In previous updates, Medieval Hits admin Larry Phillips announced that he is offering one free referral to everyone who brings in a new member before August 1. The prospective member has to surf at least 250 pages in order for us to qualify for the bonus referral. He has also caught two cheaters and removed them from the database. Today a new update has been released announcing that we have officially reached the 250 member mark:
While it may be too much of a generalization to say that Americans are stupid, many of them are certainly quite ignorant about certain topics, as this video clearly demonstrates:
Before anyone takes this too seriously, it should be noted that this is more of a humorous sketch than a scientific survey. However, the ignorance displayed by many Americans about things like geography, current events, and even “common sense” information is very real.
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If you’re a libertarian who is tired of paying taxes for Congressional pork barrel spending, you can still go whole hog with this hearty recipe without having to worry about breaking the budget. I found this recipe a few months ago in one of those “master cookbook” collections, and it has turned out to be the best formula for pulled pork sandwiches that I have tasted so far.
The only disadvantage to this method is that it takes a significant amount of time to prepare because you need to set up the barbecue and assemble a rather long list of sauce ingredients. However, some of the tasks can be done simultaneously, especially if you have more than one person helping with the cooking. I usually begin putting together the sauce ingredients in a deep skillet while waiting for the pork to finish cooking outside. By the time the pork is done, the flavors in the sauce have had enough time to blend well and mature, significantly enhancing the overall taste.
For a special treat, I like to place the sauce and the pork (after it has already been barbecued and pulled apart into small strips) into a slow cooker and let the meat tenderize for another 4 to 6 hours. This requires some patience after doing all of the prior preparations, but the delicious taste of the final product is well worth it. Because of the time requirements, I have found that it is also a good idea to make a large enough quantity of food to last for two or more days if possible. The final mixture can be preserved in the refrigerator for several days after cooking, and the quantities of ingredients in the recipe can be adjusted proportionally as needed.
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This week’s Top Builder award at Medieval Hits went to Richard Uttley, who has managed to bring in a sizable number of referrals over the past week. While his article is rather brief, he touches on a useful strategy that I have used for other programs with mostly favorable effects. As Richard explains, solo email ads can generate a quick burst of referrals, especially if the program that you are promoting does not cost any money to join (at least not initially):
After experiencing some delays last month due to problems with her hosting service, admin Michele Ballard at The-Owl-Post, a paid-to-read emails program, is beginning to recover and hopes to bring in enough revenue to cover outstanding payout requests from members.
Although it may be difficult to tell from all of the English usage problems in the latest update, this has actually been one of the most consistent and reliable PTR programs out there over the past four years. I have been a member here for almost three years now, and so far the program has proven to be a consistent source of advertising by providing reliable clickthroughs and referrals for other programs. The program owners have always been open and honest in their communications with the membership, often bucking the trend of short-lived, unsustainable sites that have become commonplace in the PTR industry over the past few years. Since I have accumulated a rather large reserve of advertising points here, I might use some of these to send Owl Post visitors to this blog just to see if it generates any interest. For now though, you can read the latest news:
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Today I received a spam email with the subject line of “MaxipTrader - Toolbox for HYIP&AutoSurf Investors”. It contains links to a download page that looks fairly legitimate, but the “beta software” is actually a dangerous Trojan virus that is capable of wiping out your e-gold balance. There is not much information about this on the Internet at the time of this writing, but upon doing a standard search of the email text for duplicate content, I found a post from someone at the TalkGold forum who reported that the email was sent to HYIP admins and monitors, and explains that if you attempt to download the software, a Trojan will be installed on your computer which will automatically spend your e-gold funds to the scammer when you log in to your e-gold account.
I also found a post at the McAfee forum from someone who was apparently victimized by this Trojan and was complaining because the McAfee antivirus program did not catch the virus and could not even identify it. Unfortunately the victim, who was foolish enough to download this nasty little piece of malware twice on two separate computers, did not remember or record the name of the Trojan file. Meanwhile, the McAfee technical support staff was virtually clueless as to how to remove it from the victim’s machine.
Because of the potentially costly nature of this spam and scam operation, I will post the contents of the email here in the hopes that some of you will have more information on this and will be able to avoid being scammed. For security purposes, I have removed the actual links to the download page, but you can find the URL by referencing the two sources above, which will allow you to look at the scammer’s landing page. Just remember that if you do this, do NOT follow through with the download!
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The leadership of the Texas LP is hoping to expand county organizations in the state by traveling to various cities, meeting with current members, and organizing outreach efforts to increase support for the party. Earlier today, I received an email from Patrick Dixon explaining the important details, so I would like to pass on this information to any Texas Libertarians out there who are not currently subscribed to the email lists but might be interested in organizing or attending meetings in your local area later this year.
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Poor spammers…even after several years of sending their spam and having ample opportunity to refine their messages, they STILL can’t get it right! A few days after receiving the last Chase email phishing scam attempt, they tried it again, this time with a different premise and message. Besides for the fact that I don’t even have an account with Chase, the obvious errors in English usage make this latest phishing attempt look especially pathetic:
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A new website that was launched recently is offering a fresh alternative for people in the Corpus Christi, Texas area who are trying to sell their products and services. While walking to the post office to mail in some paid survey checks, I noticed a few signs planted along the sides of the road advertising a site called CorpusTrader.com. When I returned from the post office, I went to the site, bookmarked it, and signed up for the free registration. I logged in and briefly looked at the ads, but there wasn’t much to see at the time because the site was still very new.
Afterward, I made a mental note to return to the site later and possibly post an ad or two. I also considered the possibility of eventually emailing the admin about the misspellings and typos that I had seen on the site. I had almost forgotten about it after that until I received an email from the admin yesterday that served as a good reminder to check out the site again:
This is an essay that discusses some of the issues in the debate over Internet freedom as it relates to free speech and public fears about “obscene” content. It was originally written for my brother’s English class but is actually a collaborative work of a few family members who worked as editors and ghostwriters. The essay is a few years old and now seems somewhat dated, but the central issues are still relevant for Internet users today. If anyone has recent updates to the information presented here, please feel free to add this in the comment section. Note that you can now preview your comments before posting, allowing you to clean up misspellings, typos, or other embarrassing errors before they are actually published.
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As I mentioned in an earlier article about the appeal to greed, there is a class of online ventures called High Yield Investment Programs (HYIP) that still has a small but loyal following among online money making enthusiasts. While it is certainly possible to make money with these kinds of programs if you know how to play the game, I have recently discovered a few programs out there that are making such ridiculous claims on their websites that it would seem unwise to “invest” in them even from a gambler’s perspective.
In fact, many people would consider these programs to be scams because there is no way any legitimate company could afford to pay out the kinds of returns stated on the sites. Technically speaking, I cannot say for certain whether any of these programs are scams or not (I consider a program to be a scam after it has been verified that the program has not paid out as promised for 30 days or more). However, I still would not recommend joining any of these programs. Not only have they probably run out of money by now even if they did manage to pay one or two people in the beginning, but if you did manage to join some of them, they could use your email address to send you lots of HYIP spam even if you don’t pay any money into the program.
Note that I have not actually linked to any of the programs listed below but instead have simply indicated the root domain of the home page. The reason for this is that many of these sites tend to by “fly-by-night” operations, which means that they could disappear soon and create lots of broken links after the sites are pulled. It is also not a very good SEO practice to link to sites that are likely to become scams or engage in spamming activity. If you are a relatively recent reader of this post and the program is still extant, you can verify the information by copying and pasting the domain into your browser bar and pressing the Enter key. This will usually generate the full URL for you and take you to the home page of the site.
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The traffic exchange Link Crews has switched hosts and moved to an upgraded server in order to improve surfing performance. Now that the move has been completed and operations are proceeding as planned, the admin is offering double the normal points per page surfed for the next two days and is also throwing in some free impressions that can be used for banner or text link campaigns. So far the surfing has been going well for me; the double points bonus is really helping because it is allowing me to climb through the crew ranks much faster than before, which translates into more credits per page view. Here are the actual details from the most recent email:
As you have probably noticed by now, the visual theme of the site has changed. The new theme is called “Independence Day” and was created by JTk (yes, that is how he spells it) at imjtk.com. This seems like a good choice for now since it happens to be July 4th and I have been searching for something other than the default theme that I could easily use but still modify to my liking later.
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The admin of Royal Surf has been slowed down somewhat by weather-related issues recently due to widespread flooding and severe thunderstorms across many areas of Texas. Meanwhile, there is an ongoing referral contest and some concern that promoters of the exchange may not be referring “quality” members. However, with at least 200 pages of surfing required before a referral can be officially credited, the problem of “tire kickers” inflating the statistics should be significantly reduced compared to most other traffic exchanges. Here is the latest update:
In addition to the big win from the June contest at Medieval Hits, I also managed to win another contest last month at Crazy-Traffic, a fairly new and promising traffic exchange. These were the final standings according to the email from Admin yesterday:
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