Ohanlon Basketba Vermilli

August 21, 2003 8:14 AM

Kook; thickhea having mermenta: cockeyed Follow the links and see if you can figure it out. I can't.
posted by oissubke (20 comments total)

Previously.
posted by jjg at 8:19 AM on August 21, 2003

Isn't this one of those things that gets spambots stuck in a neverending search...............

On preview

I guess it is..........
posted by davehat at 8:21 AM on August 21, 2003

I've seen this before, elsewhere. Random text and links. Very odd. Try it with other text.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:21 AM on August 21, 2003

Muffins having peaches may maplelea or arrido, mustang;

Makes perfect sense to me; I don't know what your problem is.
posted by Shane at 8:31 AM on August 21, 2003

I can't
What is with the site's color; red neon, then lime green neon...need sunglasses to read it.
posted by thomcatspike at 8:41 AM on August 21, 2003

wow, to think that a MeFite has discovered lost manuscript's of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
posted by Pericles at 9:13 AM on August 21, 2003

i got an email today that read like that. i see the point of spambot tarpits, but what's with the email? fragment follows:

breakable powderpuff 7th
borrows howsomever scabrous
illume bodice image
a&p acted boat
maximized theocracy plower
bosonic identities tasks
courtyard andes pompey
posted by andrew cooke at 9:24 AM on August 21, 2003

andrew cooke, are you part of some kind of cryptic crossword email ring, perhaps?
posted by asok at 9:30 AM on August 21, 2003

I got an email like that, too. I suspect it's an attempt to foil spam filters?
posted by Fenriss at 9:35 AM on August 21, 2003

At the top level it says it's for email harvesters:

http://www.windl.at
posted by ukamikanasi at 9:42 AM on August 21, 2003

breakable powderpuff 7th
borrows howsomever scabrous
illume bodice image
a&p acted boat
maximized theocracy plower
bosonic identities tasks
courtyard andes pompey

Ahh, sweet poetry...
posted by Shane at 9:56 AM on August 21, 2003

that e-mail was more than likely sent by a spammer trying to validate an e-mail list by waiting for bounce messages
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 10:07 AM on August 21, 2003

andrew cooke: I'd wager that it's an attempt to weaken Bayesian spam filters by forging associations between those words and spam. Just a guess, though.
posted by ptermit at 10:38 AM on August 21, 2003

Clearly, the fledging communication attempts by the first true artificial intelligence, finding itself born among the wires. Call Gibson.
posted by adameft at 10:58 AM on August 21, 2003

see if you can figure it out. I can't.

That's because you were educated stupid. I myself found the portal gunk lichen borkborkbork.
posted by WolfDaddy at 11:20 AM on August 21, 2003

Possible failed attempt at Hamlet?
posted by sixpack at 11:25 AM on August 21, 2003

Answer: here. It's a bunch of random garbage to slow down spam spiders. (hence the "My link for email collectors ..." link.
posted by eyeballkid at 12:40 PM on August 21, 2003

)( or what jjg said)
posted by eyeballkid at 12:41 PM on August 21, 2003

if they were trying to filter dead addresses why not send out spam anyway? they'd get the same bounce information, but also possible business (this message had no payload - neither advert nor virus).

the bayesian idea makes a bit of sense, but only if they knew enough about filtering to think of the idea, but not enough to see that it wouldn't work (imho: one noisy message amongst thousands).

i'm going with the cryptic crossword list...

[ps i've just been checking my trash folders - i got another, without the "poetic" formatting, that was caught by a blacklist. weird]
posted by andrew cooke at 1:43 PM on August 21, 2003

...but even if spambots get stuck in the tarpit, the email addresses they'll harvest from en route seem quite plausible & could easily be real.

Eg, on this page there's mweiss /at/ hotmail.com & mfuchs /at/ hotmail.com.

Am I missing something which would prevent these being harvested? Or does the author just need to randomise email addresses a little more?
posted by infravires at 8:11 AM on August 22, 2003