...making Linux just a little more fun!
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
The Irish is so bad it can only have come from Google Translate, but it's fun to see spam in my (native? no, that implies first; national?) language.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Francis Tyers <ftyers@prompsit.com> To: TAG <tag@lists.linuxgazette.net> Date: 2010/8/6 Subject: [Fwd: 100% F?IL IASACHTA R?tha?ocht] To: joregan at gmail.com Cc: mlf at dlsi.ua.es
My first spam in Irish. :D
Fran
---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From:?john smith <jsjohnsmith.loanfirm at gmail.com> > To: > Date:?Fri, 6 Aug 2010 10:41:00 -0700 > Subject:?100% F?IL IASACHTA R?tha?ocht > Dia duit a chara, > > T?imid ag Christian Eagra?ocht a buna?odh chun cuidi? le daoine i > riachtanais Cuid?onn, den s?rt sin mar go gcabhr?idh airgeadais. Mar > sin m? t? t? ag dul tr?d an deacracht airgeadais n? m? t? t? in aon > praiseach airgeadais, agus t? ag cist? g? chun t?s a chur le do ghn? > f?in, n? is g? duit iasacht a shocr? do bhfiacha n? do bhill? a ?oc, > as t?s a chur le gn? deas, n? go bhfuil sibh ag baint s? deacair a > fh?il ar iasacht ? na bainc cheannais chaipitil ?iti?la, d?an > teagmh?il linn inniu tr?d an r?omhphost jsjohnsmith.loanfirm at gmail.com > an b?obla "a deir Luke 11:10 ag gach duine a fhaigheann iarrann; s? ag > iarraidh a fhaigheann; agus chun ? a bhuaileann, beidh an doras a > oscailt" . Mar sin n? lig an deis seo a th?ann t? ag toisc go bhfuil > ?osa mar an gc?anna inn?, inniu, agus n?os m? go deo. Le do thoil ? > seo do Dhaoine ar eagla minded agus Dia tromch?iseacha .. > > > T? t? comhairle a l?onadh agus na sonra? th?os .. ais > Do Ainm :______________________ > Do Seoladh :____________________ > Do T?r :____________________ > Do Gairm :__________________ > Iasacht M?id g? :______________ > Fad :____________________ Iasachta > :__________________ Ioncam M?os?il > Uimhir f?n Cell :________________ > Maidir is Fearr > > > John Smith.
-- <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil. <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.
Breen Mullins [bpm at sdf.org]
* Jimmy O'Regan <joregan at gmail.com> [2010-08-06 18:53 +0100]:
>The Irish is so bad it can only have come from Google Translate, but >it's fun to see spam in my (native? no, that implies first; national?) >language. >
Jimmy, I'm sure you've seen this one from the Language Log, but others may be amused:
==== Quadrilingual Garbage
This notice on the window of a shop selling a very special type of life-extending egg in Hakone, Japan vies for the worst signage translation we've ever seen.[...] ==== http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2526
It's an alarming example of what can happen out there in the wild (so to speak).
Breen
-- Breen Mullins bpm at sdf.org
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 06:53:38PM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> The Irish is so bad it can only have come from Google Translate, but > it's fun to see spam in my (native? no, that implies first; national?) > language.
Jimmy, I didn't realize that Irish wasn't your first language. Is that normal in Ireland, or was there some unusual circumstance involved?
One of the things I've been doing - not as any formal project, but just a loose visualization - is keeping a mental map of where spam comes from and the sophistication level (which definitely has a per-country component to it.) I've also found it interesting to see how fast, or how slowly, that level of sophistication changes: the Chinese, for example, don't seem to ever get beyond the "The weather here is wonderful. We make stuff; buy it from us. Thank you" level. The Nigerians have kept up with variations of "I'm a widow named Maryam Abacha with 30,000,000$ (THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS)", and they're clearly trying to learn to push different buttons ("From SERGEANT JOHN SMITH in IRAQ", "I am WIDOW who is about to GO TO GOD'S BOSOM"), but still pretty basic stuff. The Japanese nationalist/anti-US spam is hysterically funny ("Japan have electrical space ray defeat America any time because eat fish is good for brain and America weak from don't eat fish. World must defeat America or they stop Japan from eat whale which make old people powerful like 19 years old!"), while the Russians push a mind-bogglingly broad array of services, from "Brick recycling in Rostov" and "Aquariums for rent" to "Secretary who will also function as your lover" - but don't seem to be in on the deeply-held secret that English is the language of the web (but then, neither do the Greeks or the Vietnamese.) The Germans seem to focus on either advertising degree mills OR sex services (it may even be an 'AND' instead of an 'OR', for all I know...)
Then there's the whole *-phishing scene. A whole bunch of (mostly) clever Poles, Russians, and other Slavs doing some very sophisticated social hackery (unsurprisingly so; when I recently spoke to a Russian CS graduate who was visiting the US, he expressed some shock at learning that the US CS degree requirements *did not* include up-to-date social engineering techniques. It seems that Russian schools have been teaching these for at least a decade.) Unsurprisingly, it seems that combining a very loose sense of ethics with a good education produces a very sophisticated and highly successful criminal class. There's a huge amount of money powering this aspect of things...
Anyway, I could go on for a while, but this Irish spam is a great
example of somebody just starting out. "Loans to/by Christians" - awwww,
how cute. 
It seems that the Irish gift of blarney doesn't map to the
Internet Age all that well...
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 11:58:07AM -0700, Breen Mullins wrote:
> > http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2526 > > It's an alarming example of what can happen out there in the wild > (so to speak).
Oh, dear. Now, I have to Bring The Pain.
Be sure to read their Brog. They also have a 'Chinglish' section.
http://www.qsl.net/ah6hy/japlish.html
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]
2010/8/7 Ben Okopnik <ben at linuxgazette.net>:
> On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 06:53:38PM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote: >> The Irish is so bad it can only have come from Google Translate, but >> it's fun to see spam in my (native? no, that implies first; national?) >> language. > > Jimmy, I didn't realize that Irish wasn't your first language. Is that > normal in Ireland, or was there some unusual circumstance involved? >
Yes, that's very much the norm. My father used to be very interested in languages, and taught me little bits of French and Latin before I ever learned a word of Irish.
Learning Irish natively is so far from the norm that there are
specific areas, collectively called the Gaeltacht, that have a special
status, etc. They hold summer schools in Irish every year, which are a
curious mix of the kids of the ultra rich and relatively poor kids on
scholarships (I was in the latter category
> One of the things I've been doing - not as any formal project, but just
> a loose visualization - is keeping a mental map of where spam comes from
> and the sophistication level (which definitely has a per-country
> component to it.)
>
> I've also found it interesting to see how fast, or how
> slowly, that level of sophistication changes: the Chinese, for example,
> don't seem to ever get beyond the "The weather here is wonderful. We
> make stuff; buy it from us. Thank you" level. The Nigerians have kept up
> with variations of "I'm a widow named Maryam Abacha with 30,000,000$
> (THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS)", and they're clearly trying to learn to push
> different buttons ("From SERGEANT JOHN SMITH in IRAQ", "I am WIDOW who
> is about to GO TO GOD'S BOSOM"), but still pretty basic stuff. ?The
> Japanese nationalist/anti-US spam is hysterically funny ("Japan have
> electrical space ray defeat America any time because eat fish is good
> for brain and America weak from don't eat fish. World must defeat
> America or they stop Japan from eat whale which make old people powerful
> like 19 years old!"), while the Russians push a mind-bogglingly broad
> array of services, from "Brick recycling in Rostov" and "Aquariums for
> rent" to "Secretary who will also function as your lover" - but don't
> seem to be in on the deeply-held secret that English is the language of
> the web (but then, neither do the Greeks or the Vietnamese.) The Germans
> seem to focus on either advertising degree mills OR sex services (it may
> even be an 'AND' instead of an 'OR', for all I know...)
>
> Then there's the whole *-fishing scene. A whole bunch of (mostly) clever
> Poles, Russians, and other Slavs doing some very sophisticated social
> hackery (unsurprisingly so; when I recently spoke to a Russian CS
> graduate who was visiting the US, he expressed some shock at learning
> that the US CS degree requirements *did not* include up-to-date social
> engineering techniques. It seems that Russian schools have been teaching
> these for at least a decade.) Unsurprisingly, it seems that combining a
> very loose sense of ethics with a good education produces a very
> sophisticated and highly successful criminal class. ?There's a huge
> amount of money powering this aspect of things...
>
Yeah. There was quite a disturbing mail on the corpora list where someone's email account had clearly been broken into. I can imagine that sort of targeting could be very successful (y'know, if they figure out to not send those sorts of things to public mailing lists).
> Anyway, I could go on for a while, but this Irish spam is a great > example of somebody just starting out. "Loans to/by Christians" - awwww, > how cute.
I think most of Ireland is too busy with Farmville to try such things... (y'know, I saw a piece of software on sourceforge earlier to automate something about Farmville - the mind boggles).
> > > -- > * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * > > TAG mailing list > TAG at lists.linuxgazette.net > http://lists.linuxgazette.net/listinfo.cgi/tag-linuxgazette.net >
-- <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil. <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 05:00:08PM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
> 2010/8/7 Ben Okopnik <ben at linuxgazette.net>: > > > > Jimmy, I didn't realize that Irish wasn't your first language. Is that > > normal in Ireland, or was there some unusual circumstance involved? > > Yes, that's very much the norm. My father used to be very interested > in languages, and taught me little bits of French and Latin before I > ever learned a word of Irish. > > Learning Irish natively is so far from the norm that there are > specific areas, collectively called the Gaeltacht, that have a special > status, etc. They hold summer schools in Irish every year, which are a > curious mix of the kids of the ultra rich and relatively poor kids on > scholarships (I was in the latter category
Fascinating - and yet, more or less predictable (as a major probability) given Irish history.
> > Then there's the whole *-fishing scene. A whole bunch of (mostly) clever > > Poles, Russians, and other Slavs doing some very sophisticated social > > hackery (unsurprisingly so; when I recently spoke to a Russian CS > > graduate who was visiting the US, he expressed some shock at learning > > that the US CS degree requirements *did not* include up-to-date social > > engineering techniques. It seems that Russian schools have been teaching > > these for at least a decade.) Unsurprisingly, it seems that combining a > > very loose sense of ethics with a good education produces a very > > sophisticated and highly successful criminal class. ?There's a huge > > amount of money powering this aspect of things... > > Yeah. There was quite a disturbing mail on the corpora list where > someone's email account had clearly been broken into. I can imagine > that sort of targeting could be very successful (y'know, if they > figure out to not send those sorts of things to public mailing lists).
Oh, they have; in fact, they've become quite smart about sliding into vulnerable places, time slots, and attention/awareness failures. There's a very interesting account at Boing-Boing about how Cory Doctorow himself got phished - which makes one go "HMMM". I mean, he's a technically-savvy guy who runs a site that's all about the Zeitgeist of the net.culture - and he gets caught? Introspection time...
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/05/how-i-got-phished.html
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Breen Mullins [bpm at sdf.org]
* Ben Okopnik <ben at linuxgazette.net> [2010-08-07 11:30 -0400]:
> >Oh, dear. Now, I have to Bring The Pain. > >http://www.engrish.com/ > >Be sure to read their Brog. They also have a 'Chinglish' section. > >http://www.qsl.net/ah6hy/japlish.html
Add to the list:
http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
Their subtitle says it: Dedicated to the misuse of chinese characters in western culture
Lots and lots of regrettable (and regretted, one hopes) tattoos.
-- Breen Mullins bpm at sdf.org