Matthew Yglesias wants an iPod that doubles as a mobile phone. Doesn’t everyone?

The latest trend in comment spam, at least on my blog, is self-referential stuff of the form

2 much spam in here 😦

The links appear to be to sites that try to download viruses or spyware as .exe files (having a Mac, I’m largely immune, so I sometimes do risky things like clicking on dubious links).

It’s not the death penalty as demanded by Stephen Landsburg for hackers, but the nine-year sentence handed down to megaspammer Jeremy Jaynes should mark the beginning of the end for spammers physically located in the US. But that’s small comfort, since spam can be sent from anywhere. A less mobile target can be found in the businesses that ultimately sell stuff through spam. These include some very large firms indeed.

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If you’ve spent any time around the blogosphere, or looking at thinktank websites, you’ll be aware that the following opinions tend to go together:

* widespread ownership of guns saves lives

* tobacco smoke is harmless (if not to smokers then to anyone who breathes it second-hand)

* global warming is a myth

There’s not too much mystery about this. The kinds of characteristics that would encourage the adoption of any one of these beliefs (make your own list) obviously encourage the others. What’s surprising to me is how frequently, at least among thinktanks these opinions are correlated with support for Microsoft, and, more particularly, denunciation of open-source software.
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Among the offerings in today’s special edition of TidBITS, the long-running online Macintosh magazine, I found this item particularly appealing.

Canned Spam Can Can Spam with CAN-SPAM — Hormel is expected to announce today their campaign to can spam using their canned Spam with the aid of the CAN-SPAM legislation. Starting today, Hormel will print the phone number, email addresses, and other information about unsolicited email senders on cans of Spam along the lines of the “Have you seen me?” photographs published on milk cartons. Canned Spam buyers who help to can spam by canning spammers can receive cans of Spam as a reward.

Other important news includes a report that the US Department of Homeland Security is responding to the threat of Windows-specific cyberterrorism, most notably through Trojans such as Phatbot by standardising on Macs.

Microsoft’s core business is under attack

Matt at Bright Cold Day posted a couple of weeks ago on A function I wish Microsoft Word had, and set up this impressive mockup

A cool post, but I can just imagine how this would actually turn out. The function would be set on by default. Adjectives would be inserted based on some lookup function derived from a database of purple passages. In the manner of Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss, it would turn short, stubby sentences into elegant multi-topic ones. Before long, the world would be overwhelmed in Redmond’s idea of scintillating prose.

Update Kieran Healy tempts fate with an even more ambitious wish. I suspect that anyone granted the wish of a boss mind-reading function would be doomed to endless administrative work.

My occasional correspondent, Graeme Bond, is as far as I know, the only other person in Australia to have pointed out in public (and in advance) that the Y2K panic was based on patently spurious arguments.

Not surprisingly, Graeme is also a sceptic about cyberterrorism and sent me this link to a story headed ASIO slams cyberterror ‘hype’. I’ve been a sporadic reader of The Crypt Newsletter, a debunker of computer-related panics, and can particularly recommend this story on how U.S. infowar commandos smuggled a deadly computer virus into Iraq inside a printer. Set to go off on April 1 of course.

UpdateLooking over my files, I realise that I forgot to mention Stewart Fist of The Australian who also debunked Y2K , and whose judgement in matters technological is usually reliable. Feel free to remind me of others I’ve omitted.

I just got my new version of iTunes which lets you connect directly to the Apple Music Store and download songs at $US0.99 a pop. Except that I got this message

The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews (sic), but you won’t be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States.

This is putting Australians on the same level as (gasp …) Windows users.