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Spam

Broadcasting Spam into Space 218

Posted by Hemos from the try-stopping-relaying-now dept.
A reader writes "Apparently frustrated by the crackdown on SPAMers by ISPs around the world, a group of Davis, California innovators made headlines this week in the Sacramento Bee by unveiling their "intergalactic communication system (U.S. Patent Pending)" which will beam unsolicited email into outer space. According to one of the founders, "this is the ultimate expression of free speech", but it will cost the general public $10.95 to have a 1000 word message launched. "
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Broadcasting Spam into Space More

Broadcasting Spam into Space

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  • Can we bounce spam into space & send the marketers the bill?

    That's what I want to see...
  • Even thought I dont live in the us, and I over 18 I felt the urge to enter their contest anyways, here was my entry.

    Dear Inteligent Non-Earth based life,

    Please allow me to apologize in the upmost for any further unsolicited spam that you may receive from our planet.

    Any such messages should not be taken as a representation of inteligence on our planet.

    If you find the said messages annoying, feel free to stop by and prosecute the people who sent the message, most of the planet would be quite happy to help.

    Please dont decide to stop the spam by destroying our planet (Althought vapourizing those who sent the message might win you world wide gratatude).

    Yours Truely.
    Nocturnal.

    (A concerned resident of Earth)
  • Quote from their webpage: "Bentspace is only responsible for sending the messages, and not for any consequence as a result of the messages that are sent."

    Damnit, are they saying that when aliens recieve offensive email and blast us outta the sky, we can't sue Bentspace.com?

    SirSlud
  • Uhm, if they "blast us outta the sky", we will have much more pressing issues than suing bentspace!

  • Firstly, the signal will never reach anyone. It'll be drowned out by radio leakage from Earth, and radio noise from natural phemonina.

    Secondly, the signal will be intermittent, so won't show up any more than the WOW! signal did on Earth, even if it -did- reach someone.

    Thirdly, noise will garble any message beyond the point of being interpretable.

    Fourthly, there is no way an alien race is going to be able to interpret ASCII text in any useful way, even if they did receive the message intact.

    Fifthly, even if the aliens broke the ASCII code, they are hardly likely to know English, or any other Terran language.

    Sixthly, even if the message was recieved and understood, given the timescales involved, it might be several hundred years before any reply would ever reach Earth, by which time the computer the message was to be delivered to would no longer exist, causing the reply to bounce.

    Seventhly, even if the Internet still existed, and a computer with the correct name was present, with a mail server that still recognised that format of message, nobody on the receiving end who knew what the message was a reply to would still be alive.

    Eighthly, even if someone DID know what the reply was for, and received it, and could interpret it (given natural language shifts), they would have no means of guaging it's authenticity or source, so rendering it useless.

  • Now I know it is true.
    The internet is possessed by the ghost of P.T Barnham !!!
  • I'm having the same problems. Don't feel alone.

    -blue
  • Well, let's look at it this way: Voyager 1, which is a little further away than Pluto these days (about 1/6000th the distance to the nearest star), has a 20 Watt directed beam transmitter aboard. It takes the world's most sensitive radio telescopes working in concert to detect Voyager's extremely feeble signal that finally makes it to Earth.

    Here's another problem: These clowns aren't even going to direct the signal to a particular star. They are just letting their transmitter sweep across the sky as the Earth rotates. I guess they hope those ET's are listening at just the right moment to hear the signal.

    Well anyway, I'm just wasting my time here, because it is just a huge scam in the end. i hope nobody has sent in they $10.

  • They're gonna don they're UFO halloween costumes so they can spam-er-email the aliens and attract them here. Sort of like throwing a couple of decoy ducks on the duck pond. Anybody sending spam to aliens must think aliens are really really dumb. Then again all it takes is just that one response out of say, fifty zillion.

    The only problem is any aliens who would respond are too dumb to have the technology to respond. There goes the $60,000 investment. DOH!!!!!!

    I suppose if it doesn't work out the spammers can go back to cutting crop circles.
  • That's correct. What it does, however, is pretty slick: msgto.com has to authorize each sender->receiver combination. That authorization will generally occur when a sender attempts to send a message to a msgto.com receiver. msgto.com will send back a message asking that person to pass a test that's extremely simple for humans but difficult for computers. Once authorized, the sender will always be allowed to send to the same receiver. Mass spamming is very near impossible.

    I really wish CmdrTaco, Hemos, Roblimo, CowboyNeal, JonKatz, or someone else would pay more attention to this service. It really looks like a complete solution to spam. If it's as good as it seems, it would be worth someone's time to create a simplified daemon that would act only as a mail filter. But since this article is a day old, I can expect at most 2 people to read this!
  • Great, our first contact will be "make money fast $$$!"
  • It must be that memory drops off over time at the inverse of 4th power :-)

    The post above was right, for reflections the returned power is 1/^4 of the distance to the target.

    Power from Tx to Rx falls off at 1/^2 * distance.

    the Anonymous Cypher

  • Silence (Score:1)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    I can see why noone has commented on this article yet. I think I'm brave enough to be the first to break the silence.

    There is absolutely no practical application to this, and the chances that someone will actually get the signal are virtually nonexistant. I guess it's pretty cool to let people pretend that they're talking to aliens. Essentially, this is what is happening here. But you won't see me spending 11 bucks on this. :-)

    ---
  • Err.. I'm sorry. I really thought that no comments have been posted yet (dumbass) because Slashdot was in "overload mode", and because the main page said that there weren't any comments yet.

    ---
  • "Bentspace is only responsible for sending the messages, and not for any consequence as a result of the messages that are sent."

    Indeed! That includes accidentally making your e-mail address (since they include the message headers) availiable to whatever galactic spammers exist... "That's no moon - it's a mobile spammer-friendly ISP!".

    If you want to see the powerful server that will be packaging your messages for its lengthy half-watt journey through the cosmos, have a look at this webcam [bentspace.com].
  • While I'm a strong believer in life elsewhere in the universe, this is stupid. Assuming the extraterrestrials (they're only aliens when they're on the Earth, BTW) do recieve this (highly unlikely - I could get farther with my freind's ham radio), what would they do with it? "Oh, look mommy, I sent my photo as a MIME attachment to an alien! I hope they have a mail reader that can view it!"
    And what makes people think non-earthlings know English (or French, or Sanskrit, or whatever) anyway? Unless the signal is very powerful and being recieved frequently, they'll probably just treat it like just another freak signal from the cosmos (which wouldn't be too far from the truth, really).
    I think you can figure out how to email me ;)
  • This gets coverage, yet http://www.FlyingRat.org doesn't.

    Spam, like it or not, is an economic and technical problem. Treating it as if it were a political problem not only won't be a solution, it will threaten freedom of expression on the 'net.
    JMR

  • gee, is anyone else tired of lame stuff being posted? Maybe I'll go hunt for something interesting. Cept i usually find that i'm 85th in line or something and my story is a day late already...

  • This not the ultimate in free speech. It is the
    ultimate in senselessness and idiocy. You never
    cease to find dumber and dumber morons on this
    planet.
  • but until know
    This should read "but until _NOW_"
    Sorry.
    Yes, I am an idiot.
    --Shoeboy
  • Great, now we don't just have to worry about aliens invading the Earth, we also have to worry about alien teenage losers launching DoS attacks against us and RBLing SETI.

  • First of, let me just say that this is the stupidest thing that I've ever heard of. But that's not what worries me...

    The post on Slashdot mentions that there is a patent pending for this (although I didn't see it in the article). I think this is a bit silly now, but could in theory give them a monopoly on all e-mail sent between planets. Just think about what would happen if we made a base on the moon: you wouldn't be able to send e-mail because they would have the patent. Depending on the wording (and lawyers), it could even cover all e-mail send via radio waves.

    Scary...

    -ElJefe

  • "The messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply. The reply would be received in the company's computer, not in the original sender's message box."

    That's assuming that the ET communicated in any of the forms of "language" known to man...
  • You can buy a lot better things to talk to aliens directly with 11 bucks....
  • ... Now even aliens can get 50 porno site ads with their 5 legit e-mails. Starting an intergalactic war are we?
  • Looks like SpamCop is going to be expanding to an interplanetary scale! Submissions for a new name now being accepted. Superintendent Spam, SpamConstable, SpaceLordSpamCop, IntergalacticSpamFuzz, Spam Spam Spam Spam lovely Spam......

    Get that Spammer with SpamCop! [spamcop.net]

  • I'm no expert, but what if you made a phone call that happened to be carried by satellite. I would imagine more than half a watt misses the satellite after being sent by the ground station.

    I was curious about what Eric Overfield an undergraduate computer science major said - that the messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply. I wonder if that means they're sending an RFC first.

    I guess they're not using AOL's Instant Message format. Hooray for standards!

  • wtf? (Score:1)

    by wankle ( 27651 )
    This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen... Its too dumb to even laugh at. They must have been drunk. bah. double bah!
  • Sorry, couldn't resist!
    (Hormel SPAM = Shoulder of Pork and hAM)

    P.S. speaking of, anybody seen the new Muppet movie? Any reviews? I always knew Gonzo had to be an alien....


    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
  • This'll make seti@home useless now.. as soon as some ET gets his mailbox filled with unsolicited e-mail, they'll rule out our planet as one of intelligence... ;)


    Justin
  • The answer would obviously be:

    A/S/L?
  • The article said that their transmitter only had half a watt of power. Egad. You couldn't even get that signal to the end of the street!
  • The aliens are already not interested in us and now that we start spamming them, they will probably RBL us.

  • Re:Half-watt, let's do numbers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Right. Basically, if we want to BROADCAST a message (narrowcasting wouldn't take that much, only a few megawatts) to an alien civilization, we'd have to induce a nova in our Sun to be noticed. Not very practical.
  • Geezz, this is tough. I guess the 1st msg would be something like...

    We have free sex pics of young women sex that work at home sex to raise money sex to help their legal and sex financial problems/opportunities sex all at no sex risk to you!

    Unfortunately, the little green men read this as:

    blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah sex blah blah.

    (with apologies to Larson and Ginger).

  • My favorite part (Score:4)

    by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @08:54AM (#1767005) Homepage
    "The messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply. The reply would be received in the company's computer, not in the original sender's message box."

    Oh good, I'm glad they've made provisions.

    --

  • Can you imagine the crap that people will send with this? Can you imagine what an alien civilization would think of the human race?

    At any rate, only an idiot would shell out the $$ for this. "'Admittedly, it is a weak signal, but it does go on forever,' Snow said." The same could be said about any electromagnetic signal. You could say the same about a toy walkie-talkie. Only idiots will pay for this service...and I don't want to know the things they would say. I hope that those messages really aren't heard by any alien civilzations, for humanity's sake.
  • I don't really see what this has to do directly with spam, except that we'll be able to spam aliens. But we've been doing that for years: all the EM waves we've generated from TV signals to cel phones will exist forever, in theory.

    Did anyone think that the SETI program is just a human attempt to understand the spam aliens have been sending us?

    Some people have too much money on their hands and an overdeveloped love of technology with no apparent usefulness. How sad that they think American children can create meaningful commentary in less than 1,000 words.

    J.
  • And if you give me $10US I'll send your e-mail to space as well. Hell for just $10US I'll even let you have 2000 words. Send your cheques to me! Give me your money!

    For a limited time the first 1000 people can have their pictures sent as an attachment. Aliens can speak MIME!

    small print : Some conditions may apply messages not actually sent to space. Money will be laundered. Messages will be laughed at.

  • This has to be the most stupid thing I've ever heard of.. Thats pretty much my entire opinion about it.. heh. I may end up spending $10.95 on it though.. blah.
  • And if you give me $10US I'll send your e-mail to space as well. Hell for just $10US I'll even let you have 2000 words. Send your cheques to me! Give me your money!

    For a limited time the first 1000 people can have their pictures sent as an attachment. Aliens can speak MIME!

    small print : Some conditions may apply messages not actually sent to space. Money will be laundered. Messages will be laughed at.
  • "The messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply.
    The reply would be received in the company's computer, not in the original sender's message box."

    Oh good, I'm glad they've made provisions.


    --

  • I realized after i submitted this that i did the calculations for spherical broadcasting while they are using a directed beam. But, naturally, i can't make a better estimate without knowing how tight their beam is. Does anyone have figures on what the angle between one side of the beam and the other is? And to further refine the numbers, what is the closest star system that could contain life (or that we cannot rule out the possibility of life)? Alpha Centauri doesn't even have planets, so it's not a good yardstick.
  • But, looks more like their idea is to document being the first people to do intergalactic email, so that they can have their dumb patent. However, the patent will not last long enough for the idea to have any true intergalactic usage; so the joke's on them. What a bunch of eegnerint woosez!
  • But at least they have a webcam updating every 15 seconds so you can look at das blinkenlights on their server rack. Maybe if I keep an eye on it I'll be able to see the fireball when the aliens vaporize it with a highly focused beam of energy.
  • I guess we'll need make a proposal for that. :)
  • Sorry for the rude awakening, but you simply didn't know.

    -Adam
  • Umm, since people have been sending email by radio waves for at least 15 years, I think that there is a bit of prior art they would have to overcome. And their transmitter isn't even *pointed* at anything. Seems like a patent for that would be about as useful as a patent for a write-only hard drive.
  • I smell a success!
  • I suggest North Dakota or North Carolina.

  • If they beam spam into outer space and it reflects off astronomical debris and bounces back after a century ...and SETI picks it up, one can just imagine the headlines:

    ALIENS' MESSAGE TO EARTH: "MAKE MONEY FAST!"

    or

    ALIEN CIVILIZATION OFFERS 100 FREE HOURS OF AOL!

    or worst of all

    HISTORIC FIRST CONTACT: ALIENS PROMISE FREE DAILY PORN IN YOUR EMAIL!

    L.

  • you forgot that the earth rotates..
    ...
  • That's funny :)

  • So.. (Score:1)

    by Tarnar ( 20289 )
    If SPAM includes pig products, does that mean we have Pigs In Space?

    I loved that segment on the Muppet Show..
  • ...why didn't I think of that?! I could be stinking rich...

    Seriously, this strikes me as being a contender for the stupidest thing yet. But it makes money, so they'll be able to go public and make a ton of coin on other people's stupidity.

    Meanwhile, once the reruns of Gilligan's Island stop, ET will then get spammed.


  • Little Green Men might nuke us.

    I would...
  • To: postmaster@earth.sol.com
    From: zork@gmaps.beta.lyrae.net
    Subject: GRBH advisory

    Dear Earthlings:

    We have received numerous reports that your planet has been broadcasting unsolicited commercial email (commonly referred to as "spam"). Please be advised that your planet is now a candidate for Galactic Real-time Black Hole (GRBH) listing.

    We understand that, as a young and technologically backward species, you may not be familiar with the rules of Galactic Etiquette. However, ignorance is no excuse for your present behavior. We have also heard that your planetary network maintains a so-called "black-hole list." Please note that your penchant for colorful metaphors is unique among sentient species; we of the galactic community are rather more literal-minded.

    We personally doubt that you wish to see your planet torn apart by a gravitational vortex, so we urge you to cease transmitting spam immediately. Please inform us by interocitor of your intent to comply within the next 100 centons.
  • Let's hope this doesn't give new meaning to the term "Realtime Blackhole List."

    Jamie McCarthy

  • Oh fer Chrissakes! Haven't we been doing this for years? Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't we been pumping our radio, television, and telephone signals into space ever since these things have been invented?

    I'm just waiting for the day when the IGPD (Intergalatic Police Dep't) sends us a $20,000,000,000,000,000,000 fine for noise pollution.
  • REMOVE.

    Not bad for our first interplanetary communication.

  • You'd be surprised at how far a half-watt can travel. Lots of amateur radio operators work the world by bouncing signals off the atmosphere's ionized layers at power levels under 10 milliwatts. That'll give you some idea of what range line-of-sight travel through the vacuum of space can achieve.


    Sure, but there's also the inverse square law to worry about. I really doubt that current human technology is capable of recieving such a signal much farther out than our solar system. Infact, radio and TV broadcast signals that have passed out through the atmosphere into space are probably what aliens would run across first, considering that such signals start out at many thousands of watts, at the transmitter.
  • That's assuming that the ET communicated in any of the forms of "language" known to man...


    "R U M/F?"

  • LART? (Score:1)

    by EXpunk ( 66988 )
    Sorry, what's LART?

    -:)



  • Don't worry dude, the 'star wars' project would protect us.
  • LUser Attitude Readjustment Tool. See Also: BOFH
  • ``A reader writes "Apparently frustrated by the crackdown on SPAMers by ISPs around the world, a group of Davis, California innovators [1] made headlines this week in the Sacramento Bee by unveiling their "intergalactic communication system (U.S. Patent Pending) [2] " which will beam unsolicited email into outer space. According to one of the founders, "this is the ultimate expression of free speech", but it will cost the general public $10.95 [3] to have a 1000 word message launched."''

    [1] - It's amazing what passes for innovation nowadays.

    [2] - I'm not sure what more amazing: a) that they thought this was an idea worth patenting or b.) that the U.S. Patent Office will probably award the patent!

    [3] - How many bozos at this price will it take for this group of innovators to become millionaires? Sadly, it'll this'll probably happen too.

    Seeing as how the Andromeda galaxy (our closest neighboring galaxy if you don't count the Magellanic Clouds) is 2e+06 lights away, I wouln't ask for a return receipt for that e-mail if I were you.

    As an aside, when I used Alta Vista to find info on Andromeda galaxy, the page contained a link labeled "The RealNames link takes you directly to Andromeda Galaxy.". Now those guys at RealNames are doing some real innovation!

  • More humor: Make Hydrogen Fast! (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @10:47AM (#1767043)
    (Shamelessly cribbed from an old USENET post...)

    This really works!

    Just send 5*10^50 atoms of hydrogen to each of the five star systems listed below. Then, add your own system to the top of the list, delete the system at the bottom, and send out copies of this message to 100 other solar systems.

    If you follow these instructions, within 0.25 galactic rotations you are guaranteed to receive enough hydrogen in return to power your civilization until the heat death of the universe!

  • One high-flying balloon (like a weather balloon), one medium-power portable transmitter activated by an altimeter and one pre-recorded message. It would be fun to see their initial reactions.

    Problems:
    properly targeting the Bent Space dish
    positioning the balloon directly over the dish
    justifying the waste of all that money for a stupid stunt like this

    Of course, the last could be said of the Bent Space "service" as well.

    ______________________________
  • on some far off planet: Hey Zig look at this . . . hmmm Interesting.
    .
    .
    .
    3 galactic years later: Zig why do I keep getting this message offering a chance to make 50,000 a year. . . .Where did you say this came from, "Earth", ok lets just stop this now.

    ZAP!!!!!!!! By by earth
  • Is this so new? Apparently radio waves from TV broadcasts perpetuate for years without limit, so this would be something similar right?

  • Awful (Score:1)

    by Dwonis ( 52652 )
    If I were an alien, I wouldn't appreciate spammers broadcasting to me. I'd call their [solar] System Administrator and get him/her/it to cut off their access to their star.
    --------
    "I already have all the latest software."
  • to transmit a message that would show incrementaly our abilities of computation. If the message was intercepted and (MAYBE) deciphered, it could either vring us one step closer to two things: An encounter with "aliens" (we all live in the same universe....maybe) The destruction of the world by hostile entities. Neither of which I woulf consider a bad thing.....
  • Maybe we can all pitch in and get NSI a subscription to this service.
  • The subject says it all, I think...
    /El Niño

  • Anyway, never forget that there is a chance to find just a bunch of complete "Me Tarzan, you Jane" idiots out there. Gee, that would be something 8))

    Alternative version of "Urusei Yatsura" beginning -- Ataru sent email (in his usual style) into space, Oni-aliens liked it and decided that the Earth is a nice place to conquer?

    Nah, makes too much sense.

  • If they were beaming actual spam into space, we could feed all those hungry aliens. They might actually like the stuff.


  • on some far off planet: Hey Zig look at this . . . hmmm Interesting.

    .

    .

    .

    3 galactic years later: Zig why do I keep getting this message offering a chance to make 50,000 a year. . . .Where did you say this came from, "Earth", ok lets just stop this now.



    ZAP!!!!!!!! By by earth
  • Absolutly; not just voice signals get carried through comm sats. When you send an email to people overseas, you are beaming well over half a watt of useless signal up the spread beam in to outerspace. Now all you have to do is figure out what exactly what kind of code ET can decipher (though I wonder exactly what make them think they can speak ET-ese). Just think, we can start charging people $10 to email us!
    I'm going to use a plastic snow dish, a turkey baster and a modem coupler to make a signal dish and claim I spent $60k on it too!
  • There is a new spam filtering service available at MsgTo.com [msgto.com] that filters e-mail based on a Turing Test. It looks very promising. The service doesn't use SSL/HTTPS yet, but the author would like to release the whole system under an open-source license if there is enough developer demand. And demand is one thing that /. is good at. The site appears to be very fast, but I'd really like to know if it can survive the slashdot effect!

    (BTW I tried to get this posted as a main /. story but it seems to have been ignored.)
  • "... the messages will include coding that an ET theoretically could decipher to send a reply"

    OK, I'm going to need some clarification on this statement. Are they saying that the messages are sent with a key? If so, how does the key work and what does that key decipher the messages to, Phoenician letters that form English words? If so, what the hell are aliens going to do with that? Imagine how anticlimactic it would have been in the move Contact if once they had finally decoded the complex radio signals they turned out to be a couple pages of alien letters that formed alien words from a complex language that highly intelligent aliens from the same planet have a hard time learning. Unless this system turns all of the e-mails into pictograms or basic mathematical equations this whole thing is a total waste of time.

    I guess one other possibility is that the aliens have intercepted our TV and radio transmissions for years and have somehow managed to separate the various languages and learn English or what ever language some sap plans to send into outer space (by the way, unless they get a lot of Sesame Street they still wouldn't recognize letters). This of course would mean that they already: A. Know we are here, and B. Have chosen not to contact us (at least not directly). So do you think that sending some week signal into space that represents text that is encoded using some non-standard method is gonna make a difference?

    You would have a better chance of contacting intelligent life if you went out side every night and flashed prime number patterns with a flashlight into the night sky.




  • When the mile-wide UFOs start beaming Death Rays(TM) into Davis, California, at least someone in that town will have it coming...
  • ...I guess it's easy enough to say, now. There goes the neighborhood.

    "FIFTEEN-ARMED SEX MOMMA WANTS YOUR E-MAIL"

    "COME TO EARTH--FREE BEER, BLOWJOBS, AND MEAT!"

    So what happens if the other planets decide to start spamming /us/?
  • ok .5 watt, evenly distributed over a sphere 4 light years in radius (distance to nearest star).
    .5/(4*pi*[4*300,000,000*60*60*24*365.24]^2)

    1.6*10^-32 watts/meter^2
    or if you have a really big radio telescope:
    1.6*10^-26 watts/kilometer^2
    or if the entire surface of your planet is a radio telescope:
    4.1*10^-18 watts/half of a earth sized planet.

    No one is gonna be picking this up, i don't care how clever they are, the signal is simply to weak.
    Any background radiation at all will completely swamp it.
  • There's also the rate of diffusion to consider. TV and radio transmissions are omnidirectional, so will drop in strength considerably faster than a directed beam.

    (A beam will still fall off with distance, as it will diffuse, some.)

    However, radio noise from natural sources (such as the sun, the planets, toasters, etc.) will probably drown out anything transmitted, at any real distance, given the equiptment used.

  • If they make money I'm gonna launch one of these. I'll use a laser pointer and morse code. It may not as extensive in coverage as their machine, but it will work, and be cheaper. I'll only charge $5 per 5000 words. I couldn't actually use their method, cuz gorsh I wouldn't want to infringe on any patent rights....
    Ohhh their "powerful computers" will do some magic and let you know when your email has been sent. And I'll send you an email right after I tap out your message.
    I gotta find the twinks who actually try to do this. I'm sure they'll buy my new death ray too.

    Silly question is Dogbert running BentSpace?
    -cpd
  • How about we just send the spammers into space, instead? Please?

    - Dave

    "Take what thou hast and give it to the poor."
  • You mean the Write-Once Read-Never (WORN) drive's been patented already? Darn! There goes my chance to make a fortune off the Windows 2000 rush.
  • Oh, I dunno. Redmond is closer than 4 light-years.
  • Hmm....is anyone up to date on alien currency exchange rates?

    If ET *does* buy into my patented multi-level marketing plan, which has worked for thousands of Earthlings, and absolutely legal and guaranteed to earn you $5000/week while you loose 50 lbs/month, I'm going to need to know how much of his money it takes to make just $9.99 US.


  • I can just see it now...

    Meezledorp! look what i got in my inbox! Free Sex for 5 days! Earth girls *are* easy!

    Gwazzlenap, we must find this Pamala Anderson now! Set course for Earth at maximum fizzlegargs!
  • So, they're actually transmitting to the opposite side of Earth (albeit with a time delay of a few quadrillion years). Without an international licence.

    I reckon they can be sued for that, polluting Australian airwaves and all.

  • In theory, any RF signal will go on forever, decreasing at the 4th power of the distance.

    In reality, there is a limit where a signal can no longer be detected. Because of the background radiation of 3 degrees kelvin, and a host of other factors, eventually even a .5 watt signal can't be detected even by a theoretically perfect receiver. The distance would probably only be about 10e14 meters, or a distance just outside our own solar system. I think that number was for a 1 watt signal on 1.0 GHz, or maybe it was the 250 milliwatt signal from one of the early spacecraft. Time dims memory.

    Their site is pretty funny, they aren't taking themselves too seriously. But there isn't anywhere they tell about what frequency or coding scheme they are using. I'd love to know. I've just posted a message to their board (number 3, they don't have a slashdot base of users, yet)

    the AC
  • You'd be surprised at how far a half-watt can travel. Lots of amateur radio operators work the world by bouncing signals off the atmosphere's ionized layers at power levels under 10 milliwatts. That'll give you some idea of what range line-of-sight travel through the vacuum of space can achieve.

    And the farther spam travels from earth, the better :-)

  • Well, they -do- say Intergalactic communications. :)
  • It's a test for intelligence. Since spammers don't have any, I guess the idea is that they'd fail the test.

  • Re:Spam ? (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    This is for real. A NASA probe sent to answer the question of whether there is intelligent life in space was first directed to Earth, as a test. The results were negative.
  • Make money fast! No selling required with a guaranteed part-time income of up to 20,000,000,000 monetary units per planetary rotation! Just order our kit for only 10,000,000,000 monetary units (grams of platinum, please drop them in the back yard -- NOT on the house or car!). The kit includes *everything* you need to start living the good life! Hear what others have said about MoneyScam...

    [include quotes of MoneyScam rich customers here...]

    If you wish to be removed from our list and not receive our mailings in the future, send 10,000,000 monetary units!

    Yours in InstaWealth,
    A. Bilfred Spammer,
    President, MoneyScam Industries
    (Null3928@bigfoot.com)

  • Oh great... (Score:3)

    by Rayban ( 13436 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @09:48AM (#1767180) Homepage
    Now Earth is going to be blacklisted on the galactic Internet. I guess we'll be considered as an open relay.

    :P

    PS: Can I change my ISP to another planet? This one has bad service and is *way* too busy even though the phone-to-customer ratio is something like 2:1!

  • Seattle company to allow money to be transmitted into the earth.
    SEATTLE Shoeboy Industries, a local high tech firm known for their extensive bong testing labs has developed a new technique to allow individuals to send money towards the center of the Earth.
    "Scientists have long speculated that there might be vast populations of intelligent beings living in a vast hollow cave within the earth's core." observered Shoeboy, founder and CEO of Shoeboy Industries, "Our process allows you to send money to these tunneling superbeings. We take your money and deposit it in my bank account. I then write a check to the underground men and deposit it as close to the earth's core as is possible with current technology."
    Little is known about the exact method Shoeboy uses to send these checks, but many industry insiders have speculated that it involves a highly specialized tool known as a 'shovel.' Such a tool could be purchased at the 'Tweedy and Pop' hardware store down the street from Shoeboy's apartment, but until know, industry analysts have considered the $14.95 price tag too high for a small firm like Shoeboy Industries.
    When questioned, Shoeboy revealed that his firm had recieved extensive backing from a prominent venture capital firm. "We used the words 'Internet' and 'e-commerce' in the same sentence and these dudes dropped 20 million on the table." reported Shoeboy. "We were all like, whoa dude think of all the twinkies we could buy."
    When asked if he thought that people would pay money to send a message to recipients whose very existence is a remote theoretical possibility Shoeboy replied "well, there's a whole mess of gullible idiots out there on the web."
    --Shoeboy

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