Work From Home On The Internet!

Carly the Speedracer Chick (I had the biggest crush on Speed as a kid, but that's a story for another time) has this reaction to yesterday's Wired News article about Global Removal:

[W]hat a freaking easy way to make money. I can go buy a "Millions CD", sign up to be an affiliate with GR then just sit back & collect a buck for everyone I just spammed – even if I'm not really selling anything.

(Link added.) Interesting point, though I get the impression Global Removal is going after bigger fish.

Today's New Blawg

Christiaan A. Alberdingk Thijm is a partner in Solv, the Dutch law firm that represented Kazaa in its dispute with Buma/Stemra (sometimes called the "Dutch RIAA"). Christiaan emails news that his firm has started a blawg. To the best of Christiaan's knowledge, it's the first European law firm to have done so:

Since we're a Dutch law firm the news is in Dutch. Most references are to English news on the web. Our focus is technology, media and communications. A lot of P2P, since we're the firm that handled the KaZaA case.

Yet another reason to learn Dutch.

Wired News: "Paying Spammers Not to Spam"

Amit Asaravala writes about Global Removal—the company referenced in several posts here recently concerning email economics—in today's Wired News:

"Despite the urban legend, these guys don't really want to keep these names on their lists if they know that the people aren't going to be receptive to advertising," said [Global Removal's CEO Tom] Jackson. "They can make more money for less effort through our program."

"There are a lot of other methods out there for stopping spam, but they're vulnerable to new spam tricks and have serious problems with blocking legitimate messages," added Jackson. "We expect to make a material difference in the amount of spam that people get by going to the source and appealing to what the businesses understand."

(My observations as quoted at the end of the article probably betray my impatience for that delayed fifth season...)

Out Of The Frying Pan

Tom Poe continues to chronicle concerns about direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems:

Recent events have raised concern about the voting machines used, called, Direct Recording Election (DRE) voting systems. These voting systems are all based on proprietary source code, which precludes even court review and audit....At the moment, there is no discussion about providing the public
access to the source code used in machines that are computer-based.

Howard Bashman links a related op-ed: "The chad you know versus the hacker you don't." In like vein, see Phil Becker in the July 31, 2003 issue of The Digital I.D. World Newsletter: "[W]hen you network machines without digital identity being part of the design, this is the type of problem that is nearly inevitable..."

Fastest Thong In The West

California gubernatorial candidate Georgy Russell, in an address to some 500 U.C. Berkeley students on September 3: "Lesson 5: A little thong goes a long way!" (Link added.) Better still is Georgy's description of her effort to present one of her CafePress offerings to Arianna Huffington:

I jumped right up to the front and presented Arianna with what I thought was one of the most sought after political tchotchkes in the state – a Georgy for Governor thong!

"Give it to him," she said, pointing to a white guy next to her. Guess she didn't hear that the Oakland museum wants one of those babies!