From: Matthew Rice <matt-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> Are you suggesting that we are receiving unintelligible e-mail because some group [terrorists, fbi, cia, csis] are trying to send messages to each other. Do you supposed that they are sending a lot of them and getting the e-mail addresses wrong or that they are sending a lot of them to confuse the trail to the intended recipient?
If you were to ask me, I'd say that this is similar to the book _Snow Crash_. Microsoft is sending out these seemingly unintelligible e-mails and anyone that looks at them has their brain 're-wired' into liking M$.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you."
A couple of notes to feed the paranoia: 1. One of my jobs is to handle incoming customer email at the Toronto Sun. Of course, 90%+ is spam. Many of these messages contain "nonsense" verbiage, I think designed to outfox spam blocking. But reading this "nonsense" can often give the impression that the creator is not operating in a strictly mercantile role. 2. A few years ago, I presented a paper at the McLuhan Program on the "Information Ecology", wherein I described how the emerging Internet was a radically decentralizing force which was undermining traditional power structures, and that disrupting the Internet was a logical strategy for maintaining traditional power base. It seems the spam epidemic is certainly undermining the value of email. For example, I now tell Sun customers that "just because you sent the email is no guarantee that we received the email". If spam blocking becomes the norm, we can expect that 5% +/- of legitimate emails just won't get through. -Hugh _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus&pgmarket=en-ca&RU=http%3a%2f%2fjoin.msn.com%2f%3fpage%3dmisc%2fspecialoffers%26pgmarket%3den-ca -- The Toronto Linux Users Group. Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml