How Spam Was Done 70 Years Ago

bitrex writes "Modern Mechanix recently ran a reprint of a 1934 article describing the problem of offshore pirate radio stations broadcasting advertisements and drowning out local, licensed radio programs. 'The primary purpose of the unlicensed broadcast station was to advertise the gambling, liquor, and other dubious pleasure activities of the ship upon which it was built ... they found other sundry rackets, such as a fortune telling program ... After numerous unsuccessful attempts of a local nature, the floating broadcasting establishment was silenced, but only after the state department at Washington, D. C, had made diplomatic representations which forced a Central American country to cancel the ship's registry.' The article also has a great artist's conception of what might be called a machine age 'data haven' bobbing in international waters in the Gulf of Mexico."

Wolfman Jack Blasting At You...

[SEWilco]

This is also how Wolfman Jack became famous, blasting across the Mexican border with 250,000 watts [wikipedia.org] (legal, but five times more power than U.S. clear channel stations could use).

Re:dubious?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's quite funny that you comment on the falling intelligence of Slashdot users, right after you fail to understand the post you replied to!

Lets see what mcgrew said, shall we?

What puritan modded that insightful comment as "funny?"

Now from this a few things can instantly be understood. mcgrew thought your comment was insightful, and he disagrees with the funny mod. A fraction of second thought would lead you to the conclusion that he believes that whoever modded your comment funny did so because he thought it was a joke and not insightful. That's why mcgrew labelled the mod a puritan (because the mod thought the idea of liquor, etc not being dubious pleasures could only be a joke).

Get it now? I guess in the future anyone posting a reply to one of your messages will have to remember that the average IQ of Slashdot has fallen in recent years, and that they will need to add explanatory supplements to every little quip... geez.

Re:And before that

[Justus]

As far as I know there's no universal "don't send me junk mail" program, but there are a couple lists you can sign up for that will dramatically reduce the amount of junk mail you receive.

To get rid of most "pre-approved" credit card offers, there's an official opt-out program [optoutprescreen.com]. This is free and it does, in fact, work.

To get rid of a bunch of other junk mail (like catalogs etc), you can add yourself to the Direct Marketing Association's opt-out list at their website [dmachoice.org]. This used to cost a small amount ($1, I think), but it's now free--they ask for a credit card number only for verification purposes. I guess they wouldn't want an interested party to suddenly find themselves bereft of junk mail or something.

Between those two, you're pretty much covered. I signed up for both of them and I receive very little unwanted mail.