I was talking with my roommate today about how upset I still am about the state of software patent laws. Specifically I’m pissed that companies like Intellectual Ventures even exist. Their entire business relies on having more money and more patents than the people they shake down. They don’t succeed by innovating or producing a great product. They win by by having more money than the people they sue, who don’t want to undergo a costly legal battle.

I started thinking of potential ways to combat an Intellectual Ventures type business. One way requires I be rich. If I was rich (like a bazillionaire) I would hire a massive force of offshore writers. I then would train them on how to write software patent applications and then I would proceed to generate as many broad inane patents as I could. This way I can cheaply amass even more ridiculous patents than they have. Then I would sue them into oblivion.

The problem with this idea is we’d just end up making a bunch of lawyers rich and we still aren’t contributing anything positive into the business ecosystem. That’s where I came up with both a better solution and maybe even a brilliant tech startup company.

Since I can’t stand software patent litigation why not stop it before it happens? Instead of reacting to lawsuits what if we could prevent them from happening in the first place? The solution is to kill anyone who brings a software patent claim to court.

Yes, this is extreme, but it will be effective. Just like Intellectual Ventures is a mafia type organization we will fight back with mafia type tactics. If we execute everyone who tries to sue another company for a software patent violation at the end of the day potential plaintiffs will sit back and think “hmmm, while the money could be good, it’s no good to me if I’m dead. Maybe I should go do something productive now.”

That’s the solution, but there some problems. How do we find people to kill these software patent plaintiffs and how do we raise enough money to make it worth their while to do so? Also how does everyone avoid going to jail? The solution is the next VC fundabale idea, KillStarter.

KillStarter is the KickStarter for raising money for assassinations. On the site people post people they want dead, why they want them dead, and other evidence supporting any wrong doing this person has committed. All assassination projects will be curated. We would only want truly bad people killed.

After a project is approved people can start anonymously funding it through BitCoins. The site only accept BitCoins so you better stock up on lots of them. BitCoins are used since we want anyone who contributes to remain anonymous as most civilized governments don’t take kindly to assassination (unless you are a terrorist, then it’s ok). The funding is used as the bounty or reward to the successful assassin. To claim the reward any would-be assassin has to download the KillStarter location based app. After a successful assassination they have to take a picture or video of the body using the app. Based on the time, geo-location, photo, and 3rd party new sources we should be able to confirm a successful hit. After that the BitCoin reward is transferred that individual.

We’re looking to raise 5 million dollars bitcoins.

My solution to the software patent issue boils down to good old fashioned murder. This post is whack. However, you have to admit KillStarter does have some good ideas in there. Maybe I can get this built in Afghanistan.

Day 1 of 30 of No Internet News Challenge

First day of no news. I can feel myself becoming more ignorant as I type.

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1. Software Patent Law Sucks: I Hate Companies Like Intellectual Ventures Day 2 of 30 of Writing Challenge I finished listening...

I finished listening to NPR’s This American Life episode about patent trolling today. You would think it’d be boring, but This American Life always manages to draw me into what you’d think be boring shows. The premise of this episode was the examination of how software patents and the litigation that often follows affect innovation.

The story starts out with the reporters interviewing an entrepreneur who started and currently runs a photo sharing website. He received a letter from a company claiming that his company was infringing on their patent. A patent that was filed a few years after he had already started the company. The patent itself was broad and covered something to the affect of anyone creating a service to distribute photos on the internet. The lawsuit named not just his company but 116 other companies. In order to fight the lawsuit the entrepreneur was told it would cost upwards of 5 million dollars. In the end he and the other companies settled.

The rest of the story examines the shadiness of a company called Intellectual Ventures. Intellectual Ventures  is a relatively new company headed by Nathan Myhrvold, the former CTO of Microsoft. The company raised billions of dollars from VC’s and other institutional investors with the intention of amassing a large portfolio of patents so other companies could license the patents from them. IV claims that what what they do gives inventors a way to make money from their inventions and allows other companies a way to license those technologies. Win-win for everyone!

However, all that glitters is not gold. When the reporters pressed representatives what examples they could give of Intellectual Ventures helping inventors they were only able to give them one example, an inventor name Chris Crawford. But as they investigated further they found that Chris Crawford wouldn’t talk to them and that later that IV had sold his patent to another company called Oasis Technology (don’t remember the exact name) and they were currently suing someone for infringing this patent. When they went to track down Oasis to learn about the patent it turned out it was just a shell company; one of many shell companies in the small town of Marshall, TX, in an office building filled with empty office suites.

What they discovered later was that Intellectual Ventures had ties to the Oasis company as well as upwards of 1300 other shell companies. They opened these companies as a way to sue individuals without making it seem like IV was the responsible party (since they protect the little guy). The reporters discovered this since IV was listed as one of the beneficiaries of any settlement or damages on court documents. To date IV has made 2 billion dollars but aside from the lawsuits has very little else to show from making that money.

Listening to the whole report made me extremely angry and illustrated several problems. The first problem being the patent office granting software patents. I didn’t know that it wasn’t until the mid to late 90′s where software patents weren’t granted. You couldn’t do it. Over time though through different cases they were able to get that over turned after they allowed it  people started patenting everything they could think of. One of the guys they interviewed in the story shared how 30% of the patents granted are patents for the same thing. The worst part of these patents is they are too broad and non-specific. People are patenting crap like “a system to share messages in a social way on the internet.” Because of this patents are now being used as weapons as opposed to spurring innovations which was why they were created in the first place. The thinking being the more sharing of ideas the better inventions that could come from it. However, people don’t like to share if they think there idea could be stolen. This idea of patents for physical inventions makes sense.

In the case of software patents, though, people are patenting ideas and not actual software code. The reporters highlighted the fact that copyrighting code like how authors copyright books made more sense than patents.

The other problem I have with this whole story  is the law system. It made me loathe lawyers and the system even more than I already do (apologies to my lawyer friends). 5 million dollars to defend yourself in court? Why does a case like this have to be so complicated? Here’s how it should be. Plaintiff  gets 5 pages to say why and how the defendant violated his patent. Defendant gets his 5 pages. They go to court, give the judge their evidence, make their arguments and then the judge rules. Case closed. All cases should be like Judge Judy or the People’s Court. No lawyers. It should cost $20 not $5 million.

My biggest issue with the system is it incentivizes people who have money to bully people who don’t have money. Because they know even if they are completely wrong that you don’t have the money to defend yourself so you have no choice but to settle. If we followed the Judge Judy patent law system I just made up there’s no doubt they would think twice about threatening people.

That’s my rant. And now Day 2 is finished!

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Along with my hate for Twitter I’m gonna add Food Trucks which seem to be all the rage these days to my hate list.

“Buy why? They are so tasty and gourmet. It’s such a great idea!”

Shut up. Here’s an idea, why don’t we take a truck and sell frozen treats from it? We’ll target the younger crowd, 12 years and under, and to entice them to buy we’ll play music as we drive slowly in their neighborhoods. Sound like the next new hot food truck idea? I’ll call it an Ice Cream Truck. I’ll be rich.

Here’s my beef with these food trucks. People act like this thing is the “best thing eva’!” when in fact it isn’t novel or interesting at all.

Here’s why I hate food trucks…listed in the sequence of actions I need to perform in order to dine at one.

I have to follow twitter or their website to find out where they are

When I’m hungry and want something to eat I don’t want to go hunting for my favorite restaurant. It’s fine the first time I’m going to a new restaurant, but if these mobile gourmet wagons keeps moving around that means I spend more time going hungry than eating. And plus I hate twitter.

Parking is annoying

Unless they are parking in an empty Walmart parking lot, chances are the food truck is going to be parked on a side street where finding parking spaces will take time and could most likely cost money. So wait, I get to spend time looking for parking and pay for parking too? It’s even more annoying if this food truck is popular. No thanks.

I have to wait standing in line

So finally after finding parking I now go to find a billion other fools in line waiting to taste the scrumpdilliumpsious food that awaits them. Can’t I just take a number and come back? Sorry, not at the food truck. Can I sit while await? Sure there’s plenty of room on the curb. This experience awesome!!

Wait how much is this going to cost me

After all that waiting I find the prices here more expensive than most sit down restaurants. They don’t even have the same overhead as a restaurant…granted they have gas to pay, but shouldn’t it be cheaper?

Where do I eat?

Food trucks don’t bring mobile eating stations so that means when I dine at one I dine standing up. While eating while standing is probably healthy for you, I prefer dining while sitting…in a chair…preferably on a table. That is unless the chairs are electrified and are coated with glass shards.

The food tastes like it was made in someone’s vehicle

Maybe I’m biased since I don’t cook, but wouldn’t you rather eat food that has been prepared in a full kitchen than a cramped up truck kitchenette? If I were the cook in one of these things I know I’d be all grumpy having to work in such tight spaces. For sure I wouldn’t be cooking your food with love. OOPS i just sneezed! That sneeze has to be bouncing all over that truck and landing in your gourmet food.

Conclusion

There you have it. I hate food trucks since I have to spend time tracking them down, waiting in line, paying more money. all while standing and eating so-so food. So what’s the allure? Oh, they put kimchi in my tacos? Cool. I  can do that for a fraction of the cost. Feast your eyes below:

Anyway, I feel bad for the ice cream truck operators and the mexican roach coach operators. They’ve been doing this for years and it hasn’t been as crazy till someone made these trucks magically more gourmet (ie just making the truck look a little more presentable and marketable).

People, enjoy this fad while it lasts. I’m sitting this one out. Enjoy your Kimchi tacos. I know I will.

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In probably the 1,000,000th post that MG Siegler has written related to FOURSQUARE (not the fun game we played as kids, but the super “hip” being continually crammed down our throats mobile app/service that allows you to “check-in” to local businesses), he coves a new startup, Future Checkin, which allows you to “Check-In On Foursqaure Without Taking Your Phone Out of Your Pocket“.

The problem this startup is solving according to the article is:

Check-in fatigue in particular is a growing problem. A number of heavy users of Foursquare that I know (myself included) have been complaining in recent months that it’s getting a bit tedious to have to pull out your phone each time to check-in to a venue. Particularly venues that you frequent. Future Checkin absolutely solves that.

After reading that I don’t know where to begin. My initial reaction or solution to check-in fatigue wold be to STOP PLAYING FOURSQUARE. But I think that might be too logical. But I’m not too smart, and maybe I’m missing something. Instead I’ll follow up with while MG and gang might think that Future Checkin will be a big help for frequent users of Foursquare, Future Checkin is acutally the downfall of Foursqaure.

Why the Downfall?

It’s simple. The whole point of engaging in Foursquare is to partake in a “game.” I use the term very loosely cause I don’t see it so much a game, but if you consider anything where you get points and compete as a game then technically it’s a “game.”  Foursquare’s game mechanics are simple, you take you out your phone, open the app, tap check-in, and you gain a check-in point. Whoever has the most check-ins for a location is crowned the Mayor and has all the same privileges a real mayor has (none).

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but part of the enjoyment of playing games is not so much the end result (getting the high score) but the process (the whole journey is the reward thing). What Future Checkin provides people is basically a way to automatically play the game without any work on the player’s part. That’s like having a program play Pacman for you. That’s not fun, that’s lame. If this is how these mobile local app/games are going to work this raises the question, why bother using stuff like Foursquare if you don’t even need to take it out of your pocket?

But maybe some people feel like the following…

Well I like playing Foursqaure since I can become the mayor of McDonald’s…so Future Check-In allows me to check-in when I forget

That’s true, but it makes the game truly irrelevant when you don’t have to do any additional work. That’s like me getting points every time I pee, take a breath of air, or scratch my butt (actually I’m kind of liking the sound of this game). I don’t have to do any work to play this game, I just do it cause I need to.

The bigger problem is that once someone starts using Future Checkin and racking up more points than another person that other person is going to install it…and then sooner or later everyone will have to install it to be competitive.  Once one person starts cheating it brings down the whole ecosystem and just makes it so everyone has to “cheat” to stay competitve.  Then we have the situation where everyone is playing a game where no one is doing anything…except installing an app on their phone.

So basically Future Checkin makes Foursquare irrelevant.

If You like Future Checkin You’ll Love These Ideas…

Maybe you don’t agree with me and that’s fine.   It doesn’t seem like Techcrunch sees it my way either. Somehow I’ll survive.  However, before I go I’ll leave you with some other awesome super brilliant app ideas that you’re guaranteed to love if you love Future Checkin:

• Future Twitter – automatically tweets and responds to tweets based on your personality – for people who have tweet fatigue
• Future Chat – automatically chats with your friends so you have more time to use Future Twitter – for people who have chat fatigue
• Future Tennis – a robot that will play tennis for you against other opponents – for people who have movement fatigue

Anyway you get the point…if it gets to the point where you aren’t involved in the process it makes me wonder why even do it in the first place?

I did have hope today when I read the headline in Techcrunch, “Why Checking Into Foursquare with Your Phone in Your Pocket Won’t Always Work,” that someone would realize this futility issue with Future Checkin. But the article was talking more of the technological constraints of this working rather than discussing the bigger question of “why bother using Foursquare if we aren’t going to be using it.”

Stay classy Techcrunch.

Disclaimer:

I’m not ragging on the developers of the app, it’s not easy to build and launch stuff. I’m just ranting on the bigger picture of what’s the point of doing something when we aren’t involved. Hopefully you see that.  If not then keep enjoying Foursquare.

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I don’t consider myself an Apple “Fanboy,” but I do happen to like quite a few Apple Products.  For me it’s not about just being blindly loyal to a company for the sake of being loyal (ie Fanboy-ish), but really just choosing to purchase products that I think are better and do what I want them to do.  In college I didn’t like Apple’s products that much.  My roommate had like a G3 iMac and was a big fan of Apple products.  He kept trying to convince me to abandon my home built PC and drink the Apple Kool-Aid.  At the time I wasn’t convinced.  A few years later though after the release of  Mac OSX and playing around with it I decided to jump ship from Windows XP (which was crashy and annoying) give Apple a chance.

It was great and to this day I still love Mac OSX.  I can work efficiently and there is good software for it (though gaming is weak).  Anyway, this long intro was just to highlight the fact that while I use Apple’s product I’m not “owned” by them.   I expect a lot if I’m dropping money on something. So with all the hype surrounding iSlate which now has been confirmed as iPad I wanted to chime in with my 2 cents (as I’m sure millions of others have already).

I know other people are exploding in their pants when they first saw the announcement.  Many people on my Facebook feed were like “I WANT IT NOW”  (in all caps).  However, my response is “Don’t I have this already?”

iPad looks just like a big iPod Touch / iPhone, but more expensive.  Sure it’s “sexy” and all that crap, but if I have a bigger device I expect it to do more things…at least do Flash and let me do some background apps.  Oh yeah, what about Skype video conferencing?  Nope…not without buying external hardware.  You can attach a keyboard to it too, but doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of creating this “tablet” style in the first place?

For all the Fanboys go ahead and buy it right away.  My prediction is this will go the way of the Macbook Air, relatively cool, but not as popular as anticipated.  I’m holding out for another year and looking forward to some Tegra 2 enabled devices.  Have you guys seen this Nvidia pwered ICD Slate that was demoed at CES 2010?  This thing is exciting:

Why is it exciting?

• It can run a variety of operating systems since it is ARM based (Chrome, Android, Windows Mobile, etc…) so you aren’t locked in.  If you do use Android you’ll still have access to 3rd party apps
• It plays flash natively…this means Farmville, Bejeweled Blitz on your device
• It plays 1080p video without breaking a sweat…this means I can watch hulu (since it plays flash) without busting out my laptop…oh it also can output 1080p via HDMI so it’s like a VCR/DVD player you can carry around with you
• You aren’t locked into Apple and Itunes (which I hate, but that’s another story)…
• Looks like there’s a camera on that device so skype and other video conferencing is definitely possible
• It looks like and just as easy to use as iPad
• If you kept watching the video you can see it runs Unreal 3 with no problems whatsoever

To me this looks like the superior product, but unfortunately ICD can generate the amount of buzz that Apple can.  However, I don’t care I’m still holding out and in the mean time I’m sticking with my iPhone 3GA.

*** UPDATE ***

Here are two other tablets that I’m looking forward to over the “magical and revolutionary” iPad.

The Notion Ink Adam (featuring Pixel Qi screen):

And the Microsoft Courier

I don’t really Microsoft, but they’ve had some decent products (Xbox)…so I was pretty skeptical when I heard about their own tablet pc.  What I like about this is that rather than trying to be a great game device/music device it aims to be a great digital journal.  I like taking notes on real paper notepads.  I find handwriting stuff down helps the creative process and just adds more personality than just typing stuff in.  It also allows more free freedom in how you put stuff down.  Unfortunately searching through piles of notebooks gets old and while I could cut out photos from magazine or print them out on the computer and paste them into my notebook…that’s just too much work.  Depending on the price point this is something that I could definitely use.  Not only would it save me time, but it would also allow me to save paper (and ultimately the environment!).

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As you guys know I’m a SUPER BIG AWESOME-O BEST-EST Fan of Twitter (see my post I Truly Hate Twitter) and I’ve decided to jump on the Twitter book publishing bandwagon and am working on my own Twitter book titled Twitter IS For Dummies.

Just what kinds of things can you expect to learn in my upcoming super great Twitter book?  I’m glad you asked… Learn to:

• Share when you last made a bowel movement or any other personal bodily function that ordinarily you wouldn’t publicize to the world.  Ex.  “I just pooped my pants!”
• Believe that Twitter is the greatest thing on the planet.  In order to use twitter you must love it unconditionally.  It’s better than everything.  The sooner you realize this the more ready you are to join the Church of Twitter
• Make yourself feel even more important than you really are.  If you have low self-esteem Twitter will make you feel more important by deluding yourself into thinking people actually care when you tweet “OMG I just got my period”
• Twitter in dangerous situations where your safety is less important than sharing your tweet.  Next time you are being mugged, attacked, raped, held at gun point…take a timeout with your assailant and whip out your phone so you can tweet “I’m being raped now and I feel bloated. FML!”

So yeah, please keep a look out for Twitter Is For Dummies.  It truly will be a glorious book and make me filthy rich.  If you are looking for other self help books also check out my book Just Because There’s a Goalie Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Score.

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I have to get something off my chest.  It’s been bothering me for the past few months and I’ve been meaning to write about it, but hadn’t made the time.  Better now than never.  So here it goes…

LMFAO (the band) please stop making alternate versions to your song “I’m in Miami Trick.”

I don’t know if you guys know LMFAO, but they have this super annoying song that’s played a billion times on the radio called “I’m in Miami Bitch” or the more radio appropriate version “I’m in Miami Trick.”  I’ve embedded the song and video below for your listening “enjoyment.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

To be honest I kinda liked the song the first time they played it, but in typical commercialized brainwashing fashion they kept playing it until my ears bled.  That was already painful enough, but nothing out of the ordinary, however things got worse.  One day while listening to the radio I hear…

blah blah blah … I’m in LA trick!

At first I thought I was listening to a different song because I could have sworn they normally say “I’m in Miami Trick.” But the DJ said it was LMFAO.   Fair enough so there’s 2 different versions of this song. A few weeks later I was driving around San Francisco and heard this on the radio…

blah blah blah…I’m in The Bay trick!

WTF?  There 3 versions of this song now?  The worst part is that’s it’s not even brand new lyrics talking about “the Bay” or whatever city they are singing about.  It’s just them replacing one city name with another city name and then adding “trick” after it.   Either way my hatred for the song and the band is steadily increasing (not yet at Twitter hate levels).

A few weeks later my girlfriend comes back from Denver, Colorado, and says “you’ll never guess what I heard in Denver…”   Please don’t tell me–

blah blah blah…I’m in Denver trick!

That’s right, Denver now has it’s own LMFAO “Trick” song.  This was the straw that broke my back.  Just how much more pandering to the audience and selling out can LMFAO do?  Just how many versions of their crappy song “I’m in Miami Trick” are there?  Wikipedia provided me the answers.

There are at least 59 versions of “I’m in [FILL IN THE BLANK WITH WHATEVER] Trick!”

Yes 59 versions of their song.  I won’t list them all here, but that’s a lot of “tricks.”  Among the more notable “Tricks” include:

• “I’m in New Bedford Trick” (New Bedford, MA, I had to look that up)
• “I’m in the Burgh Trick” (Pittsburgh)
• “I’m in Fort Wayne Trick” (Fort Wayne, IN)
• “I’m in Winnipeg Trick” (Winnipeg, Canada)
• “I’m in the IE Trick” (I thought Internet Explorer, but Inland Empire CA)
• “I’m in Canada Trick” (for stations in rural Canada)

Before I thought the formula for a LMFAO song was [Any American City] + Trick.  However, from the list of 59 versions apparently you can just choose any geographic location.  It can be a city anywhere in the world, a region, a country, etc…  What is somewhat amusing is how LMFAO got lazy with Canada.  Rather than go through and “create” alternate versions for many of the cities in Canada (besides the major ones) they just decided to do a blanket Canadian version “I’m in Canada Trick.”  Geez, LMFAO, if you are going to do something do it all the way!

Why stop at geographic locations?  Why not take your hit making formula and just  incorporate any nouns that make somewhat sense?  This way you can target and market your talent to those people…  Here are some suggestions to help you increase your sales revenue:

• “I’m in Foreclosure Trick!”
• “I’m without Insurance Trick!”
• “I’m in Pre-School Trick”
• “I’m in Detention Trick”
• “I’m in Jail Trick”
• “I’m in Denial Trick”
• “I’m in My Car Trick”

I can’t stop myself from coming up with more LMFAO hits.  I should be a song writer.

Anyway, there has to be some record in the Guinness Book of World Records for most versions of a crappy song done by the same artist.  At 59 versions LMFAO would definitely be the front runner.  Not even Petey Pablo and his song “Raise Up” did he decide to sell out and do separate versions for each major city instead he just did:

a remix called “Raise Up [All Cities remix]” which is similar to the original, starting off with North Carolina, except that he shouts out other cities, states or regions in this order: South Carolina, Atlanta, Virginia, New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Maryland, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, St. Louis, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and San Francisco Bay Area.

Luckily not every music artist goes to the darkside like LMFAO and creates a cookie cutter song.  I mean can you imagine if John Denver had gone to LMFAO for guidance on his song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”?  The chorus might have been:

“Take me home, country roads, to the place I belong…East Calcutta, Mountain Mama…”

So I make my final plea LMFAO…please stop…please!!

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So for anyone who has applied or gone through the process of opening and filing their own paper work for a small business they know there is a lot of different papers and forms that need to be filled out, signed, and filed with their state government.  A lot of these forms you have to pay different fees to get processed.  You kind of get immune to all the forms.

However, just recently I received this letter and from in the mail from the “Board of Business Center” asking me to “remit payment: $175.”  When I first saw this I was like “what!  More forms and bills to pay?”  But then I was mentally going through my checklist of stuff to see if indeed this was something I needed to pay…but thought something was very fishy for several reasons:

• It was from the Board of Business Center — all the forms I had received up till now were always from the California Secretary of State, this was some state-less Board of Business Center.
• The address (PO Box 39876, Los Angeles CA 90039) I was supposed to send payment was LA — all of the small business stuff is handled in Sacramento, the capital, why send to LA?
• The fine print on the back of the form — the back says “upon receipt of your payment Board of Business Center will deliver the Statement of Information to the Office of California Secretary of State in a timely manner with the State Fees.  Luckily I had just sent my Statement of Information so why would they need to deliver this again for me?

All these little clues just tipped me off to the fact that this thing was some kind of scam.  So I finally googled it and found a very similar looking letter, but for a different document that needs to be filed with the State.

According to the link above I posted one of the commenters works for the California Attorney General’s office and is investigating these scammers.  If you run across a similar letter as the one I posted you’re urged to contact them.  Info below:

Complaints may be filed with the California Attorney General’s Office by mail, telephone, fax, the Internet, or email:

MAILING ADDRESS:

Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P.O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550TELEPHONE:   1-800-952-5225 (Toll-free in CA) or (916) 322-3360

FAX:   (916) 323-5341

WEBSITE:   http://ag.ca.gov/consumers

In the spirit of sharing and hoping that someone googles the scam letter I got so they don’t lose out $175 I’ve posted scans of the letter I’ve received and made a post here.  The things people will do to make a buck.

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In case you don’t believe me checkout the email’s I received (I’ve crossed out the winning reference numbers since I don’t want you claiming prize)…Ok really do people really fall for this stuff?

From:     jmitchell@qcc.mass.edu
Subject:     Dear Inernet User
Date:     July 23, 2009 12:32:36 AM PDT

Dear Inernet User

We are pleased to notify you the “Winner” of our Internet Lotto draws. This is a reward program for the patronage of internet services and all email addresses entered for this promotional draws were randomly selected from an internet resource database of of registered software and domain users.

Reference Number: NLS 90 EU 1109
e-ticket number: 765-45556453 098
Category: A
Amount: $2,500,000.00 (Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand Dollars)

You may wish to establish contact with your claims agent via e-mail with the particulars presented below:

CLAIMS AGENT.
Name: Thomas Ward
Tel::+31 619 551 210
Email: dptclnl2009@yahoo.cn

In line with the governing rules of claim, you are requested to furnish your claims agent With the following information:

1. Full names
2. Address
3. Occupation.
4. Tel/Fax
5. Nationality
6.  Winning Reference Number

Yours faithfully,
John Mitchell
Promotions Co-ordinator

John really should use spell check…I’m not an “Inernet” user!

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I was just thinking to myself…you really have to hate twitter if you search “I Hate Twitter” in all CAPS.  I can just imagine some kid sitting at home all angry about how Twitter murdered his family so he opens up his browser and googles “I HATE TWITTER.”  It’s good to know I’m not alone in the world and I’m not taking crazy pills.

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