26 February 2006

Quiz

I received the following e-mail today from joldford@strato.com:

hello jason orendorff,
If you don't mind me asking are you a programer by profession? I noticed Microsoft has new Visual programming products, it is hyped for easier, quicker, more affordable programing, are you familiar with it? http://msdn.microsoft.com/developercenters/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/
Do you freelance (independently write, produce, or make) any desktop programs for Windows 98, XP? Or Mac?
Regards,
John Oldford

The question is, is this spam?

2 comments:

jto said...

Answer: of course it is, but it took me a lot longer to decide for this one than for most other spam e-mails. My spam filter is smart enough to figure out most of them, and most of the rest I don't even have to open.

Ultimately the problem will be undecidable. This suggests an interesting "lesser Turing test": give a program a link to someone's blog; it composes an e-mail and wins if the recipient responds.

Jim Jinkins said...

Borderline.

If you ask the guy not send any more emails like that, and continue to receive them, then he is a spammer; and Microsoft is either his sponsor or his victim.