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Sometimes I wonder about those monkeys on the typewriters (1), and how similar
that is to spamming.
One of the stories relating to that theory, is that if you put those said 6
monkeys on typewriters, they'll write every book in the Great Library... but
they'll also write humongous amounts of rubbish along the way. And, well, it
seems like the spams I get are coming from, well, monkeys on keyboards... for
example I get letters whose sender is said to be <jg5fs7@thjk.com> and
frankly, that gets on my nerves.
Maybe all the people out there on the web are just like the monkeys on
typewriters, just writing every combination possible... every once in a while,
a normal email will come up, but the spam that you'll get in between those
times...
Oh, and the other part of the theory (2) predicts that the said monkeys will
eventually write all the possible combinations of characters. Which leads to
the realization that you could never tell the right books from wrong (eg,
you'd have a book that is titled "Romeo and Juliet", and will start out like
the real version, but then switch to rubbish somewhere in the middle... and
you'd never notice, provided the rubbish was still words (3). Or, in other
words, you'd have millions of copies of Romeo and Juliet, each saying
something else, and now go figure which is the right one.
Again, that's pretty analogous to spamming. You get an email, with the
subject "Hi", starting with the words "Hi, this is Laura. I want to ask you a
question." (4) and then it switches to some commercial or R-rated spam. How am
I supposed to know from the first few lines? If I'd block out the word "Hi"
or "question", I'd never get *any* mail... ;-)
Sorry for ranting that out. It just seems like those spammers are just
monkeys... and it's a jungle out there! <grin>
-Shiri
(1) Y'know, the "put 6 monkeys on 6 typewriters and they'll eventually write
Shakespeare" sort of theory.
(2) As stated in "Fantasia Mathematica", a collection of extremely funny, math-
oriented, geeky stories.
(3) even that's a far-fetched assumtion...
(4) I get lots of real emails starting with similar text, especially from
AFOLs.
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