Fun with Spammers

From the Kalsey Group:

Somehow my email address has ended up on a list used by low-end tech bodyshops. The type of recruiters that exist only to place warm H-1Bs in short-term Oracle DBA contracts for $10 an hour. The list is sold, given, or rented to a number of bottom-feeding headhunters.

...

The only good thing about these emails is that most of the bodyshops sending them out are located in California. Since I’m also in California, I can take advantage of California spam laws that entitle the offended party (me) to $50 per message or actual damages, up to $25,000 per day.

So I invoice them. Usually they ignore the invoices and continue spamming me. Once I remind them of the several thousand dollars that they owe, the spamming usually stops. [_Go_]

Makes me wonder if we should put into Inbox Buddy a "Auto Invoicing" feature.  Hrm....

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Command Line PHP

Since I was doing this yesterday, I appreciated this pointer from Keith (who also helpfully has links to Lord of the Rings Reviews) [_Go_]

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Simon on Font Resizing -- And the UI Errors in Browsers

As the originator (as far as I know) of the term "FontBitch", for web designers that needlessly impose unsizable fonts on the rest of us, I really like what Simon has to say here:

I find it extremely annoying that modern browsers consistently hide their basic text resizing options - IE 3 got it right by including an increase/decrease text size button in the main toolbar by default but browsers since then have all conspired to hide the option in a menu where it is far less likely to be found by casual browser users. [_Go_]

There's lots and lots of other good stuff in this posting.  Thanks Simon!

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PHPEclipse

Wow.  I guess that others have seen this but not me.  A PHP Eclipse plugin to make Eclipse into a PHP IDE.  While I'm not an IDE fan, this is good news for those that are since Eclipse keeps getting good reviews.  Hebig has more on this as well as a link to an O'Reilly Eclipse tutorial. [_Go_]

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Wanted: Small Independent Developers

PoorButHappy is putting together a list of "small, independent developers" that "live off their software".  He only as three entries but there have to be more.  If you know of any then you should send them to him since this is an interesting exercise to say the least.  [_Go_]

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Outstanding!  Copycoditis

This is just excellent!  We've all seen this.  But Kasia has the cure ... Follow the link for more.  It's fast and guaranteed to work in almost all cases.

Copycoditis

Main Entry: copy·co·di·tis
Pronunciation: "kä-pE-co-'dI-t&s
Function: noun
Date: December 19, 2002
: inflammation of the programmer caused by a previous programmer copy-pasting code from another source without actually bothering to read or check what said code does. May also include inflammation due to comments from copied code no longer applying to new code yet left in for confusion purposes. [_Go_]

Kasia also has good comments about JavaDoc -- which are really generalizable to any type of source code comments.  [_Go_]

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JoeUser: Whining from the Free Beer Crowd

JoeUser has some good comments on those "open source advocates" that always want "something for nothing" i.e. that free software is somehow morally superior to commercial software.  I don't think I've ever taken that position.  I don't see anything morally superior about Open Source -- to me Open Source is very much about a more open engineering process that leads to better software.  Like Open Source or not -- the types of software it produces, while not perfect, tend to be of greater quality -- results may vary, and as with commercial software, Open Source can produce crappy stuff.  But when it works the results are outstanding (Apache, Mozilla, SendMail, Linux, BSD, PHP).  [_Go_]

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Paying off Debts -- When You Can't

Scoble cites some tips I gave him in an email about how you go about paying off debts -- even when you really can't.  If anyone wants to hear more then leave a comment and I'll formally write it up.  But a lot of what I said to him is actually right there.  Thanks Man for writing it up! [_Go_]

Oh and Scoble seems to be back and blogging regularly. That's good news for all of us who like to be "scobleized".  (Scoble is one of my favorite blogs). [_Go_]

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Did Your Blog Cost You Your Job?

Ouch!

One woman, a Web designer who asked that her name not be used, said she lost her job because of what she wrote on her Web log.

She was summoned to her supervisor's office to discuss the narratives -- often derogatory -- that she'd written about her company and co-workers. Although it doesn't say so on her Web site, the blog is mostly fiction, consisting of veiled references and often composites of people, she said.

After the meeting, she thought she'd succeeded in escaping with merely a slap on the wrist. "We talked about it and resolved things, and I was never going to talk about work on my Web site again," she said. "I was under the impression everything was okay."

Two days later, she was fired. "I was shocked that they would take it seriously," she said, "and that little old me with this little old Web site would cause such a stir."  [_Go_]

Makes you realize why some folks choose to blog anonymously.

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