Life On the Wicked Stage: Act 2

Rendering Computer Viruses

Spooky stuff. Check out renderings of nasty computer viruses here at artist Alex Dragulescu project malwarez

Technorati Tags: Alex Dragulescu

Google Thinks Spammers Are Giving Up

Google thinks spammers might be giving up. The basis is that the spam being sent and received seems to be reaching a lull, at oh, something like 10 billion a day. Filtering and other methods do improve things, but if things are slowing down, I believe it is because it just isn't as lucrative, or other fields are more lucrative. But I don't believe it is slowing down in reality. Probably just become old, not sexy news.

Great, Now There's Facebook Phishing

Or at least that's what I assume this is that just popped into my InBox this morning. Phishing using Facebook. You knew it was just a matter of time.

Porn and Spam: Human Nature At Work

Not only do spammers use porn to help them defeat captchas, but apparently they've targeted Leopard with a porn scheme. These guys have all sorts of initiative, that's for sure, too bad they use it for such ill. Or are they just brutally honest about what the rest of us know, but keep pretending exists only in the shadows of dark minds?

Via Gizmodo

Shadow of the Raven Diaries: Ghost Stories with Vincent Price

Working on a play about the supernatural, Edgar Allan Poe, a ghost or two, and some pretty deep psychological mysteries is always fun and a lot of work. Working on any play, sometimes things happen in the work that tie directly into the play. Yesterday, a spooky (yet fun) event happened in rehearsal.

Shadow of the Raven: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe is set in a library, created to honor Edgar Allan Poe. It is full of his books, and other Poe-like items. We had our first rehearsal on stage yesterday and while the structure and most of the set was there, a lot of the props and dressing are still to come. The large book on the lectern that will be a collection of the complete works of Poe will be coming in this week, so we use rehearsal or stand in props until they arrive. Yesterday we grabbed an old  book of roughly the same size, that was actually an old actors directory containing headshots and brief info on the actors.This book stood in for the complete works that the characters refer to often in the story. It sits in a place of reverence on a lectern.

When one of the characters crossed to the lectern and flipped the book open while talking about Vincent Price, the book opened to, yep, you guessed it, a picture of Vincent Price.

Gave us all a few chills and a good laugh.Spooky.

Bacn: Better (or worse) Than Spam?

Chris Brogan is blogging about a new Internet term: Bacn. Yep it is pronounced like the stuff you fry up for a BLT. Bacn is an email telling you someone is following you on Twitter or Pownce, or someone wants you to answer a question on Facebook, or any bills you receive via email.

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Big Spammer Busted

So the Feds claim spam is going to diminish in our email boxes because they've busted Robert Alan Soloway. He is accused of being one of the Top 10 spammers in the world (maybe there's a contest?). Good news that they took action, but I'm in wait and see mode on what kind of impact it has.

Via MSNBC

Spyware Vendor Sues Anti-Spyware Vendor

Yeah, right. Zango, who is trying to clean up their rep as a spyware purveyor is suing anti-spyware vendor PC Tools. They claim they don't like the way Spyware Doctor doesn't give users a choice before removing Zango's "products."  Makes you want to laugh.

Via InfoWorld

Blame the Easter Bunny For CRAPWARE Not The DOJ

Scoble says to blame the DOJ for slow starting Vista computers, loaded to the gills with CRAPWARE. Little question of timing there I think. If I'm not mistaken, we've been seeing CRAPWARE long before the DOJ ruling. I may be wrong there, so we'll see. This is in response to Walt Mossberg's discovery of CRAPWARE (I posted about this on GBM today.)

Blame the Easter bunny. It makes more sense because the purveyor's of CRAPWARE (like the folks behind "the 20" that begin movies, like the folks behind an advertising or marketing scheme, like the politicians, like Major League Baseball and its handling of the steroid issue, like the RIAA, ) think their users and customers are just as gullible.

When The Bad Guys Start Fighting With Each Other

So, it is becoming so profitable for the scumbags who perpetuate spamware and malware that they are fighting each other to protect the computers they've stolen. This article from MSNBC's Red Tape Chronicles lays it all out. I wonder if the guys behind all of this ever shower, or just bathe in their own stink.