Année : 2004

Reporter Brian McWilliams – an ex-collegue from PC World – has written an interesting article in Salon about the risks involved in trying to « unsubscribe » from spammers’ lists.

« I decided to try contacting some of the people on the remove lists. I’d remind them that clicking spammers’ unsubscribe links has been known to install Trojan horse software on your computer. What’s more, you can’t even trust some mainstream companies. A recent study found that Amazon and other high-profile firms are sometimes embarrassingly lax in honoring remove requests. »

Brian recently published a book called Spam Kings, published by O’Reilly.

« Spam Kings chronicles the evolution of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a notorious neo-Nazi leader (Jewish-born) who got into junk email in 1999. Using Hawke as a case study, Spam Kings traces the twenty-year-old neophyte’s rise in the spam trade to his emergence as a major player in the lucrative penis pill market–a business that would eventually make him a millionaire and the target of lawsuits from AOL and others.

Spam Kings also tells the parallel story of Susan Gunn, a computer novice in California who is reluctantly drawn into the spam wars and eventually joins a group of anti-spam activists. Her volunteer sleuth work puts her on a collision course with Hawke and other spammers, who try to wreak revenge on the antis. »

Sounds like the pitch for a great screenplay! The first chapter is available in PDF format.

« It begins in the senses, it is done with words, its end is communicated insight. And when it is truly successful the insight is communicated to the reader with a pang, a heightened awareness, a sharpening of feeling, a sense of personal exposure, danger, involvement, enlargement. It is hard to believe that even the most intellectualized poets and novelists want their messages to come through cold. An emotional response in the reader, corresponding to an emotional charge in the writer – some passion of vision or belief – is essential, and it is very difficult to achieve. It is also the thing that, once achieved, unmistakably distinguishes the artist in words from the everyday user of words. »

From On Teaching and Writing Fiction, by Wallace Stegner.

Mise � jour, mardi 14 d�cembre: Le Devoir a publi� un article sur le sujet. (Merci Michel)

Vous avez remarqu� ces illustrations qui ont embelli les rues de Montr�al cet �t�? (D’autres photos sont disponibles ici.) Elles sont l’oeuvre de l’artiste Roadsworth qui se retrouve dans l’eau chaude � cause d’elles. La police de Montr�al a port� 85 chefs d’accusation contre l’artiste qui pourrait avoir � payer une amende de 50,000$ et se retrouver en prison pour avoir contribu� � la beaut� de nos rues.

Chris de Zeke’s Gallery propose de faire parvenir un courriel � l’inspecteur en charge du dossier. Tous les d�tails et adresses n�cessaires sont disponibles sur le carnet de Zeke. Si vous avez appr�ci� l’oeuvre de cet artiste, prenez une minute pour faire parvenir un courriel � l’inspecteur et � la mairie. En esp�rant qu’il ne soit pas trop tard…