How To Spot A Psychopath

My mail server, mail.dansdata.com, is on the fritz. Well, the server’s actually working, but I don’t have an account there any more, for some reason. So mail to dan@dansdata.com has been bouncing, for a couple of days now.

The usually-excellent support people at SecureWebs haven’t been quite on the ball about this. If you’ve got something important to say to me, send it to rutterd@iinet.net.au.

UPDATE: The mail, she works once more. (I’m perversely glad that lots of other people were suffering as well.)

I’ve got greylisting now, too. I’ll turn it off if it becomes unacceptably annoying, or if I decide I need more spam to write about.

In these days of belt-tightening and margin-cutting, have “contextual” ad companies like Kontera finally been forced to actually live up to their promise of delivering ads that’re relevant to the text they link from?

That’ll be a “no”, then.

(Source.)

You’d think that contextual link-ad companies would be in a deadly downward spiral.

They can only deliver ads that’re actually relevant if they’ve got tons of advertisers to choose from (like Google, who often deliver ads that contradict a page’s content, but are at least talking about the same subject). But anybody with half a brain can see that, at the moment, actual relevant contextual ads seem to be very much in the minority.

So if you pay a contextual ad company to advertise your product, you can’t expect anything better.

But then again, the big contextual ad companies have been in business for several years now, and most of them still haven’t gone broke.

As I write this, RealTextAds (who contacted me in 2004) seem to be out of business, but Vibrant Media are more than eight years old and still going strong. So are Tribal Fusion, as mentioned in passing in 2005 and looked at specifically here; they’re about as old as Vibrant. And Kontera, responsible for the ad in the picture above, is six years old. They run ads under their own name, and also as “ContentLink“.

So somebody must still be paying for this crap.

Perhaps the ads actually do work - get clicks, and create sales. I’m sure plenty of people at least click on these weird little pop-ups, even if they’re only trying to make the thing go away.

I can’t see how the cost per conversion can be good, though.

They like me! They really, really like me!

But seriously - thanks to everybody who voted for me in Atomic’s Issue #100 poll.

I could only be more pleased if my runaway victory actually won me a prize.

(Perhaps I’ll get a mouse!)

I just got me one of them Twitter things that the kids are so crazy about.

I have a serious, serious problem with turning things I’m writing into very lengthy projects, so Twitter actually looks like a good idea to me. I understand why a lot of people view it as pure granulated pointlessness, but it gives me a chance to toss off the occasional bon mot without any real time investment, and perhaps some of you will enjoy the result.

(In the unlikely event that anybody reading this doesn’t get the title joke: La.)

(Pennypacker also found this when I searched for “Twitter”. I don’t know why, but it’s another good one, so what the heck.)

I’m sure you usually only visit DealExtreme (previously) for their delightfully wide range of prophylactics, but they now also stock the “Spotlight” cigarette-lighter-charged flashlight that I reviewed a little while ago.

It’s yours for $US18.80 including delivery to anywhere, PayPal only. The standard price is $US14.95 ex delivery, so unless you’ve got a bricks-and-mortar shop nearby that stocks it, the DX option is very likely to be cheaper, for people outside the USA at least.

(The two vendors I originally mentioned in my review are JTSpotlight and 12VSpotlight.)

If you’re outside the USA you’ll probably get the light about as fast from DealExtreme as you would from anybody else, too. DealExtreme usually take a while to deliver stuff (I’ve not yet received my tiny plastic Buddha, for instance), but that’s because they’re drop-shipping, just telling the Chinese factory that makes whatever you’ve bought to send it to you. With perhaps some minimal amount of cobbling-together of orders on the actual DealExtreme premises as well, just to add a few more days to proceedings.

Drop-shipping means you get to wait however long each factory takes to get stuff packed and posted. But DX is presumably selling Spotlights direct from the manufacturer, too, and I think the Spotlight makers don’t also make a wide range of three-dollar Chinese oddities, so they ought to respond faster.

(If you order a Spotlight and it arrives seven months later, packaged between two Zebu cowpats that’re held together with a strand of barbed wire, I accept no responsibility. But do feel free to vent in the comments.)

UPDATE: As reader Changes points out in the comments, DX now also have a brandless “OEM” version of the Spotlight, for a princely $US8.50 delivered.

I was trying to figure out why, for the last few days, Bloglines has frequently failed to notice when I’ve read something from one or another feed. Four times out of five, the next time it checked for updated feeds it was re-adding all of the stuff I just read.

Well, I found out why this was, and I also found that this wasn’t the half of it. It turns out that Bloglines is also now just completely ignoring many feed updates. So you get to read some stuff over and over, while missing out on other stuff entirely. Awesome.

So, finally, it was off to Google Reader for me.

(Migrating to Google Reader is quite easy, if your current feed aggregator doodad can export your subscription list in OPML format. This, fortunately, is something that Bloglines has not yet forgotten how to do.)

I’ve been using Bloglines since 2003. Apparently Mark Fletcher, the guy who started the site, sold it to Ask.com (where he later took a job) in 2005, and they’ve now pretty much just left it to rot on the vine. (To the point that even Fletcher’s sick of it.)

I was happy enough with the Bloglines interface, and it’s still got a couple of features that suit me better than Google Reader does. But only if it, you know, works. Which it doesn’t any more. Oh well.

If you’ve noticed an even further diminution of my usual glacial work-rate over the last week, that was because I was on holiday, and strictly forbidden to work. (Except, of course, for this delightful diversion.)

We were house-minding in Darlinghurst, a short walk from Taylor Square, its ever-shifting 24-hour population of gym-toned gentlemen, and its unpredictable fountain.

The house we were minding is a tall terrace, with thirty-three thigh-strengthening stair-steps between the living room and the bedroom.

All that healthy exercise does lead you to a view, though.

The view from the top loo is pretty decent…

…though necessarily hemmed in by the walls of the house and its neighbour.

Go up yet another flight of stairs, though, and you can walk out onto a deck that covers the original roof.

(The original-size version of this stitched panorama is rather enormous.)

The house used to be a boarding-house, and the current occupants are doing a huge renovation, ripping out major sections - like the toilet-and-shower block on the ground floor, for instance - and turning the building back into a normal house.

The “ripping out” part of the renovation is pretty much done…

…but the “turning it back into a normal house” part is, I feel fairly safe in saying, not entirely complete.

There was also a cat.

Dansdata.com has a new server, but it’s having a minor failure to proceed; I can’t put any new pages on it.

The old one is still accessible, though, here. It’s got a couple of articles on it that haven’t made it to the new server yet.

UPDATE: Thanks to the helpful people at SecureWebs, the standard site is now working properly again. The above direct-IP-address old server won’t be getting any more new pages, and will probably go away some time soon. Feel free to keep going there to confuse my ad providers, if you like.

On the Internet, threats of legal action - justified or otherwise - are about as common as pornography.

(Essential NSFW link.)

Actual legal action, however, is about as common as measured and careful explanations of the many good points that’ve been made by someone with whom you strongly disagree.

But wouldn’t you know it, the other day, for the very first time, someone who’d threatened to sue me actually stumped up the cash to get a real live lawyer to send me a letter.

Well, actually just an e-mail, not a paper letter. But this still went above and beyond anything I’d ever seen before.

I’ve been threatened plenty of times, but not one of those people has, until now, actually gotten any further than saying “I’m a-gonna sue yo’ ass!”.

(I’m not counting the couple of times I got e-mails from “lawyers” who had Yahoo e-mail addresses and very poor spelling.)

Because real letters from lawyers are so rare, people are likely to get scared if they receive one. But you shouldn’t. It’s not really that big a deal.

But first, The Letter, and my reply to it.

I’ve lightly anonymised this, because the identities of the person who had it sent, and of the lawyer who sent it, are irrelevant here. We’ve now settled our dispute (and no, not in the “for an undisclosed sum” way), so there’s no need for me to draw any more attention to this guy over all the others. Regular readers will be able to figure out who it is without much trouble, but it really doesn’t matter. It’s the content, not the source, that matters here.

Also, do please note that I am not any sort of lawyer, and no expert on the law here in Australia, or anywhere else. If you think what you’re about to read constitutes actual legal advice, you have made a terrible mistake and need to look somewhere - almost anywhere - else.

I welcome comments from any readers who do have legal qualifications, though!

Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:21:03 +1000
From: Larsen E. Pettifogger
To: Dan
Subject: [Redacted]

Attention: - Daniel Rutter

Dear Mr Rutter,

We have been referred to your web publications by Mr Smith, a resident of the United States of America.

We understand and have viewed for ourselves your posting on the internet concerning Mr Smith.

Understandably, that posting has caused Mr Smith considerable aggravation and embarrassment.

Notably also, we understand that it has given rise to a number of threats having been received by Mr Smith personally.

It is apparent from your postings and publications that you have a very low opinion of Mr Smith. In any event, that view may not be shared by others - it is certainly not shared by Mr Smith.

Whatever your views as to the matter may be, they cannot be put forward in justification of the publications in respect of the way in which you are proceeding.

We expect that Mr Smith seeks an end to this matter and wish to suggest to you that you remove the posting immediately (within 24 hours).

The haste of your co-operation may have a positive impact on the Mr Smith’s views as to damages.

Yours sincerely,

–
LARSEN E. PETTIFOGGER
SOLICITOR AND BARRISTER

PETTIFOGGER Partners

I replied thus:

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

At 10:21 PM 22/07/2008, Larsen E. Pettifogger wrote:

> that posting has caused Mr Smith considerable aggravation and embarrassment.

I might suggest to Mr Smith that if he wishes to avoid embarrassment, he might like to reduce the number of bold statements about my sexual proclivities which he, or his associates, makes available for global perusal.

> Notably also, we understand that it has given rise to a number of threats
> having been received by Mr Smith personally.

Perhaps you should have a word with the people he alleges have been threatening him, then, if in fact they exist.

I certainly haven’t threatened him, and I didn’t ask anybody else to do so, either. I held Mr Smith up, based on what he did, as a figure of fun, not as anybody who needed to be “threatened”.

If Mr Smith has any evidence to the contrary, or indeed merely any evidence of actual threats regardless of their connection to me, then I am sure he will present it to you in the very near future. If I could only be in your offices, about to receive such a wondrous bounty!

> Whatever your views as to the matter may be, they cannot be put
> forward in justification of the publications in respect of the
> way in which you are proceeding.

Your command of grammar appears to exceed mine. I am having difficulty understanding the exact meaning of this sentence.

But no matter; I shall forge ahead.

Does Mr Smith contend that anything I posted was not true?

I do not of course need to remind you, but I feel you may need to remind Mr Smith - while billing him at, I hope, your standard hourly rate - that truth is now by itself an adequate defense against defamation actions, here in New South Wales at least. If I am incorrect in this assumption, do please correct me - unless such correction is only available upon payment of the abovementioned fee, which I regret to say I most probably cannot afford.

I would be very pleased to appear in court to defend myself against Mr Smith’s allegations. I do hope that Mr Smith will do me the honour of flying to Australia to face me in person.

Should he, instead, wish to bring suit against my blog hosts, I regret to inform him that he will then have to retain representation in Ireland.

Defamation actions are, I believe, rather more likely to succeed there, but I assure Mr Smith that should he silence my blog there, I will swiftly find another host - in, most likely, the United States of America. The existing posts regarding Mr Smith, not to mention several others which suggest themselves to me at this moment, will in that case, and in every other case I can at this moment imagine, remain.

> We expect that Mr Smith seeks an end to this matter and wish to
> suggest to you that you remove the posting immediately (within 24
> hours).

I cordially invite Mr Smith to stick this suggestion where I believe he, equally if not more cordially, once invited me to stick a small electronic device.

(Can you tell I was drunk when I wrote that?)

OK, here’s the deal.

A letter from a lawyer is just that - a letter, from a lawyer. Even if it’s delivered by registered mail and not e-mail (I presume e-mail nastygrams are cheaper), even if it’s got a big “CEASE AND DESIST” printed on the top - it is not “legal action”. It doesn’t mean you’re being sued. It doesn’t even mean that you might be sued.

All it means is that someone paid this particular lawyer to send this particular letter.

If someone walks into a law firm and asks them to send a letter to someone else demanding that that other person cease and desist from beaming voices into the complainant’s head via mental telepathy, the law firm will shrug, hold the complainant’s money up to the light to make sure it’s real, and send the letter. You can hire a lawyer to send a letter for you that says pretty much anything.

Said lawyer will, in his role as the legal equivalent of hired muscle, do his utmost to make the target of the letter think that you mess with him and his client at your peril, and that you will surely find yourself on the losing end of a billion-dollar lawsuit if you do not do exactly as you’re told.

This is, in many cases, what legal professionals refer to as a bluff.

The deadly-serious, here-comes-the-subpoena, check-yo’self-before-you-wreck-yo’self attitude that legal nastygrams always project is at least half of what the client is paying for. That attitude will be precisely the same regardless of the lawyer’s opinion regarding the merits of the case, and regardless of what the client’s said he’s willing to pay for. The lawyer will act just as scary even if he’s 100% certain that the complainant is a raving loony who has obviously just paid his last $200 to have that letter sent.

It’s possible to sue someone for just about anything, but actually suing is way more difficult, and expensive, than just having a lawyer send a letter. If you pay a lawyer to send Joe Bloggs a letter telling him that you sincerely believe it’s an infringement of your human rights that Joe keeps wearing blue socks on Tuesdays, the lawyer will take your money, smile broadly, and send the letter. If you then want to actually sue Joe for his terrible actions, then your lawyer will start talking to you about the value of psychiatric care. (Although even then, some lawyer may take the case.)

When the case is preposterous - as many Internet Drama cases are - even the most enthusiastic of complainants aren’t going to find it easy to locate a lawyer who’s willing to take it on. Not even, necessarily, if the complainant is seriously wealthy and happy to spend. If the case is so stupid that the judge is obviously going to throw it out after the first ten minutes, lawyers know they won’t get much chance to earn from it anyway. If a case is sufficiently stupid, the lawyers themselves could end up being punished for their violation of legal ethics.

(I’ll wait for the laughter to die down before I continue.)

If you’re actually guilty of some civil wrong or other, or if you’re innocent but the evidence available doesn’t make you look good, then you should take a legal nastygram seriously, and possibly seek your own legal advice. And if you are going to be sued, you’re probably going to receive one or more nastygrams first. But just because nastygrams usually come before lawsuits doesn’t mean that nastygrams are good predictors of a lawsuit. Getting on a plane always comes before crashing into the side of a mountain, but that doesn’t mean that outcome is likely.

If you’re neither guilty nor guilty-looking, and cannot conceive of any way in which you could possibly seem otherwise to a jury composed of people who can tell a right shoe from a left one more than half of the time, do feel free to send a snarky reply like I did, or indeed ignore the letter entirely.

Just the same, though - take this guy as a lesson, Internet nutjobs!

Step up! Grow a pair!

Put your money where your mouth is, and actually drop some dollars on a lawyer to send a nastygram to the object of your irritation!

I’m actually half-serious about this. Sometimes, Internet Drama really does have some sort of substance to it, and in that case, just dropping a few hundred bucks on a little lawyerly activity can very much be worth the effort.

But remember: All a nastygram actually means, in and of itself, is that someone is angry enough at you that they are willing to spend the time and money to get a lawyer to send you that letter.

Something went wrong at my generally extremely excellent Web hosts securewebs.com, and the Dan’s Data mail server has gone a bit strange.

For the better part of a day, now, I think mail.dansdata.com has been eating messages and sending neither errors to the senders nor the actual mail to me.

I’m waiting for feedback from SecureWebs support about this. They’re generally pretty snappy (so, in case you’re wondering, are Blogsome), but it’s the weekend and SecureWebs are the kind of hosting outfit that doesn’t make stupid claims about Eight Nines Uptime and charge accordingly. If you buy SecureWebs hosting, you get as much reliability as the vast majority of Web sites need, for a decent price. If you’re not a PHB, you’ll know that this is very probably what you actually need from a host. Advertisement concludes.

[UPDATE: The support people got back to me about ten minutes after I finished this post.]

The mail server problem may have something to do with my Mirror Universe career as a spammer, or it may not. For a little while just now I thought the server was back, but perhaps it isn’t; it’s gone quiet again, happily telling me that no messages are waiting when I know that a couple of thousand spams, at the very least, should have piled up by now.

The problem will, I’m sure, be dealt with soon. But if you sent me an important e-mail in the last day, I fear your missive may have been consumed by the rugose and squamous horrors of the bit bucket.

I’ll update this post when the server’s resuscitated. When that happens, please send your message again. If it’s a matter of life, death or PayPal donations, you may e-mail me at rutterd@iinet.net.au and/or rutterd@optushome.com.au.

UPDATE: Mail.dansdata.com has been migrated to a new server, but almost no mail is coming through as of yet. I presume this has to do with DNS propagation or something. I still don’t quite trust it, but it looks as if it ought to be working, with I think better spam filtering, soon.