No gods, no kings, no billionaires
After a year of writing for the Movie Blog, my good buddy Richard has started up a film-related web site of his own: Filmstalker.co.uk. (Films talker, geddit?)
He’ll be bringing you film news and reviews, and maybe even the odd podcast here and there. Although the site will cover all types of film, Richard has a particular interest in modern horror and eastern cinema, so he’ll probably be bringing you lots of goods from those directions.
Good luck, Richard!
Over at Bloggie-nominated The Movie Blog, oft-proclaimed “Founder and Editor” John Campea is busy eliminating all traces of Richard Brunton, who wrote most of the site’s content last year. The other week, John told Richard (by means of an an article in the Hamilton Spectator) that he is now earning enough money from the site to quit his day job. Richard, who has received (I believe) approximately the cost of a sandwich and coffee in expenses from the site, went “WTF?” Whereupon John told him he was no longer needed.
Classy.
Richard, who writes for The Movie Blog, has been trying to get an all-Scottish version of their regular podcast going for some time now. On Thursday he finally made it happen! And I got invited along as a guest for the session! So if you feel like hearing the two of us ramble on about the best and worst movies of 2005, head on over to The Movie Blog for the download.
We had some technical troubles that prevented Louise from doing her “Voice Of God” thing, the output volume has ended up quite low, and you can hear the nerves shaking our voices at times. However, given that this was our first podcast ever, I think we managed to not totally suck. Might we do it again? Time will tell…
Having been tempted by Rands’ introduction to home poker games, I played in my first game a couple of weeks ago. (Yeah, I bought myself a decent set of chips. They lend a certain atmosphere to the game.) Interest was high amongst the gang, and it looks like we’ll be playing again soon.
I’m learning more about the game from various web sites and books, and yesterday evening I signed up with an on-line poker room (Empire Poker) and played at a “play money” table for an hour or so. I caught a few lucky breaks (like pocket aces turning into trips on the flop, earning me a sweet little pot) and I enjoyed it. The pace was just right for me to pay attention to the betting with one eye, and catch up on my RSS feeds with the other.
However, as I was turning in for bed, I mentioned to Abi what I had been doing.
“Oh no,” she said, dripping disapproval, “you didn’t, did you? Now I’ll never be rid of them.”
“What?”
“Comment spammers. Advertising their poker sites. We hates them, precious. All of them. I just spent ages cleaning up their crap, and now you’re off encouraging them.”
I was deflated.
Poker sites generally don’t do comment spamming themselves. Most of the spam is a by-product of their affiliate and referral schemes. For example, if site X sends a visitor to poker site Y, and that visitor signs up for an account, then site X gets a referral fee. (The player might have to hang around and drop a certain amount of cash before the fee is paid, but that’s the general idea.) Comment spammers these days are often individual operators who set up disposable referral gateway web sites. These are the sites that get linked to in comment spam; the idea being to steer people to the actual poker site via these gateways, thus generating referral income for the spammer on the pass-through.
By signing up for a poker room (albeit via an established and respectable poker site rather than a link farm), I am contributing to the success of gambling web sites in general, validating their business model, and thus contributing to the daily flood of junk that still makes it past MT-Blacklist.
Bummer.
At a company induction session a year or so ago, one of my fellow inductees was talking about how she’d bought a variety of “herbal remedies” from a junk email she’d received. I clearly remember having to restrain myself from jumping up and shouting, “It’s you! You’re the one in a thousand who actually buys stuff from those assholes and makes it worth their while!”
Have the tables been turned now? Am I now the bad guy? What is the moral difference between responding to a spam link, and buying a product or a service from an industry sector that comment spammers use as a springboard for their slimy techniques?
If my doctor were to prescribe me viagra, to what extent would I supporting the email spammers who bombard me with dozens of messages every day?
I have a credit card. How much responsibility do I have for the flood of credit card offers that arrive through snail mail?
I work actively to keep this blog and the rest of our site free from spam, abusive comments, and other junk. I like to think that I’m doing my bit to keep link spam from being a profitable or productive enterprise. Does this square away with playing the occasional game of on-line poker?
“So, yes, the rumors were true. Six Apart did indeed acquire LiveJournal.”
Wow. This looks like an incredibly smart move from Six Apart. Congratulations to all involved.
Spurred on by Rands’ example: http://del.icio.us/sunpig.
Integration into Movable Type, using a variant of Jeff Veen’s script, is in progress. This will probably take the place of, or at least supplement the regular linkdump.