************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** "My name is Dave Rhodes. In September 1988 my car was repossessed and the bill collectors were hounding me..." Over the last few years thousands of messages bearing the plight of Dave Rhodes have been posted to net.news. If you believe absolutely everything you read, this hard luck story had a happy ending. Dave Rhodes asked everyone on the net to send him $5. It wasn't charity, you see, because if a kind soul sent Dave Rhodes $5, he could add his name and home address to the bottom of a list of others who sent in their $5. Rhodes' entry could be removed from the top of the list, everyone else could be moved up one, and the message could then be re-posted to hundreds of newsgroups. Since the re-posted message's subject was "Make Money Fast" others would naturally want to make money fast and keep this amazing cash making system going ... unless of course the user found his access cut off and the message cancelled by an irate postmaster. Although a Make Money Fast message (aka MMF) hasn't likely had the name of Dave Rhodes in the actual list since the late '80s, his name has lived on in the introductory paragraph of many MMFs. There is, however, some question as to whether Rhodes ever existed. One FAQ reports Rhodes was a Maryland student who used his account at Columbia Union College to spam the net in 1987 or 1988. Some users have reported an earlier snail mail version bearing Rhodes' famous plight. Further, no one has actually produced an archived message with Rhodes' name in the From line. No big surprise. Computer people are computer people. They are, unfortunately, not historians. There seems to be little that can stop MMFs, despite possible criminal prosecution for mail fraud or even the common sense notion that you don't distribute your home address to millions of strangers. Most people usually killfile MMFs. There is, however, a breed of user that believes when faced with an inescapable irritant, you may as well study it. I conducted my own personal study of MMFs before I figured out how to use a killfile. I noticed the Rhodes' rags-to-riches intro tale was increasingly being replaced by a strange all caps, over exclamated plea to "PLEASE READ THIS!!!! DON'T FLAME ME!!! THIS WORKS!!!" Like that was going to help. One of the better sites on the net devoted to MMFology is the Make Money Fast Myth Page (www.pacifier.com/~klucke/mmf/mmf_myth.html). The page's author shows the mathematical futility behind this scam. If you come in at the number 10 slot, you'll need two million people generating 8,000 gigabytes of data to move you to the magical number one slot. It ain't gonna happen.