From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 11 Feb 94 11:29:18 Subject: Online Urban Legends: a selection from BIGDUMMY.ZIPUpdReq A quote from BIGDUMMY.ZIP (here as an .ARJ), version 2 of "The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet": 4.4 THE BRAIN-TUMOR BOY, THE MODEM TAX AND THE CHAIN LETTER Like the rest of the world, Usenet has its share of urban legends and questionable activities. There are three in particular that plague the network. Spend more than, oh, 15 minutes within Usenet and you're sure to run into the Brain Tumor Boy, the plot by the evil FCC to tax your modem and Dave Rhode's miracle cure for poverty. For the record, here's the story on all of them: There once was a seven-year-old boy in England named Craig Shergold who was diagnosed with a seemingly incurable brain tumor. As he lay dying, he wished only to have friends send him postcards. The local newspapers got a hold of the tear-jerking story. Soon, the boy's wish had changed: he now wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest postcard collection. Word spread around the world. People by the millions sent him postcards. Miraculously, the boy lived. An American billionaire even flew him to the U.S. for surgery to remove what remained of the tumor. And his wish succeeded beyond his wildest dreams -- he made the Guinness Book of World Records. But with Craig now well into his teens, his dream has turned into a nightmare for the post office in the small town outside London where he lives. Like Craig himself, his request for cards just refuses to die, inundating the post office with millions of cards every year. Just when it seems like the flow is slowing, along comes somebody else who starts up a whole new slew of requests for people to send Craig post cards (or greeting cards or business cards -- Craig letters have truly taken on a life of their own and begun to mutate). Even Dear Abby has been powerless to make it stop! What does any of this have to do with the Net? The Craig letter seems to pop up on Usenet as often as it does on cork boards at major corporations. No matter how many times somebody like Gene Spafford posts periodic messages to ignore them or spend your money on something more sensible (a donation to the local Red Cross, say), somebody manages to post a letter asking readers to send cards to poor little Craig. 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 11 Feb 94 11:30:40 Subject: Online Urban Legends: the rest of the storyUpdReq Don't send any cards to the Federal Communications Commission, either. In 1987, the FCC considered removing a tax break it had granted CompuServe and other large commercial computer networks for use of the national phone system. The FCC quickly reconsidered after alarmed users of bulletin-board systems bombarded it with complaints about this "modem tax." Now, every couple of months, somebody posts an "urgent" message warning Net users that the FCC is about to impose a modem tax. This is NOT true. The way you can tell if you're dealing with the hoax story is simple: it ALWAYS mentions an incident in which a talk-show host on KGO radio in San Francisco becomes outraged on the air when he reads a story about the tax in the New York Times. Another way to tell it's not true is that it never mentions a specific FCC docket number or closing date for comments. Save that letter to your congressman for something else. Sooner or later, you're going to run into a message titled "Make Money Fast." It's your basic chain letter. The Usenet version is always about some guy named Dave Rhodes who was on the verge of death, or something, when he discovered a perfectly legal way to make tons of money -- by posting a chain letter on computer systems around the world. Yeah, right. 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 11 Feb 94 11:33:18 Subject: Imus on Stern UpdReq From: field@bedford.progress.COM (Mark Field) Newsgroups: rec.radio.broadcasting Subject: Imus on the FCC/Infinity/Stern Date: 19 Jan 1994 04:46:43 GMT Message-ID: <2hidvj$dfh@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> Organization: NONE What follows are comments made by Don Imus on the `Imus in the Morning' program Friday, January 7, 1994. The words are his, the punctuation and spelling are mine. This is reproduced with permission. FCC / INFINITY / STERN "Let me take a minute here to put this Federal Communications Commission, Infinity Broadcasting, Howard Stern story into a context for you from my point of view, since every talk show and newspaper on the planet has been calling me about it and I thought this would probably be a good opportunity to do that. "I should say initially in the spirit of fairness that I own a bunch of Infinity stock, that I work for Infinity, and that I have enormous respect for Mel Karmazan who runs Infinity. I might also add that I can work for anyone I want to and I am only beholding to Infinity because I signed a contract a couple of years ago for what many agree now was chump change. But to the point. "To put the Stern mess into context from my perspective, you've got to to break it down to its component parts in order to see what's really involved: The FCC. What Stern does. What Stern ought to be able to do. And finally Stern himself. "Well first of all the FCC is egregiously wrong in holding Infinity Broadcasting hostage to Stern by delaying the purchase of radio stations we want to buy while it considers the complaints against him. It is a peevish petulant attitude at best. At worst it is piling on - a power abuse trip by a smug band of regulators who are a text book example of what happens when you give tin badges to people who suffer a persistent sense of inadequacy. It's the same psychosis that produced the Rodney King incident, and now gives us the commissioners of the FCC. Their interference with Infinity Broadcasting's ability to do business before the Stern matter is adjudicated is not only unethical but I bet you'll find is unconstitutional as well. The irony here is Infinity is currently abiding by the law while the FCC is not. But then the commissioners are political appointees, aren't they? "Now, it's also clear to me - to me - that Stern should be able to say what ever he likes. No matter what puddle of putrescence he happens to be wallowing in at the moment: `Praying' for the former commissioner of the FCC to die of cancer is an example for example. The point, though, is this: If every time some slug says something that offends us we are thrown into wild expurgatory paroxysms then let's just repeal the first amendment right now and be done with it. And please, spare me the 'my kids might listen' rap because that's why they make radios with dials. "As inherently offensive as suggestions about losing the first amendment should be to everybody, equally offensive to me are the self-appointed arbiters of taste around the country who are holding Stern aloft now as some first amendment champion locked in a noble struggle to defend fundamental constitutional guarantees. This nit wit couldn't of distinguished the Bill of Rights from his utility bill until somebody pointed it out to him about twenty minutes ago. "To cast him now as some guarantor of the constitution is so preposterous it is laughable. It is absolutely nothing more than another step along along the path of least resistance that led into the voyeuristic rabble that constitutes his audience. "The plain truth is that Howard Stern is a vile misogynistic, xenophobic punk who panders to the worst instincts in the worst people and even to the worst instincts in some people who should know better. But then folks do slow down at a car wreck, you know, looking for pizza guts there on the pavement, and sometimes if you think that's funny, fine. And some times it is, like if it were Howard's guts spilled as a result of the accident he just had on his way to an appointment with his proctologist, or whatever. -{ Continued }- 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: All 11 Feb 94 11:33:56 Subject: Imus on Stern II UpdReq "The issue is that Stern should be able to say what he wants, you should be able to listen to what you want, and Infinity Broadcasting's ability to do business should suffer for neither. Stifled by some strutting panel of culture cops decrying the excesses of his species. "You know what the real deal is, cause I worked with him, he's stupid, I mean that's the deal, there's nothing more nothing less, he's stupid. I mean I realize better than most folks that humor is subjective, you know, he's just stupid. I also understand that the first amendment isn't a stupidity test and that it guarantees both contemptuousness and virtue. I mean if it didn't, how would I be on the air? "Perhaps the worst insult in all of this occurs when some referee of refinement equates Howard Stern to George Carlin or for God's sake Lenny Bruce. Two guys who stuck controversial humor in your face for a purpose. When Lenny Bruce said nigger it was a brilliant attempt to drain the malice from that term to the point that when some little five year old black kid heard it, it wouldn't break his heart. "The only thing Stern sticks in your face is a repulsive, mean-spirited bully demeanor energized by the power of his cheap celebrity that allows him to humiliate people who can't defend themselves. Anybody can do that, I can do that, I mean we do work for the same company, and as the saying goes: Been there, done that. "Because I mean I did start all this shock jock business back when it was novel. And for those of you that think Howard's act is the result of some neuvo creative genius the facts are when he came here to New York from Washington, D.C. he was doing my act, obviously he had to come up with something else. And the tapes are available by the way. "So Stern is doing what he wants to do, I am doing what I want to do, Infinity Broadcasting should not be made to suffer in either case, and you should be able to listen to whatever you want. "Coming up in a few minutes I will be talking to Senator Bill Bradley and Howard's gonna have a lesbian stick a tent pole through her nipples..... maybe I can tape it." 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718