Esteemed edstatters:
In his What Is This?: ???? (January 31, 2002) Ronny wrote:
<< I've started receiving messages like the following from the newsgroup.
Is this a problem with the newsgroup or a problem with my mail program?>>
In his Re: What Is This?: 业务联系 Jay replied:
<<A recent one had an email root address matching a Taiwan friend, so I
infer they are coming from there. they have the same 'appearance' I find
when looking at Chinese web pages, suggesting that yes, they are intended
to be Chinese characters but mis-handled.>>
In his Re: What Is This?: ???? (2/1/2002) Yves also replied::
<<This is probably a message written in another alphabet like a asian one.
I receive spam mail at my yahoo address from .kr (korea?) addresses with
such fonts.>>
Excellent conjectures Jay and Yves. .kr is indeed the country code for
Korea. Meanwhile, .cn is that for China and .tw that for Taiwan.
IANA | Country-Code Top-Level Domains at http://www.iana.org/cctld/
cctld.htm
There have been messages such as these from all three places. (I
chose not to say "countries" because I don't wish to get into the
bad straits -- does ya dig? -- between the the mainland and the island)
.
Incidentally, Should you wish to take a squint at a couple of pages
to which they lead, see:
搜狐新闻 http://sohu.com/ (Looks like kinda fun)
欢迎光临上海热线！ at http://mail.citiz.net/ (Hmmm? Don' know 'bout
dis one)
Finally, in her Re: What Is This? (Thu, 31 Jan 2002I) Jackie (the list owner)
wrote:
<<We (our systems administrator and I) have been mystified by the recent
glut of these messages too. Most of them seem to come from Asian
countries, so I presume the problem has something to do with the mapping
of Asian character sets. I know there have also been lots of problems
with spam and viruses on EdStat; we are working on solutions. Soon we
will announce some changes in the administration of the list that should
solve some of these problems.>>
I, for one, will be interested to learn what happens.
Have a prosperous palindromic year,
Aitchoo aka H(arley) U(pchurch) MS/D [Math Stats Dummy]
Ps. Can't resist a gentle little dig. Dontchoo brainy guys never do no
*research*?
