The good folks at Lycos in Europe have developed a screensaver that pounds spammers’ sites with requests for data.

It’s called “Make Love Not Spam” (Windows download here) and it’s not quite a denial of service (DoS) attack. It’s more like DoS lite. The idea isn’t to shut down the spammers, but simply to increase their bandwidth costs and (presumably) thousands of people request their pages every minute.

For whatever reason, Lycos has limited each user to doing about 4 MB worth of “damage” to the spam sites (which Lycos verifies before adding to the list).

Still, if enough people start using it, maybe we can all annoy the spammers as much as they annoy us.

In the ‘Great Expectations’ column, I see my editor put in a comment that yes, I know about the Opera browser. And yes, I sure do. But Opera isn’t free; you either have to deal with ads or pay for it. Considering that both Firefox and Internet Explorer are both free and both very good, I don’t see the point.

If you feel like telling me why it’s worth $39 for a Web browser, go ahead. The comment form is below.

* * *

One thing I didn’t mention in my column is why I went to close my MBNA Visa account. It’s because of a horrible practice that it, and other credit card companies, have adopted.

When we moved from place to place in Columbus (Ohio), at one point we missed one of our electric bills — it got lost in the shuffle. When we finally realized this (our mail caught up with us) and paid it, we had been at least 30 days late, which gave us a ding on our credit.

So MBNA doubled my interest rate to more than 25%. The word is “usary.” Oh, and of course we never got a note or a call about this — just a change in the fine print at the bottom of the bill.

When I told the MBNA person about this, her excuse was just great: All the banks do it because, even though the electric bill had nothing to do with them (I had never missed or been late with an MBNA payment), they assume that my “bad” credit will eventually around to them.

Incredible. And another good reason not to do business with MBNA.

I’ve added the ability for people (that is, you) to comment on my USA Today columns — at least the ones where I’ve posted follow-ups.

It works like this. Sometimes after a column is posted I’ll want to add something — maybe more information or a clarification. So that’s why I have the follow-ups section (see the left column on the home page).

And that’s where I added the ability to post comments. Obviously, still feel free to e-mail me. But if you want to go public, there you go.

Oh, and of course I reserve the right to take down any comment that I feel isn’t appropriate due to language, content, or… or anything. It’s my site, after all.

OK, so the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese Sandwich fetches 28 grand from some idiot (actually an online casino). Can you name 10 charities that could have used the money more?

Huckster Diana Duyser of Florida told people that the image of the Virgin Mary was visible in the once-bitten sandwich (below).

Take a look. There certainly is what appears to be a face there — although two dots and a coupla lines can have the appearance of a face.

:-)

But what on earth makes people think it’s the Virgin Mary? Seriously — there’s none of the traditional cloak and child that you usually see with Mary. There’s nothing at all to indicate that the “face” is that of Mary, or of Julia Roberts, or of my mother. It’s a vague face.

(And I’m not touching on the fact that I would think it’s incredibly insulting to imply that God would somehow put Mary’s face on a grilled cheese sandwich.)

All right, maybe this is just me, but if you were going to put a photograph on a page for your univiersity’s department of communication, would you choose a shot of a brick wall?

That’s the choice the Virginia Tech Department of Communication made. Gads!

(Actually, the image rotates and only two of the bunch show a brick wall. But still — one of them happened to be the one I landed on.)

So an odd thing happened when I got a call from Verizon Wireless.

We had a bunch of calls on our Caller ID from when we were out — all of them showing as “Pay Phone.” Weird — I thought someone was calling us from some road somewhere.

Then it happened while I was home and I picked up. I hear a recording: “This is Verizon. This call will be recorded and monitored.”

So I hung up. (Wouldn’t you? I had no clue what it was, and if it was a pay phone, why would Verizon declare that it was listening in? Something was weird.)

Something made me think, so I looked at my Verizon Wireless bill, and it turns out we missed a payment. A-ha — the call must have been from them asking for money. I went and paid it.

Still, it’s weird that Verizon’s billing department is being listed as “Pay Phone.” Either its system is screwed up and the name is coming up wrong, or Verizon is deliberately trying to masquerade calls from the billing department so people won’t ignore them. Neither makes a whole lot of sense, but since I paid the bill the calls have stopped.

Does it strike you as kosher that a company is able to change what comes through on Caller ID? What if I wanted “Pay Phone” to appear when I called someone?

This actually happened before, with Karen’s old credit-card company. Whenever they called (before we straightened the whole mess out) it came up as 111-111-1111. Not “Private” or “Unavailable,” but that. More weirdness.

Important: There is a follow-up to this entry at http://www.kantor.com/blog/2004/12/index.shtml#000424.

I keep thinking that there are odd tidbits I know that I ought to share, just in case. Here’s one that happened to come to mind today.

Lots of people know that the line “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” comes from The Shadow — the old pulp fiction and radio series.

But that’s just the last line. Here’s the whole thing:

There is, in every man, a dark side –
a capacity for sin.
It lies behind the doorway of the mind,
the lock concealed in shadow, the key a mystery.
To find that key is to find the entrance to the darkest secrets of the human soul.
And to walk that pathway, to face the darkness, is to become its master.
But who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

(Note: It might be “…beyond the doorway…”)

Having just paid off all my credit card bills in their entirety, I can appreciate that there’s a good analogy to be made here.

Congress approved a boost in the the government’s borrowing power (effectively its credit limit) — an $800 billion boost. That’s to make sure that the government can pay all its bills.

That means the government’s credit limit is now 70 percent of the size of the entire economy. Holy moly.

Here’s the analogy. You earn, say, $50,000 a year. You’ve got a credit card with a limit of $31,674. And you’ve maxed it out. So you apply for and get an increase in your credit limit to $35,000.

And you’re gonna max that out, too.

That’s where the federal government is today.

Why is that a problem? Because every year the government has to pay interest on the debt. Sure, it can keep the principal rolling along, but the interest is always due. And the billions of dollars we pay for that interest is money that can’t be used for something else.

This isn’t a partisan thing (although I’m sure it’s easy to argue that it is). Politicians of any stripe are happy to spend a few trillion of someone else’s money, especially when if you spend it in the right pork barrel you get re-elected.

So next time you see that your roads aren’t being repaired (’cause the states are getting less money from the feds these days because of that debt), or your local schools can’t afford supplies, or there’s a longer line at the DMV — well, then the problem with a huge debt becomes obvious.

(To be fair, this analogy is simplified. That money the government pays in interest goes back, to some extent, into the economy where it’s spent and taxed. So some of it eventually makes its way back to to the goverment coffers. But the basic idea holds true: The larger the debt, the more the interest payment and the less money for other things.)

I was heartened to read today that people are actually reading things on the Internet. They’re not just, er, looking at pictures I guess.

Anyway, I’m posting this comment under “USA Today Follow-ups” because I wanted to offer an apology of sorts for this week’s column on copyright.

It’s pretty darned huge.

Normally I keep my columns around 1000 words or so, give or take a couple of hundred. But when Angela (my editor) suggested doing a piece on Digital Rights/Restrictions Management, I didn’t realize what I was getting into.

Sure, I was familiar with DRM to a point, and certainly in concept. But the issue of copyright turned into a very big one.

It bumps into lots of other issues rather quickly: piracy, music downloads, P2P networks, Creative Commons licensing, Disney… the list keeps going. I couldn’t cover it all, but I like to be comprehensive.

So I ended up with a 2200-word piece and there’s still more to say. (Creative Commons will be the subject of a future entry.)

Anyway, just a note of thanks to anyone who read the whole thing. It was long and I hope worth it. (And if not, tell me why.)

What a difference. Today my boss came to me with a printout of an article of mine that’s appearing Sunday — a look at HDTV. He tells me how much he likes it, and even points to a couple of specifics.

“But…” I prompted, assuming there was something wrong.

“Huh?” he said. “No buts. It’s good. It’s very good.”

What an incredible difference. At the American Chemical Society, my boss — one Anne O’Melia — was an absolute nightmare (and I don’t mind saying so). There was rarely a compliment to be had; there was always a “but.”

(My wife, upon hearing what happened today, said without prompting, “Wow, what a difference. So she noticed it too.)

What was tragically funny is that Anne would send me and other “new” managers — I had about nine years of experience, mind you — to these seminars on how to be a better manager. Things like complimenting your employees’ work, not worrying about the little stuff. Real basic-manager things. But she never did any of this herself, and believe me we all talked about it.

(Actually that’s not entirely true. She did tell me once, early on, that I was a good writer. But that was it. After that, it was one bad thing after another, and all the people who worked for her commented on it.)

I say this for anyone who’s managing, supervising, or in any way the boss of someone else. This stuff really is important. People will say nasty things about you behind your back if you’re like Anne. But if you take the time to say the good — and not just as a prelude to a criticism — the people who work for you will try that much harder.

At the ACS, every day was a struggle not to call in sick. I’ve never seen such a demoralized group of people. (Always threatening to take away their holiday time off didn’t help either.)

But tomorrow I’m going back to my current job to try to get another attaboy. Silly? Maybe. [shrug] But it’s nice to be appreciated.

PS: If you’re reading this, McG, it ain’t brown-nosing. When I brown nose you won’t even realize it. ;)

OK, count me as one of the people who got a TiVo (a digital video recorder or DVR to some, although mine is a TiVo brand) and loves it. Just like trying to convince people about broadband Internet at home and how great it is, I realize it’s an uphill battle. Until you get a TiVo, you don’t appreciate it.

What’s funny for me is how I’ve come to rely on it’s instant-replay feature: Just hit one button and you get a replay of the last 10 seconds — very useful if you miss a line of dialog (”What’d he say?”). Trouble is, I’m so used to the function that I try to apply it in real life.

Obviously that doesn’t work.

I was sitting at a breakfast meeting today listening to a rather interesting speaker from the FBI. At the same time, I was taking notes for an article on his talk. Obviously I’d miss bits here and there, but I’d keep thinking to hit that non-existant-in-real-life replay button.

The same is true with the radio. I’ll be listening to NPR or Bob and Tom, miss something, and reach for a button that isn’t there so I can hear it again.

I suspect other people have a similar problem; I cannot be the only one with this reaction. I take it as a good sign, or, rather, the sign of a good product.

Apparently Tom Hanks’s quote from Apollo 13 — “Houston, we have a problem” — is one of these nominated to be the top 100 movie quotes of all time.

I hope it’s not chosen for one simple reason. Jim Lovell, the astronaut played by Hanks, didn’t say “Houston, we have a problem.” Picky as it is, what he said (quite clearly) was “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

Listen to WAV audio here.

Today, at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing’s annual
briefing, I listened to Curt Gottfried, chair of the Union of Concerned
Scientists, talk about how the government is interfering more than ever
with the free flow of science information.

This is creepy stuff — not only because it means that the government is
stifling information (meaning reports that it doesn’t agree with;
climate change statistics are the most commonly mentioned), but because
this is our government.

The reason I stress that last part is because of a comparison Gottfried
made to science in the USSR. He visited the Soviet Union in the mid-60s
he said, and was invited to give a talk at one science facility. Soon
after, someone from another facility asked him to give the same talk.
‘Why not come to the talk I’m giving at such-and-such a place?’ he asked.

‘It takes a month to get permission to visit another institution,’ the
Soviet scientist said. And this was within the USSR.

Contrast that to what he told us about current HHS (Department of Health
and Human Services) policy, remembering that HHS controls among other
things the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the FDA: “HHS [now]
requires formal travel permission when NIH scientists wish to visit
UN-related insitutions,” even when they are within or near Washington,
D.C. The process takes several weeks.

That means that visits to WHO (the World Health Organization) or the
Pan-American Health Administration require formal approval of HHS.

“One of the most important effects, and I think it’s already underway,”
he said, “Is the demoralization of scientists working for the
government.” If you have to get permission to meet with other scientists
across town, who can blame them?

But he did point out that this wasn’t an issue of the Bush
Administration (although he said it was a lot worse than most). “This is
a continuing problem that’s not going to be changed by changing the
person in the White House.”

Funny sign I saw today walking through the under-construction section of
the airport here in Arkansas: “Welding in Progress. DO NOT WATCH!”

I’m still trying to iron out the wrinkles of posting via e-mail. The
problem is that I’m not using any kind of integrated system. I’ve got
Movable Type running the blog, the third-party MEOW application to handle
processing the e-mail, and the Unix system on my (wonderful) hosting
company which has to run a “cron job.” (That basically running a
particular command at certain intervals. In my case, it means checking the
blog’s e-mail box every fifteen minutes.)

Anyway, the whole purpose of this message is to see whether or not this
system is finally working.

Heard an interesting thing on the news today. It spoke of the
before-the-election controversy about “black box voting” — electronic
voting machines that were proven to be easy to tamper with.

Anyway, the comment was along the lines of “despite concerns about the
security of these machines, use of them went off with only scattered
problems.”

See, the problem was never that they would be hard to use. The problem
that I and others brought up was that they could be tampered with —
that someone could possibly change the votes. And no one would know.

So saying that no one detected any problems doesn’t mean a thing. The
machines and their workings are, for the most part, hidden from all but
the programmers at the companies that made them. There is no way for us
to know whether there were any problems with these things.

To take an extreme example: What if a machine was programmed to change
every 50th vote for Jones into a vote for Smith? Voters would cast their
ballots for Jones, but one in 50 would have his choice changed.
Invisibly. If interviewed on TV he would say, “It went off without a
hitch,” never knowing what changed behind the scenes.

This strikes me as the media confusing an outward appearance of normalcy
with proof that all is well inside. It may be fine; the machines may
have performed flawlessly. /But there’s no way to know./

As someone who researches till he’s blue in the face — or at least blue
in the fingers — before buying anything, I’m curious about Exava. It’s
supposed to be “the next generation search engine for shopping,”
although the site is fairly empty. Anyone know much about it? I could
make a list pretty quickly of what I’d like in such a thing (all well
within the realm of programming possibility). But I wonder why they a)
think they can do this better and b) think they can make money doing it.

I think b) is a bigger issue. If a shopping-search site accepts
advertising, any smart user will take its recommenations with a grain of
salt. In other words, it’s no better then any of the dozens of
‘find-a-store’ sites out there, such as Yahoo Shopping or BizRate. So a “next generation”
shopping search would have to offer more while remaining objective.

Hmm.

This is yet another test, and possibly the last, of posting via e-mail.
I use Movable Type, probably the most popular piece of blogging software
in use (not counting sites that host blogs, such as BlogSpot). One of
MT’s big drawbacks is that it doesn’t come with a way to post to your
blogs by mail.

I’ve tried several third-party add-ins that are supposed to let you do
just that, but none have worked. Today I stumbled upon MEOW, and for the
first time I’m able to send a message to a particular address which MEOW
checks. If there’s mail there, it posts it to the blog. A very neat setup.

I had some minor problems getting it to work, but now all seems well,
which is why I’m willing to put up test messages.