There is no excuse for this. They claim the results are powered by Yahoo!, but the real Yahoo! search results are not nearly as irrelevant for the same search terms. For users running at 1024×768, all links above the fold are sponsored links. But even the ranking of the organic results are suspect. But to boot, another five sponsored links appear below the results. This “service” is enabled by default for RoadRunner subscribers. The opt-out process is simple enough, but forcing this on unsuspecting users its unconscionable. One has to wonder, based on these website suggestions, if RoadRunner is in fact at all interested in providing relevant suggestions, or if they are misrepresenting the service as helpful when they are knowingly providing all sponsored results and presenting them as organic.
Once you and I talked about what hell is, but only now do I know.
Hell is sitting in an important meeting at an investment bank, being asked important questions about subprime mortgage exposure, but only being able to think of the “suicidal” hot wings you ate last night. Try not to think about it — it’s no use.
The beads of sweat were running down my forehead. The suicidal hot wing sauce was a thick heavy oil, infused with fire itself. Not particularly easy on the mouth, it becomes even more aggressive in situ. I lost focus on the meeting as the greasy irritant suddenly and without warning hit some spot inside me that drove my body mad. I should have seen this coming, except that I still can’t see much of anything since there must have been sauce residue on my hands when I adjusted my contact lenses this morning — couldn’t even keep them in my eyes. Excuse yourself. Run. To the bathroom — quickly. Oh no, you have to speak next. Just try to sit still. Sit still through the horrible feeling.
And people wonder why our financial system is in crisis.
I really don’t have much to contribute on this topic, but I did want to just announce that as soon as Obama dropped the phrase “orgy of spending” during the debate, I was floored. I wasn’t expecting to hear “orgy” during the debate. Likewise, the VP debate the other night, Palin’s repeated use of “raping” kind of got to me. Odd to hear taboo words out of their mouths. Maybe a techno “orgy” remix is in order…
In the meantime I got the AIM screen name “orgy of spending”. Awesome.
Sen. Clinton, I voted for you when you ran against John Spencer in 2006. Shortly after, I wrote you a heartfelt letter expressing some of my concerns as a voter, but neither you nor your staff felt it necessary to send even so much as an acknowledgement. But I’m writing to acknowledge you for your commitment to the ongoing presidential race. Specifically, I wanted to thank you for running Google ads. Knowing that I would never vote for you again, let alone donate, I felt compelled to click the ad, at your expense, and write to thank you. Your ad is the kind of ad that I could enjoy clicking, at your expense, again and again. Thanks and regards.
So, I log in to one of my “Gmail for Domains” accounts today, one which I rarely ever log into. What do I see? 233 new messages in my Inbox. This basically just exists as a drop for administrative emails (in other words, spam). Of these 233 messages, about 10 were legitimate. I was still pretty shocked to see that of the 223 or so spam messages that made it through, that it was only but a fraction of the number of mails received — I received nearly 93,000 spam emails in the last 30 days (remember, they delete spam automatically after 30 days). That works out to about one email every 30 seconds.
(click to enlarge)
All the emails were addressed to some random address at my domain (.com). In this case, there probably isn’t much I could have done to stop these mails. Another domain that I leave dormant that I checked today after seeing this monstrosity had about 3444 spam messages, of which about 20 were not caught by Gmail’s spam filter. But the one thing that made these mails different than the ones I received in the other account were that messages to this domain were all returned mails. In other words, spammers were sending forged messages, using a non-existent address at my domain (.com). This can be cut down, although apparently not completely eliminated, by using DNS SPF records. The only drawback is that not every remote mail server supports SPF. As such, some of these emails will still get through to those servers. Google provides some guidance on setting DNS SPF records (if you can) that can help cut down this number, although it still will not eliminate spam entirely.
Ever received more spam than this in your Gmail or Gmail for domain account? Post a link to a screen shot or post your story below!
