Olympic Medalist was Spyware King

Remy writes "Seems that Australian gold medal mogulist Dale Begg-Smith is also a spyware entrepreneur. According to a report at Spam Kings, Begg-Smith has supported himself in style as president of a company responsible for generating 20,000,000 pop-ups per day, thanks to drive-by installs of spyware. I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"

Well...

...unless spam or spyware is illegal in Australia, or against terms set by the International Olympic Committee (which probably includes stipulations for non-voliation of the laws of competitors' native countries), then no, he shouldn't be barred from competition.

Also, on the subject of "amateurs", you can't be a "professional" in the sport you're competing in. There's nothing to say that someone can't be rich, or be a "professional" in some other field. He shouldn't be barred for "richly supporting himself" either, until installing spyware becomes an Olympic sport.

Hmm. Don't give them any ideas.

Re:Well...

No! THis would be a great sport in a biathlon.

Sport 1: Competitive spamming

Sport 2: Shooting. But we give the recievers the guns

Re:Well...

I'd be content to send the man to a quale hunting expedition with the US V.P.

Re:Well...

Nah... survival rate is too high for that... have Senator Kennedy give him a ride home from a party...

Nephilium
**Sniff sniff... is that burning karma I smell?**

Re:Well...

How is the parent Flamebait, when the Grandparent is +3 Funny. Aren't these just the same joke (except the one making fun of democrats is Flamebait)?????

Re:Well...

They're both funny, unless you're family of someone who's been drowned or shot by a politician.

-jcr

Re:Well...

Also, on the subject of "amateurs", you can't be a "professional" in the sport you're competing in.

Ummmmmmm....I do not think so. Pro-Basketball stars compete in the Basketball tournaments as do Pro-Ice Skaters (Michelle Quan?) Which is a bit sad since the Pros have already made it and it is the newbies that made the Olympics great. I understand that, as professionals, the people who compete have a chance to actually make some money while they are still young - but it used to be the atheletes competed to get the recognition. Now it's more like they compete to show off their backers. Almost like horses at a race track where the jockies have various brand names on their jackets (and I even saw a brand name on the blanket under the saddle once). Too much commercialism.

<On a side tangent>In the Bible Jesus threw the merchants out of the church saying churches were a place of worship and not for the selling of wares. Should the Olympic committee take a hint from him and throw the merchants out of the Olympics because it is a place for amateurs and not professionals? (By this I mean the merchants are basically buying their way in to the Olympics whereas before no blatant displays were allowed and now they are allowed.)</side tangent>

After all, what's the difference between watching the Indy 500, the WWW, or even a boxing match at Ceasar's Palace and the Olympics? None - if they keep going the way they are going.

Going back to the original topic though, being Spyware King has nothing to do with being a "professional" athelete. Nor would having gained a traffic ticket (so long as said ticket doesn't land you in jail). It is not yet against the law to create Spyware although a lot of people (myself included) do not like or want Spyware. So until that is changed - whether or not this person creates Spyware has nothing to do with whether or not they should or could compete in the Olympics.

Re:Well...

The amateur regulations were redefined because at that time the Soviet-bloc had paid "professionals" representing them at the Olympics. While they were not "professionals" in the Olympic definition (i.e., money for sport's performance) they were given token jobs in government or the military while for their day job they practiced their Olympic sport. You were talking about teams which had practiced together every day for eight years and whose only goal was to win gold at the Olympics. Contrast that against the majority of the other competitors at that time and you usually had a mismatch.

I understand the reason for the change, but I think it did take something out. Take for example the 1980 US hockey win against the Soviets. Why is that so famous? Because a team of college kids beat the most "professional" hockey team at that time. It was a big win because amateurs beat the professionals. (Yes, I know Team USA practiced for over a year before the Olympics but that was nothing compared to the years of practice for the Soviets).

Now, today in 2006, the US hockey team flew in the day before from all their NHL teams and then went on the ice the next day to play against Lativia. What is amazing in this 2006 game is that the "basically amateur" team from Lativia tied the NHL *super-stars*. Team Lativia went nuts after the game because they should have blown out. It made a big story because the professionals were almost beaten.

For the NHL professionals (or any other professional competing) this is not something they are dying to win. A lot of the time they are more worried about their National endorsements (think basketball star controversy) and/or they are worried about not going all out because they might get hurt and injure themselves and hurt their professional career. (Yes, not all think like this, but enough do which takes away some of the spirit of the games.)

Which would you rather see? A young amateur who goes all out and wins a gold after years of practice or a paid professional taking a week off from their competitive sport so they can try to pump up their professional career and get more shoe endorsements?

Actually...

Although you've played to the conspiracy theorists who'd love to believe the myth that the high paid professional athletes really are a bunch of overpaid floaters who couldn't care less about the olympics, the truth is USA's tie with Latvia early on in olympic rounds was more or less predictable and quite common under such circumstances.

The only two teams who are made up of 100% NHL players are Canada and Team USA. These two teams played for the gold 4 years ago in Nagano after handily beating all other strong hockey playing countries, which include Sweden, Finland, Russia and the Czech Republic. If you'll go back and look at the early rounds of each of the past several olympic games, the NHL-based clubs tend to do poorly early on and from time to time get beaten by teams made up of amateurs. Why is this?

1. The players are often travelling to the other side of the world 24-48 hours before they are supposed to step on the ice and play. That's hardly enough time to compensate for jet lag. (Obviously, this was not an excuse at Salt Lake in '02...)

2. NHL seasons are in full swing up to about 3 days before the first game at the olympics, meaning that the olympic teams made up of NHL players have little more than a single practice together in 4 months leading up to the games. That's not enough time to gel together as a cohesive team unit.

3. Teams that win Stanley cups aren't made up solely of a group of all-star players. On championship teams, each player has spent a good deal of time learning to fill a particular role on the squad so that the team plays better as a whole than would be expected based on the individual talent of each player alone. These NHL "dream team" squads often lack an appropriate mix of key role players.

4. Early games at the olympics are mostly meaningless. Given the circumstances (first competitive game together as a team) any professional coach will tell you it's more productive to spend time getting to understand each other's playing style rather than focusing on annihilating the competition as if it was the gold medal game.

5. "...on any given Sunday". Hockey, basketball and baseball are sports in which a few random lucky bounces can dramatically change the outcome of a single game. It's quite common (maybe 15-20% of the time?) that a team is outplayed, yet wins a game because a ref call goes one way or the other, or the ball/puck takes a lucky bounce. To compensate for this randomness, MLB, NBA and the NHL have instituted best-of-5 and best-of-7 series to reduce (but never quite eliminate) the chances that the weaker team will advance. The Olympics is single-game elimination in the semi-final rounds and beyond, meaning even a significantly weaker team has a decent chance of advancing past a strong competitor.

6. Hot goalies. More than any player on the ice, goalies have a huge impact on a team's overall results. A hot goalie can almost single-handedly win a game for a team that is otherwise badly outplayed. Witness the Czech Republic's beating of Canada at the 1998 Olympics for evidence of this. Stanley Cup champions almost without exception have very strong goaltending. It's not uncommon for a really hot goalie to turn aside 40-50 shots a game when his team fails him against a stronger opponent. These games can have surprisingly positive outcomes for otherwise badly outplayed teams if the goalie plays really well.

With that said, go Canada!

Re:Actually...

Nagano was 8 years ago, and the US team sucked and trashed some hotel rooms. 4 years ago the olympics were in Salt Lake City.

Then again

Only if they had Spamming as one of the events in the Olympics.

In true Aussie style:

As an Australian, let me be the first to disown him.

Fuck you canada! You can have him back - and take this trashy medal with you on your way out.

Re:In true Aussie style:

As a Canadian, let me the first to turn you down.

Fuck you Aussies! You claimed him in the first place - you keep him! We're going to keep the steroid users from Jamaica.

  - Zarq.

Imposter

A real Canadian would apologise.

Yeah

They could throw it into it's own category, like doping. "He was disqualified for spamming".

Re:Yeah

They could throw it into it's own category, like doping. "He was disqualified for spamming".

Or they could do an interesting drug test - "We heard you are a spammer and need to find out if you have been using drugs. Drop your pants and stand next to this ruler."

They should've made him ski while his CPU...

is stuck at 99% usage. Maybe he'll freeze mid-jump and crash like the rest of the poor bastards he's helped infect.

Re:They should've made him ski while his CPU...

Nah, he just skiied for 2000m and then got eaten by a yeti.

Re:I wonder.....

At a slight disadvantage being the oldest biathalete on record, vice president Cheney nonetheless earned plenty of points for his target skills. "I tracked the target across my vision," he said. "When I pulled the trigger however, there was a spammer in my line of fire. I take full responsibility for what I did."

The spammer was taken to a hospital with .22 wounds to the face and neck, where his condition was upgraded from "stable" to "beaten to death with computer mice."

Re:I wonder.....

...vice president Cheney nonetheless earned plenty of points for his target skills. "I tracked the target across my vision," he said. "When I pulled the trigger however, there was a spammer in my line of fire. I take full responsibility for what I did."

He's already shot a lawyer, if he can bag a spammer and an RIAA executive, Cheney will be a shoo-in for the 2008 presidential election.

those that excell

tend to do it in more areas than just one.... 20 mill annoyances a day is pretty good

interesting

This article reports him the president of "AdsCPM Network." http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/the-ski-dream- funded-by-a-spam-fortune/2006/02/13/1139679533728. html [theage.com.au] Which is mysteriously under construction right now. Handy archive.org has a copy from last month: http://web.archive.org/web/20050125100919/http://a dscpm.com/ [archive.org]

Skiing over the moguls...

Skiing over in moguls in the Olympics is like running a spyware ring on the Internet.
Even if you win, you're still a scumbag.

Congrats [epsilonminus.com].

I hope you're joking

"but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"

What relevance at all does spamming have to do with the Olympics? Why not just fire and ban spammers from all walks of life, jobs, restaurants, movies, etc, oh wait, it's a little something called freedom. As much as all us hate spam, child porno, junk mail, ads, laywers, etc, we must live them. It's something most people call "society".

Re:I hope you're joking

Why not just fire and ban spammers from all walks of life, jobs, restaurants, movies, etc

Sounds good to me.

oh wait, it's a little something called freedom

There's a little system that pretty much all societies have invented. See, when someone does something really outrageously wrong, something that harms society as a whole, society takes their freedom away from them. It's called "justice". Spamming is something that harms every computer user in the world. Justice is overdue.

Re:I hope you're joking

Well ignoring your utterly absurd mention of 'child porno' as a part of society, the second article clearly states a rule of the olympics.

'The Olympic Code of Ethics says participants "must not act in a manner likely to bring the reputation of the Olympic Movement into disrepute."'

Now given that spamming is illegal in many countries within the olympics, and because it is all over the internet it can gain vast public interest. Id say this breaks the code entirely and by allowing someone whod be considered a felon in many countries to compete, the Olympics are very much being brought in to disrepute.

He has the freedom to spam. They have the freedom to kick him out of the Olympics. It's a little something called, freedom is a double edged sword. Welcome to society.

Re:I hope you're joking

"What relevance at all does spamming have to do with the Olympics?"

Spammers surreptitiously install malicious software on people's computers against the computer owner's will or knowledge. It is illegal in the U.S.A, the U.K., and probably in Australia. I think criminal activity is enough to bar one from competition in the Olympics.

Huh?

The olympics are judging competitors on thier sporting abilities, not thier business ethics. If Dale has broken some law then fair enough, chase him down with lawyers. Disqualifying him from the olympics would be on par with banning anyone who fails a doping test from running thier own business - they are completely unrelated.

Sad

You don't even attempt to mask your jealousy. Nerd athletes are the Xmen of the future. Sorry, Napoleon Dynamites of the world.

ps: this is only a joke if rated funny and a serious warning all should heed if rated anything else.

Well...

If Jesse Owens was allowed to compete in the Berlin Olympics near the height of Nazi power, then I don't think any Olympic committee has authority to enforce a morality unrelated to sporting itself. An Olympic spammer in an online nation is no guiltier than a black Olympian in a racist nation.

(Please don't misinterpret this as saying that Jesse Owens was somehow wrong.)

20,000,000?

Twenty million popups a day?

That's it?

Pfft. That's like 100,000 infected machines, tops.

Please don't tell me

it showed up in his urine sample. Man, these guys are getting really insidious.

Re:Please don't tell me

it showed up in his urine sample. Man, these guys are getting really insidious.

Are, um, male appendage enhancement pills banned by the Olympic authorities?

(Is it 'performance enhancing' if one has to lug a minor python around in one's trousers? I do hope for his sake he wasn't partaking in what he was most likely advertising...)

Olympic committee morality

Given that the International Olympic Committe has chosen to hold their games in places that grossly violate human rights like Nazi Germany (1936), the Soviet Union (1980), and mainland China (2008), I don't think they have much moral standing to ban someone for spyware.

Re:Olympic committee morality

That doesn't mean the Australian Olympic Committee can't ban him.

What gives? Everyone's standing up for the rights of the spammer? I'll happily admit there are even worse crimes in the world, but those have penalties too.

Let me remind folks that it was just this month that the Australian PM wanted to ban a New Zealand athlete from the Commonwealth Games because he had committed manslaughter, and had finished served his sentence nearly ten years ago. He's not a shining example, and manslaughter is more serious than spamming, sure. But where's the dividing line between crimes that are serious enough to warrant bans and crimes that aren'? What about robbery? embezzlement? white-collar crime? Now we're in grey areas. I'd say spammers are fairly high up the list of serious criminals who should be kicked out of an event which ostensibly (though not in actuality) is there to celebrate human dignity.

Foster's. Australian for beer.

Spyware...Australian for advertising.

*WAS* is the important word right

.. he gave up his spyware business to focus on the olympics...

Well at least the olympics are good for reducing spam right ?

his real sponsors....

check out his competition jacket...

I bet it has 'sponsored by C1Alis! and Vi4gra! By online too satsfy you're lady"

Modified medal

Someone should modify his Olympic medal so that it's got a flap on the front that "pops up" at random intervals and smacks him in the face, blocking his view.

he is an amteur

From the original Slashdot story:

"I know the concept of Olympians being amateurs is outdated, but shouldn't they be barred from competition for this sort of thing?"

Well, it is correct that the Olympics no longer require that the contestants be amateurs, but even if they did the Australian in question would still be an amateur. I.e., olympic athletes were always allowed to be professionals in some field but untill few years ago they were not allowed to be pros in the field they are competing in. So the quoted sentence does not make much sence.

A think a much bigger issue is what this guy did may have been a crime in many of the countries he was doing it in. So should a criminal be allowed in the Olympics? I don't know ... but since he probably has not been convicted anywhere, I dont think the Olympic games is the correct place to judge him.

Take away his medal and...

Take away his medal and give him an X-10 camera instead.

Official NBC/Olympics bio

I heard about this guy's business while watching the men's mogul competition, so I looked it up on NBC's olympics site [nbcolympics.com]:

At 13, the entrepreneur founded an online marketing company that he says has grown to the third-largest in the world. Begg-Smith originally started the Vancouver and New York-based company, which designs search engines and pop-up window blockers for about 5,000 websites, to fund his ski career.

Which seemed a little fishy--why would an online marketing company want to block pop-ups? I guess somebody did a clumsy job of white-washing his bio.