Spam
”Canned Bacon Guarantees Full Heart Failure in 24 Hours
Remember the canned cheeseburgers? Now you can make yours even more yummylicious with canned 100% US bacon, cooked and ready to eat. Actually, forget the burger: make your own bacon sandwich using two additional layers of bacon instead of bread. Each can contains all the vitamins and minerals you need to keep a healthy life while pretending to work in front of the computer, and you can even use the remaining fat to polish iPhones and assorted gadgets. More »Spammer Keeps Whining About Large Hadron Collider Assploding
Dear Moron Physicist Who Can't Write Proper English,
I hope you are right about CERN's Large Hadron Collider exploding and destroying the whole frikkin' universe in a big fiery ball of antimatter, neutrons and Higgs bosons.
That way we won't have to try and decipher your spam any more.
Yours Sincerely,
j.
P.S. Check out MIT Center for Theoretical Physics' admin answer to this guy after the jump. Apparently he doesn't only spam via email, but calls and harasses people everywhere and leaves messages on answering machines.
P.P.S. Stop sending mail, you psycho.
P.P.P.S. Can someone at Google shut down this spammer's Gmail account at once? Thanks.
Nokia's Plan to Conquer the U.S.: Product Spam
Nokia is the number one cellphone maker in the world, selling about 40 percent cellphones worldwide. But in the U.S., it barely cracks the top five. Their master plan to grab a slice of our red, white and blue shores? A hot new phone everyone will talk about? An iPhone-killer? Nope. Just lots and lots of phones, hoping that if they toss enough at consumers, some of it will land in their pockets. It might actually work if some of it hits the mid-range, where there actually is a hole in their lineup—low and high bases are well-covered, but they could use some depth in the middle. Still, we hate product spam. [Reuters]Happy 30th Birthday, Spam!
Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on this day, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of computers. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an "insult... to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network." Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of computers, and you've cost IT departments nearly $200 billion to combat you. But since it's your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
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New Intel Security Can Tell You and Malicious Attacker Apart
Intel's Proteus security software starts out by getting to know you better—understanding your habits and network demands—using those statistical guidelines to clamp down on stuff that, let's face it, doesn't really sound like You. At least, not the You that Proteus has grown to love. This kind of learning really helps when trying to protect company-owned portables: Not surprisingly, typical behavior at work and typical behavior at home turn out to be two very different things. More »
riches
IBM Says Storm Worm Creators Making Millions, Daily
The cunning masterminds behind the Storm worm are apparently rolling in great wealth. The boffins at IBM estimate the worm is netting just under $2 million per day for its creators. The Storm worm's financial success comes from the fact that it has successfully created a massive collection of autonomously running computers, a.k.a. a botnet, which can be used to launch profitable spam attacks. More »
product spam
Sony DSC-S780, DSC-S750: Low-End As Sony Cams Go
The DSC-780 and DSC-S750 have lofty-sounding model names, but don't be fooled: they're low end to the tune of $180 and $150. Do Not Want. More »
product spam
Sony DSC-W170, DSC-W150, DSC-W120: Regular Point and Shoots
Sony's W series cameras are their midline point and shoots in feature and size. Best feature: Like the T300, it has a smile shutter mode which snaps the show when the subject grins. The W170 has a 10.1mp rating with 28-140mm 5x Carl Zeiss lens. They'll come in lots of colors, with a few minor variations between each model.More »
clips
Justify Your Gadget: Sony's 16 Camcorders
Sony announced 16 new camcorders at this year's CES. Seriously, 16 brand new freaking camcorders. Why would any product line need so many (often indistinguishable) options? We went straight to the source to find out.
roundup
Afternoon News: Poop-Sniffing, Pancake-Eating, Vegas-Going Spammers
• A Purdue professor is paying students $30 to sniff animal poop and using the research to improve estimations of odor emissions on farms. It's days like this that I am happy I went to Indiana University. [11alive]• Dealzmodo: All-you-can-eat pancakes at IHOP?! Why am I still sitting here? [Dealnews via BBG]
• Alan Ralsky, a notorious spammer from West Bloomfield, MI (sort of my home town!) was indicted yesterday on 41 charges of swindling millions of dollars by using penny stock scam emails. Good riddance. [Detroit Free Press]
• Did we mention we're going to Vegas? The weather doesn't look great, but just about anything beats another day in frigid New York City. [Weather Underground]
South Korean Soldiers Get Spam Hacked
Apparently the Futurama movie wasn't riffing with dated material, because spam scams are still a real threat in the world—much of South Korea's military has fallen for an email virus that pulled information off individual soldier's PCs. And to address what you're all thinking right now: the catchy email subject had nothing to do with penis enlargement or princesses in need of temporary funding. Instead, soldiers fell for the old "Current state of the North Korean army's capabilities" headline.
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Product Spam Makes Tech Shopping Confusing, Painful
Canon sells seven different Digital Elphs, 9 different A-series cameras and 15 different all-in-one printers. Samsung's US website lists 31 LCD TVs—plus another nine plasmas. Garmin currently promotes 32 different models of in-car portable GPS navigator. I'm sick of writing up 14 products from one company that all sound the same, and I'm sick of staring at the "Compare Models" tool on a manufacturer's website just so that I can finally, in good conscience, tell my friend/family member/colleague, "Just buy the cheaper one." We call this product spam and yeah, it's getting to be a problem.
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product spam
Canon Launches 12 Printers, Only Needed To Launch 4
Canon followed a stellar camera launch day with an equally ambitous printer launch: 12 printers in all, including two of those cute little compact photo printers, two basic photo printers and eight—no joke—eight all-in-ones. Like I said, ambitious, but here's how it could have done with fewer: More »
better than spam
Brando Canned Shape Card Reader/Hub
In a technological leap, Brando has shoved all of your favorite mini storage mediums into can form. Yes. Can form. Supporting SD, XD, MS, Mini SD, *T-flash/Micro SD, the "Canned Shape Card Reader" is also USB 2.0 3-port hub and a perfect subject for your postmodern painting career. But for $17, it'd better beat a can of soup. More »
i am become death, destroyer of spam
Spamtrap, a Guillotine For Junk Email
Here's an emotionally satisfying piece of performance art, an installation called "Spamtrap" by artist Bill Shackelford. Its sole purpose is to entrap spam email into its Pentium II PC that's connected to a wireless network, print out the messages, and then unceremoniously rip them all to shreds, accumulating into a big pathetic pile of rubbish. More »
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