This guy is already known net.scum...
on
Suing the Spammers
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· Score: 1
Jason Vale, the spammer behind this, has a long history of not only net abuse (which includes joe-jobbing, DoS attacks and the like,) but his Latreile-selling operation is essentially pure, unadulterated medical quackery... essentially he's trying to tell people that cyanide cures cancer. Several of my online colleagues have been tracking his exploits for well over a year, and we've found little to suggest that he is anything more than net scum. The site our group uses as it's base of operations is the the MMF Hall of Humiliation, devoted primarily to elimination of pyramid scams on the Internet, but we also branch into other areas of antispam activities. We'd be more than happy to see the FDA lock this guy away for a long time.
This quarter at a local community college, I have been taking an online class in report writing as one of three classes (the other two are conventional classroom fare) and I've found that the online class has been pretty well useless. For one thing, the system (known as WebCT) used in the class is, despite appearances, essentially non-interactive in nature. The class consists of a few documents in PDF and HTML providing the information for the class, a message board and an internal e-mail system. There is also a chatroom component, but in the times I have visited it, it has been completely empty.
If you have the time to sort through all the information (made especially difficult by the poor interface on Acrobat as well as the inherent difficulties of reading large amounts of text on a computer screen) you might be able to get the information required. (Some classes also use RealAudio lectures, but those are another can of worms entirely.) It would also be an effective solution if used as a self-paced class, but the way the class I'm in works, you still have deadlines... As it stands, I will most likely be retaking the class as a standard instructor-led class next quarter.
At the school I attend, it's clear that Pepsi is the preferred provider of soft drinks to the students, but there are also Coke products provided in several locations on campus. I imagine that this is provided by the company which provides vending services, since their other locations I've seen also provide both products.
What I'd like to know is why they think they can get away with charging a buck a bottle for water, then stick a vending machine with nothing but bottled water right next to the drinking fountain?
Around here in Redmond, home of just about everyone's favorite company to hate, we also have the corporate HQs of both Nintendo of America and Wizards of the Coast closeby. Naturally, every preteen in town is carrying their pukemon cards everywhere they go. Every store in sight carries the suckers (right down to the 7-eleven) and the WOTC Game Centers located in several malls in the area are so infested with the little pokemonsters that no sane person can approach them. Recently overheard at a local Target store was one parent who's kids were bugging her for another collectible toy, and she relented, saying "As long as I don't have to go near that stupid pokemon store."
On the other hand, I found out today that a stray pokemon card that ended up in our house made a great tool for spackling the wall for painting purposes in the absence of a putty knife... "Gotta Patch 'em All!", I guess.
I am currently a student enrolled in one online class at Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, WA, and I just enrolled in my first online class (a technical writing class) this quarter. So far, I've only been in the class itself for about two or three days now, but anyone who is familiar with the Net in general (particularly message boards and chatrooms) should have no problem. One nice touch is that lectures are available in RealAudio format on some of the classes offered here.
I didn't necessarily work at MS, but for two years I did outsourced support for them on Win95 and Internet Exploder. At the second level of support, each technician had a "production" machine, on which the software was pretty strictly controlled (limited to MS apps, and only the ones we actually did support on.) We also had so-called "breakme" machines on which nobody really cared what they were used for... Linux boxes, some NT (since we were actively encouraged to pursue MCSEs)... I even had a colleague who ran their breakme as an Amiga using UAE!
A very well-written article, as usual. This is not a new trend either. There are, however, a couple of other examples of such "Techno-journalism" running rampant. First of all, the whole Gianni Versace murder case stands out as an example. I remember at the time that a lot of the media coverage amounted to hysteria. At the time, people seemed to lionize Versace as some sort of Can't-do-wrong superhuman. One news report even stated that "He will never be forgotten." Gianni who?
Another example of this is the type of journalism used by Northwest Cable News, the regional 24-our news channel that covers Washington, Oregon and Idaho. It seems that the slightest little tidbit they can get their hands on becomes a major catastrophe. Not necessarily a single person (they tend to follow along with the rest of the media on issues such as the JFK Jr. case) but just the slightest little story, they'll spend hours on "exclusive coverage" and try and pry out every little detail they can.
..At least in comparison to what MS is offering. Living in Bill's backyard, I recently did some handwiritng entry over at MS on WinCE machines, and found them to be quite thorougly useless for the purpose of doing handwriting, as more time was spent backspacing than actually writing characters on their system. There is somewhat of a learning curve on this system, but I imagine it's probably a lot easier using a pen than it is with a mouse.
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Jason Vale, the spammer behind this, has a long history of not only net abuse (which includes joe-jobbing, DoS attacks and the like,) but his Latreile-selling operation is essentially pure, unadulterated medical quackery... essentially he's trying to tell people that cyanide cures cancer. Several of my online colleagues have been tracking his exploits for well over a year, and we've found little to suggest that he is anything more than net scum. The site our group uses as it's base of operations is the the MMF Hall of Humiliation, devoted primarily to elimination of pyramid scams on the Internet, but we also branch into other areas of antispam activities. We'd be more than happy to see the FDA lock this guy away for a long time.
This quarter at a local community college, I have been taking an online class in report writing as one of three classes (the other two are conventional classroom fare) and I've found that the online class has been pretty well useless. For one thing, the system (known as WebCT) used in the class is, despite appearances, essentially non-interactive in nature. The class consists of a few documents in PDF and HTML providing the information for the class, a message board and an internal e-mail system. There is also a chatroom component, but in the times I have visited it, it has been completely empty.
If you have the time to sort through all the information (made especially difficult by the poor interface on Acrobat as well as the inherent difficulties of reading large amounts of text on a computer screen) you might be able to get the information required. (Some classes also use RealAudio lectures, but those are another can of worms entirely.) It would also be an effective solution if used as a self-paced class, but the way the class I'm in works, you still have deadlines... As it stands, I will most likely be retaking the class as a standard instructor-led class next quarter.
Of course, this provides motivation for anyone who tries to hack the place...
"Gotta' crash 'em all!"
At the school I attend, it's clear that Pepsi is the preferred provider of soft drinks to the students, but there are also Coke products provided in several locations on campus. I imagine that this is provided by the company which provides vending services, since their other locations I've seen also provide both products.
What I'd like to know is why they think they can get away with charging a buck a bottle for water, then stick a vending machine with nothing but bottled water right next to the drinking fountain?
Around here in Redmond, home of just about everyone's favorite company to hate, we also have the corporate HQs of both Nintendo of America and Wizards of the Coast closeby. Naturally, every preteen in town is carrying their pukemon cards everywhere they go. Every store in sight carries the suckers (right down to the 7-eleven) and the WOTC Game Centers located in several malls in the area are so infested with the little pokemonsters that no sane person can approach them. Recently overheard at a local Target store was one parent who's kids were bugging her for another collectible toy, and she relented, saying "As long as I don't have to go near that stupid pokemon store."
On the other hand, I found out today that a stray pokemon card that ended up in our house made a great tool for spackling the wall for painting purposes in the absence of a putty knife... "Gotta Patch 'em All!", I guess.
I am currently a student enrolled in one online class at Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, WA, and I just enrolled in my first online class (a technical writing class) this quarter. So far, I've only been in the class itself for about two or three days now, but anyone who is familiar with the Net in general (particularly message boards and chatrooms) should have no problem. One nice touch is that lectures are available in RealAudio format on some of the classes offered here.
I didn't necessarily work at MS, but for two years I did outsourced support for them on Win95 and Internet Exploder. At the second level of support, each technician had a "production" machine, on which the software was pretty strictly controlled (limited to MS apps, and only the ones we actually did support on.) We also had so-called "breakme" machines on which nobody really cared what they were used for... Linux boxes, some NT (since we were actively encouraged to pursue MCSEs)... I even had a colleague who ran their breakme as an Amiga using UAE!
-=>W=-
A very well-written article, as usual. This is not a new trend either. There are, however, a couple of other examples of such "Techno-journalism" running rampant. First of all, the whole Gianni Versace murder case stands out as an example. I remember at the time that a lot of the media coverage amounted to hysteria. At the time, people seemed to lionize Versace as some sort of Can't-do-wrong superhuman. One news report even stated that "He will never be forgotten." Gianni who?
Another example of this is the type of journalism used by Northwest Cable News, the regional 24-our news channel that covers Washington, Oregon and Idaho. It seems that the slightest little tidbit they can get their hands on becomes a major catastrophe. Not necessarily a single person (they tend to follow along with the rest of the media on issues such as the JFK Jr. case) but just the slightest little story, they'll spend hours on "exclusive coverage" and try and pry out every little detail they can.
Must be a slow news existence, huh?
-=>W=-
..At least in comparison to what MS is offering. Living in Bill's backyard, I recently did some handwiritng entry over at MS on WinCE machines, and found them to be quite thorougly useless for the purpose of doing handwriting, as more time was spent backspacing than actually writing characters on their system. There is somewhat of a learning curve on this system, but I imagine it's probably a lot easier using a pen than it is with a mouse.
-=>W=-