« Bloggers swarm the Business Innovation Factory's Collaborative Innovation Summit | Main | BIF-3: Mark Cuban wants to buy Cubs -- and Verizon »

October 11, 2007

Nobel Prize for Doris Lessing; Call a customer-service human; Russian Viagra spammer murdered...

Feminist voice: British author Doris Lessing has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.

I first read Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook in high school. It wasn't easy to get into, but once in, I loved it.

Database of customer service direct lines: Paul English's appearance at the BIF-3 summit here yesterday is a good opportunity to mention his very useful gethuman databaseagain. It gives the secret recipe for bypassing voicemail walls at dozens of companies.

Filesharing is so over:P2P researchers: use a blocklist or you will be tracked... 100% of the time. At Ars Technica,

The old cliché "You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you" turns out to apply quite nicely to the world of P2P file-sharing. A trio of intrepid researchers from the University of California-Riverside decided to see just how often a P2P user might be tracked by content owners. Their startling conclusion: "naive" users will exchange data with such "fake users" 100 percent of the time.

Related: Madonna dumps label in $134m deal; Nine Inch Nails is now label-free.

Russian Viagra and Penis Enlargement Spammer Murdered. Blogger Alex Loonov saw it on Russian TV, and translates.

Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means 'Thick Skin'), a Russian spammer, found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as "killers" in Russia).

Who hated Tolstokozhev so much as to hire a hit man to assasinate him? Well, I guess you have about one billion e-mail users to suspect. Tolstokozhev was a famous spammer who sent millions of e-mail promoting viagra, cialis, penis enlargement pills and other medications. Links in these e-mails usually led to some pharmacy shop, which paid Tolstokozhev a share of its revenue.

Silly Web: The Children’s Hour, Part 2: Can Facebook Apps Grow Up? WSJ blogger Kara Swisher. Interesting debate in the comments, too.

Profit motive: Tribune staffers who smoke told to pay $100/month fee. They also have to pay the fee if anyone in their family who gets Tribune health insurance smokes. "Naturally, this makes me wonder what other unhealthy sins will be surcharged in coming years," writes Michael Mayo. "Will there be a fee for drinking booze? Eating fast food? Having high cholesterol? Not adhering to proper weight/body mass guidelines?"

AP reported last month,

In 2009 (Indianapolis-based Clarian Health ) will start reducing pay for employees in its health plan by $10 per paycheck if their BMI — a measurement of body fat through a height and weight ratio — is in the obese range of more than 29.9. The deduction will be $5 per check if they don’t meet required cholesterol, blood pressure or blood glucose measurements. Workers will be required to complete an annual health risk assessment and can appeal to have their fees dropped if they show improvement.

There's no correlation to actual use of the medical system that results in bills to the insurer, these are just sin taxes they can get away with. Even if you're perfectly healthy and only cost the insurer an annual checkup, your rates rise. Skiers, motorcycle owners and those who live in rough neighborhoods may be next.

Via Romenesko, where a commenter reports, "USA TODAY has done this for the past couple of years or so, and I assume other Gannett properties take the same action."

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 10:33 AM | Permalink