{"id":779,"date":"2005-04-17T12:48:41","date_gmt":"2005-04-17T03:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/04\/17\/angry-emails\/"},"modified":"2005-07-23T16:43:37","modified_gmt":"2005-07-23T07:43:37","slug":"angry-emails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/04\/17\/angry-emails\/","title":{"rendered":"Angry Emails"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently explained my decision to start packaging and distributing my own version of WordPress<\/a> in order to make my life simpler, as to the distribution of Spam Karma 2<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Simultaneously, I had to deal with an outbreak of issues (or more exactly vocalizations on these issues: it’s unlikely the issues have been any more common than before. They were just given more attention on these pages) with Spam Karma 1.<\/p>\n

I have taken the time to write a very detailed response<\/a> to cover all aspects of the False Positives problem, and provide anybody coming to me with a comment denied by Spam Karma, with the Why?<\/em>, How?<\/em> and What Now?<\/em> of their problem. The bottom line being that, while I’m sincerely sorry about these, I am not responsible in the slightest for the use people make of this program (especially considering how easy it is to screw up the install when you hold yourself too smart to read the docs) and even less so now that there is an upgrade available. <\/p>\n

But I care<\/em>, and think I have proven it in the past, to whoever bothered contacting me without resorting to death threats immediately.<\/p>\n

There is, however, one way to make me not<\/em> care about your problem… It goes a little bit like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Act 1 (Exposition):<\/p>\n

\nFrom: ***<\/i><\/b>
\nTo: drdave@infamousgenius.com<\/b>
\n Date: April 16, 2005 8:59:07 PM JST<\/b>
\nReceived: from some AOL customer<\/i> by ***<\/i>.mx.aol.com […]<\/b><\/p>\n

I resent being identified as and accused of being a “nasty comment” spammer. For YOUR information and edification I have never ever, sent or been involved with the sending of ANY spam. To find that I have been blocked\/banned from a site as a result of YOUR program is an affront I won’t stand for. I would refer you to the remarks posted on your BLOG whatever for details of what I originally wroted that was intercepted by your program, and deleted. I fully expect that YOU contact the site administrator of the site I am apparently now banned from and straighten out the problem that YOU and YOUR software are directly responsible for. In the event I do NOT hear from YOU regarding this situation, rest assured I WILL file complaints with the FCC for interception and diversion of lawful communications be it direct or indeirect as a consequence of the code which you wrote and distributed with and for express intent and purpose of intercepting and diverting communications. I am truly sorry there may be issues with SPAM, but that in and of itself does NOT empower YOU or anybody else to interfere with lawful communications, period.
\nSignature removed for the protection of the criminally stupid<\/em><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Act 2:<\/p>\n

\nFrom: drdave@infamousgenius.com<\/b>
\nTo: ***<\/i><\/b>
\nDate: April 16, 2005 9:04:04 PM JST<\/b><\/p>\n

https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wordpress\/spam-karma\/false-positives\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Signature removed for the protection of my own mailbox<\/em><\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Act 3:<\/p>\n

\nFrom: *** (yea: still the same, in case you have difficulties matching his inimitable style)<\/i><\/b>
\nTo: drdave@infamousgenius.com<\/b>
\n Date: April 17, 2005 4:17:05 AM JST<\/b><\/p>\n

https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wordpress\/spam-karma\/false-positives\/<\/a><\/p>\n

??? <\/p>\n

Nothing there justifies, or remediates the fact your program, or version thereof, has unjustifiably filtered out and mislabeled a proper communication, and further mis-identified me as engaging in unlawful conduct. Causing my name and information to be listed and blocked from a site for no reason. <\/p>\n

You wrote the program that filtered my message, that intercepted and deleted such communication, and quite obnoxiously in scope broadly misjudged me to be a malcontent and wrongdoer. <\/p>\n

You authored the accusation casting negative aspersions of my being a nasty comment spammer, which others see and believe to be accurate because a computer program said so, hence must be true regardless of fact. <\/p>\n

I expect you to contact the administrator of the following site and clarify to them that, I am NOT a spammer and, did NOT post, or in this case attempt to post, a nasty comment or spam. That NO evidence involving my attempted posting supports the false-positive finding and accusation against me as set forth by your program. <\/p>\n

[some random blog URL removed]<\/em><\/p>\n

It is not my place to inform users of your program of false-positive discrimination issues, nor my place to remotely mention or suggest altering detection settings as described in your response page. You may disclaim any liability to users of your program for any consequential damage, however, I am not a user, and you cannot go around making and publishing false accusations of unlawful conduct, orcausing to be made and published as your documented program has clearly done. You can’t simply disclaim liability for harm or dismiss collateral damage to third parties as “innocent bystander(s)” caught up in some crusade. <\/p>\n

As a consequence of your actions, direct or indirect, (i.e. the program you wrote and distributed). I have been falsely accused of a malicious and illegal activity (spamming) and unjustly harmed (denied access to a public forum). To whatever extent direct, commission with intent, or indirect, by neglect, error, ommision, or simply inadequate logic [more likely] the net result being the same, significant precedence abounds, it’s wrong. As such I don’t think it unreasonable to expect you to clear up what your program caused. <\/p>\n

Signature removed for the protection of the increasingly criminally stupid<\/em><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Act 4 (Denouement):<\/p>\n

\nFrom: drdave@infamousgenius.com<\/b>
\nTo: ***<\/i><\/b>
\nDate: April 17, 2005 12:50:51 PM JST<\/b><\/p>\n

Dear non-spammer,<\/p>\n

Not only do you seem to be lacking proper reading and cognitive abilities, otherwise you would have realised that this lengthy response I took the time to write (while I probably could have been doing much more enjoyable things, such as sleeping), did<\/em> in fact answer your questions at length, but you are also highly annoying, if only by your constant use of pseudo-legalese verbiage in these highly redundant communications.<\/p>\n

I will draw your attention to the fact that, unlike your completely unreadable emails, I paid particular attention to formulating my own answer in a somewhat easy to grasp, if not easy to read, form.<\/p>\n

While I am certainly prone to much understanding toward whatever tone is employed by people contacting me on the spur of the moment, regarding these matters, my tolerance quickly fades away when it becomes obvious I am not dealing with some reasonable user, justifiably irritated by what he just experienced, yet able to comprehend the matter at hand if explained calmly, but with some perpetually angry and bitter individual, whose entire life seems devoted to bending the world to his liking, through angry communications and the use of big words.<\/p>\n

Your tone and aforementioned use of ridiculously out-of-place paralegal terms, lead me to believe you are one of two things:
\n1) A lawyer or closely associated profession. a US-residing one at that. and quite likely of the ambulance-chaser persuasion too.
\n2) Just one of these thousands random morons inhabiting the US, who dream of suing their way through life and have successfully thwarted any attempt at creativity that has ever come in the past two decades and didn’t have 200 lawyers to back it up.<\/p>\n

The fact that you seem to think you have something of a legal case here, would imply an absolute ignorance of the most basic tenets of the legal system, and therefore: 2). But I’m gonna give you benefit of the doubt and say that, after all, you might be a very stupid lawyer, or more likely, under the delusion that lots of redundant wording and liberal use of UPPER CASE is gonna impress me into sending you a settlement check before I go and personally contact each and every user of my software and remind them that, exactly as the documentation states, this software might<\/em> actually stop a commenter that, despite their obvious lack of manners and potentially sub-average IQ, is not, in any way attempting to spam.<\/p>\n

Well guess what? I am not very impressed. nor scared.<\/p>\n

So please feel free to get in touch with my lawyer, but please be sure to bring an interpreter, because he only speaks Japanese. and he hates Americans too.<\/p>\n

Just because you seem to be into that kind of legal grassfucking, allow me to remind you that we are talking about a software that is distributed with the explicit mention of “AS IS” and “WITH NO IMPLICATION OF LIABILITY WHATSOEVER” (see, I can use all caps too).<\/p>\n

As to why your comment was stopped, since you might still be curious about that one (and probably didn’t bother to read through the link above, where you might have found an answer to that question):<\/p>\n

Why I’d love to say there’s some sort of design in there to detect and thwart any attempt at commenting based on the IQ of the commenter. It’d be both exaggerating my skills as a developer and insulting the numerous other courteous and reasonable people whose comment happened to be stopped by mistake on any other occasion… Therefore I’ll give you the quick and entirely accurate answer: you are an AOL user<\/strong> (and while I can see how this might sound like a confirmation of the initial IQ-based filter theory, let me assure you there is nothing but the simplest of technology involved here, and this particular aspect is fully documented in SK’s manual).<\/p>\n

To conclude this waste of 20 perfectly fine minutes of a beautiful sunny Sunday (well, at least in my corner of the world. Judging by your attitude, I suspect you might not be experiencing the same warm Spring weather, wherever you are hailing from), I will hereby kindly inform you that a properly anonymized version of this exchange will be gracing the pages of my own website, as you are reading this. There again if you feel like legally objecting to this, feel free to contact my lawyer: he is definitely worth getting acquainted with (ask him to tell you these great stories of how, as a child during the war, he used to be sent on vacation to Hiroshima island with his sister)…<\/p>\n

Otherwise, please accept my sincerest apologies regarding your misfortune and receive my complete assurance that I will do absolutely nothing about it.<\/p>\n

Oh yea, and do<\/em> get a life.<\/p>\n

Karmically Yours,
\nSignature removed for the protection of my own mailbox<\/em><\/cite>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, to quote one of my most eminent role-model<\/a> in life: This conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.<\/em><\/p>\n

Update:<\/b> Because who doesn’t like a clich\u00e9 movie-ending twist where the supposedly dead-and-buried evil guy springs back to life for a last fright<\/s> laugh, you can check out the epilogue in the comments<\/a>….<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An angry reader writes. We respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-fucked-up-world","category-wordpress-tweaking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}