EPIC

[yesthattom]

My favorite “horror story” is the one that takes places in the future, shows a terrible thing that happens, and then when the story ends you realize that the prediction has already come true. I present to you, EPIC.

Comments

[thespian.livejournal.com]

what interests me is, with the *exception* of Friendster, which I thought was, frankly, stupid, I have been an early adopter of every one of these technologies....and next year I'm going to journalism school specifically to specialize in online journalism, a new option that I will be among the first to specialize in (in 2009, the first crop of people who have specialized in online journalism with graduate from Ryerson; about 40 people, and I am intending to be one of them).

Should the future go like this....then I will be an active participant in it. And to be honest, a lot of what they show, with the exception of the computers rewriting stories to suit, is...well, not *fine* with me, but not actually the horror story that they make it out to be. People have *always* wanted their bread and circuses, and the history of that concept shows that it's not a current socialization thing, but something reaching back millenia. To imply that using the new technology in this fashion is somehow worse than it has been in the past is history-blind.

[aillecat.livejournal.com]

To me, being a privacy nut, I'm totally freaked out, and yes, in my mind it *is* a horror story.

The mere thought of the demise of the Times is the scariest part... ACK!

[alanesq.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, we will finally have those flying cars in 2014, as well.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I gave that talk already

[(Anonymous)]

Yo i wuz just wondering why did you send that email to drgonempress17? And why wen she replyed you ddint exsist?!?! Its just kinda wierd to just send a message the says "sharpness"! Dont ya think?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I did?

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

ah, I tracked it down.

acgnj.org is hosted on my server, which is whatexit.org.

A new trend in spamming is for spammers to figure out if the email addresses they've purchased are real or not by sending single-word emails (like "contactable" or "sharpness") to the address to see if it goes through. They don't care about the reply, because they can see if the email went through by watching the sending process. In fact, they don't want any replies because that would just be more work for them to do (deleting all the replies saying, "what's this?"). So, they forge the From: line of the email to be a random person's email address. In this case, blond@acgnj.org. It's called a "probe".

Sorry to hear that the spammers are probing you. That's rarely fun.

Re: Just Humor Me

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

64.32.179.55 is a permanent IP address assigned to one of my servers. Are you sure the email really came from that address, or is it just the From line? (check the Received: lines if you still have the message)

"purchased email address" -- how do spammers know who to spam? They buy CD-ROMs that contain lists of email addresses. The better discs (which are more expensive) contain addresses that have been recently verified to be functioning. Therefore the email probes are actually more likely to come not from spammers, but from people that sell the discs to spammers. (I misspoke earlier) (You'd be amazed at the industry that has sprung up to sell spamming tools and databases to spammers. It's sick. Sadly, it's a very profitable industry.)

A 1-word email can't contain a virus. What to do with it? Just like any spam, delete it without replying.

Re: Just Humor Me

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Yes, the bounce came from my address since you were replying to an email address that doesn't exist (I don't have a user named "blond"). However, the original message has a Received: line from 24.92.164.114 which is dt041n72.tampabay.rr.com (Road Runner Cable). That means someone's PC on a cable modem was hacked and used by spammers to relay email. Complain to abuse@rr.com

[cross-star-luv.livejournal.com]

I don't know who it was but no offense to you sir or anything but if anyone does send an e-mail like that to her again I will personally deliver some serious e-mails of my own I would like to state that no one messes with my friends especially if it is in death threat form such as that..

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

What are you talking about?