Slashdot Mirror
Olympic Medalist was Spyware King
Remy writes "Seems that Australian gold medal mogulist Dale Begg-Smith is also a spyware entrepreneur. According to a report at Spam Kings, Begg-Smith has supported himself in style as president of a company responsible for generating 20,000,000 pop-ups per day, thanks to drive-by installs of spyware. I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"
...unless spam or spyware is illegal in Australia, or against terms set by the International Olympic Committee (which probably includes stipulations for non-voliation of the laws of competitors' native countries), then no, he shouldn't be barred from competition.
Also, on the subject of "amateurs", you can't be a "professional" in the sport you're competing in. There's nothing to say that someone can't be rich, or be a "professional" in some other field. He shouldn't be barred for "richly supporting himself" either, until installing spyware becomes an Olympic sport.
Hmm. Don't give them any ideas.
Only if they had Spamming as one of the events in the Olympics.
As an Australian, let me be the first to disown him.
Fuck you canada! You can have him back - and take this trashy medal with you on your way out.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
They could throw it into it's own category, like doping. "He was disqualified for spamming".
is stuck at 99% usage. Maybe he'll freeze mid-jump and crash like the rest of the poor bastards he's helped infect.
tend to do it in more areas than just one.... 20 mill annoyances a day is pretty good
This article reports him the president of "AdsCPM Network." http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/the-ski-dream- funded-by-a-spam-fortune/2006/02/13/1139679533728. html
Which is mysteriously under construction right now. Handy archive.org has a copy from last month:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050125100919/http://a dscpm.com/
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
Even if you win, you're still a scumbag.
Congrats.
"but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"
What relevance at all does spamming have to do with the Olympics? Why not just fire and ban spammers from all walks of life, jobs, restaurants, movies, etc, oh wait, it's a little something called freedom. As much as all us hate spam, child porno, junk mail, ads, laywers, etc, we must live them. It's something most people call "society".
The olympics are judging competitors on thier sporting abilities, not thier business ethics. If Dale has broken some law then fair enough, chase him down with lawyers. Disqualifying him from the olympics would be on par with banning anyone who fails a doping test from running thier own business - they are completely unrelated.
You don't even attempt to mask your jealousy. Nerd athletes are the Xmen of the future. Sorry, Napoleon Dynamites of the world.
ps: this is only a joke if rated funny and a serious warning all should heed if rated anything else.
If Jesse Owens was allowed to compete in the Berlin Olympics near the height of Nazi power, then I don't think any Olympic committee has authority to enforce a morality unrelated to sporting itself. An Olympic spammer in an online nation is no guiltier than a black Olympian in a racist nation.
(Please don't misinterpret this as saying that Jesse Owens was somehow wrong.)
Twenty million popups a day?
That's it?
Pfft. That's like 100,000 infected machines, tops.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
it showed up in his urine sample. Man, these guys are getting really insidious.
Given that the International Olympic Committe has chosen to hold their games in places that grossly violate human rights like Nazi Germany (1936), the Soviet Union (1980), and mainland China (2008), I don't think they have much moral standing to ban someone for spyware.
Spyware...Australian for advertising.
.. he gave up his spyware business to focus on the olympics...
Well at least the olympics are good for reducing spam right ?
lounge around on the blue couch
Didn't they change that law to allow those who make money at their sport can now compete in the olympics? a la shawn white?
w00t
Seriously, since when has it been a precondition of The Olympics for an athlete not to be some horrid scumbag? For the most part you only see these people perform, a smile or tears for the camera, stand around on the medal stand while the music plays, perhaps on a cereal box and some lite interviewing on telly. Unless they erupt like Tom Cruise (on behalf of his Co$ beliefs), how are you likely to know any past or present are rotters?
Ok, thanks to the internet and nature of this weasel's business it will come up, and hopefully he'll get flayed in the press (Gold Medal Vermin), though you don't often hear much of these, except the most photogenic who go on to some level of stardom.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I bet it has 'sponsored by C1Alis! and Vi4gra! By online too satsfy you're lady"
Someone should modify his Olympic medal so that it's got a flap on the front that "pops up" at random intervals and smacks him in the face, blocking his view.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
At a slight disadvantage being the oldest biathalete on record, vice president Cheney nonetheless earned plenty of points for his target skills. "I tracked the target across my vision," he said. "When I pulled the trigger however, there was a spammer in my line of fire. I take full responsibility for what I did."
.22 wounds to the face and neck, where his condition was upgraded from "stable" to "beaten to death with computer mice."
The spammer was taken to a hospital with
A real Canadian would apologise.
From the original Slashdot story:
... but since he probably has not been convicted anywhere, I dont think the Olympic games is the correct place to judge him.
"I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"
Well, it is correct that the Olympics no longer require that the contestants be amateurs, but even if they did the Australian in question would still be an amateur. I.e., olympic athletes were always allowed to be professionals in some field but untill few years ago they were not allowed to be pros in the field they are competing in. So the quoted sentence does not make much sence.
A think a much bigger issue is what this guy did may have been a crime in many of the countries he was doing it in. So should a criminal be allowed in the Olympics? I don't know
Take away his medal and give him an X-10 camera instead.
I see him getting his just deserts when he's pressed on his past and gets irritated.
(not an actual interview, but how I'd love to see one go)
"Congratulations on making $40,000,000 on spy-ware and unethical business practices, Dale."
"Hey, I just won a gold medal, can we talk about that?"
"They give out gold medals now for hijacking browsers to porn sites?"
"No, it was for moguls!"
"Ah, yes, we see you're one of the top spy-ware people, so that does make you a mogul in the business."
"No, skiing moguls!"
"Oh, do you mean you have pop-up ads on the ski slopes?"
"Bwahhhh! I want me mum!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
He's already shot a lawyer, if he can bag a spammer and an RIAA executive, Cheney will be a shoo-in for the 2008 presidential election.
"They aren't any worse than anyone else working in the ad industry." Wow, so they're pretty bad then?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
We've already apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Although you've played to the conspiracy theorists who'd love to believe the myth that the high paid professional athletes really are a bunch of overpaid floaters who couldn't care less about the olympics, the truth is USA's tie with Latvia early on in olympic rounds was more or less predictable and quite common under such circumstances.
The only two teams who are made up of 100% NHL players are Canada and Team USA. These two teams played for the gold 4 years ago in Nagano after handily beating all other strong hockey playing countries, which include Sweden, Finland, Russia and the Czech Republic. If you'll go back and look at the early rounds of each of the past several olympic games, the NHL-based clubs tend to do poorly early on and from time to time get beaten by teams made up of amateurs. Why is this?
1. The players are often travelling to the other side of the world 24-48 hours before they are supposed to step on the ice and play. That's hardly enough time to compensate for jet lag. (Obviously, this was not an excuse at Salt Lake in '02...)
2. NHL seasons are in full swing up to about 3 days before the first game at the olympics, meaning that the olympic teams made up of NHL players have little more than a single practice together in 4 months leading up to the games. That's not enough time to gel together as a cohesive team unit.
3. Teams that win Stanley cups aren't made up solely of a group of all-star players. On championship teams, each player has spent a good deal of time learning to fill a particular role on the squad so that the team plays better as a whole than would be expected based on the individual talent of each player alone. These NHL "dream team" squads often lack an appropriate mix of key role players.
4. Early games at the olympics are mostly meaningless. Given the circumstances (first competitive game together as a team) any professional coach will tell you it's more productive to spend time getting to understand each other's playing style rather than focusing on annihilating the competition as if it was the gold medal game.
5. "...on any given Sunday". Hockey, basketball and baseball are sports in which a few random lucky bounces can dramatically change the outcome of a single game. It's quite common (maybe 15-20% of the time?) that a team is outplayed, yet wins a game because a ref call goes one way or the other, or the ball/puck takes a lucky bounce. To compensate for this randomness, MLB, NBA and the NHL have instituted best-of-5 and best-of-7 series to reduce (but never quite eliminate) the chances that the weaker team will advance. The Olympics is single-game elimination in the semi-final rounds and beyond, meaning even a significantly weaker team has a decent chance of advancing past a strong competitor.
6. Hot goalies. More than any player on the ice, goalies have a huge impact on a team's overall results. A hot goalie can almost single-handedly win a game for a team that is otherwise badly outplayed. Witness the Czech Republic's beating of Canada at the 1998 Olympics for evidence of this. Stanley Cup champions almost without exception have very strong goaltending. It's not uncommon for a really hot goalie to turn aside 40-50 shots a game when his team fails him against a stronger opponent. These games can have surprisingly positive outcomes for otherwise badly outplayed teams if the goalie plays really well.
With that said, go Canada!