This one fooled me, if only for a second. When I read the first few words, I thought it had my number:
I thought this was going to be another long boring blog post, but I was pleasantly suprised. I will be posting a backlink on my blog, as I am quite sure my readers will find this more than interesting.
But alas, only the usual fawning spambot. The goal is to seem more like a real live person, just as in Philip K. Dick stories where robots grow more and more like humans, to the point where the two become virtually indistinguishable. They haven’t reached that goal yet, but they’re trying, they’re trying.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Blogging and bloggers.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
That’s why people like Obama are so necessary. The guy who raised 750 million and opted out of Public Financing complaining about the complaining about other people spending money to air their opinions? There is no way any logical entity would ever think up something like that.
January 23rd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Well. I’ve done it again.
There is a preview plug-in for WordPress blogs. Consider it.
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Nolanimrod: Can you give me a link to where it describes the plug-in? Is it new? I used to have one here, but it caused a huge glitch that made it impossible for people to post links in the comments. Everything ended up garbled when people tried to do that. So I removed it.
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Neo–not only do you need to worry about spam bots but now, apparently, paid government infiltrators;
See the stories about Czar Cass Sunstein’s proposal for such government infiltrators–man, the Stassi and KGB must be so proud ( http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/15/sunstein/index.html), and the story today–I’m sure it is just a coincidence–that 47 different newspapers have somehow miraculously selected an dprinted–out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of letters to the editor–nearly identical Letters to the Editor, defending Obama and his performance, each written by commenter “Ellie Light,” who gave 47 different addresses to assure that her letters would be considered (http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/01/letter_writer_claims_diverse_r.html)
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:33 pm
This is a very interesting post and worthy of further pursuit. I have written on a similar topic.
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:27 pm
holmes, is that you? Holmes?? Holmes???
January 24th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
yes, some of the spambots on my blog have been getting better recently. Here’s one that made me look twice:
“Does health care reform really have any chance now after the political defeat in MA?”
That it was left on a post about Iraq and had a URL about long term care gave the game away.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Good old Akismet has yet to let anything of this sort through at my place, no matter how plausible it may look.
And I have yet to see an actual blogger use the term “backlink” under any circumstances.
January 24th, 2010 at 11:57 pm
Very trying. Just like Holmes.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:40 am
> that 47 different newspapers have somehow miraculously selected an dprinted–out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of letters to the editor
Patterico.com lists over 70 now. Busy little beaver, ain’t she?
I’m not sure the “selected by editors” is correct, though. I believe this is in the “post ‘em all” online letters-to-the-editors section that they’ve been found, not necessarily the print versions where an actual human picked them out.
===========================
As far as Neo’s issue, yeah, you can recognize ‘em by the “genericity” (as opposed to the “generOSity”) of the comment, I believe. As Tom notes above — if there’s nothing of the post topic in them, then it’s likely a spambot.
It’s just the selected text by the spammer when he set it into the spambot — it’s not the bot that is any more intelligent, it’s just the applicable social engineering skills of the spammer that have improved.