CNN is running a story

CNN is running a story about the first documented case of "Spam Rage", in which a spammee, fed up with the crap in his inbox, started making threats at the company he thought was responsible for them. If I was on the jury, I'd probably vote "not guilty" in this case, and I think a reasonably competent lawyer can make a strong case that he was being harassed. In any case, what I really want to know, is how a reporter chose this quote with a straight face, the emphasis is mine:

The object of the Californian's anger was Douglas Mackay, president of DM Contact Management, which works for Albion Medical, a firm advertising the "Only Reliable, Medically Approved Penis Enhancement."

"This went for a long, long time. He seemed really dedicated to this," Mackay said from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. "He seemed like a guy just crazy enough with nothing to lose that might actually do something."

He said his firm does not send spam but blamed a rival firm which he said routes much of their unsolicited bulk e-mail through Russia and eastern Europe. Mackay said such firms gave a bad name to the penis enhancement business.

Because the rest of them are fine, upstanding members of their local Better Business Bureaus, I'm sure...

Starting today, my workload should

Starting today, my workload should be back to normal, and I can start posting again. Things also tend to be pretty dead on a University campus this week, the students only have class today and tomorrow, and the faculty/staff only work until Wednesday. The tape library that I manage ran out of tape this weekend, so the first thing on my agenda is to go and feed the robot this morning. At $100/each, I don't want to load in tapes we don't need, but due to some scheduling changes I've made in the backup system, we've gotten double copies of several servers around campus, and that's eating up tape.

Today is the last day

Today is the last day that I have to work in the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, as my replacement starts Monday. They wound up hiring Mark Dobie, the person who held the job before me, so the transition should be fairly painless. Time to clean the last bits out of my old office, format my PC, and clean out all that crap in my inbox I've been putting off doing, by sending it all to Mark. :)

I don't know who wants

I don't know who wants to buy an iMac with a 20" LCD on it, but I sure don't. Why would you want to spend that much money on a display you can't use with your next computer? I'd much rather spend $1000 on a separate LCD display that I could use long after the computer attached to it is obsolete. The 20" iMac strikes me as a product in search of someone who wants to buy it. Any pro users who really need that much screen real estate would be better served by a PowerMac, and most home users don't want to spend $2200 on a computer (with a one-year warranty, no less).

Wow, this week's episode of

Wow, this week's episode of "Enterprise" was great. It reminded me a lot of the story of H.M., one of the most bizarre stories told to Psychology majors, about a man suffering from anterograde amnesia, or the inability to form new memories. There's a BBC article here.