Dean and his staff "truly get the meaning of the net" - and unfortunately, given the global spam problem, he probably does.

While wondering what the Dickens 'cyberstumping' is, the Round-Up was shocked to learn that this wasn't the first time that the Dean campaign has been embroiled in an imbroglio over spam, with a similar incident earlier this year.

Some cynics have suggested that politicians see spam as a cheap and effective way to reach voters. Out of a dozen or so bills introduced in Congress promising to regulate commercial spam, not one attempts to restrict political email messages. The Round-Up smells a conspiracy.

In fact, the practice - sorry, completely innocent mistake - of spamming the electorate is rife with a raft of politicians scattered across the States nursing slapped wrists.

Scanning the list of culprits, the Round-Up's eye was drawn to the name of Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida and big brother of justly elected President George Dubya.

Heck, if you can't trust a Bush to uphold the values of fair play we may as well just log off completely...

Staying with spam, the Round-Up would like to draw its readers' attention to the plight of New Zealand resident Shane Atkinson, who it transpires is the man responsible for spamming millions of inboxes with emails offering pills to enhance the length and girth of, ahem, the old chap.

Shane told the New Zealand Herald who rumbled his ruse that his servers regularly sent up to 100 million unsolicited emails on "a good day". ("A good day" for who is open for debate)

Having been exposed, some irate spamees, possibly fuelled by raging pangs of inadequacy, dug up and published Shane's contact details online.

Some added him to dozens of subscription sites including a gay dating service. Meanwhile others, believing in more direct action, have taken to calling Shane at home and giving him a piece of their minds.

Surprisingly, Shane feels hard done by and is concerned that his five-year-old daughter may answer the phone and get an earful of abuse.

Now the Round-Up in no way condones the verbal abuse of a five-year-old Kiwi girl over the phone, but surely this is a case of "Hello Mr Pot meet Mr Kettle".

After all, you can't help but wonder how many millions of five-year-old kids her dad regularly spammed on a daily basis with offers of penile enhancement.

Still, our Shane remains undeterred from his online money-making schemes. "I sort of feel good now about stopping this," he said, apparently without irony, before adding chirpily: "I'll just stick to search engines and websites - that's still plenty of fun and money."

Bravo Shane, the Round-Up can't wait to see what you come up with next, but whatever it might be it's bound to be done in the best possible taste...

Anyway, all this talk of spam and digital shenanigans segues quite neatly into a push for silicon.com's latest hot topic: Digital Blunders 2 (see here and here for a selection). We're also asking you to take part in a quick 20 second survey all about Digital Blunders (click here and give us a few more precious seconds of your time).

When we ran the first Digital Blunders channel way back in 2001 we asked you to let us know your tales of digital woe and you duly emailed us in your droves with your gaffes.

We've asked you the same thing in 2003 and what do you know, you emailed us in droves again. It seems that no-one is any the wiser - us included.

For example, when we ran our Spam Week special recently we sent an email announcing the launch. We did this on the same day we implemented our brand new email system. Can we just take this opportunity again to apologise humbly and sincerely to the three thousand or so readers who each received five copies of our damning report on unsolicited email. We are very, very, very sorry.

See, confession can be so cathartic - give it a go, email your blunders, bungles and boobs to editorial@silicon.com.

We've already received some glorious examples. To give you an idea of what we are after, here are a couple of corkers that plinked into the editorial inbox this week.

First up is a confession by proxy:

"A colleague of mine moved to a new position to find she didn't get on too well with her new supervisor, Bob. In fact, she grew to loathe the man so much that, when prompted to change her password, she changed it to "BobTheBastard". This gave her a modicum of satisfaction every morning when she logged on.

"That is until she went sick and got a phone call from Bob. There had been an urgent assignment at work and the solutions were all to be found on a file on her personal drive. The phone call began with "Hi, we need to access your personal drive urgently.

"Now, what's your password?"

Ah...

However, the Round-up's favourite so far is this one from a silicon.com reader across the Channel - and proof that sometimes you can't beat a good, old typo:

Marti Demetrion writes: "A friend of ours who lives in the US is very fond of eating duck, which she has trouble finding in restaurants and grocery stores there. So when she visits us in Paris, she makes a point of eating it often and in several different formats (confit de canard, magret, etc).

"Just before one visit she emailed us to say that she was looking forward to "consuming as much dick as humanly possible" - the 'i' being right next to the 'u' on the keyboard..."

Honestly, how canard can it be to type 'duck' properly? The Round-up is sure that someone, somewhere out there can top that.

Is it you? It is, isn't it? Go on, email editorial@silicon.com if you've hit reply when you meant to hit forward, or if you've wrongly addressed an email and landed yourself in hot water...

Next week, the Round-up will be sailing merrily down the Thames in the company of Keith Chegwin.

We kid you not. If the Round-up manages to gain an audience with the great man you'll have the transcript of our conversation with the pop-playing legend, who famously let it all hang out in Britain's first all-nude game show, next week. (And the Round-Up is as excited as you are to discover what the technology angle will be.)

Meanwhile, if you have any questions you'd like us to pose Keith let us know by emailing editorial@silicon.com.

And if that isn't incentive enough for you to read next week's column then the Round-Up doesn't know what is.

Until then, take a gander at the best bits and bobs from the naked jungle of the IT world.

192 to 118 countdown - rival says BT more interested in "glamorous" areas Sobig virus devastation continues Hutton Inquiry highlights email liability Bank of Ireland faces "total war" with staff over $600m HP deal Bright sparks offer broadband over power lines