Translated material
Roman Leibov. Wacky Museum
Fools, fools, fools without number,
All genera, sizes and varieties,
It’s as if fate created them all to order,
Taking a government contract of fools.
If I were a king, I would build them a house
And he opened a stupid museum in it,
Having placed them all by rank behind glass
For the edification of my country.
S. Nadson
“ The hardest thing to find,” Yu.M. Lotman told us at a lecture on introduction to the specialty, “is yesterday’s newspaper.”
On the Internet, newspapers are in order (unless, of course, you take into account all the greedy people who also try to show old issues for money).
The most unprotected part of information distributed through networks is, of course, personal correspondence. I don’t remember how many times I lost the archives of my letters, but each time it was a small tragedy. Then, of course, I learned to turn a blind eye to these things, but the bitterness of loss still lurks at the bottom of my soul.
A special category of letters are those that we throw away without reading. These include the so-called spam - mass commercial advertising, as well as various texts aimed at forcing those who read them to launch a certain program attached to the letter. And then this program will deal with the hard drive of the victim of the epistolary genre...
Meanwhile, the mentioned types of texts, which disappear irrevocably into trash bins, are also part of online culture and are worthy of study. But in order to study, you need to have an object in front of your eyes. And the baskets, as a rule, are emptied. An entire layer of culture is disappearing, which is compensated, of course, by the creation of more and more texts of this type, but it is difficult to look at the problem historically.
I already had to write about this problem, since then I have received several wonderful Trojan horses and an endless number of offers to buy Viagra anonymously. I fed the horses hay and sent them to the trash bin; I didn’t buy Viagra either. The texts have disappeared.Viagra is not a pity - it is serial. And he won’t run away from us anywhere. We'll try our best, but she won't do anything. But the Russian text with an offer to buy a toothbrush, which caused a painful feeling of tenderness and pity, is lost forever. This is the extent to which you have to lose faith in people and connection with reality in order to sell a toothbrush using spam! Even if it’s with natural bristles. From the mane of the Trojan horse.
The wits from Tinaa Technologies, however, as N. Gryzunova pointed out to us, have found a form of spam archiving. They suggest using spam@tinaa.com when registering on the web. And then they carefully store mail arriving at this address in a separate directory (if you have a weak connection, do not rush to follow this link - there are half a megabyte of headers alone). A very elegant solution - “technical” mail (usually meaningless) will not come to you, and at the same time all address sellers are clearly visible. But this is not the kind of archive one dreams of.
I invite NetCulture readers to participate in the construction of the Stupid Museum. If you received an advertising offer outstanding in terms of stupidity or stylistic richness, if a wonderful blue ribbon with the inscription “love Minya as I love you” was woven into the Trojan’s mane, or if on his bridle there was a bag with the inscription “holiday in Cyprus and $10,000,000 in addition,” if, finally, you are also subject to the modest charm of small epistolary genres, and you have an archive of texts from outstanding suppliers of horses (who don’t look in the mouth) and toothbrushes - please do not consider it difficult to forward all these works of literature to me .
Of course, kill the Trojan itself (a file with the .exe extension) first. But don't touch the text, please. Let it, like the notorious ancient Greek pot, originally intended for ancient buckwheat porridge, freed from its utilitarian-abominable function, shine with a calm, pure aesthetic light in our Museum.
Well, a list of spam authors wouldn’t hurt either (so, if possible, send letters in the most complete form, with all headers... Shishkov, sorry, I don’t know how to translate). The network must know its heroes.
And here we will sort the exhibits and arrange them in the halls for the edification of the state.
The conditions for donors are simple:
- texts must be written in Russian (English and others are also gratefully accepted, but I will publish them only in exceptional cases);
- executable files should not be attached to the texts.
And here - for starters - is the first exhibit. It is remarkable in that it is a cover letter to a Trojan, masquerading as someone else's spam (of course, port.ru has nothing to do with this campaign). And the appeal is wonderful. I hear from the host, user!
Probably came to me as a birthday present:
- Received: from SpoolDir by ADMIN1 (Mercury 1.48); 2 Jul 00 16:04:27 +200
Return-path:
Received: from madli.ut.ee (193.40.5.124) by admin.ut.ee (Mercury 1.48) with ESMTP;
2 Jul 00 16:04:22 +200
Received: from demos.su (mx.demos.su [194.87.0.32])
by madli.ut.ee (8.10.1/8.10.1/madli-1.12) with ESMTP id e62E7Pr13857
for ; Sun, 2 Jul 2000 16:07:25 +0200 (EET)
Received: from geisteskrank.demos.su ([194.87.5.54] verified)
by demos.su (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.2.4)
with ESMTP id 7405605; Sun, 02 Jul 2000 18:08:03 +0400
Received: from dialup-3128.mtu.ru by geisteskrank.demos.su with SMTP id SAA36704;
(8.9.3/D) Sun, 2 Jul 2000 18:05:15 +0400 (MSD)
From: admin@port.ru
To: webmaster@port.ru
Subject: ATTENTION! WARNING! ATTENTION! WARNING!
Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 18:05:25 +0300
Message-Id: <36709.753763310182000.290@localhost>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=clamdbakkrcdlfsc
Hello hostik!
Dear ICQ user!
The Port.ru company - the creator of the largest free mail service mail.ru - is celebrating its year of operation!
Over this year, a huge number of users have appreciated the service provided by the company. We thank all our users for their choice. The company's anniversary is our common holiday and one of the most important events in the life of the Russian Internet! In honor of this event, we are organizing a car draw among mail.ru users!
The car raffle is on now! The selection of applicants for the main prize will continue until July 1. You can take part in the competition at any time. To do this, you don’t need to fill out giant forms or write dozens of letters, everything ingenious is simple:
1. you launch the client program (through which you will receive all the necessary information about the progress of the competition)
2. Next, you enter a little information about yourself and come up with your password AND THAT'S ALL!
The client program will do the rest for you.
You can get more detailed information in the program description.
The car will be presented on Monday, July 2 at the Port.ru anniversary celebration at the Radisson-Slavyanskaya Hotel.
Good luck to you!
Best regards, Port.ru company
http://port.ru