One of the things I find surprising, is that in all of the virus mail I have gotten, (at the rate of 10-20 or more per hour now), none of the senders appeared to be a celebrity.
Now, I know that is an odd thing to look for, but there ya go. You would think, since there is no more than 6 degrees of separation between each of us and Kevin Bacon that a virus trolling thru one after another address book, would eventually find Kevin Bacon, or Pam Anderson and send me a virus mail using their address as sender.
Now if I actually got one, I don't know yet what I would do with it, but if it was Pam's (or Jolene's!) I might be inclined to write and suggest I can help her with her virus problems and offer to go visit. Kevin's I would probably chuck.
But I wonder what it means that we don't have any celebrity virus mail. Are there more than 6 degrees of separation? Do they have better virus protection in Hollywood than the rest of us? Maybe they don't use e-mail at all? Maybe they use pseudonyms or their original names to hide their identity. Like Tony Curtis using Bernie Schwartz. So perhaps I have gotten virus mail from Madonna, but didn't realize that Louise Veronica Ciccone was her. It's possible that if I got one from Jacko@neverneverland.com, I wouldn't believe it really was from the gloved one.
Well pseudonyms are plausible as an excuse for the biggest celebrities, but I suspect there are large numbers of celebrities (sports, authors, etc.) that wouldn't use a pseudonym. I can't see Johnny Cochrane for example, hiding his identity. Probably a virus from him would rhyme:
We like our mails to have some charm,
But sometimes they contain a virus,
So if in fact this mail does harm,
Let's sue the hacker, please hire us.
Johnny Cochrane
How come I don't see viruses coming ostensibly from politicians or well-known government officials or at least their offices? They send out enough mail...
Instead people get viruses from weird names like i18nguy, and bluedscrewedandtattooed31. Something is funny here, but I can not yet put my finger on it. Maybe there is a first class network,and we are all riding (or writing) coach...
Viruses would be more tolerable if they were coming from celebrities. I would love to get a mail from Gore Vidal, or Buzz Aldrin. Heck, if I got one, I might even forward the virus to friends to show them!
Copyright © 2003 Tex Texin. All rights reserved.
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