Tony and Paige.com

Do you know why we get so much junk mail these days? It’s the same reason we get so many telemarketing calls – because it works. People are actually dumb enough to buy the things they see advertised in spam.

This article in Wired talks about a security flaw at a spammer’s website that made their log files available. According to these logs, this one site has received about 6,000 orders for their “magic” pills since July 4. Even worse, most people ordered 2 bottles at about $50 each.

According to the article, the site is owned by a 19-year-old high-school dropout. He buys the pills for $5 per bottle and pays other people about $10 per order to send out spam. So if each order was for only 2 bottles (some were for more), that means he made ($600,000 – $60,000 – $60,000) $480,000 in about the last 30 days. That’s nearly half a million dollars for doing nothing.

I’m definitely in the wrong line of work.

It looks like my forum is working so I added a link to it under navigation. Now if I ever find time to add any new material to the site, people will have a place to go and talk about it. I guess for now, people can just go talk about how lazy I am…

There’s one thing about the forum that I need to change, and then I’ll be uploading the source in case anybody else wants to use it. If you want to take a look at it, check back sometime after my Advanced Database final on Thursday.

The discussion forum that I started working on about a month ago is finally ready for a little testing. I haven’t put a link for it under navigation yet, but you can get to it by going to http://tonyandpaige.com/forum/.

It should be pretty simple to use. You don’t have to sign up, or enter a password to get in. Just click on a topic to view the posts or use the form to start a new topic. Once I’m sure that the system works pretty well, I’ll replace the current comments system with this forum.

In case you’re wondering why it’s so simple, it was inspired by the forums at . Joel is a really smart guy with some great ideas about running a small business and writing good code. This forum is based on the ideas in his article .

Try it out, and let me know if it breaks…

There was an interesting article posted the other day on Slashdot comparing programmers to sharecroppers. Here’s a quote:

If you’re developing software for … any platform that is owned and operated by a company. They own the ground you’re building on, and if they decide they don’t like you, or they can do something better with the ground, you’re toast. They can ship their own product and give it away till you go bust, then start charging for it; and use secret APIs you can’t see; and they can break the published APIs you use.

The full article is available here. This is just one more reason to avoid proprietary software.

Do you really know what all the latest technology buzz words mean? AMD has put a quiz where you can test your knowledge. They call it the Technology Terminology and Complexity Test.

All of these seemed pretty easy to me, but that’s probably because I read about and use words like these every day. Let me know how you do.