Michael Giagnocavo has a post about some visual spam using ASCII art (which has been around forever) to spell the stuff they are spamming (applied to a new technique).  Cool stuff, I gotta admit.  As text it would be hard to analyze I think…whereas if it were a picture it would be simple OCR.  I’m sure someone could rather easily come up with a way to recognize the ASCII art and integrate that into your email, but all the bayes-based stuff out there now is helpless against it.  Although both Michael and Bill make some good points about being so clever with the scams and sucking at the basic stuff like…English.

Seeing this reminded me of my early days doing web design, in like ‘96.  When I wanted to do something cool with some HTML or javascript, where did I go to learn it?  Porn sites and “hacker” sites.  They always used the coolest new client scripting techniques.  They were using frames before anyone (remember when frames were huge?)

Virus writers do some cool shit too…technologically.  I love reading virus code when I can find it…not only does it help you spot flaws in a system, but viruses tend to lean toward the small, fast, dirty, get the job done in their techniques….you know, not all these class structures and design patterns and everything else.  It’s just cool to look at.

Anyway, I’m rambling…