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Win an AIBO
Jon Frisby let me know that Everyone.net is running a contest right now. The prize? An AIBO, along with performance pak is yours if you are the lucky winner. The model is the ERS-111. To register, you sign up for a membership at Everyone.net, apparently.
Wait.. I have to enter my own e-mail adresss, and the more other e-mail adresses I submit, the better my chances of winning? So they want to collect e-mail adresses? What for? I can see only one purpose, and it's not legitimate.. It's called SPAM.
yech!
--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
This is great! I WAS planning on getting a dog soon, but I would have to walk AIBO. Best of all, I can save money on shots in favor of batteries.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
Don't enter that contest! They just collect your emails to add you to every spam list imaginable! ...yeah...
Ugly spammer horror. The "unsolicited" in "Unsolicited Commercial Email" I've always taken to always include, "persons without a previous business relationship with the recipient" -- which certainly isn't any different just because someone else types in your address, instead of them harvesting it.
-
<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
I really want that AIBO, and I've got a couple of places I could whip up a BUNCH of temporary spam collecting e-mail addresses at. But is it worth the effort? In the time it would take me to set it all up, filter it for a winning message and remove the accounts I could easily make more than value of an AIBO by using the same skills doing some extra consulting here locally! Besides, with them basically encouraging such behaviour by giving links other places that give free e-mail addresses is asking for it.
This is little more than a fancy web-based chain letter if you think about it! I gave it one address just so I could track how much SPAM it sends. I'm sickly curious that way.
You know throwing the
wondering if should have posted this anonmyously now that it's got me scared of my mailbox......
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Seriously, exactly who's palm got greased as a result of this useless posting? A contest on the web? Yikes
/\ X | O M
Well, I tried to enter, but it came back with a message saying that the email address and phone number must be valid. It's too bad they didn't explain what was wrong, though. My phone number was in standard notation, and my email address was perfectly valid.
I imagine they don't like that my email address has a + in it, as I've had problems with this before, but according to RFC 822, this is legal: The username may contain any CHAR (ascii characters 0-127 in decimal), EXCEPT control characters (0-31), space, and special characters, which must be quoted.
Special characters are: ( ) < > @ , ; : \ " . [ ]
Yep, it's down. Sixth and lastly, what exactly is an AIBO?
Sheepdot: Open Source good, Closed Source baaaaaaad!
Slashdot! The ads aren't just at the top of the page anymore.
Slashdot, your web promotion headquarters. Let us Slashdot you *today*!
Wallowing in mediocrity? The Slashdot Plan(tm) allows you to promote your services for free, so long as you give away one of the many `geek prizes' manufactured by our advertisers.
Seriously. Is this Slashdot material? Sheesh.
Please do not accuse us of spamming. Have you received any UCE from us? No.
As a company, we despise spam. We run a web based e-mail service for crying out loud!
Your address gets used to notify you of the outcome of the contest. Your friends' addresses get used once to tell them about the contest. That's it.
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I created a hotmail account and used it to register for the contest. So far I haven't received any spam on the account, but I'll be sure to post an update in a couple of days. In the mean time, feel free to register or list the following hotmail account as a friend for the Aibo contest: everyonenettest@hotmail.com
As I have noticed with all other toys/gadgets with electric motors and such, they all have one thing in common: the sound of a 1950's vacuum cleaner with a dying motor. Now, has Sony made any technological breakthroughs in noise reduction? This is a serious question, but if they have not, I think I would prefer to have a root canal than have one of these things around.
don't worry about it man. theres always gonna be one or two paranoid people. and they have no reason to believe that you're not a spammer. but you get a vote of confidence from me, partly because i'm gullible, but mostly because i think those metal dogs are cool.
like a free dinner from the Warsaw Marriott.
Or a free pair of Adistar Wrestling shoes.
Or a free personal electronic caddy
Or a free set of shafts (you never know when yours will break, wink wink, nudge nudge)
Or a free WebTV (Ok, so that one's not so good)
Or a free Wave keyboard
Hmmm. I take it back. An AIBO is best after all.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Please, people, this isn't about collecting addresses for spam. It's a simple promotion, a web promotion no less, and its purpose is to get people acquainted with everyone.net. You did hear about their website before right? No? Well you have now. That's exactly the point. While you're there, they'll try to convince you why you should go with them instead of MS's hotmail.com. Again, that's the whole point.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Hey, guess what? Slashdot got suckered! Everyone.net just now got almost 10,000 FREE AD VIEWS for absolutely no money! Oh, well, maybe an AIBO, but not much more than that...
I'd say they made out like bandits. Who's their marketing guy? I should ask him to come work with me....
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Usually, when you send a message to someone through these type of web forms... it will have text before and after your input..... like:
"Hi, your friend from blah blah blah would like you to come to blah blah... here is their message:"(message follows) but, this doesn't. Oh well.
Don't enter this contest at all costs! They'll just spam you to death AND give me less chances to win! Now gimmie your email addresses, I'll make sure they won't be submitted. :)
Reed.
"Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank." --TMBG
"Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank." --TMBG
I bet The Slashdot Crew will be getting a lot of spam from people trying to win AIBO's over the next few days...
BTW: I will not do this, but I'm sure a bunch of AC's already have...
And to all you ppl worried about evil evil nasty spam, even if they are lying, it's about time you wake up and notice it's 1999 and spam exists.
Get a spamtrap accnt. isn't that what Mail.com is for?
"Laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank." --TMBG
AIBO is cool but I'm not about to spam my friends to win one. Fuck everyone.spam.com
if electricity is created by electrons, is morality created by morons?
And BTW the last straw for Andover.net was sending java advts. in every page (not every but many) - which even over my cable modem was taking too long to load.
R
For some reason I'm reminded of Lazlo Troth, cranking out thousands upon thousands of entry forms with the expectation of winning 32% of the winnings (Including the mobile home.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Whether or not you spam (which you're assuring us that you don't, so I'll trust you on this one), I don't think that Slashdot should be running ads for you posed as articles.
With Slashdot as a commercial property (and publicly owned), I think that there needs to be an increase in the quality of the articles. Spelling & grammar errors in posts need to be corrected. Advertisements should be in the form of banners, not in the form of articles. Rumors shouldn't be posted as "news".
Just my rant, though, and I'll probably be flamed/moderated down for it.
Maybe in order to be more profitable, Slashdot should start selling article space? Why not, this is a capitalist world right and everybody is selling out? Why not sell the articles to the highest bidder! And how much more benefit to RedHat would a article praising their new release than a silly banner ad? So why not charge for it? Hell, the board of directors might demand it!
I get really pissed off at the crap slashdot shovels out and i'm labled a troll? That's it i'm outta here!
JF, My guess is that you're wrong on this one. ... My guess it that this is a combo spam/virus technique, where the e-mail looks like it's coming from a trusted friend, but the actual message is an ad for the ABIA and the web site.... I've got two email addresses, I'l test it and see.
my hotmail account got an add from my mailcity account titled "Win an ABIA" -- Spams so bad, I guess I can't even trust myself these days.... Anyways, here's the header from the hotmail message, showing originated at everyone.com and sent via mailcity with my name as the "sender". ... From: batmans_byte@mailcity.com Save Address Block Sender Subject: Win an Aibo Date: Sat, 18 Dec 99 8:6:56 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: from [216.200.145.35] by hotmail.com (3.2) with ESMTP id MHotMailBA24FC900008D82197A1D8C89123D1AF0; Sat Dec 18 08:08:48 1999 Received: from eon9.everyone.net (reports.everyone.net [216.200.145.62])by omta02.mta.everyone.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id AC3071C27F1for ; Sat, 18 Dec 1999 08:08:27 -0800 (PST) Received: by eon9.everyone.net (Postfix, from userid 99)id 53EEF3EC6; Sat, 18 Dec 1999 08:06:56 -0800 (PST) From batmans_byte@mailcity.com Sat Dec 18 08:14:34 1999 X-Mailer: MIME-tools 4.104 (Entity 4.116) Message-Id:
I don't usually use my email address, so I entered. And, sure enough, this morning my mailbox has been filled with this worthless crap.
Don't do it, if you value your address.
I'm sorry. What I meant to say was 'please excuse me.'
what came out of my mouth was 'Move or I'll kill you!'
Yes, they're getting tons of free valid email addresses and phone numbers for the demographic of 'people who want a plastic dog' for the price of one plastic robotic dog.
Yes, you will get spammed.
No, you probably wont get the doggie.
But.. What the hell I did it. I already get spam on my hotmail account. I made that account, oh about a month ago, didn't tell anyone and found 2 pieces of spam 10 minutes later. Can we say security problem. Oh, and I did use the enctypted login, though there isn't an encryption option when creating the account. I'm sure there's a low-level hotmail/MSN employee pulling up to work in a Ferrari ala Richard Prior in Superman 3.
I should be telling you not to join in, the less of you the more chances for me, so whatever you do DON'T join in.
Um, I already have more than one e-mail account, my work and my personal. So I just gave them addresses of me that were different than my name. I plan to check first with my friends and see if they mind my using their e-mail addresses. But like everyone else mentioned, don't bother entering. I want the AIBO! www.aibonet.com - Very Interesting.
No thanks.
(All the "collecting spam addresses issues aside, of course.)
I'm quite surprised that the one I posted on /. didn't get any spam from robots that trawl the web for addresses.
Cheers to Everyone.Net for being ethical and not spamming. Looks like Jon Frisby gets to keep his reputation (and karma rating).