Gosh, I Wonder if this Is Legit

This shows up today in my Yahoo Mail:

It so happens that I do know, slightly a Jerry Caliendo. But it also so happens that, except for one or two social-media exchanges in which I attempted to determine if we're related, I’ve had no traffic with him. He’s not in any of my address books—certainly not my Yahoo address book—nor is it terribly likely he has my Yahoo address either. So the genesis of this pretty unimaginative bit of phishing (for, cynic that I am, I believe it to be Not Entirely on the Up-and-Up) is a mystery. Could be one of those viruses that gets into an address book, then sends to everyone in the address book but makes it look like it’s coming from a different address in the same book. Had that happen at a workplace some years ago. Not fun. Everyone is mad at you because “you” have a virus, and why aren't “you” doing anything about it? Of course, in that job, someone was always mad about something. Or, often, nothing at all. 

But I digress. 

One has to assume that if an acquaintance was in fact sending a link to 60+ addresses, he or she might preface it with some kind of introduction. Especially since the link purports to belong to a French entity. And for heaven’s sake, why can’t the phisher be bothered to come up with some imaginative bogus supposed address? As I have complained before, it’s like these guys aren’t even trying anymore. It may well be, as I keep reading, that these scammers are growing more and more sophisticated, but they seem to be growing less and less creative. And if they can’t be bothered to come up with something interesting, then I can’t be bothered to put my computer at risk by clicking on their link. 

Come on, people—it’s a two-way street!

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Men of Steel

Here is a photo of the actor Kirk Alyn as Superman in the 1948 Columbia serial Superman; Alyn also appeared in its 1950 sequel, Atom Man vs. Superman.

I mention this because, in all of the hullabaloo about Man of Steel, which had its premiere today, one keeps reading references to George Reeves as the “original” screen Superman. Not just in fanboy blogs, either: a Salon article about the “curse” of Superman movies leads off by calling Reeves “the first actor to portray the beloved superhero on the screen”, and my childhood chum and fellow comic-book aficionado tells me that Entertainment Weekly commits the same sin.


If only there was some way to, I dunno, check facts before publishing articles. If only there was some resource to which one might turn to look up such information, perhaps some kind of movie database on the internet. If only the writers of such articles had sense enough to pause for a moment and ask themselves if what they “know” is in fact at all accurate. If only editors would examine articles with jaundiced eye. If only publishers would view fact-checkers as essential to their business, not extravagent frills that fall to the axe during the first round of budget cuts.

If only...

I am very fond of George Reeves; for me and most of my peer group of the so-called Silver Age of Comics, Reeves is Superman, even more than Christopher Reeve, and likely always will be. But to carelessly claim he was the first filmic Superman is just plain wrong, and does a disservice to Kirk Alyn. Reeves did not step into the cape until the 1951 feature film, Superman and the Mole Men, which served as a kind of pilot film to the TV series Adventures of Superman, which aired the following year.

Were one of such a mind (as I shared with my aforementioned childhood chum yesterday), one could in fact make the case that radio actor and announcer Bud Collyer was in fact the screen’s first Superman: Having voiced the character and his alter ego on the radio series The Adventures of Superman, beginning in 1940, Collyer provided the voice of Superman and Clark Kent in a series of cartoons that began in 1941. (Collyer reprised the dual roles in 1960s Saturday morning cartoons.) Although of course never seen in the Superman role, one might claim that Collyer was the first to portray the character.

However, I am content to give the credit to Kirk Alyn. It is, after all, where the credit is due.

Meanwhile, I perceive that I am sounding a little like someone from The Big Bang Theory. Sorry about that. My point here is more about getting facts straight that showing off my comic-book geekiness. But whatever works.

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Apostrophe Catastrophe, pt. 2

Words are insufficient to express how much I detest this sort of thing:

Not the ’70s per se, but rather the typographical dumbness and/or inexcusable laziness inherent in having the apostrophe in such instances going the wrong way.

For once, uncomfortably, I have to put myself among the Blame the Computer crowd. Specifically, I blame “helpful” applications that insert legitimate quotation marks and apostrophes into our sentences. That and dumbness and laziness (see above).

For the most part, I appreciate having " and " turned into “ and ”, but the problem arises when the program gets to ' and ’. See, Word, PhotoShop, InDesign, etc., don't know an apostrophe from a single quote mark. So it looks for cues from the structure of a sentence. If it guesses that the user wants single quotes around a sentence, or a word or words within a sentence, it will correctly produce something like this:

“The quick brown fox jumps over the ‘lazy’ dog.”

Good enough. Likewise, when the program detects a single quote mark within a word, it correctly deduces an apostrophe is the order of the day:

“The quick brown fox’s kits jump over the ‘lazy’ dog.”

But things go entirely off the rails when those sentence cues don’t hold. For instance, a couple of paragraphs ago, when I wrote “ and ” ? I had to go back and make sure the second quotation mark curved the right direction. Good ol’ Microsoft Word wanted to give me “ and “ … because the space after and made the program thing it was the beginning of a sentence, phrase, or word. It gave me the right quotation mark, but in the wrong context.

And when I wrote good ol’ Microsoft Word back there? Word correctly determined that I needed an apostrophe in ol’, since it indicates a missing letter, and delivered the goods. But it—and nearly any other program you’d care to name—gives out entirely when it comes to something like Welcome to the ’70s. It’s the space in front of ’70s that throws it, making it think that a single quote mark is needed rather than an apostrophe. And it delivers the wrong goods.

The fix is really very easy: You type ‘’70s --> , and then go back and delete the --> ‘. Alas, computers have convinced a great many people that anyone who can use turn one on is a writer, editor, designer, typographer, you name it, and so a great many people who don’t know the difference between ‘ and ’ – and are too ignorant to know they don’t know – are misusing left-hand single quote marks as apostrophes. Luckily, it’s almost certain that a majority of their readers or viewers don’t know the difference either. But for those of us who do…nails on a blackboard.

That said: Kudos to the designer of the image above, or a semi-astute editor or art director, for not sticking an apostrophe before the s in ’70s. If ‘70s is like nails on a blackboard, ‘70’s would be like an icepick in the ear.

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Hint: It's 100%

This from today’s edition of the local rag. I’m no doctor, but...

Perhaps a Very Distant Relative

This is not the first time I’ve noticed that Salon’’s “related stories” link is almost always entirely unrelated to the article I’’ve just read; it’s just the most recent.

The article in question (this time) is Scientists release most precise date of dinosaur extinction. And it’’s an interesting read. Interesting enough that one might, in fact, be inclined to read more on the subject--which, presumably, is what a “related stories” link would be for.

But not in Salon’’s world, where, apparently “related stories” really means “other, completely unrelated stories.” Behold the three items it initially displays:

• Brooklyn muralist immortalizes Internet martyrs;
• When Facebook broke the Web;
• The car that cost $1.4 million to repair.

Not a dinosaur among ’’em.

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The Fine Print

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Ah, yes. What balderdash. I observe that an increasing number of e-mail messages—including those that come from individuals, not institutions—carry some variant of the above twaddle.  I rather suspect that such disclaimers carry no weight whatsoever, in a legal sense. If they do, then shame on us, since the little paragraph above has no meaning whatsoever. Consider:

The message is “…for the sole use of the intended recipient(s)”….  And how, pray, is one to know who the Intended Recipient(s) is or are? The above sample is one that I copied from a message received this past week (with the exciting subject line “CONFIDENTIAL”). It was sent from an individual to a short list of individuals that, obviously, included me. My name, my Mac address. May I not safely conclude from that that I am an Intended Recipient? I mean, my address and everything!

“Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”

But soft! “Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited.” Clearly this means that if I am not an Intended Recipient I may not “review” (i.e., read) the message, yes? How, then, am I to determine that I am not an Intended Recipient? The fact that it’s addressed to me would seem to indicate so. But how can I be certain without a “review” of the item in question?

So, throwing all caution to the wind, I plunge into the body of the message. Which begins with the salutation “Brethren.”

Ugh.

I have encountered this before. Somewhere in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, my e-mail address has become attached to an Elder who shares a name with me. In bygone times I would respond to such misaddressed missives (I imagine I’ve written about that in the past, but I’ve no time to go through the archives at the moment), but I discovered that people not only could not be bothered to acknowledge their error, they could not be bothered to correct it. I know I have written about the woman who habitually gives people my address instead of hers (she seems to have left out a letter), and how I one replied to all of the misdirected messages from her friends, encouraging them to update their address books—only to receive no reply…except for more misaddressed notes!  (Oddly the only exception to this rudeness/stupidity has come from businesses to which the woman in question has sloppily given the wrong address.)

Along those lines, I responded, in the early days, to e-mail from various LDS persons, politely encouraging them to correct their address books. No reply, ever. So I quit replying. Not my fault if their message fails to reach one of their Intended Recipient(s).

And speaking of: So now I am into the “Brethren” message (which contains, following a brief greeting, the peculiar line, “I think that I have spoken live with each of you.” Spoken live. Still deciphering that one), and must conclude that I am not one of the Intended Recipient(s). For one thing, the sender has not Spoken Live to me, nor Spoken Unlive to me, nor Spoken Any Other Way to me. For another, he says, “I continue to look to raise a lot of money,” which immediately tells me he isn’t talking to me—although he goes on to say that this lot of money must not come from “members of the Church,” which is intriguing and suspicious enough that I was momentarily inclined to reply. (“You know, I speak live to a lot of people, so refresh my memory about what we spoke live about before…”)

So now I am in clear violation of the disclaimer, for I would seem not to be an Intended Recipient, and yet I have “reviewed” the message, unauthorizedly, which the disclaimer says I can’t do. Or maybe that was on the mattress tag. I’m losing track.

What am I to do? Clearly I can’t unread what I have already read. I know this bloke is eager to raise “a lot of money” from “those who share the passion and who are NOT members of the Church”; I am unlikely to forget that any time soon. The disclaimer says I am to report my transgression to the sender. But I’m pretty sure that violates my Fifth Amendment rights, so I’m not going there. Also, I’m tired of trying to do the right thing by people who are too fucking rude to acknowledge the effort or change their behavior, so that’s out.

The instructions go on to say that I must now “destroy all copies of the original message.” Exactly how I am supposed to do that? For one thing, the “original message” by definition resides with the sender. Am I to break into his house and destroy his computer? Maybe the “original” isn’t even on his computer—maybe it’s on a server somewhere. Am I to hack into the system and determine the location of the host, then travel to wherever it may be and destroy its server farm? And even then I am left with the quandary inherent in the command to “destroy all copies of the original message.” In my world, there can be only one “original”—everything else, by definition, is a copy, not an original. So which am I to destroy? The original? Or copies of the original? If the latter, we have a big problem, since there are apt to be dozens, if not more, floating around in cyberspace. Maybe they’re hanging around various servers that handled the message en route to its Intended Recipient(s).  Finding and destroying all traces could take decades.

And what of those Intended Recipient(s)? They have copies! I presume I must break into their homes and offices and destroy their machines as well! And their ISPs’ servers!

And what about “disclosure,” which the disclaimer also prohibits? How am I to know whether they disclosed the e-mail’s contents? How am I to know whether any such disclosure was “authorized”? And if they did disclose, what is the penalty? And who is to undertake it? The disclaimer implies that it is my responsibility…but I’m not supposed to have read the message in the first place!

Which obviously means…I shouldn’t have read the disclaimer either.

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What's This Doing in My Spam Folder?

Why in the world does Yahoo Mail think that great stuff like this is spam?

Who knows how many other important opportunities I’ve been missing out on?

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