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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 I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"
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.
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.
it showed up in his urine sample. Man, these guys are getting really insidious.
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
Take away his medal and give him an X-10 camera instead.
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.
The amateur regulations were redefined because at that time the Soviet-bloc had paid "professionals" representing them at the Olympics. While they were not "professionals" in the Olympic definition (i.e., money for sport's performance) they were given token jobs in government or the military while for their day job they practiced their Olympic sport. You were talking about teams which had practiced together every day for eight years and whose only goal was to win gold at the Olympics. Contrast that against the majority of the other competitors at that time and you usually had a mismatch.
I understand the reason for the change, but I think it did take something out. Take for example the 1980 US hockey win against the Soviets. Why is that so famous? Because a team of college kids beat the most "professional" hockey team at that time. It was a big win because amateurs beat the professionals. (Yes, I know Team USA practiced for over a year before the Olympics but that was nothing compared to the years of practice for the Soviets).
Now, today in 2006, the US hockey team flew in the day before from all their NHL teams and then went on the ice the next day to play against Lativia. What is amazing in this 2006 game is that the "basically amateur" team from Lativia tied the NHL *super-stars*. Team Lativia went nuts after the game because they should have blown out. It made a big story because the professionals were almost beaten.
For the NHL professionals (or any other professional competing) this is not something they are dying to win. A lot of the time they are more worried about their National endorsements (think basketball star controversy) and/or they are worried about not going all out because they might get hurt and injure themselves and hurt their professional career. (Yes, not all think like this, but enough do which takes away some of the spirit of the games.)
Which would you rather see? A young amateur who goes all out and wins a gold after years of practice or a paid professional taking a week off from their competitive sport so they can try to pump up their professional career and get more shoe endorsements?
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Nah... survival rate is too high for that... have Senator Kennedy give him a ride home from a party...
Nephilium
**Sniff sniff... is that burning karma I smell?**