HT: Editorial

Right, so what am I ranting about? Well... Monet and the information superhiway. Do the two go together? Does anyone care? Of course not. You just want me to rant about porn and sleaze and bombs and things, which, I will do... but in time my dears, in time.

As someone once said, "There is no such thing as a free lunch" and on the internet, well, that is more than true isn't it? Almost every piece of junk mail we recieve promise so much for nothing... and yet... every piece fails completely to deliver.

Hands up if you haven't received one of the 1001 variations upon this theme - the main variation usually being the names on top of the list... and the number of ways it tries to say "this is not illegal... this is the greatest money making scheme in the world"

When this works, why does it work? Simply, it is because people are stupid. But only certain people. Americans. Now before you start complaining about stereotypical behaviour patterns being applied to a whole continent based on the actions of a few dumb asses... well... I know that, you know that. But, where did these chain letters originate? Where are the majority of addresses on the lists based ? How many people believe something which states in, perhaps, its first line "This is not illegal"...

Yes, American's are stupid. But not all, no. Some are cunning. Some prey on the stupidity of their fellow Americans. Of course, the Clinching arguement about the stupidity, is the way that they blind mail thses schemes off. They send them to the four corners of the world. Of course, had they any inteligence at all, they would realise how pointless it is. Should someone, say in the UK, respond to the list - the cost in converting the one English pound (more than 1 US dollar) into dollars would incur so much cost, that the whole transaction would not be worth it.

Of course, it is not just the pyramid schemes that are this stupid. We have the companies, who sell a unique product or service to a small area, and yet choose to flood the mailboxes of everyone all over the world. Why do they do this? They should realise that the majority of the addresses on their lists do not want to recieve such things. What use is a New Jersey Tree Felling service to someone in Egypt... should they respond, the cost for the company to fly over far in exceeds any profit they could be making.

Then we have porn. What you may, or may not, realise is that there are a large number of Adult Check organisations set up who provide a service. They charge around 10 to 20 dollars per year (usually) and this allows you to access any adult site protected by the service. However, there are so many different services, and so many different sites, that to access everything you would have to pay a small fortune.

So, how do they get people to visit them? Well. They advertise the web site as being free. Now, as far too much of the 'net is filled up with horny young men... obviously these said men decend quite quickly upon the free web page full of porn. However, upon reaching there, they see the "This page is protected by Blah Blah Blah" so they click the little how do I get access link to find that they have to supply credit card details and pay for their free access.

Now while we're not for censorship of the net ... but equally, not against measures to provent minors from accessing things they shouldn't... we think that this is wrong - and, were the schemes not all american, against the law. Why? Well, in England we have something called the "advertising standards authority" which has a simple rule, that "everything an advert says, must be true." which basically means, if an advert says "this is free" and makes no reference at all to payment - even for postage (in the case of postal mail) then the item being advertised is free. Now, like most people, I have recieved hundreds of pieces of junk mail advertising Free XXX sites which, in fact require a passing over of money from me, to them. Unfortunately, the majority are sent by fake people. By those who steal the names of others - or use names that do not in fact exist! So how can we report these people to the advertising standards authority? We can do nothing. Nothing.

And, that, I'm afraid is about the size of it. Stupidity, money grabbing oppertunists. We hate them. Of course, they prey on the terminally stupid, which is mostly American in origin... but, to not alienate too many american readers, this is to be expected isn't it? There is a set number of stupid people per 100 heads of people. Lets say, for example, it is a figure between 5 and 25 percent... say 15. That is, for every 100 people, there is 15 stupid people. Now, lets put that into a table, because I like drawing tables and they make things so much easier to understand.

Table showing the relative number of stupid people per country
Country	Population	Stupid people
United Kingdom	58,306,000	38,870
Taiwan	21,100,000	14,066
France	58,285,000	38,856
USA	263,563,000	175,708

Do you see what I mean? Simply because they have far more people than most other places, they have far more stupid people (this is without doing any complicated weighting of the figures based on environmental or other stimulae) - of course, they also have more inteligent people... which is where we came in. Inteligent people making money from the poor and stupid.

Rantz