And While We're On Spam...

As if to underscore the damage that spammers like Jayne or Solway are doing to our economy, I thought, in a moment of free time over lunch today, that I'd classify the spam just one of my accounts has received in the last 72 hours.

Here are the results, and I'm sure you won't be surprised.

Out of 215 spam emails (vs just 28 legit emails), they divide up as follows;

Spam flogging Viagra, Penis Enlargement or some other male sexual performance enhancement product: 152

Spam flogging fake watches, usually Rolex (though Patek Philippe and Tag Hauer got a mention too): 39.

Scams of the Nigeria style, or notifications that I've won fictitious lotteries: 16

Spam inviting me to a porn site: 6 (which is unusually low)

Spam offering pirated software: 2

213 is the number of spam emails that managed to slip past my mail server spam filer and actually arrive in my mail box. Our server tells me that the number of filtered items that didn't make it that far is around six times that number, or 1,200. Fortunately, the it's configured to kill the spam it filters completely.

1,400 emails in 72 hours, only 28 of which were legitimate.

"Constitutional right" my arse!

Constitutional Right? Bah!

See the guy on the left? Remember his face. Throw darts at it. Deface it with a felt pen by drawing horns on his head, or perhaps a little Hitler moustache, or, maybe, Joseph Goebels glasses. That's "Super Spammer", Jeremy Jayne.

He's a free man today, because the First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to "anonymous" free speech.

Ok... for those of you who don't follow this sort of stuff, here's some background. Way back in December 2003, the State of Virginia filed felony charges against this scumbucket under anti-spam laws that make it a criminal offence to falsify email header information. In other words, it was against the law to send out an email that you pretend is from someone else. That's SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for spammers, who hide like cowards behind the complexities of the web by faking return addresses and originating server information on their junk emails.

Sadly, this week, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the conviction, deciding unanimously that the law was in breach of the US First Amendment right to free speech. The court actually went further, deciding that free speech really meant "anonymous" free speech, citing the example of the one of the key triggers for the American Revolution, the "Federalist Papers", published anonymously under the pen name "Publius". They were actually written by US founding fathers James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

In its ruling, the court found that, had email been around in 1776, the Federalist Papers may well have been sent by anonymous email. It therefore concluded that protecting the right to send such emails and to falsify their origin to attain anonimity was entirely consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment.

Hmmm. I have to admit to very mixed feelings on this.

On one hand, I'm a passionate advocate of free speech, and I'm a great admirer of America's founding fathers whose collective intellect in framing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States laid the foundation for a world of unprecedented wealth, comfort and freedom.

However, there is a line in the sand with this, and the challenge is to have the wisdom to draw that line in the right place. For example, we have Racial Villification laws in Australia that make it an offence to denegrate anyone based merely on their race, religion or sexual preference. I support that, even though it impinges the right to free speech we enjoy.

We also have laws which amke it a criminal offence to incite a riot, and I'm not so excited about that. Inciting a riot is, after all, the first step toward revolution, and while government would have have to be exponentially worse than it is now, I still want to retain the right to chuck it out.

But defining spam as free speech? Nah. I don't think Americas founding fathers would have considered the ability to send email flogging fake Viagra as a "right" worthy of protection under the Constitution.

I also don't think the court thought this through. The principal difference is that spam in my mailbox costs me money. If you don't understand how, CLICK HERE for a post I wrote way back about another Super Spammer, Robert Solway.

What the court has decided is, in effect, that the US Constitution mandates that I pay for the delivery of the message when someone who I don't know, and who has never ask my permission, seeks to exercise his right to free speech. In a perverse kind of way, that's taxation without representation, the very notion that started the whole shebang in 1776 in the first place.

It is clear that the judges sitting on the Virginia Supreme Court do not understand just how much, in real dollars, spam costs their economy.

I am expecting the Virginia decision to be overturned in the US Supreme Court soon.

And Even More Silly Politics...

I forgot to memtion that our local municipal government elections are being held tomorrow (Saturday). Voting is compulsory, which means one is required to turn up, scribble something on the ballot paper (like "None Of The Above), fold the ballot up and stuff it in a big cardboard box.

I'm going to be elsewhere, so I took the opportunity, while on a walk with Zac this morning, to drop into the Council offices and vote.

Surprisingly, there was a gaggle of candidates outside jostling to thrust a "How To Vote" card into my spare hand. Of course, in these more environmentally conscious times, it isn't card any more but rather a very thin "recycled" piece of paper. Recycled is politically correct, apparently, and somehow makes wasting resources on this nonsense ok. It clearly doesn't occur to them that recycled paper is also a finite resource.

One of tha candidates was from The Greens... which is the party you vote for if you want everyone else to think you're young, hip, in-touch, and are concerned about "global warming".

Oh oh. Regular readers will know my views on that. I politely listened to the Green candidate tell me her party was determined to make our municipality "carbon neutral" by 2012.

I then told her I didn't believe in anthropomorphic global warming and she started to sprout the party line about carbon, and greenhouses, and other less interesting things.

You can probably predict the outcome... I opened fire (metaphorically, of course). I gave her both barrels.

"Well we'll have to agree to disagree on that, but really, this election is about local issues", she said.

"No it isn't. You just told me you want to do the carbon neutral thing. Global warming's about as far away from as local issue as it gets."

"But we're opposed to selling the local bowling club", she quickly added.

It was at this point that another candidate joined the fray. "But there is no proposal to sell the bowling club", he said.

"Yes, but we're opposed to its sale anyway", replied the Green.

It reminded me of a wonderful scene from one of my top 3 fave films, "Wag The Dog", which is really a documentary and ought to be compulsory study in any political science degree.

In the scene, the "Political Consultant", Conrad Breen (played brilliantly by Robert DeNero) is planning a diversion from a breaking story that the President had been caught having sex with a girl scout in the Oval Office. He points at one of the President's staffers and says "You, call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Scott. Get him on an aeroplane to Seattle tonight."

He points to another and says "You, I want a press release saying General Scott has not gone to Seattle to talk to Boeing about premature deployment of the B3 Bomber."

The first aid says "But there is no B3 Bomber".

And Breen replies "which is exactly why General Scott has not gone to Boeing to talk about it."

Brilliant. And so, today, life reflected art.

On a more serious note, I was offended that they wouldn't let Zac vote. He lives here too, and some of the decisions our Council will make will effect him directly. It's an outrage.

Politics... Bah!

Mark Twain once wrote "It doesn't matter who you vote for, you still end up with a politician."

There's interesting political shows on right now on either side of the Pacific, and they're worth a comment.

Now that the interminable American primary season is finally over and the candidates are oficially endorsed, the US Election can get down to the pointy end.

And the candidates are...
Some young handsome black/white dude with a silver tongue and very nice suits, who has chosen Mr Boring as his second, or some old white guy who managed to get himself captured by the Vietcong (which qualifies him as a war hero), who has, appropriately, chosen Rambette as his second.

And one of these two will be the Leader of the Free World. Are you kidding Americans? Seriously? You couldn't find anyone better?

Here's my take...

Obama is The Hollow Man. He's all talk, with absolutely no substance. From this distance, it seems all he's ever done is promote Obama, though if success in what you've done is an indicator, then he's going to make a fine President because he's clearly promoted himself extremely well.

McCain is eight years too late. I like the guy, and suspect he would have made a great President in 2000. If the job hadn't gone to The Idiot, I think the world would be a different place. But now... I just get the feeling he's past his use by date (though at least he can pronounce "nuclear").

Ah well. Dr J and I will be in America on election day. I'm really looking forward to that.

Over on this side of the Pacific, our State government has imploded, and in such a spectacular way as to remind us of just how disgustingly slimy and self serving those who seek public office in this country really are.

The outgoing state premier's press conference said it all. "I'm resigning today, because it's best for the party that a new team be allowed to take up the reins. In my entire career in politics, The Party has always come first."

Um. Mr Premier, don't you mean "the voters come first". No apparently not.

His successor is a nobody, very much like Mr Obama. He's been in Parliament for just a couple of years, and really hasn't distinguished himself. But here's the problem...

Before that, he was chief of staff to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, a guy called Milton Orkopolis, who is currently serving a jail term for luring under-age boys to his Parliament House office, supplying them with drugs, and having sex with them. (Yes, if nothing else, politics in New South Wales can be "interesting").

There can only be two possibilities...
Either, as Chief of Staff, our new Premier was incompetant in not knowing what his boss was up to, which means he shouldn't be Premier, or he turned a blind eye to his paedophile boss, and if that's true, he should be sharing the prison cell.

Sadly, the next state election is in March 2011. That's more than two years away, a lifetime in political speak. The long suffering people of this state are counting the days.

And on that... when the politicians in this state moved to a "fixed term" (previously, the Premier could call an election any time during his term), I campaigned to adopt an American style "recall" system, which would allow The People to fire an inept or corrupt government. Sadly, the suggestion was howled down by the self serving slimeballs who sit in our legislature.

What a pity.

That Announcement Was Premature

More than a few weeks ago, I proudly announced at "Wroof! Is Coming". I even set a date, August 24. I blew my trumpet long and loud. "Brilliant", "Inspired", "Stunning". The dictionary of superlatives was depleted.

And then I hit a bump... a crash of Photoshop which I was using to tidy up some graphics.

It was then that I realised that Wroof! just wasn't good enough yet. I say "yet" because it will be all of the things those superlatives describe. In many ways, is IS all those things, but not entirely.

You see, it isn't finished, and by "finished", I mean polished, shiny and very warm to touch.

It took a tiny little bug to make that penny drop. It was something to do with the way Wroof! handles shopping carts, and as I was trawling through lines of code looking for the error, I started to see some big design problems.

For example, Wroof! lets you choose fonts and colours for your pages. On testing, I discovered that the method for passing the page reference from one page to the next was flawed. It wasn't a bug... it worked exactly the way it was supposed to... it just didn't do the job required. It needed to be fixed, and the fix meant combing a hundred thousand lines of code to insert a page reference whenever your site's visitor moves from one page to the next. Boring, time consuming, and a pain in the rear end.

There have been more like that... errors in logic or design that haven't bothered me in creating our company websites, but which would break your patience if you tried to use it.

As if those issues weren't enough, I looked at the two pages where you get to decide how your website will look... the two most important pages in the whole thing... and they sucked. Big time. Really sucked. They were clumsy, unintuitive and clunky. Wroof! has to be better than that so a rewrite was required. It was a timely reminder of one of my mantras... "if you're going to do something, spend a little more time and do it right".

Wroof! is still coming... but I've put the date back a little... to October 1. Given the history of the last few weeks, I'm not going to set that in stone... but I'll be bloody pissed off if I need to push that date back again.

Freezing Balls

I received a little linguistic history in my mailbox yesterday that makes me feel whole lot more comfortable about using an expression sometimes spoken to declare unusually cold weather.

Back in the days when sailors were real men, ships were made of wood and Britania ruled the waves, engineers struggled with a rather serious problem.

To rule those waves, ships needed cannon, and a cannon is just an expensive ornament without cannon balls. There's not much point having cannon balls, thouigh, unless they're right next to the cannon that's destined to fire them. The problem is, they're balls, which, by their very nature, like to roll around under (or over) your feet.

So how do you store the balls next to the cannon safely and securely, especially when your deck isn't a stationary platform?

You put them in a box, right? Wrong! If you put them in a box, they're too difficult to get out. Remember, life or death could depend on the speed of reloading, and besides, anything wood might be damaged in battle, which would mean all you'd have to do to render your enemy's cannon inoperative would be to break the box holding the balls.

The best storage method was one you've seen in any swashbuckler... stack them in a square based pyramid... one on top, resting on four, resting on nine, resting on 16, stacking 30 cannon balls right next to the cannon. The problem with that, though, is that you need to stop the bottom layer from sliding out under the weight of the rest. First, they tried creating a wooden square on the deck but they quickly found that under the weight of the balls, the wood would eventually wear down, making the pyramid unstable. Wood also flexes, which is great if you want your ship to survive the first volley of shot, but really bad if you want something held in place by the wood to stay exactly where it is.

So the engineers struggled with ways to keep those pesky cannon balls on deck next to the cannon without them rolling around because as effective as these things were against your enemy's timber, if they went-a-rolling, they were even more effective against your ankle.

The solution was a heavy metal plate with 16 round indentations, called a "Monkey". In their simplest form, monkeys were the bashing bits at the end of pile drivers, and you could imagine that, with repeated bashing, the pile driver would develop a pile sized indentation in the metal.

Make a monkey with 16 indentations that exactly matched the configuration of the cannon balls and your problem was solved... almost. Unfortunately, if the monkey was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it so engineers turned to the next available metal, brass.

Yes. It was called a "Brass Monkey".

Brass, though, has an interesting property. It expands and contracts with temperature much more than iron and an unfortunate consequence of that meant that if the temperature dropped too far, the plate would shrink to a point where the indentations would no longer line up with the cannon balls and your beautifully stacked pyramid would collapse.

It was, quite literally, cold enough to "freeze the balls off a brass monkey".

Like me, you probably thought the expression was some vulgar reference to testicles and brass ornaments. How quickly language forgets its roots.