Thursday, June 19, 2003

Stuff I can't find

I've got emails that say this is cool. Also this. Hell, I dunno.

Sturm und Blog

I'm sitting on the deck here, barely sheltered from a tropical torrent,as a thunderstorm rolls through. It's a little bit scary and thoroughly wonderful. I'd show visuals, but I'm in dial-up hell so... O well...

Blogalong

Nice little piece on blogging in the Times today. Thanks to Buzz for the pointer.

Natually, the Times sends me link love on an off day. Sez here we've had a little over 1100 visits today. That's about 1/100th of what Andrew Sullivan gets, isn't it?

Jeff wonders about how many hits click in from where. You can do more checking here. I'm heading back out to the beach with the kid. Low tide beckons.

Presumspam

So I get an e-spam from Convedia this morning. I call it spam because I didn't ask for it. At the bottom is an unsubscribe link. It takes me to a page that says

Unsubscribe
You have been successfully unsubscribed from the list "Convedia Media/Analysts". If you'd like to be removed from all Topica Email Publisher lists, please click here.

Looks to me like Topica is in the semi-clean opt-out spam business. Here's the FAQ.

I don't begrudge Topica making a living. But I do begrudge Convedia for taking advantage of "subscribers" who aren't.

Of course, it's wise to remember that opting out of spam emails is generally a bad idea since it only informs the spammers that your address is a real target. I am sure Topica and Convedia, as Real Companies, are not examples of those cases. (Note: Dick disagrees.)

[Later...] I now recall that Convedia is a company Drazen Pantic told me about (and I mentioned positively in a piece due to come out in the September Linux Journal). I kinda doubt that I checked off a Yes to any question about getting unsolicited company information when I visited the company site. Though perhaps I did. Generally I avoid saying yes to anything that might possibly send unwanted emails.

Hell, maybe I'm just cranky after watching hundreds of unwanted emails oozing down over a flaky dial-up line.

And I will be installing SpamAssassin at the new server one of these days.