What it is to be human
September 24th 2007 -
As it is a Monday, we should start our whole-body exercises gently. Here, Mr Rabbit demonstrates a simple relaxing exercise. Remember to close your eyes and think of birds or fish.
Speaking of semi-sentient entities, and despite Marco’s skepticism, I’m pretty sure these are humans at clickbank:
“I think we should all try to help our fellow human beings,who are trying to make a living online. I’m a human, really I am! Bad robots, bad! Hee, Hee.I enjoyed reading your article.”
I’d certainly be amused (and impressed) if this was a spambot, but I’m not going to do a word-jumble humanity-checker because I really think that’s just going to let some of the spammers in. It’s easy enough to sort the friends from the spam at the moment. I don’t think I’m missing much.
OK, a hypothetical question for the clickbankers, then:
You’re in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?
Mr Teufel Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
I’m hungry. I want tortoise soup. But I’m too chicken to break the poor thing’s neck.
PS: I don’t think I’m a clickbanker. But maybe I’m one but was programmed to think I was human?
:)
Lexifab Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Ha! Double ha!
(Also, I didn’t help the tortoise because the stupid bugger shouldn’t be in the desert anyway. And because altruism does not compute).
Marco Parigi Says:
September 24th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Why don’t you put a fuzzy picture up and let through spammers that describe what it is correctly?
Marco Parigi Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 6:53 am
I don’t think I’m missing much.
I think you are (time and angst sorting the mail out). There was a reasonable and growing amount of suss comments in my blog, and not a single one since the blocker. Dr Clam woud concur as well. The only reason I wouldn’t put the blocker on is because it means less comments overall, with some desired commenters frustrated out of commenting. If it’s friends and relatives only anyway, that point is moot.
admin Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Were you getting comments from clickbank? I agree with you in general – I have certainly received comments as you describe, definitely generated by spambots with rudimentary pattern analysis and templates to sound as though they’re responding to posts – but the clickbank posts are a level more sophisticated than that. And, as I mentioned before, a few of the posts are *definitely* from humans.
Marco Parigi Says:
September 25th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Unless I’m missing something, all of the quotes you’ve mentioned are in no way convincing to me. I did get an occasional clickbank on a blog that I had forgotten about – yes. But not a sausage since the filter.
dri Says:
September 26th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Ahahahahaa, I am so loving Mr Rabbit’s head exercises. In a strange coincidence, I found myself doing exactly this exercise in court this morning. Am most gratified to find I was actually exercising and not being a silly bugger as I had thought.
Hee. I could watch him all day. *bobs and waves*