Apathy Sketchpad

Yesterday, The Times reported that the Labour party had taken donations which had come to them via. a proxy to conceal the donor’s true identity. Aside from containing this fantastic sentence:

Donations made via third parties are illegal unless the person behind the donation is also declared or there is a “reasonable excuse”.

…it also explained this email I received in March but had always assumed was a scam:

DEAR BELOVED URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL

I am DAVID ABRAHAMS, an impotant businessman here in LAGOS, NIGERIA and I have sum of $600,00 USD  (SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLAR) which I want to donate to THE LABOUR PARTY. I would like a trust worthy partner to act as a donor. The money will be transfered into your account and then into THE LABOUR PARTY. The fund will be split as follows: 15% for your expenses, 10% for contingency/emergency and 75% for THE LABOUR PARTY.

Yours in Christ,

David Abrahams

LAGOS NIGERIA

No, really. I wouldn’t lie to you.

Also I read that Santa has lost the disks on which he stored the lists of 25 million naughty and nice children. So, er, let’s hope that doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

I just got one of those copperplate email jobs. I’ve included it here but there’s really no reason you should read it (as such, it’s after the fold). Read the rest of this entry »

Some time ago now, the Department for Children, Schools and Families issued a document called “Faith In The System“, which set out their insane plan to put more children’s education in the hands of groups who define themselves by a shared delusion and the voluntary suspension of critical faculties. I wrote to them about this, asking to know on what basis this derranged scheme was justified and I got a reply about RE lessons. Both of these emails are reproduced in full on this website, in my previous entry on the subjet. This entry contains the reply I sent them and their response to it. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, I got an email from a man pretending he was trying to sell me gold dust. But he wasn’t specific enough… Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, the Government released a document called Faith In The System, which was a good title because it simultaneously describes the problem, the proposed solution, and what I lost whilst reading it. I’ve done a previous entry, more immediately after the document was published, which covered faith schools more generally. I suspect most of it will be covered here, but there’s the link if you want it. This entry is more concerned with a very wordy correspondence on the subject, which is so lengthy that it belongs firmly after what I understand is called “the fold” in blogger jargon. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, a Nigerian internet café was raided by some police. It had been mailing out 419 scams to everyone on their “suckers list”, myself included. For those of you who’ve never seen this website or heard the term elsewhere, a 419 scam is an email designed to trick you into handing over your money or the personal details required to access your money. They’ll ask you to help them transfer millions of dollars and promise you a cut, then require some comparatively small up-front fees, then vanish after you hand them over, or they’ll ask you to cash cheques then forward the money on elsewhere, and they’ll give you bad cheques, hoping that you’ll forward the money before the bank properly clears them, or they’ll tell you you’ve won the lottery, or that your bank account has been frozen, or that your contract is complete and there’s money waiting for you (presumably thinking you’ll pocket it rather than tell them they have the wrong guy) then they’ll take your bank details from you and use them to empty your account. As the man on the news said the other day, “there’s a scam for everyone”. There’s nobody, he says, who couldn’t be fooled by the right one.

Well, hello! Here I am. I can’t be fooled by email scams. People have tried, again and again, and I just won’t be fooled. They’ve tried all the above scams, they’ve offered me millions to invest in charities (presumably thinking I’ll plan to steal it all), they’ve told me they have oesophageal cancer, they’ve sent me forms and pictures and passports. They’ve tried in English, and in French. They may have tried in Russian but I don’t know what my Russian spam means unless there are pictures. They’ve invented companies, and they’ve personally insulted me. And I have discovered one important fact that holds the key to avoiding accidentally giving them all your money: they’re idiots.

I’ve convinced them I’m a citizen of The Mushroom Kingdom of Great Britain. I’ve told them the date of my death. I’ve asked them to help me rob a bank. I’ve emailed them a photo of money when they asked for money. I’ve told them I work as a Christmas Technician. And it honestly takes a hell of a lot to stop them replying. These scams are marginally less sophisticated than the ones on The Real Hustle. The way you escape them is by outsmarting them, and as they’re idiots that doesn’t require a massive amount of effort. It simply isn’t true that anyone could fall for one of these, and if you believe that they could then you probably will.

So here are a few tips. Some of them will seem patronising, but apparently people need to be told this stuff:

1. If a bank emails you to tell you your account has been suspended, make sure it is your own bank.
2. Your bank knows your account number and does not need to be reminded.
3. There is no email lottery.
4. If you win a lottery you did not enter, that should be a clue that all is not as it might appear.
5. Oesophageal cancer is extremely rare. If someone you’ve never heard of contacts you claiming to have it, they are lying.
6. Always check links. If the domain isn’t the one your bank normally uses, it’s probably fake.
7. If it’s riddled with spelling errors, it’s fake.
8. If it involves millions of US dollars, it’s fake.
9. If you’re being paid for something you didn’t do, it’s fake.
10. If it’s very obviously fake, then it’s fake.

I’ve seen a couple of banking ones that were passably convincing, but really you shouldn’t be using online banking unless you’re pretty savvy with email and the like. I know it’s convenient, but so is owning a car: if you can’t work it you shouldn’t drive. The risks are too great. If you fall for one of these scams, then I’m sorry but you’re a fool. And I don’t think it’s a good thing for news companies to suggest otherwise, even if it does make you feel better about it.

I like my news honest and not insulting. This was neither.

I still get 419 scams. I don’t know why; you’d think they’d learn. But generally I can’t think of anything fun to do with them that I haven’t already done. I suppose I could re-run some “greatest hits”, sort of like after The Bunker: Crisis Command when they redid it on BBC4 with different contestants, but for now here’s one that lent itself to a novel approach. Read the rest of this entry »

The Irish Lottery

…

Dear winner,
This mail is to bring to your notice that your email emerged as one of
our winning email address in our just concluded Irish Lottery Board
sweepstakes programme that made you automatically a winner of the sum
of £750,000.00(GBP)
Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European
booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your coupon.
In view of this, your £750,000.00(GBP) will be released to you by
any of our payment offices in Europe.
Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate
the release of your funds as soon as you contact him or her.For
security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information
confidential till your claim is processed and your money remitted to
you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize.
This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and
unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned!!!
To file for your claim, please contact our Claims Agent and fill the
payment processing form and send it to our claims agent immediately.

…

Yours faithfully,
Sir Kolyn Perkins.
Online coordinator for THE IRISH LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.

I didn’t even enter the Irish Lottery. There’s a joke in here somewhere…

As most of you by now should know, I moderate Team17’s forum. On the off-chance that it is etichal for me to blog about this, some time ago (in fact, a little over two years ago now) I got into something of an argument with a user called “Skinbom”. Hestarted out being argumentative and annoying, and then, along with his buddy RoQ, whom I believe to be unique in choosing to name his videogame handle after a skin cream, started trolling the whole forum under the quaintly naïve impression that I couldn’t delete all of his posts in less than ten mouse clicks.

I got into a bit of an argument with him. I’m never sure how to handle those. I mean, is it okay to say “if you keep arguing with me I’m going to lock the thread,” or is that abusing my power? The alternatives, though, are just to let him think he’s won, which is probably worse in the long run, or else to argue forever. Fortunately, we have a Thomas to lock the thread for me so I can get the thread locked without actually locking it.

But then he posted on my website to attack me. That’s not on.

Nor is it very smart: people don’t seem to understand how easy it is to work out who is who and what is what. For example, here’s a Team17 spammer called Energize trying to play mind games with me and failing abysmally:

Click for full image.

Anyway… I sent him this:

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 00:36
Title : Your post on my guestbook

---

If you don’t like me then that’s fine; I don’t like you either. But you should at least recognise that you’re no better.You don’t need to resort to profanity the first time you imagine* that one of your posts has been deleted. You don’t need to reply to every little thing that you consider off-topic — doing that merely encourages a discussion of them. Use the “report post to a mod” button for that. (See also, posting an extended flame halfway through a thread and then blaming someone else for it being off-topic.) It couldn’t be the first time a mod’s post was reported, and it wouldn’t be the first time one was deleted, either. And you don’t need to start a personal vendetta based on one post.But I don’t mind all that. I’m used to that, and at least it’s defensible.But you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT post replies specifically and transparently designed to annoy another user. And having done so, you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT then visit that user’s website and post personal remarks about him there. That’s the online equivalent of arguing with someone in the pub and then tracking them down the next day and throwing a brick through their window. And that would get you a restraining order. Your friend RoQ was banned for less than that, remember, and I strongly suspect that the only reason you weren’t is because the admin staff don’t know you exist.Yet._____________________
*Yes, “imagine”. Nobody deleted your post about the queen’s knickers, though now that I look at it, perhaps that was an oversight and we should have done.

One of the great tragedies of our time is that, in order to save precious inbox space, I deleted all the messages that weren’t quoted in another, so this tale will have to be told largely in my replies to his messages, but fear not: his rantings are reproduced as quotes therein!

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 01:28
Title : Re: Andy!!!

---

Skinbom: “Hi Andy! Hows it going? Hope all is well in Andy land!Oh, by the way……you are one of the worst mods I have ever seen.Bye Andy.”
I feel sure you must have a point, but I’m at a loss to discern it.

I had explained that my name is not “Andy” but I hadn’t expected him to listen. (There are precisely two people in the world who call me Andy. One I’m used to and don’t mind and the other was a lecturer who I didn’t want to argue with. Not about that, anyway.) After that pointless diversion he got back on topic.

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 01:42
Title : Re: Your post on my guestbook

---

Skinbom: “if you don’t want me to come to your site….make it private. As long as its public……go pound sand.”
That’s like saying “if you don’t want to be punched in the face, wear a hockey mask”. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you may.I’m more than happy to let this go, but if you make one more personal remark about me I will do everything I can to get you banned, purely so that you stop bothering me. I have a perfectly enjoyably social life, thankyou very much, and it’s not your place to ascribe a spurious life to me and then mock me for it. I think that says a lot more about you than it does about anyone else.

I’ve never heard of the phrase “go pound sand” before. Or since. Next, he accuses me of abusing my moderator powers to get his personal details, which I couldn’t have done even if I’d wanted to:

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 14:33
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Skinbom: “You have illegally given out my private information on your personal website. My email is listed as private on this site and you used your power as a mod to access it and post it and asked your friends to attack it. I have copied the entire page over there and forwarded it to the proper authorities…..good luck with that.”
Actually I got it from your public profile on your clan website.If you want it private, make it so.

Persumably he reported me to the same “authorities” as Trippenz. I base this on theobservation that two years have passed and there have been no discernable consequences of this blatant attack on his human rights (assuming he is a human).

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 14:41
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Skinbom: “So….you wanna have an email account war? Remember you started the email doo-doo.”
I’ve not done a thing to your email address. I’ve never even emailed you.
Besides which, I happen to know that you’ve linked to my website on your clan forum. I’d say it’s a bit rich to pretend I started anything.

I can’t read what he put on his clan website, either, because it’s locked to members only, but as I did with Energize, I can put two and two together: his forum appeared on my referrals list.

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 14:49
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Skinbom: “You posted my email and asked your friends to spam it.”
In fairness, you spammed my PM inbox AND my forum first. And I didn’t ask them to spam it, I just didn’t ask them not to. “Feel free” is such a wonderfully ambiguous phrase.

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 14:55
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Skinbom: “I made one post in your forum…..and i have not spammed your PM.”
This is spam:
Skinbom: “Hi Andy! Hows it going? Hope all is well in Andy land!
Oh, by the way……you are one of the worst mods I have ever seen.
Bye Andy.”
It contained no new information and was clearly designed to irritate me. That sounds like spam to me.

Apparently not, though…

From : Skinbom
To : AndrewTaylor
Date : 2005-04-03 15:08
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Andy,
Although it may have irritated you, it was not spam….only stated my opinion of what I think of your mod abilities.

I decided to call an end to the whole debacle then.

From : AndrewTaylor
To : Skinbom
Date : 2005-04-03 15:26
Title : Re: You have overstepped you bounds.

---

Well clearly it was spam. I know it was, and you know it was, and trying to pretend that it wasn’t isn’t going to change anything. Whatever else I may be, I’m not an idiot and I’m not going to believe you, even if you do.I’m not going to PM you again. Frankly, I’m running out of space in my inbox anyway. In return for this I expect you to get off my back. And that includes stopping spamming the rest of the forum, not least because someone will delete them and the last thing I need is you thinking I’m systematically deleting all your posts.

I didn’t hear from him after that.

As some, none, or fewer of you may know, I moderate the Team17 forums. This dubious honour brings me into contact with a wide variety of Internet denizens who range from the simply delightful to the dangerously insane. This one goes by the name “trippenz”, for reasons I can’t fathom. Most things trippenz does appear to be for reasons I can’t fathom.

Once he announced he was releasing a patch for Worms Armageddon called “WA:CE”, which I think stood for “Worms Armageddon: Cpecial Edition”, but then when it failed to appear I changed my mind to “Chimerical Edition”. Some time ago a whole pile of his posts were deleted, and I got this email:

Since i have been temp banned and can’t contact [fellow moderator] thomasp. I will send you this and you can forward it to him. Since the UK also has laws againts racism and the game as a racist flag the game should therefore be band and soon will. I do not know if you remember a game called Mortyr which is a Nazi theme based game it was BAND. Doing so to this game would not be hard. Thank you for your time.

I’m quite proud of what I did next. Normally I just accept things people say and try to counter them, but recently I’ve taken to actually checking them, and I’m finding an alarming number of them turn out to be lies.

It isn’t possible for a flag to be inherently racist (except perhapsthe old South Park flag). Mortyr is something of a special case. It was banned IN GERMANY for containing Swastikas (and in Greece as part of the blanket ban on all games). The Nazi symbol has been illegal in Germany since the end of WWII, and has only recently been allowed to be reproduced, and then on the condition that its use is unambiguously anti-Nazi. W:A does not include a swastika flag and so would not fall under the same ban. Interestingly, I believe games featuring violence against humans are also illegal in Germany, so Worms is one of few games that ARE allowed there.

The UK has laws against racial hate crime and racial discrimination, but to my knowledge there are no laws here or anywhere else against reproducing symbols used by racist groups other than the Nazis — heck, we allow the BNP to run for government — so given that you can’t spell the word “banned” (which is probably going to become very ironic very fast), I’m going to have to ignore your legal advice for the time being. And I’m not going to waste Thomas’ time by bothering him with this nonsense either.

Now be honest:

Are you Jack Thompson?

His reply:

No I am not Jack Thompson. Mortyr was banned from almost every country with racism laws. The Rebel flag is also in the same classification and can only be used in educational things and in the privacy of your own home. Since in this case none off those apply, therefore making the game illegal. And as far as legal advice just mentioning Torrents, there is no difference between that and saying p2p because they have the same concept. I did not mention how to use them, where to get them or anything else about it. I also mention that you should check in your country to see if it legal and that you need proof that you originally bought the software such as a reciet. Now if I gave links and/or saying how to use them or names of the programs, then I would accept the infraction points, but since this is also not the case I therefore did not violate any forum rules.

He seems pretty sure of this Mortyr stuff, so I decided to do a bit more checking.

I can’t find a single report of Mortyr being banned anywhere other than Greece and Germany — look, here it is for sale on Amazon http://amazon.com/s/re…Go.x=0&Go.y=0 and here’s the sequel on play.com http://play.com/G…ing=mortyr&searchsource=0 — so if you can, please send me a link. But even if it was, it’s hardly comparable to having the confederate flag in W:A, is it?

I assume that’s the “rebel flag” you mean? rebel.bmp? The Confederacy’s flag from the American civil war? The one that’s still part of Mississippi’s state flag? It’s controversial, but I don’t think anyone would ever even try to ban a game for featuring it, especially as an entirely incidental option you don’t have to ever see. Especially a decade old game. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen cartoons with that flag in them. I’m not sure how else I’d have recognised it.

And the fact is that the phrase “no you can download a wa.iso off of a torrent” is discussing illegally obtaining free copies of W:A and that is against the forum rules — common sense should tell you Team17 wouldn’t like you discussing that — and, if you choose to download such a file, it is also against international copyright law, no matter what misinformation you may have read on warez sites about it being legal if you own the game or it being legal if you delete it within 48 hours. The fact that you could, theoretically, have provided fuller instructions is utterly irrelevant. You told people — you told a MODERATOR — how to illegaly obtain W:A for free. That’s is not acceptable. You’d have to be insane to think it was acceptable!

If there’s a problem, your best bet for sorting it out is simply to wait it out. I don’t think me or Thomas have the ability to revoke infractions (if we do I don’t know how and can’t be bothered to learn), and Team17 are between webmasters at the moment and I doubt the main network administrator has the time to be chasing up petty complaints from annoying forummers. The fact is that you can still post and there are only about three weeks left on those infraction points anyway, after which they will simply vanish and you’ll have full posting rights again. (Well, provided you don’t clock up any more in the meantime.)

Just let it go.

Andrew

Watch out, subject, you’re in for a total changing!

You still never ansered the question about what’s the difference between p2p and torrents. they both have the same concept and also p2p is more widely known. so y is it ok for one and not the other.

What?

It’s not okay for you to talk about either. Sometimes people discuss one or the other and nobody cares; it’s a fairly informal system and sometimes the mods don’t notice or decide not to bother with infraction points or whatever, and of course it depends on context. If someone’s describing a new way they’d like online play to operate and they use P2P as an example of a clever system or something then obviously that’s fine, so there’s a certain amount of flexibility. But discussion of either in the context of downloading Team17’s games is wrong.

If you’ve been discussing downloading Worms from P2P networks then please send me a link so I can give you some infraction points for that as well.

Quick! Grab that straw!

I didn’t say worms nor T17 i just said software

Nice technicality, idiot.

“Software” includes Worms.

Anything factually true is morally acceptable:

well you can download worms off of p2p also just like anything else so like i said whats the difference. nothing

At this point I gave up trying to chace his runaway minecart of thought and just threw him a rope. He hanged himself.

Alright, look, you’ve totally lost me now.

So what I’m going to do is, instead of attempting to respond directly to your point (because I don’t know what it is and suspect it doesn’t exist), is simply to explain the rules as I understand them and then you can tell me which part of them you think you have been unfaily accused of breaking. Okay? I’ll number them so that we can refer to the list later, but the numbers are just something for this email and aren’t official.

1. Do not insult other members.
2. Donot double post
3. Do ot swear of try to circumvent the word filter.
4. Do not post adverts.
5. Do not Post Details Regarding Hacking/Cracking Games

(Those are different categories of infractions you can get, so they’re as official asit gets.) I think any talk of downloading Worms (aside from TryMedia versions) is assumed to fall under the remit of Rule Five and tends to be deleted and/or infracted.

6. Team17 can do what they like.

Rule six is a bit of a wildcard rule.

But then, who could resist an opportunity to play the victim?

1. Do not insult other members.
hmmm people have against me on the forums and nothing happened to them, but anyways all evidence has been submitted to the authorities and legal action against T17.

He hired some male prostitutes, dressed them up in three-piece suits…

hmmm people have against me on the forums and nothing happened to them, but
Yes, well, after all that stuff abpout WACE that failed to materialise and after you threatening to have WA banned and after this lengthy debale are you really that surprised?

anyways all evidence has been submitted to the authorities and legal action against T17.
What? What evidence? What authorities?

Is this about your being given some infraction points on a privately run internet forum or is this your campaign to have a decade-old game banned because of one 240 pixel image that you have decided to object to, despite the fact that you previously appeared to like this game enough to produce a third-party patch for it?

I mean, I notice that you’ve apparently chosen not to answer my question. I simply asked you what your grievance is, so that I could better try to address it, and instead you have made vague allusions to legal action which I presume will also fail to materialise.

I think you’re trying to waste my time.

Stop it. If you email me again, you’d damn well better say something.

Andrew

A while later, I got this:

Many have even admitted that doing something like WACE takes time, so y would I release it to the public while it’s still in the works. I pm Deadcode and offered to send him what’s all been done, but yet to my surprise he never once replied nor said anything on the Forums about it. Cybershadow offered to help with WA CE, but since word got out that I was making CE on the forums a lot of people including him said that its impossible. So I turned him down, but since time as gone by me and CS have been getting along pretty good over msn most likely I will take him up on his offer and send him a copy.

As far as evidence and authorities go that is none of you concern.

Well, all this was ages ago now, but today he posted a thread in the Worms Armageddon forum which simply said ” Go here [url deleted] and download the torrent. Plz use this download to preview the album. If you like it Plz download it when it comes out world wide May 15th 2007.” and I dutifully deleted it. For good measure, I also gave him an infraction point, with the attached message “This isn’t Team17-related, Worms Armageddon-related, or legal. I cannot fathom the thought process that led you to post it here, but please don’t use that thought process again.”

Just now I got this email:

So shot me. Ban me. Yes it is legal. Understand deleteing post no arugments there and where you live it might be illegal. ^^

I replied with this:

Look, I don’t care what kind of weird argument you have. I am not going to get into an argument with you about the legality of torrents. Perhaps distributing the .torrent file itself is legal, but downloading the album from it is not (at least not unless the owners of the copyright say otherwise which I assume they don’t).

Even if it is legal, it’s still spam. So knock it off.

If there’s a God, I’ll never hear from trippenz again and this page won’t need updating.