to nerdy south records
date Mar 26, 2007 12:41 PM
subject RE: restoration of myspace music account 156441490
mailed-by myspace.com

Hi,

We apologize, however you were deleted due to the fact that you are a known spammer, and have created a multitude of profiles in the past. Your account will not be reinstated.

Thank you,
Myspace Music Support
Myspace.com

i find this funny and sad at the same time.

my response:

for the record, i have no reason to spam myspace and i havent ever spammed on myspace, so i dont know why you think i did anything wrong. i certainly didnt create a multitude of profiles like you claim - i dont even know where youd get that impression.

if theres someone else i can talk to, id be more than happy to clear the air with them. again, i know ive spammed in the past - so did tom and chris - we were even rokso listed on spamhaus together at the same time. some of us find ways to move on and make money doing other things.

http://www.ytcracker.com/music/demos/ggatkomn
a sick mp3 i made tonight in commemoration of p. nis being the tightest

busta rhymes
the who
ah ha
darude
bon jovi
missy elliot
stacey q
tears for fears
three six mafia
black eyed peas
ferry corsten
i forgot who this is i think dj infiniti
blue oyster cult
bob marley
the shapeshifters

anyone who knows my daughter knows that she is a gigantic fan of dora the explorer - she has the most ridiculous collection of dora-related things that i have amassed her. i love the show for its multicultural, worldly approach to entertainment for children - it is both educational and fun but not in the hokey sense. it also has that interactivity where dora (and her cousin diego) break the fourth wall by getting the kids involved in the show.

i came across this article in slate where it discusses the actual marketing strategy behind the show. it rightly places the control of the television into the parents’ hands, therefore the total marketing package that i mentioned above is really no accident. the crossover appeal between parents and kids is a brilliant and well-planned one. dora has surpassed barney in terms of merchandising and ad revenue, and while i was too old for barney i still remember the scope and size of his reign of terror in his heyday. an interesting excerpt from the article:

The show and its licensed goods—paper plates, wallets, miniature moonbounces—have brought in an estimated $1 billion since Dora premiered in August of 2000. And Dora the Explorer: Silly Fiesta debuted atop Billboard’s Kid Video chart this week, knocking Dora the Explorer: It’s a Party out of the No. 1 spot.

oh well, until you are a parent, i don’t think any of this matters.

i own a small, 12-seat outbound call center running centos, asterisk, and vicidial - a $0 solution that eats fools up proper. holler at me if you want to pay me to teach you how to ball off VoIP too aka consulting lol.

recently, i encountered a sales campaign basically consisting of follow-up calls where a rep would be nice to have but absolutely not cost effective or necessary. i decided i would just go the vocal spam route and record one of my female representatives giving the canned script as a prerecorded message. in this case, everything is completely FTC compliant because it is a follow-up call based on an online application they filled out so DNC rules do not apply.

first off, you will need to create a phantom agent. after logging into the /vicidial/admin.php with my admin account, i created an agent named phillip nis from the users tab.

after adding phillip nis, i needed to make him a remote user, so i clicked on the “remote agents” tab. from here, you click “add new remote agents.” in the “user id start” field, put the id number of the phillip nis rep (in my case it was 6667 because IRC ports holla you know how we do). put 1 in the “number of lines” field, select the asterisk server you are using in the server IP. for the external extension i just put 00 because it really doesn’t do anything - you’re going to have a recording talking to these people, so a real remote agent doesn’t need to be contacted. select the campaign you will be doing this on and leave the user as inactive for now.

from one of your phones connected to the matrix, dial 8168. a friendly voice will tell you to enter a pin. here you will enter 4321. the voice will tell you how to record a voice prompt. after recording the message that you want to spam, hit # - pressing 1 will save the prompt, pressing 2 will play the recording back, 3 will rerecord. for some stupid reason, i don’t see a way to delete stuff from this particular interface - just make sure you record something that you’re absolutely in love with. the recordings made in this fashion are numbered starting from 85100001, so as you make jokes and stupid recordings for whatever purpose the recorded filenames are incremented. to access what a recording sounds like at a later time, you can dial the prompt number from a phone on your network (i.e. dialing 85100001 will play that recording through your handset/headset). in my case, my recorded message was saved as 85100003.

i configured my dialplan to basically wait for a couple seconds of silence and then play the recorded message to the recipient. the silence is basically in place so that way when the person on the other end says “hello?” or the answering machine beeps it won’t be talking over them. i added the unassigned extension 8329 to /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf using the following format:

exten => 8329,1,WaitForSilence(1000,2)
exten => 8329,2,Playback(85100003)
exten => 8329,3,AGI(VD_amd_post.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8329,4,Playback(85100003)
exten => 8329,5,Hangup

the waitforsilence command waits for 1000ms, twice. the playback function plays the recorded message. the AGI script changes the status of the lead to “AL” and then the message is played again in case someone missed it the first time. the extension then hangs up and moves on.

reload your asterisk configuration files through the asterisk console.

in your campaign configuration, using the detail view, enter 8329 (or whatever unused extension you chose) in the “campaign vdad exten” field. save the changes.

log into your /vicidial/vdremote.php interface using the phillip nis-esque user id and password you created. switch this user’s status to active and the campaign will begin dialing automatically with the lists you have loaded.

i think that’s comprehensive enough.

*** MINI UPDATE ***

utilizing this method only dispositions leads that have actually listened to the first instance of the recording, so i just jerry-rigged the VD_amd_post.agi script to change the status of the lead after waitforsilence() is executed.

open VD_amd_post.agi in /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin/ and replace all instances of ‘AL’ with ‘PICKUP’. save the file as VD_pickup.agi, or whatever you feel like. make sure it’s chmodded rx all.

change your extensions.conf section for the auto message campaign to:

exten => 8329,1,WaitForSilence(1000,2)
exten => 8329,2,AGI(VD_pickup.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8329,3,Playback(85100003)
exten => 8329,4,AGI(VD_amd_post.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8329,5,Playback(85100003)
exten => 8329,6,Hangup

that way the lead is coded as ‘PICKUP’ if the line was live but the entirety of the recording was not listened to.

every song i’ve heard of theirs has been incredibly strong. i think they have staying power for the next ten years provided they keep making music.

that is all.

there’s a couple of slipups, but only a dj or avid listener would catch them (i think). miami vice, cream, led zeppelin, ciara, sylvester, snoop - all represented well in this mix called “hennesey and tha time machine.”

click here to download it and view the elite bonus picture.

also worth noting is that the pcs will come preloaded with a C64 emulator and 50 classic games!

click here for the article!

Commodore Gaming has emerged from the shadows to announce its first line of gaming PCs, together with some flashy new cases.
The Commodore brand, which was purchased and relaunched by the Dutch firm Yeahronimo Ventures in 2005, now includes four boutique PCs: the high-end Commodore XX, followed by the GX, GS, and G. Prices for the PCs were not available, as the site will begin selling them next month.

click this little itunes button here to open the itunes store.

since the invention of the internets, people have long since found ways to garner attention from the masses. i couldn’t tell you what my hacking-related geocities address number was, but i remember it was on the SiliconValley block and i would harass my “neighbors” frequently. fast forward to 2007 - we have all kinds of mediums to look idiotic on - most notably youtube. people harass each other on there and on myspace all the time - this makes the world a wonderful place.

aside from the chain letters flooding youtube preaching terrible luck if you do not repost x message on y videos, i’d like to see some of you talented fans do some interesting stuff with my music, primarily so i can feature it here on the site and show off what stellar people you are. be ridiculous, lip synch, draw something in mspaint, belly dance - whatever. upload the video to youtube and paste a link in the comments or just email me at rapper at gmail dot com so i can show the world your unending greatness.

here are a couple videos to get you started:

also, no update on the myspace thing yet. sad panda.

if you go to my music myspace page, you will see that i have been deleted yet again.

i’m slightly frustrated because i’m sort of shackled to myspace in the sense that it is the premier site for social networking and music exposure. i have other people periodically monitoring my profile from my colorado offices (i do the messaging and commenting, they add the friends, etc.) but i know i don’t spam and i haven’t been phished, so who knows what the fucking deal is.

i’ve spoken with a few people though some dg methods and i think i will be able to get my account restored - at least, i *hope* i can get it restored. i have faith in the power of phillip nis - let us hope that faith succeeds.