Slashdot Mirror
Broadcasting Spam into Space
A reader writes "Apparently frustrated by the crackdown on SPAMers by ISPs around the world, a group of Davis, California innovators made headlines this week in the Sacramento Bee by unveiling their "intergalactic communication system (U.S. Patent Pending)" which will beam unsolicited email into outer space. According to one of the founders, "this is the ultimate expression of free speech", but it will cost the general public $10.95 to have a 1000 word message launched. "
Can we bounce spam into space & send the marketers the bill?
That's what I want to see...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Even thought I dont live in the us, and I over 18 I felt the urge to enter their contest anyways, here was my entry.
Dear Inteligent Non-Earth based life,
Please allow me to apologize in the upmost for any further unsolicited spam that you may receive from our planet.
Any such messages should not be taken as a representation of inteligence on our planet.
If you find the said messages annoying, feel free to stop by and prosecute the people who sent the message, most of the planet would be quite happy to help.
Please dont decide to stop the spam by destroying our planet (Althought vapourizing those who sent the message might win you world wide gratatude).
Yours Truely.
Nocturnal.
(A concerned resident of Earth)
Quote from their webpage: "Bentspace is only responsible for sending the messages, and not for any consequence as a result of the messages that are sent."
Damnit, are they saying that when aliens recieve offensive email and blast us outta the sky, we can't sue Bentspace.com?
SirSlud
"Old man yells at systemd"
Uhm, if they "blast us outta the sky", we will have much more pressing issues than suing bentspace!
Secondly, the signal will be intermittent, so won't show up any more than the WOW! signal did on Earth, even if it -did- reach someone.
Thirdly, noise will garble any message beyond the point of being interpretable.
Fourthly, there is no way an alien race is going to be able to interpret ASCII text in any useful way, even if they did receive the message intact.
Fifthly, even if the aliens broke the ASCII code, they are hardly likely to know English, or any other Terran language.
Sixthly, even if the message was recieved and understood, given the timescales involved, it might be several hundred years before any reply would ever reach Earth, by which time the computer the message was to be delivered to would no longer exist, causing the reply to bounce.
Seventhly, even if the Internet still existed, and a computer with the correct name was present, with a mail server that still recognised that format of message, nobody on the receiving end who knew what the message was a reply to would still be alive.
Eighthly, even if someone DID know what the reply was for, and received it, and could interpret it (given natural language shifts), they would have no means of guaging it's authenticity or source, so rendering it useless.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Now I know it is true.
The internet is possessed by the ghost of P.T Barnham !!!
morturii
I'm having the same problems. Don't feel alone.
-blue
Well, let's look at it this way: Voyager 1, which is a little further away than Pluto these days (about 1/6000th the distance to the nearest star), has a 20 Watt directed beam transmitter aboard. It takes the world's most sensitive radio telescopes working in concert to detect Voyager's extremely feeble signal that finally makes it to Earth.
Here's another problem: These clowns aren't even going to direct the signal to a particular star. They are just letting their transmitter sweep across the sky as the Earth rotates. I guess they hope those ET's are listening at just the right moment to hear the signal.
Well anyway, I'm just wasting my time here, because it is just a huge scam in the end. i hope nobody has sent in they $10.
They're gonna don they're UFO halloween costumes so they can spam-er-email the aliens and attract them here. Sort of like throwing a couple of decoy ducks on the duck pond. Anybody sending spam to aliens must think aliens are really really dumb. Then again all it takes is just that one response out of say, fifty zillion.
The only problem is any aliens who would respond are too dumb to have the technology to respond. There goes the $60,000 investment. DOH!!!!!!
I suppose if it doesn't work out the spammers can go back to cutting crop circles.
That's correct. What it does, however, is pretty slick: msgto.com has to authorize each sender->receiver combination. That authorization will generally occur when a sender attempts to send a message to a msgto.com receiver. msgto.com will send back a message asking that person to pass a test that's extremely simple for humans but difficult for computers. Once authorized, the sender will always be allowed to send to the same receiver. Mass spamming is very near impossible.
I really wish CmdrTaco, Hemos, Roblimo, CowboyNeal, JonKatz, or someone else would pay more attention to this service. It really looks like a complete solution to spam. If it's as good as it seems, it would be worth someone's time to create a simplified daemon that would act only as a mail filter. But since this article is a day old, I can expect at most 2 people to read this!
Great, our first contact will be "make money fast $$$!"
It must be that memory drops off over time at the inverse of 4th power :-)
The post above was right, for reflections the returned power is 1/^4 of the distance to the target.
Power from Tx to Rx falls off at 1/^2 * distance.
the Anonymous Cypher
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I can see why noone has commented on this article yet. I think I'm brave enough to be the first to break the silence.
:-)
There is absolutely no practical application to this, and the chances that someone will actually get the signal are virtually nonexistant. I guess it's pretty cool to let people pretend that they're talking to aliens. Essentially, this is what is happening here. But you won't see me spending 11 bucks on this.
---
Or the Zentraedi come to LART us because of the rogue space fortress that crashed here and started broadcasting "MAKE PROTOCULTURE FAST!!!1!"
Or the First-In-Still-Here queue....
"Bentspace is only responsible for sending the messages, and not for any consequence as a result of the messages that are sent."
Indeed! That includes accidentally making your e-mail address (since they include the message headers) availiable to whatever galactic spammers exist... "That's no moon - it's a mobile spammer-friendly ISP!".
If you want to see the powerful server that will be packaging your messages for its lengthy half-watt journey through the cosmos, have a look at this webcam.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While I'm a strong believer in life elsewhere in the universe, this is stupid. Assuming the extraterrestrials (they're only aliens when they're on the Earth, BTW) do recieve this (highly unlikely - I could get farther with my freind's ham radio), what would they do with it? "Oh, look mommy, I sent my photo as a MIME attachment to an alien! I hope they have a mail reader that can view it!" ;)
And what makes people think non-earthlings know English (or French, or Sanskrit, or whatever) anyway? Unless the signal is very powerful and being recieved frequently, they'll probably just treat it like just another freak signal from the cosmos (which wouldn't be too far from the truth, really).
I think you can figure out how to email me
I think you can figure out how to email me
PGP Key:
This gets coverage, yet http://www.FlyingRat.org doesn't.
Spam, like it or not, is an economic and technical problem. Treating it as if it were a political problem not only won't be a solution, it will threaten freedom of expression on the 'net.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
gee, is anyone else tired of lame stuff being posted? Maybe I'll go hunt for something interesting. Cept i usually find that i'm 85th in line or something and my story is a day late already...
"I want peace on earth and good will toward men." "We're the U.S. government. We don't do that sort of thing!!"
This reminds me of the 'Name A Star After A Loved One' crap a few years ago...
Sad thing is, these guys will probably be sipping margauritas in the Bahamas in a few months...
"Yeah... We send you message into space, really..."
What is scary is that they will clean up on this...
Can I open a booth at the local flea-market as a francise??? Sing me up
I went to the Florida St Fair in Feb this year.
A couple people had a booth where you sign your name on a form, and they slide the paper into a slot, and a 'computer' (picture several sheets of plywood with random blinking lights sticking out) gives a personality reading of your sig on an '80s era dot-matrix printer.
Sad thing is, there was a line of red-necks paying 5 bucks for this... (did peek and see a vintage IBM PC behind the plywood)
This not the ultimate in free speech. It is the
ultimate in senselessness and idiocy. You never
cease to find dumber and dumber morons on this
planet.
but until know
This should read "but until _NOW_"
Sorry.
Yes, I am an idiot.
--Shoeboy
As a token of goodwill, especially after the release of the "South Park" movie, I think we should present the state of California as a gift to our friends in Canada. They're bound to make better use of it than we have!
**>>BELCH
Great, now we don't just have to worry about aliens invading the Earth, we also have to worry about alien teenage losers launching DoS attacks against us and RBLing SETI.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
First of, let me just say that this is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard of. But that's not what worries me...
The post on Slashdot mentions that there is a patent pending for this (although I didn't see it in the article). I think this is a bit silly now, but could in theory give them a monopoly on all e-mail sent between planets. Just think about what would happen if we made a base on the moon: you wouldn't be able to send e-mail because they would have the patent. Depending on the wording (and lawyers), it could even cover all e-mail send via radio waves.
Scary...
-ElJefe
"The messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply. The reply would be received in the company's computer, not in the original sender's message box."
That's assuming that the ET communicated in any of the forms of "language" known to man...
Insert mind here.
You can buy a lot better things to talk to aliens directly with 11 bucks....
... Now even aliens can get 50 porno site ads with their 5 legit e-mails. Starting an intergalactic war are we?
Diji
"I came, I saw, I WTF'd!"
The question is, can we cuss out aliens? I know oh my alpha pager they don't let me curse.
Get that Spammer with SpamCop!
Wah!
I was curious about what Eric Overfield an undergraduate computer science major said - that the messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply. I wonder if that means they're sending an RFC first.
I guess they're not using AOL's Instant Message format. Hooray for standards!
This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen... Its too dumb to even laugh at. They must have been drunk. bah. double bah!
Sorry, couldn't resist!
(Hormel SPAM = Shoulder of Pork and hAM)
P.S. speaking of, anybody seen the new Muppet movie? Any reviews? I always knew Gonzo had to be an alien....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
This'll make seti@home useless now.. as soon as some ET gets his mailbox filled with unsolicited e-mail, they'll rule out our planet as one of intelligence... ;)
Justin
"Short, tall, fat, skinny, from the highest king to the lowest man, everyone uses the potty." - Brak
The answer would obviously be:
A/S/L?
The article said that their transmitter only had half a watt of power. Egad. You couldn't even get that signal to the end of the street!
The aliens are already not interested in us and now that we start spamming them, they will probably RBL us.
Right. Basically, if we want to BROADCAST a message (narrowcasting wouldn't take that much, only a few megawatts) to an alien civilization, we'd have to induce a nova in our Sun to be noticed. Not very practical.
Geezz, this is tough. I guess the 1st msg would be something like...
We have free sex pics of young women sex that work at home sex to raise money sex to help their legal and sex financial problems/opportunities sex all at no sex risk to you!
Unfortunately, the little green men read this as:
blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah.
(with apologies to Larson and Ginger).
Oh good, I'm glad they've made provisions.
--
He didn't write a complex sheild-disabling program in a few minutes, he just loaded Windows 98 onto the ship's computer! The reason the sheilds went down was becasue of the frequent reboots required. Frankly, I'm suprised the damn thing didn't blow up right then, instead of the nuke doing the damage.
Can you imagine the crap that people will send with this? Can you imagine what an alien civilization would think of the human race?
At any rate, only an idiot would shell out the $$ for this. "'Admittedly, it is a weak signal, but it does go on forever,' Snow said." The same could be said about any electromagnetic signal. You could say the same about a toy walkie-talkie. Only idiots will pay for this service...and I don't want to know the things they would say. I hope that those messages really aren't heard by any alien civilzations, for humanity's sake.
I don't really see what this has to do directly with spam, except that we'll be able to spam aliens. But we've been doing that for years: all the EM waves we've generated from TV signals to cel phones will exist forever, in theory.
Did anyone think that the SETI program is just a human attempt to understand the spam aliens have been sending us?
Some people have too much money on their hands and an overdeveloped love of technology with no apparent usefulness. How sad that they think American children can create meaningful commentary in less than 1,000 words.
J.
damned vulpine http://sb.drtwister.com/
And if you give me $10US I'll send your e-mail to space as well. Hell for just $10US I'll even let you have 2000 words. Send your cheques to me! Give me your money!
For a limited time the first 1000 people can have their pictures sent as an attachment. Aliens can speak MIME!
small print : Some conditions may apply messages not actually sent to space. Money will be laundered. Messages will be laughed at.
This has to be the most stupid thing I've ever heard of.. Thats pretty much my entire opinion about it.. heh. I may end up spending $10.95 on it though.. blah.
And if you give me $10US I'll send your e-mail to space as well. Hell for just $10US I'll even let you have 2000 words. Send your cheques to me! Give me your money!
For a limited time the first 1000 people can have their pictures sent as an attachment. Aliens can speak MIME!
small print : Some conditions may apply messages not actually sent to space. Money will be laundered. Messages will be laughed at.
Oh good, I'm glad they've made provisions.
--
I realized after i submitted this that i did the calculations for spherical broadcasting while they are using a directed beam. But, naturally, i can't make a better estimate without knowing how tight their beam is. Does anyone have figures on what the angle between one side of the beam and the other is? And to further refine the numbers, what is the closest star system that could contain life (or that we cannot rule out the possibility of life)? Alpha Centauri doesn't even have planets, so it's not a good yardstick.
But, looks more like their idea is to document being the first people to do intergalactic email, so that they can have their dumb patent. However, the patent will not last long enough for the idea to have any true intergalactic usage; so the joke's on them. What a bunch of eegnerint woosez!
After receiving the spam, some BEM version of Erol's Afterburner will probably deliver a relativistic LART.
[See _The Killing Star_, by Charles Pellegrino for the gory details]
I guess we'll need make a proposal for that. :)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Sorry for the rude awakening, but you simply didn't know.
-Adam
I smell a success!
THIS IS PRE-ALPHA PRIVATE RELEASE CODE!!!
DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU ARE A DEVELOPER.
ALL IT DOES IS CRAS
Once we go faster than the speed of light and colonize a cool planet with weird and intelligent animals...WE WOULD GET YEARS OF SPAM!!
There was a company several years ago who took an acre or so of cheap land, subdivided into one-foot parcels, and sold them to Russians who wanted to own a piece of America. They made millions.
So have we even tested half of these automated SETI algorithms by scanning parts of space that include our own space probes sent out so long ago? Say... Vger (oh sorry, Voyager ;)
How many watts are being used intentionally by those probes to send data back to earth, and how well can we receive those signals now?
alaric
ever closer to actually gettin an account
alaric@portone.com
If they beam spam into outer space and it reflects off astronomical debris and bounces back after a century
ALIENS' MESSAGE TO EARTH: "MAKE MONEY FAST!"
or
ALIEN CIVILIZATION OFFERS 100 FREE HOURS OF AOL!
or worst of all
HISTORIC FIRST CONTACT: ALIENS PROMISE FREE DAILY PORN IN YOUR EMAIL!
L.
you forgot that the earth rotates..
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
If SPAM includes pig products, does that mean we have Pigs In Space?
I loved that segment on the Muppet Show..
...why didn't I think of that?! I could be stinking rich...
Seriously, this strikes me as being a contender for the stupidest thing yet. But it makes money, so they'll be able to go public and make a ton of coin on other people's stupidity.
Meanwhile, once the reruns of Gilligan's Island stop, ET will then get spammed.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
Little Green Men might nuke us.
I would...
To: postmaster@earth.sol.com
From: zork@gmaps.beta.lyrae.net
Subject: GRBH advisory
Dear Earthlings:
We have received numerous reports that your planet has been broadcasting unsolicited commercial email (commonly referred to as "spam"). Please be advised that your planet is now a candidate for Galactic Real-time Black Hole (GRBH) listing.
We understand that, as a young and technologically backward species, you may not be familiar with the rules of Galactic Etiquette. However, ignorance is no excuse for your present behavior. We have also heard that your planetary network maintains a so-called "black-hole list." Please note that your penchant for colorful metaphors is unique among sentient species; we of the galactic community are rather more literal-minded.
We personally doubt that you wish to see your planet torn apart by a gravitational vortex, so we urge you to cease transmitting spam immediately. Please inform us by interocitor of your intent to comply within the next 100 centons.
Jamie McCarthy
Jamie McCarthy
jamie.mccarthy.vg
Oh fer Chrissakes! Haven't we been doing this for years? Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we been pumping our radio, television, and telephone signals into space ever since these things have been invented?
I'm just waiting for the day when the IGPD (Intergalatic Police Dep't) sends us a $20,000,000,000,000,000,000 fine for noise pollution.
REMOVE.
Not bad for our first interplanetary communication.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
Never underestimate the number of idiots willing
...
to shelve the moneys for whatever.
Watch for their IPO anytime soon
Sure, but there's also the inverse square law to worry about. I really doubt that current human technology is capable of recieving such a signal much farther out than our solar system. Infact, radio and TV broadcast signals that have passed out through the atmosphere into space are probably what aliens would run across first, considering that such signals start out at many thousands of watts, at the transmitter.
Sorry, what's LART?
-:)
Killing spammers is too good for them.
Don't worry dude, the 'star wars' project would protect us.
[1] - It's amazing what passes for innovation nowadays.
[2] - I'm not sure what more amazing: a) that they thought this was an idea worth patenting or b.) that the U.S. Patent Office will probably award the patent!
[3] - How many bozos at this price will it take for this group of innovators to become millionaires? Sadly, it'll this'll probably happen too.
Seeing as how the Andromeda galaxy (our closest neighboring galaxy if you don't count the Magellanic Clouds) is 2e+06 lights away, I wouln't ask for a return receipt for that e-mail if I were you.
As an aside, when I used Alta Vista to find info on Andromeda galaxy, the page contained a link labeled "The RealNames link takes you directly to Andromeda Galaxy.". Now those guys at RealNames are doing some real innovation!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
This really works!
Just send 5*10^50 atoms of hydrogen to each of the five star systems listed below. Then, add your own system to the top of the list, delete the system at the bottom, and send out copies of this message to 100 other solar systems.
If you follow these instructions, within 0.25 galactic rotations you are guaranteed to receive enough hydrogen in return to power your civilization until the heat death of the universe!
One high-flying balloon (like a weather balloon), one medium-power portable transmitter activated by an altimeter and one pre-recorded message. It would be fun to see their initial reactions.
Problems:
properly targeting the Bent Space dish
positioning the balloon directly over the dish
justifying the waste of all that money for a stupid stunt like this
Of course, the last could be said of the Bent Space "service" as well.
______________________________
on some far off planet: Hey Zig look at this . . . hmmm Interesting. .Where did you say this came from, "Earth", ok lets just stop this now.
.
.
.
3 galactic years later: Zig why do I keep getting this message offering a chance to make 50,000 a year. . .
ZAP!!!!!!!! By by earth
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Is this so new? Apparently radio waves from TV broadcasts perpetuate for years without limit, so this would be something similar right?
$10 to have your personal message beamed into outer space. Its called >radio ..look into it.
Nothing like throngs of idiots standing in line to broadcast the signal "We are a race of weak, hairless apes."
If I were an alien, I wouldn't appreciate spammers broadcasting to me. I'd call their [solar] System Administrator and get him/her/it to cut off their access to their star.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Or maybe that was just a cover up and you really are an alien.
to transmit a message that would show incrementaly our abilities of computation. If the message was intercepted and (MAYBE) deciphered, it could either vring us one step closer to two things: An encounter with "aliens" (we all live in the same universe....maybe) The destruction of the world by hostile entities. Neither of which I woulf consider a bad thing.....
Maybe we can all pitch in and get NSI a subscription to this service.
The subject says it all, I think...
/El Niño
If they were beaming actual spam into space, we could feed all those hungry aliens. They might actually like the stuff.
2nd power, not 4th
on some far off planet: Hey Zig look at this . . . hmmm Interesting.
.Where did you say this came from, "Earth", ok lets just stop this now.
.
.
.
3 galactic years later: Zig why do I keep getting this message offering a chance to make 50,000 a year. . .
ZAP!!!!!!!! By by earth
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Absolutly; not just voice signals get carried through comm sats. When you send an email to people overseas, you are beaming well over half a watt of useless signal up the spread beam in to outerspace. Now all you have to do is figure out what exactly what kind of code ET can decipher (though I wonder exactly what make them think they can speak ET-ese). Just think, we can start charging people $10 to email us!
I'm going to use a plastic snow dish, a turkey baster and a modem coupler to make a signal dish and claim I spent $60k on it too!
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
There is a new spam filtering service available at MsgTo.com that filters e-mail based on a Turing Test. It looks very promising. The service doesn't use SSL/HTTPS yet, but the author would like to release the whole system under an open-source license if there is enough developer demand. And demand is one thing that /. is good at. The site appears to be very fast, but I'd really like to know if it can survive the slashdot effect!
/. story but it seems to have been ignored.)
(BTW I tried to get this posted as a main
hahahahaha
"... the messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply"
OK, I'm going to need some clarification on this statement. Are they saying that the messages are sent with a key? If so, how does the key work and what does that key decipher the messages to, Phoenician letters that form English words? If so, what the hell are aliens going to do with that? Imagine how anticlimactic it would have been in the move Contact if once they had finally decoded the complex radio signals they turned out to be a couple pages of alien letters that formed alien words from a complex language that highly intelligent aliens from the same planet have a hard time learning. Unless this system turns all of the e-mails into pictograms or basic mathematical equations this whole thing is a total waste of time.
I guess one other possibility is that the aliens have intercepted our TV and radio transmissions for years and have somehow managed to separate the various languages and learn English or what ever language some sap plans to send into outer space (by the way, unless they get a lot of Sesame Street they still wouldn't recognize letters). This of course would mean that they already: A. Know we are here, and B. Have chosen not to contact us (at least not directly). So do you think that sending some week signal into space that represents text that is encoded using some non-standard method is gonna make a difference?
You would have a better chance of contacting intelligent life if you went out side every night and flashed prime number patterns with a flashlight into the night sky.
I've got some beach front property and a bridge in the Sahara - think the aliens'll go for it?
.5 Watt will make it that far. (Don't forget to say hi to Rudolf).
.5 Watt will travel - whichever is the case. How bout a 50% off sale - I'll do it for $5 bucks and double the word count and maybe even through in an attachment (let's spread MS Word Macro-viruses throughout the galaxy - bwah ha ha ha ha...)
:) But that's not all. For the price of a cheap cup of coffee, you not only get me doing nothing at all, but I'll through in me not thinking at all too. That's right - not a thought in my nugget. What a smashing deal - what more can you ask for in a dollar. Maybe I'll put that on eBay...
Lessee - when I get spam, I get pissed and delete it. When they get spam, they get pissed and delete us.
I know, I'll start a Santa Clause email service - send your list to the North Pole - surely
Okay, how 'bout an Elvis-gram? Yeah! For ten bucks, I'll send your letter to Elvis - no response guaranteed. (But then, he's still alive)
Good God, for ten bucks, I'll send your email to damned near any mythical or non-mythical entity within 500 parsecs or the distance
Okay, for $1, that's right folks - one measely buck, uno dollaro - I'll do absolutely NOTHING. How 'bout it. Imagine me sitting back doing nothing at all (like writing these idiotic responses). Come-on, any takers? It's only a dollar - surely you can afford it...
Mike the Maniac
When the mile-wide UFOs start beaming Death Rays(TM) into Davis, California, at least someone in that town will have it coming...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
"must take into account the infinite possibilities and trillions of plants outside our solar system that may contain life."
now, unless its a typo, then these guys REALLY know whats happening out there, we should be sending them fertilizer deals and gardening kits.
i just hope they are not triffids
...I guess it's easy enough to say, now. There goes the neighborhood.
/us/?
"FIFTEEN-ARMED SEX MOMMA WANTS YOUR E-MAIL"
"COME TO EARTH--FREE BEER, BLOWJOBS, AND MEAT!"
So what happens if the other planets decide to start spamming
If you believe it, mail me, and I'll give you a better deal.
------- CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
As if crashing a probe into the moon wasn't enough to piss the aliens off...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Telos IV, Alpha Quadrant
The United Galaxy Federation suffered an incredibly blow, which lead to its distruction, today on Gikbol, in the year QQFH#.
Amazingly, a species of Life know as "Humans" in their own langugae, planned an 85 year sneak attack of what surprizinly annoying message. Our SPAM(tm) shields, erected when the Earthings TV signals were first sent out into space, were not prepared for a half-watt transmission of death.
"I can't believe what happened," spoke councilmen Sith, "One moment, we were deciding to investigate a certain trade federations occupation of Naboo, when all of the sudden, our terminals lit up, offering us free samples of a superpotency drug, guarenteeing sexual powers, at http://www.viagrasuperstore.com."
"We all believed that we would be masters in bed...and we rushed out to buy this viagra, or spend money on a get-rich-tomorrow."
The UGF reign of honesty, peace, justice, exploration, and compassion has now ended.
However, Taco Bell's rule of the galazy is expected to last just as long, and with more product placement then you'll care to tolerate.
I thought that the Earth was constantly sending out all forms of radiation (light, radio, etc.). This has been mentioned in several movies. Remember Contact? In it, the aliens sent us images of Hitler, because the first Television Broadcast (i.e. radiation containing images that could leave Earth) took place at the Berlin Olympics. World Band can be heard around the world, and I would guess some of it leaks out into space as well.
ok .5 watt, evenly distributed over a sphere 4 light years in radius (distance to nearest star).
.5/(4*pi*[4*300,000,000*60*60*24*365.24]^2)
1.6*10^-32 watts/meter^2
or if you have a really big radio telescope:
1.6*10^-26 watts/kilometer^2
or if the entire surface of your planet is a radio telescope:
4.1*10^-18 watts/half of a earth sized planet.
No one is gonna be picking this up, i don't care how clever they are, the signal is simply to weak.
Any background radiation at all will completely swamp it.
how about starting with:
...
I'm too stupid to have people on Earth to speak to , so
Just think how angry we will be in 1000 years when the only thing you can get on the radio is the random SPAM broadcast from Earth hundreds of years ago..
Where does it say anything about them sending spam? Did I miss something here?
So now ET will get to make money quick? Really, though, this is stupid. No-one's gonna pay money for this, except for the uniqueness factor. The chance of your message reaching something else is practically nil, even assumming there's someone out there. Why waste the money?
The first intelegent civilisation to receave our galatic spam sends a message back so powerful it causes a planet wide blackout.
The spammers assume the strong "!!!NO!!!" means send your salesmen. When they send back the salesmens bleached bones the spammers send there lawyers.
The aliens respond by sending there warlords. The warlords find that we killed the spammers the moment they had no lawyers to protect them.
We introduce the warlords to the Internet and then we have 2,000 years of peace prosparity and warlord porn.
I don't actually exist.
How much are you charging :)
I don't actually exist.
It says "read more" without a comment number every time I load slashdot's main page. I get excited thinking I'm going to be the first post but then I'm tremendously let down every time I actually "read more".
somehow i can't escape the comparison to the group of people who sold land patches on the moon (surprisingly, for similar prices). :)
ever since the invention of money, people tried to accumlate it for themselves.
as a whole, space can be viewed as a gigantic money vending machine.
if newspaper space has been successfull, and cyberspace outearned it, hyperspace must be worth a fortune
They might _literally_ put us on their :)
Realtime Blackhole List
Wow, yes, YOU TOO can send a message RIGHT TO THOSE FRISKY ALIENS for just $10.95!!! But wait, there's more! Oh, well, actually, there's not!
I don't know about making contact with any alien life forms, but if nothing else it appears man has created yet another money singularity right here on earth (black hole that is). What a piece of work is man!
As if there aren't enough things to waste money on out there.
"Get out of my way! Can't you see I'm trying to save the world!!" -Xion
The whole point of this seems to be that it's pointless and thus harmless.
It's probably a good thing that these messages, 99.9% of which will be moronic garbage, will never reach a soul. Now if we could convince spammers to try and reach a broader audience, we could even get something out of this:
Think about it:
In the infinity of space Pyramid Schemes *must* work, also there will be an infinite supply of aliens interested in human anatomy (for those "see nice grrrrls at www.XXX.com" spammers), ways of avoiding taxes in the US, or the ultimate tools to spam other aliens.
And since the signal "does go on forever" you don't even need to handle this complicated bulk emailer: one message is sufficient to spam an infinite number of aliens !!!
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
But it's not flat, so it could just loop around a distant black hole and come back and hit any part of the Earth.
Unfortuanatly, theres probably a minimum power required to constitute pollution.
just a test.
please ignore.
--- witty signature
well ..
.. I'm sure he'll come looking for us .. rather then waiting for us to find him
There is a good way to make friends with E.T.
Spam him
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
I've got some beach front property in Arizona and a bridge in the Sahara - think the aliens'll go for it?
.5 Watt will make it that far. (Don't forget to say hi to Rudolf).
.5 Watt will travel - whichever is the case. How bout a 50% off sale - I'll do it for $5 bucks and double the word count and maybe even through in an attachment (let's spread MS Word Macro-viruses throughout the galaxy - bwah ha ha ha ha...)
:) But that's not all. For the price of a cheap cup of coffee, you not only get me doing nothing at all, but I'll through in me not thinking at all too. That's right - not a thought in my nugget. What a smashing deal - what more can you ask for in a dollar. Maybe I'll put that on eBay...
Lessee - when I get spam, I get pissed and delete it. When they get spam, they get pissed and delete us.
I know, I'll start a Santa Clause email service - send your list to the North Pole - surely
Okay, how 'bout an Elvis-gram? Yeah! For ten bucks, I'll send your letter to Elvis - no response guaranteed. (But then, he's still alive)
Good God, for ten bucks, I'll send your email to damned near any mythical or non-mythical entity within 500 parsecs or the distance
Okay, for $1, that's right folks - one measely buck, uno dollaro - I'll do absolutely NOTHING. How 'bout it. Imagine me sitting back doing nothing at all (like writing these idiotic responses). Come-on, any takers? It's only a dollar - surely you can afford it...
Mike the Maniac
... happened!
Slightly off topic:
/. should have an alien porn design comptetition, break out the gimps!
I've always wanted some alien smut. I wonder what kind of d/l speeds we can get from alt.milkyway.smut
Maybe
--Let's hack root on 127.0.0.1 --panZ
Send what you want... Chances are some script kiddie is running a hacked SETI@51Pegasi client and when he recieves the 'Sol' block will just send faked results to increase his keyrate.
Even if the results werent faked. Given the content of the messages it would still result in 'no inteligent life found'.
Then again, perhaps we'll be visited by aliens..
"Would you like us to take you to our leaders?"
"no, we're here to GET $$$$$$ TODAY and see HOT RAW SEX."
-- Greg
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
So what? Fading out is the best that could ever ...
happen to SPAM
weee.
seriously, I don't quite get it, why would anyone want to do this?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
SETI is based on the premise that other cultures, assuming such exist, are broadcasting powerfully enough for us to hear. But what if everyone is just listening? Things like this can't hurt.
Silly signature limit . . .
10.95 per message!!! GEEZE... that's expensive. Of course, anybody could do this on their on by transmitting with a radio signal since radio signals ALSO leave the planet.
Teach a man to dish and he will gossip for life.
That would be SUCH a waste of $10.95
-------
Oh yeah... piss off the aliens with SPAM. They're gonna snuff us out for sure. We're doomed.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
(A beam will still fall off with distance, as it will diffuse, some.)
However, radio noise from natural sources (such as the sun, the planets, toasters, etc.) will probably drown out anything transmitted, at any real distance, given the equiptment used.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How did the person who submitted this figure that the people are disgruntled spammers? Unless I didn't read the article well enough, I saw no mention of spam.
I'm not sure about your other claims, but you are definitly right that time dims memory. RF signals decrease by the inverse SQUARE not the inverse 4th power!
This just prooves the american economy is doing too well...when someone comes up with a scheme like this and they can afford to pay for it, its just gone too far...
And my atempt to get moderated down: (probbaly not) First Post!
Erik
HAM digital stuff, at 1200 baud or so.
DonC.
This isn't in the true spirit of spam... What they should do is mug random people on the street and force them to pay so someone else can send an unwelcome message. THAT would be spam.
The article makes no mention of spam.
Uh-uh. It's only SPAM if they don't include a note stating that an alien may reply to the message asking to be removed from their mailing list. ;)
Seriously though... This raises the ages-old question once again : is there intelligent life on Earth ?
Etc, etc, ad nauseam...
Knowing the exchange rates would not help you anyways. Interstellar security and exchange commission (ISEC) rules forbid you to do any interstellar commerce if you are not a resident of Alpha Centauri, and if you have not at least a yearly income of 100000000 credits. However, Stellar*Trade has allowed for a loophole: if you paint yourself all green and lie about your homeplanet and income you might be eligible.
Universal Death Penalty. ;-)
I think they misspelled half-wit.
Just want I want to be the ambassador of the human race, some spam about "the world's youngest, nakedest xxx teens!" Granted, E.T. won't have the cultural frame of reference to really understand it, but still... it's embarassing.
Apparently it's a new scheme for ripping off people and making money without doing anything. It's not like this has any real importance whatsoever. While the signal may go on forever in space, it'll be so incredibly faint. I wonder if it would even be possible to pick out this signal from the huge mess of noise generated by all of the other signals constantly being generated on this planet in huge amounts.
I can't believe that this is really true. It seems like one of those things that is so dumb they wouldn't even make a fake article about it for April Fool's Day.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Damn! I was gonna declare war on the aliens and blame it on Bentspace.
Though the Bentspace folks will probably get lynched anyway when they arrive to kill us all just because som kid used too many four-letter words.
Don't hate the media, become the media.
Don't these people have something, ANYTHING, better to do?
~mina
I'm out of my mind, leave a message.
Wait, wait! Not the guys with a 0.5W TX. The guys with 1000000W TX. I mean television.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
What if bombarding other races with our spam causes an intergalactic initiative to destroy us?
As if this planet doesn't appear stupid enough from outer space, beaming insipid talk shows and inane sitcoms out into space, now we'll start spamming the whole bleeping galaxy. We might as well broadcast "STAY AWAY" 24 hours a day. I'm getting a vivid mental image of a dog on a leash, barking constantly until he goes hoarse and is drooling all over himself...
doc.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
Well, given the choice between the worlds youngest, nakedest xxx teens! and a handful of Reeses Pieces...I think ET would make the right choice.
BTW, you gonna eat the rest of those crunchies?
-- I'm sure this is amusing to someone.
--
Repton.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
If they make money I'm gonna launch one of these. I'll use a laser pointer and morse code. It may not as extensive in coverage as their machine, but it will work, and be cheaper. I'll only charge $5 per 5000 words. I couldn't actually use their method, cuz gorsh I wouldn't want to infringe on any patent rights....
Ohhh their "powerful computers" will do some magic and let you know when your email has been sent. And I'll send you an email right after I tap out your message.
I gotta find the twinks who actually try to do this. I'm sure they'll buy my new death ray too.
Silly question is Dogbert running BentSpace?
-cpd
How about we just send the spammers into space, instead? Please?
- Dave
"Take what thou hast and give it to the poor."
- Dave
"INS, Division Six. I'm afraid we'll have to confiscate all these interstellar immigration visas; those all have to go through our department. Now, if you'll just look over here for a moment...."
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
According to Heaven Cable News, God could be considering today to put Mankind in the Holy Court of Heavens.
"Yes, it is possible that Final Judgement is finally near!" - said St. Peter in today's press conference.
The causes for such situation were due to the recent wave of unsolicited E-Mail that has been flooding Heavens.
"This now looks like Hell! We receive every day millions of messages. Yesterday, they were usually requests for saving souls or pardon some minor sins. We try to answer to each request in the measure of our possibilities. But since the spam started it has been increasingly harder to make our own work. Besides they are not sent by the address!" - said St. Peter
Accroding to St. Peter most content of this spam would be much proper to send to Hell. They range from cheap financial pyramids, dubious products and reaching some more sinful stuff.
According to sources that requested to stay anonymous the latest, is maybe what worries most the Heavens Offices. While the large majority of angels simply ignore this spam, still, some are lightly attracted by such messages like "Free Hot Sex pics!" and alikes.
According to the Chief of Joint Commanders Staff of the Heaven's Army, St. Michael, this could be a smart plot by Hell to undermine Heavens. "We are ready to take any action to stop this spam!"
"It's pure BS. Don't give a damn to what that bastard says" - replied the press-attache of Hell, Dark Angel Belzebu. During a phone call, on which Belzebu, and Head for Propaganda Lucifer answered, they refuted any claims that Hell has something to do with this.
"Besides we are also suffering of this damn spam stuff!" said Lucifer. "Some s!#@%$#@% had the #%#^#$ idea of sending signals #%@$$ spam to the center of the Earth in hope that some #%#^# could live here. And we got all this #$%^!^!$!!!!!"
Answering to the question if the contents of this spam would not fit more a costumer profile of Hell's citizens,Lucifer replied: "Well you see, this @%##^!#!!! spam is mostly an invitation for sin. But we are already suffering Eternal Punishment... So why the Hell we need this @$@%#%$#@!!! stuff?"
According to independent analysts this is a rare occasion when Heaven and Hell seem to agree: this spam thing must stop! According to the ghost of the Flying Dutch, an expert of Purgatorius Corporation, it is probable that both foes may try a concerted action. However he thinks that St. Peter was just using a sharp tone for the press. "You see, according to Revelation, for Armageddon to happen, there is a need for the coming of the Antichrist. Certainly this is not the situation."
"According to the information we possess, St. Paul, the head of Heaven's ideological section, has been in close contact with their embassies on Earth. It is highly probable that this has to due with a special communique they have been preparing."
"Besides there have been rumours that Satan has ordered to prepare a special room to receive a lot of new sinners. It is said that this room will be equipped with tons of computers loaded exclusively with M$ Outlook. All these computrers will be connected to a mail server with an old version of sendmail and tons of trojans, viruses and spam tools. So you may guess to whom this thing is directed..."
"I think that all this will just end by the excomungation of all spammers." - he concluded.
...Well, in any case... if you were from Alpha Centauri, wouldn't you want to hear all the latest developments in the wonderful world of hot slutty barely legal teen cheerleader nympho sex pics?
Oy, vey.
"Don't touch the bunny!"
I can't wait! We'll broadcast our spam out into space, and a zillion light-years away, some intelligent beings running their own SETI@Home project will pick it up and invade our planet in hopes of finding EASY MONEY and hot girl-girl action!
Well, I mean, it's only a while before we start colonizing and physically screwing up the moon and Mars, might as well begin electronically.
Enuff said. The article had nothing to do with spam.
--
um, not that i disagree with any of your points or anything, but why would the msg have to get all the way to andromeda? seems to me there are plently of star systems in our galaxy it could reach first...
A few thousand years from now, in a galaxy far, far away, on an alien planet... ALIEN RESEARCHER #1: Hey, N'Gaa'Thok, check it out. We're getting something.
... they leave the lab to go get some coffee, come back an hour or so later ...
ALIEN RESEARCHER #2: [looks at monitor] Wow.
RESEARCHER #1: Hmm. Looks like it came from the Milky Way.. from a planet called Earth. Let's see if we can translate it.
RESEARCHER #2: Okay. [types in some commands]
RESEARCHER #1: This could take a while. Wanna get some coffee or something?
RESEARCHER #2: Sure.
RESEARCHER #1: Okay, let's see what it's got so far. "Make money fast... Free hot XXX sluts..."
RESEARCHER #2: "Make money while you surf..." More "free hot XXX sluts"...
RESEARCHER #1: [sighs] Just as I thought. We are the only intelligent life in the universe.
Am I missing something here? What's the point?
And, more importantly, won't this really put a dent in Swatch's various space-related publicity stunts?
Can your IM do this?
A sure-fire way to get Extra-Terrestrials to invade and set up a dictatorship propped up on the basis of human slavery. :)
We had it coming...
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
And how is that supposed to help?
/dev/null. For only 4.95$.
If this is a hit, i will propose a new service: I will personnaly, lovingly send your spam to my box's
C.
It never actually says anywhere that they condone spam? Who made that up?
I've got some beach front property and a bridge in the Sahara - think the aliens'll go for it?
.5 Watt will make it that far. (Don't forget to say hi to Rudolf).
.5 Watt will travel - whichever is the case. How 'bout a 50% off sale - I'll do it for $5 bucks and double the word count and maybe even throw in an attachment (let's spread MS Word Macro-viruses throughout the galaxy - bwah ha ha ha ha...)
Lessee - when I get spam, I get pissed and delete it. When they get spam, they get pissed and delete us.
I know, I'll start a Santa Clause email service - send your list to the North Pole - surely
Okay, how 'bout an Elvis-gram? Yeah! For ten bucks, I'll send your letter to Elvis - no response guaranteed. (But then, he's still alive)
Good God, for ten bucks, I'll send your email to damned near any mythical or non-mythical entity within 500 parsecs or the distance
Okay, for $1, that's right folks - one measely buck, uno dollaro - I'll do absolutely NOTHING. How 'bout it. Imagine me sitting back doing nothing at all (like writing these idiotic responses). Come-on, any takers? It's only a dollar - surely you can afford it... But that's not all. For the price of a cheap cup of coffee, you not only get me doing nothing at all, but I'll throw in me not thinking at all too. That's right - not a thought in my nugget. A $19.95 value, all for only one buck. What a smashing deal - what more can you ask for in a dollar. Maybe I'll put that on eBay...
Mike the Maniac
Lord help us all if aliens decide to "black hole" earth!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Reflections back to the transmitter (e.g. radar) are reduced by the fourth power; maybe that's what he was remembering.
first comment. :)
-- atomly
I've had it with those cheezy, good for nothing bastards!
Because their antenna just points straight up, the signal sweeps across the sky due to the Earth's rotation. At best, a receiver will get a couple of bits of data at any distance past the solar system. Did they say what baud rate they will be using?
"R U M/F?"
Thank you for correcting me. I was, stupidly, succumbing to using a "cliche" of language; to use "man" instead of people/homo sapiens/etc..
I am a female, and what I meant to say was:
That's assuming that ET communicated in any of the "languages" known to human beings.
Insert mind here.
And memory falls off over time as the inverse cube?
--
Xenu loves you!
... when you read Carl Sagan's 'Contact' way too many times.
If you insist on sending something specifically for intelligent creatures out there please make it coherent (i.e. 'FIRST POST' and 'This story doesn't belong here' do NOT qualify).
I can't believe that some people would actually fork over the money to do pay for this. Not only will it be a total waste of energy, but if there IS intelligent life out there, and it has the technology to decode what we are sending, then they will realize that it is nothing but junk mail being sent, and decide to not even bother with looking at the Earth for contact.
Anyway, doesn't the Earth put out enough radio waves as is?
Hmm....is anyone up to date on alien currency exchange rates?
If ET *does* buy into my patented multi-level marketing plan, which has worked for thousands of Earthlings, and absolutely legal and guaranteed to earn you $5000/week while you loose 50 lbs/month, I'm going to need to know how much of his money it takes to make just $9.99 US.
I can just see it now...
Meezledorp! look what i got in my inbox! Free Sex for 5 days! Earth girls *are* easy!
Gwazzlenap, we must find this Pamala Anderson now! Set course for Earth at maximum fizzlegargs!
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Hey, man, didn't you see Independance Day? Jeff Goldblum's Mac Powerbook interfaced with the aliens' computer just fine (too bad those things can't really interface with anything down here without some doing...)! Of course they use the same technology we do! Even if they don't, I'm sure they have the Hale-Bopp cult to do their translations, with Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa for good measure.
This reminds me of a company a few years back that would sell you a square meter of land on Mars. You're paying for a novelty piece of paper. Why not just fire up the old inkjet?
If you want to send a signal to aliens, your better off going out into the wilderness and firing one of those cheap laser pointers at the sky.
The cake is a pie
I reckon they can be sued for that, polluting Australian airwaves and all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
In theory, any RF signal will go on forever, decreasing at the 4th power of the distance.
.5 watt signal can't be detected even by a theoretically perfect receiver. The distance would probably only be about 10e14 meters, or a distance just outside our own solar system. I think that number was for a 1 watt signal on 1.0 GHz, or maybe it was the 250 milliwatt signal from one of the early spacecraft. Time dims memory.
In reality, there is a limit where a signal can no longer be detected. Because of the background radiation of 3 degrees kelvin, and a host of other factors, eventually even a
Their site is pretty funny, they aren't taking themselves too seriously. But there isn't anywhere they tell about what frequency or coding scheme they are using. I'd love to know. I've just posted a message to their board (number 3, they don't have a slashdot base of users, yet)
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
What would you even sell to an alien? I doubt aliens want to earn millions in just five weeks with little or no effort required from the comfort of their own home. But then again, I'm not an alien.
--
|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
You'd be surprised at how far a half-watt can travel. Lots of amateur radio operators work the world by bouncing signals off the atmosphere's ionized layers at power levels under 10 milliwatts. That'll give you some idea of what range line-of-sight travel through the vacuum of space can achieve.
:-)
And the farther spam travels from earth, the better
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
I wonder who would buy into this kind of nonsense.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Imagine you've just jetted out to Andromeda for the weekend, and you've forgotten to activate your 20th century spamblocker.. And you start getting this crap..
If you grew up in the outer colonies, you'd be tempted to put a few bucks together for a planetcracker and get revenge on the filthy cesspit...
The Vogons will not be pleased. This might push the hyperspace expressway project through Earth up a few years. Get your babelfish ready!
The party's over
n/t
Now all we need is a galactic ISP for ET to check his mail on. Besides, on my next trip around saturn I'd like to check /. once in a while :)
-Rev_Icon
Maybe by the time the transmissions reach an alien civilization we'll have turned the Earth into a luminous, radioactive ball of gas, to save the aliens the trouble.
"Free XXX Diplomas!"
Either they'll vaporize us, or rename the planet "Vegas" and turn it into a resort. "Porn! Interesting wildlife! $20 diplomas!"
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Here is a site promissing the same this for free!
I don't know if it's legit tho...
I guess that means that some alien race is going to really "Black Hole" the earth now. Good going for humanity.
I always thought that spammers were ex-Citizen Band users with a computer. I guess this sort of proves it. 'cept they are using their old C band satellite dish that they were going to throw anyway. Just like a spammer to say 'make $60,000 in your spare time' or 'this is a $60,000 investment'. Yeah, right. It's their old garage door opener for crying out loud.
Breaker, Breaker, calling all aliens -er- I know how you can fix your credit. Sheesh.
Once a spammer, always a spammer. Or a spammer by any other technology is still a spammer.
Now, any aliens out there really won't visit Earth :)
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
If that theory is true, then sending SPAM out to space is surely the best justification for wiping us out since we first started polluting the galaxy with "I love Lucy" reruns...
Read a good book lately?
Read a good book lately?
so if they use a radio telescope, that means that someone nearby could sit there, receive everything they transmit, and then put it online as another service.
anyone got friends in sacramento?
--Danka, who likes kids, but wouldn't want to eat one
and cut out the middleman. We can save money by omitting environmental controls and airtight gaskets.
Perhaps I'm dense.. but what is the point of this anyway?
I can't wait till some person sends a message into space stating...
"Please bring elvis back!"
He he.
wow! imagine the business for green card lawyers!! interstellar immigration!! What a legal headache!!!
Does it seem like the Slashdot main page is frozen to anyone? Why doesn't it change? To me, it still says this article has no comments, and the Windows2000test one has like 300 something when it actually has over 500! Is this just me or what? It is no my cache. I have tried 3 diff broswers on three diff computers running two diff OSs that have all not seen this page previously. No Proxy cache or anything either. Well?
Corndog
Make money fast! No selling required with a guaranteed part-time income of up to 20,000,000,000 monetary units per planetary rotation! Just order our kit for only 10,000,000,000 monetary units (grams of platinum, please drop them in the back yard -- NOT on the house or car!). The kit includes *everything* you need to start living the good life! Hear what others have said about MoneyScam...
[include quotes of MoneyScam rich customers here...]
If you wish to be removed from our list and not receive our mailings in the future, send 10,000,000 monetary units!
Yours in InstaWealth,
A. Bilfred Spammer,
President, MoneyScam Industries
(Null3928@bigfoot.com)
Geeky modern art T-shirts
That's what I'm sending.
Can you imagine making a thousand dollars a week?
A day? Well now you can!!
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Here are some of our happy customers:
"I couldn't believe it. Normally, even my husband won't listen to my incessant rambling. But now my pointless blather is reaching countless intelligent species, and I'm making more money than I ever have! You've got to try it!" - M. Hekman
"I'm rich! And I owe it all to SirSlud Inc, who showed me how to fire off more trash per second than my garbage men take from my curb every year! When I got that first reply from HjjkKk'a:sd, from the Gamma quandrant, asking for more information about my guacamole and peach casarole recipie, I knew I was set to make a bundle. If you've got pointless things to say, the galaxy has aliens who don't wanna hear it! It's instant riches!" - J. Harper
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---------
We're sorry if this message reached your galaxy in error. If you wish to block further messages, simply point your Death MegaRay Planemoleculizer KillRay 3000 (tm) at the dimmest star in the sky and fire. You will recieve no more emails.
------
"Old man yells at systemd"
AP - Arcturas 9 - In response to rampant unsolicited email from everyone's least favorite planet, Earth, the Galactic Countil has voted 99-1 to impost a Spacetime Death Penalty (SDP) upon the Earth. Earlier plans to initiate first contact with the Terran people and to offer them membership in the galactic federation were tabled once again after the unsolicited spam began to flow. This is not the first example of ill-will from the Terrans. Earlier atempts at covert contact resulted in missiles being fired at landing parties, attempted captures, and extreme unwillingness to make knowledge of out existance aware to anyone but a priveleged few (global revelation is a requirement for membership), and attempts to use bits of introduced technology for purposes of war.
The SDP will warp the space surrounding the Earth and it's solar system in a several thousand light year radius into a 4-dimensional spheroid that will be finite but unbounded. The Terrans, when they finally do begin to explore the universe will think that space is devoid of all life and that they really are at the center of the universe. The SDP is expected to last indefinitely.
Now Earth is going to be blacklisted on the galactic Internet. I guess we'll be considered as an open relay.
:P
PS: Can I change my ISP to another planet? This one has bad service and is *way* too busy even though the phone-to-customer ratio is something like 2:1!
æeee!
Seattle company to allow money to be transmitted into the earth.
SEATTLE Shoeboy Industries, a local high tech firm known for their extensive bong testing labs has developed a new technique to allow individuals to send money towards the center of the Earth.
"Scientists have long speculated that there might be vast populations of intelligent beings living in a vast hollow cave within the earth's core." observered Shoeboy, founder and CEO of Shoeboy Industries, "Our process allows you to send money to these tunneling superbeings. We take your money and deposit it in my bank account. I then write a check to the underground men and deposit it as close to the earth's core as is possible with current technology."
Little is known about the exact method Shoeboy uses to send these checks, but many industry insiders have speculated that it involves a highly specialized tool known as a 'shovel.' Such a tool could be purchased at the 'Tweedy and Pop' hardware store down the street from Shoeboy's apartment, but until know, industry analysts have considered the $14.95 price tag too high for a small firm like Shoeboy Industries.
When questioned, Shoeboy revealed that his firm had recieved extensive backing from a prominent venture capital firm. "We used the words 'Internet' and 'e-commerce' in the same sentence and these dudes dropped 20 million on the table." reported Shoeboy. "We were all like, whoa dude think of all the twinkies we could buy."
When asked if he thought that people would pay money to send a message to recipients whose very existence is a remote theoretical possibility Shoeboy replied "well, there's a whole mess of gullible idiots out there on the web."
--Shoeboy