Somewhat related to usenet, this is a rant that just needs to come out.

I sure have seen a lot of Windows Vista on usenet. Home edition, premium edition, useless features edition.

Well I just got a computer today that has Vista on it. What a piece of crap! Nice looking Toshiba laptop, beautiful wide screen, supposedly lots of features and Windows Vista installed.

Fire up the machine and it take 45 minutes of start, restart and enter in a few tidbits of information here and there and it’s finally ready for use.

The desktop open up and I’m given windows warnings already. Then the camera software crashes.

Think you’re familiar with windows? If so then Vista has a curve to throw you because while everything might still be there, it is presented differently. Just differently enough that it may cause confusion.

I’ve heard about the issues with high definition media not working properly in Vista due to DRM requirements. This will simply piss my customer off and cause issues for her customers.

So what is this? A laptop or a toilet? I have already instructed my customer to format the device and install a licensed copy of Windows 2000 Professional.

So why is Vista being pirated? It’s a piece of crap. Of course maybe that’s one of the reasons why it’s being pirated. Because no one wants to pay for crap.

/rant

One of the most annoying things on usenet is sporge. What is sporge some might ask?

Sporge is short for spammed forgery, simple enough in it’s name, but it’s use makes some users go mental.

When someone decides to sporge a group they typically take a popular posters nym (their name or nick on usenet) and make fake, false, incomplete or misleading posts using that nym.

So what eventually is supposed to happen is the sporger trashes the posters good nym. However this usually doesn’t happen since most of usenet is smart enough to be able to read headers and most sporgers are too dumb to know that headers exist.

Typically a sporger will post from a free account, or a proxy, or sometimes even their own ISP. Intelligent usenet users will see the change in the posters headers and know that the sporger is a total lamer. However for the few who don’t know anything about usenet other than it’s a place where they can talk kewl and get all sorts of free software and mp3’s it’s a different issue.

The newbies (I don’t care if they’ve used usenet for 20 years, if they don’t know what a header is and how to read it then they’re a newbie) whine and complain that the posts are garbage and they actually start replying to the sporger asking them to stop or to post par files for the incomplete posts and all sorts of other stupidity.

A good sporger will get an account on the same ISP or NSP as the poster and make sure their sporge is a true forgery of the origional posters. These guys are good at what they do, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Yes usenet is a great place, but if you’ve only got half a brain then shut off mommies computer and go back to your calculator. Learn something about the system you’re using (it might actually shock you to learn, but it’s good for you) and stop feeding the trolls.

Sporge sucks, if you don’t want to see it then learn to killfilter. Of course once the sporge has stopped the real poster will still be killfiltered, but at least the rest of usenet doesn’t have to deal with more stupidity.

I’m not elitist, I think usenet is for everyone. But I do think there should be a test before anyone is allowed to touch a computer. And if you fail, all the money in your bank account is donated to buy spam filters for third world countries.

People don’t learn do they? The latest dumbass spamming usenet with his paypal get rich scheme posted the following

“Remember, all of this is ABSOLUTELY LEGAL! You are creating a service! A Business… An Email List Service Business. If you have any doubts, please refer to Title 18 Sec. 1302 & 1241 of the United States Postal laws”

Section 1302 relates to mailing lottery tickets or related matter (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00001302—-000-.html

Section 1241 relates to injurious articles as nonmailable (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00001716—-000-notes.html)

Obviously these spam dumbasses are counting on the sheep they are fleecing to not be smart enough to actually check up on the laws they are quoting.

Get yourselves a clue people, smarten the hell up and don’t fall for this crap.

It’s truly sad to see that some people still assume that they can spam usenet with their ‘paypal get rich legally’ schemes and not run into problems.

So today I thought I’d take a look into it and see what can/will happen.

Not only will paypal close your account and freeze your funds for 180 days your usenet account will either have it’s posting disabled or the account will be closed on you.

If the person who reported the spam also contacted your ISP then your internet access could be disabled as well.

Some providers (ISP’s and usenet providers) are actually charging their clients for handling spam complaints. It’s about time too. If only people would pay attention and read the terms of service (TOS) they would have known that what they were about to do could result in fines and account closures.

So please, if you’re in the market to make some money then go get a job. Or start a website and beg for donations, but don’t be dumb enough to believe that spam is the way to go.