Email Mushroom Clouds

The UK and Europe are introducing half-baked anti-spam legislation designed to protect individuals (but not corporations) from spam and unsolicited approaches over telephone.

I had an idea to set up a company who would charge a small monthly fee to individuals in return for then sending (spamming) clear and personalised instructions to every commercial entity in the country on behalf of the individual along the lines of "Please do not send me unsolicited spam and permanently remove me from your database.", and these instructions would be sent every month or every time a new business or trading entity became registered or incorporated.

TPS and other preference service registers help to an extent but actively and regularly instructing every business in the land to not contact you would go a long way towards killing off spam using a recursive and fabulously ironic method.

Universal SPAM Theory

The other day amidst a rare bout of what can only be described as thinking, I thought that I detected a possible join between the notion of Spam and the SETI project.

One aspect of the SETI project is about filtering infinite streams of radio wave signals and noise in the quest for intelligent life, separating billions upon billions of nonsensical radio blips and cracks from more repetitive or complex patterns that may suggest or, even better, lead to proof of the existence of intelligent life on other planets.

I don't know for certain, but aside from the cosmic noise pollution we inadvertantly generate from our everyday terrestrial activities like television, radio, satellite communications etc., I do vaguely recollect hearing or reading that we're also pinging out signals into space specifically to notify others of our existence, a sequence of prime number pulses or something like that, or perhaps I'm confusing this with something I read in Carl Sagan's Cosmos, anyway, either way you look at it we're sending out signals into space, on purpose or not.

And just like the earthbound spammers we detest, we're spamming the freaking universe with all manner of crap, making all sorts of unwelcome promises to impotent males on the planet Zorg.

What is it about us humans that makes it seem universally acceptable, not to mention our g_d given right to butt in, un-invited into the lives of others with the presumption that we are welcome.

For all we know there's an intergalactic council meeting taking place right now - where, oddly, in my mind they're all wearing olde-worlde garb and speaking perfect English - to discuss what to do about the mounting problems arising from the annoying little blue planet they call SPAM.

And just like savvy earthbound recipients of email borne spam, they're refusing to click the 'reply here to be removed from our mailing list' hyperlinks because that would simply confirm their intergalactic existence to us which may well be the last thing they'd want to do. Maybe there is a massive Bayesian SETI filter out there.

Faith, Hope & Chariot

I just completed my largest ever purchase on the Web to date. A car. About twenty grands worth. This new record undeniably puts my previous record purchase a tad in the shade - a mobile phone worth £200 and before that a bunch of books from Amazon.

It wasn't entirely end to end on the Web, there have been a couple of phone calls to confirm delivery specifics but, pretty much, it's been purchased over browers and emails over the last fortnight or so. Of course the money didn't actually change hands - apart from the deposit - until the wheels actually turned up so I'm not saying I threw myself completely at the mercy of some TCP/IP bandits risking all, but you know what I mean. Next up, a Learjet.