My two “main” blogs, the one you are reading, and [Geek World](http://geek.pandemonium.de/) have received 50000 spams since I first started using [Akismet](http://akismet.com/). I am usually quite happy to celebrate milestones and such, but not this time. 
And it’s gotten really bad really quickly, too – one and a half years ago it was rare enough that I attempted to [report comment spam by hand](/2005/12/13/spam-spam-spam-lovely-spam/) to the ISPs of origin.
Never has the “Villains & Thieves” category been more appropriate: [Paul Wolfowitz will quit on June 30](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6667975.stm). Good riddance to that corrupt, facist pig, I say. The only question is: Why the hell does he not have to resign immediately?
But I guess it’s a case of “better late than never”.
As a followup to my [dumb spam](/2007/04/02/dumb-spam-5/) series: I got two spams today which advertised a service to help the recipient “have sex with a 12 year old girl”. What the hell?
I’ve forwarded these emails to the criminal police and offered my help (signed witness statement, help with email headers, whatever).
I also usually send them all “money courier” advertisement spam, but they never seem to care. I surely hope they’ll get off their lazy asses, and actually look into this.
Got one of those annoying 419 scams. It begings like so:
>Dear Friend,
>
>First of all I want you to Know that this is not a scam mail.Because
>base on what is going on all over the internet world people find it
>very difficult to beleive thing like this any more.if you can
>garantee me from your side your trust and honestly i will be able to
>work with you.i will apprecaite if you can come down your self and
>see thing for your self before we proceed snd this will make thing
>clearer for you.
Interesting how they suddenly feel they have to explain that, to paraphrase a famous politician, they are not crooks. I guess this means that the normal 419 has become less effective. No real surprise, considering how they flood us with that garbage. But in a way this could be seen as a minor victory of sorts.
>Fake enhance1ment meds have once again flooded the market. A recent polling has shown that as much as 90% of male enhan1cement medications sites out there are selling cheap knockoff versions of the original product!
You don’t say!
Of course whoever buys stuff from a spammer deserves to be ripped off, but that’s another topic.
…the Oscars happened. [Yawn](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6395861.stm).
I can proudly say I did not watch **any** of that Hollywood crap. The MPAA isn’t going to get any of my money anymore.
[France is banning public smoking](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6319133.stm). As always, Germany doesn’t recognize a good idea and I expect this country to be the last one to implement a smoking ban.
I don’t really mind smokers. They can burn their money and tar up their lungs all they want; I don’t care. I also sometimes hang out with smokers. But I want to have the choice. Too often, I wait at a bus stop or a similar location, when a smoker comes along, stands next to me to wait, and lights up a cancer stick. Without asking. And that is the core of the problem. If smokers cannot respect others, then it is time for a ban.
Well; with some luck, the EU will force Germany to do this sooner than later.
551 Another example of stupid spammers. This one expects the user to enter the spammed address manually into the browser. Must be pretty convinced of the seductiveness of his product (or of the spam itself). I think people would be too lazy for that.
…sucks.
I mean, really, it does.
Even on the best days they are never on time. The subway is always ~5 min late. You’d think you could make schedules that fit the reality. The tram is usually okay, but has the problem that it shares the roads with cars. And those oftentimes block crossroads and so on. Not their fault, of course, afterall how could you expect tram tracks on a road that you only take every day of the week to get to work?
But this past week things have been even more horrid that normally. I think not a day has gone by that it did not take me 30 minutes longer to get to work or back home in the evenings. On monday it wasn’t exactly their fault – someone had jumped in front of a train. Still, this caused me to be home by 20:15 instead of 19:00.
Today was another bad morning. Wanted to be at work at 9:00, arrived at 9:50. According to the train driver the train’s brakes had blocked. No surprise, considering they still haven’t replaced the ages old trains on the Hanau-Wiesbaden lines with the modern ones. Of course the first train that arrived was also a short train (three cars), which was completely full and couldn’t take all the passengers that were waiting.
Every private company would have to pay damages to its passengers for this lousy service. Not a state monopoly – they have the law on their side.
In the end, I could have easily taken a taxi to get to work and to get back home, every day, this week and it would have been cheaper due to the additional work hours I could have put in. And that is considering my train ticket costs only a few euros – not the 80 Euros per month most people pay.
I am getting several trackback spams which feature the URL:
http://url
Hah! Spammers are stupid.