Just wait until the Russians find you. I get dozens of "cheap trips to the Baltics" offers daily, but I'd have to leave from St. Petersburg. If only I'd help that nice widow get her millions back, I could afford it...

I constantly get offers from all over the world, from relatives I never knew I had, to send my bank account information so they can deposit millions of dollars into it.

I always fell terrible about those poor ex-Nigerian oil ministers, and those ex-bureaucrats from South Africa.

Seriously though, my spam mail is significantly less interesting than it was a few years ago. Maybe I just have better filters now. I used to enjoy getting ads for penis AND breast enlargements on the same day.

The newest scam here is Idenity thief where they send you an urgent email informing you if you don't fill out a new form you will have your accounts terminated. I get these from my people claiming there from my IP, Banks (even ones I don't have accounts with), Insurance you name it. All will be well once you give them your bank account information and credit card information.

That is too good, Zara.

hhp

Zara: did you get the copyright clearance from the original authors before embarking on your project? I find it ironic that typophiles can be so concerned about the sanctity of intellectual property when it comes to fonts, but so cavalier otherwise.

That said, nicely done!

Raph, two points:

1. Zara is quoting disjointed phrases from multiple messages, any one of which would be accepted fair use.

2. Satire is always fair use.

Raph, how do you get copyright clearance from them? Ask them to send their bank account info and credit card numbers?

Zara, that sounds so wicked cool! Can you post an image of that poster?

John: so now you're trying to justify theft of intellectual property because the sheer number of authors makes it impossible to identify who has ownership of individual lines.

Thank God this whole "fair use" loophole is going to get closed soon.

[I knew I should have put in a smiley the first time]

Sorry Zara! I got your message via e-mail, and didn't see your link in the text. I just saw your link here, and openned up the PDF. That is so sweet; I want one!

Ralph: what gives?

No, Raph, I'm saying that the text, as used, is generic. I get dozens of these e-mails, and they all use variations of the same text. Presumably they are not all from the same person, so unless someone were to come forward and say 'I wrote the originals on which all these are based', I think these texts have long since ceased to be anyone's intellectual property. Intellectual property needs to be defended, and if it is not it ends up in the public domain before its time.

[Should I be reading in a smiley the second time?]

I get bunches of Russian spam messages. I wonder how they "found me"

John:

[Should I be reading in a smiley the second time?]

Yes.

My provider uses the Postini service for catching spam. I still have to go and check for false positives regularly, but ever since my provider merged with another provider recently, the amount has dropped to a few a day, down from over a hundred. Rather boring, really.

My favorite riff on spam is Spamusement! I only wish I'd thought of it.

some of the type settings in some old T26 catalogs
are done with spam, too.

fwiw, earthlink has a nice spam filter ...

I get lots of Russian and Japanese spam, which I don't mind so much as the English spam because I get to look at some of the more 'exotic' fonts on my system. I've received a couple of Arabic spams over the years, which was nice, and a handful of Hebrew spams which are boring because they don't include Biblical cantillation marks.

I'm still waiting for a spam in Devanagari or one of the other Indic scripts.

Hey, that's my family you�re talking about. They may not be much (and sure we've never meet--I living here and they living in Nigeria and South Africa and South America etc.) but they're all I never new I had (plus the ones I knew I had from being born by them).

They deserve credit for writing. They deserve credit for wanting to give me my rightful millions. Let's give them their credit. Steve's right. Let's get their credit numbers and bank accounts and really give it to them.



PS
this emoticon's for you, Raph