From Garnet's Inbox: "Buy Your Number"Today's candidate for best spam email is: Subject: Be cool, own a number :)
A site selling real numbers has been launched lately. You can buy real numbers, like 3, 432 or 87674. You get an online certificate e-mailed to your e-mail address that proves you own that number. Why do people buy numbers? Because it's fun! You can show your certificate to your friends, or print it out, and have it framed. Cool, isn't it? Be cool, own a number :) URL: http://www.buy-your-number.comThis is not a spam, but an opt-in bulk mail. You get it because you are on an opt-in list. And because we think you are cool :) My brother swears I have too much time on my hands, so just to prove him right, I visited their website: Buy your number for $7.99, or with our special offer, now just $4.99! This is a limited time offer!Once you paid for the choosen number, you get an online certificate mailed to your e-mail address, that you have paid for that number. You can save the certificate to your disk, print it out and have it framed, or send it to your friends. You can buy any 1-7 digit number - even numbers like 000213 - based on availability. And the buyer of the 1,000,000th number will win $1,000,000 in cash!Here are some numbers they claim to have recently sold: 1 331116 5973555 7001 8 44 438606
900009 3223 1010101 8978363 111101 3444913
4900094 3000 7777777 2282088 370 1940638 9999999 Funny thing: They say they are selling "real numbers". Here are some facts about real numbers. According to my research, this site is only selling a small subset of integers, or whole numbers, also known as "natural numbers". Should we report them to the Federal Trade Commission for false advertising?However, they do have a handy function to check if your favorite number has already been bought: If you want to check who bought a specific number, or you want to check if a number is available, than(sic) just click the Check number button. You will see a popup window, where you can type the number. After clicking on the Check number button in the popup window, the certificate that belongs to the number will show up if the number is already sold. If the number is not sold yet, a message will tell you that. And, so that the whole world can know that you own your number, you can even wear your number: You can buy merchendise(sic) only the at the time when you buy your number. This is to assure that only the people who have number can have the official t-shirt and hat. So these merchandises are sold exclusively for those, who HAVE their number. So if you want to be one of them, than(sic) go ahead, and buy your number Good thing they are only selling numbers right now. The number of misspelled words they could sell could be really overwhelming!They even have a disclaimer that says it is illegal to sell numbers in some countries, but it's the buyers responsibility to know if they are breaking the law or not. Who would you call to find this out? Your local police department, your state representative, Hillary Clinton, or would you have to go all the way to the President, or even maybe the U.N.? Could there be an international treaty covering the sale of numbers? I did a little research, and came up with the following article: U.S. launches new offensive in IraqMonday, November 17, 2003 Posted 11:19 AM EST (1619 GMT) TIKRIT, Iraq (HNN) -- The U.S. military has unleashed what it describes as a massive offensive against illegal number trafficking around Saddam Hussein's ancestral homeland of Tikrit in north-central Iraq, American military sources said. The operation began Sunday night as part of the 4th Infrantry Division's Operation Middle Digit. "The 4th Infrantry Division and Task Force Iron Lung has launched a series of combined arms operations to include air and ground strikes against identified traffickers in numbers," a statement from U.S. Central Command said, "along with precision raids against calculating individuals focused on neutralizing numerological objectives, derivatives, tangents, and other subversive functions." A military source said Operation Middle Digit is designed "to let the Iraqis know that trafficking in numbers will not be tolerated, because all of the world depends on the free flow of numbers." Soldiers captured Mohamar Bin "Binary" Mohammad -- also know as "Abu Binary" - on Saturday about 50 miles (77 kilometers) west of Baghdad, near Habbiniya. Abu Binary was high on the list of the U.S. Defense Department's secret list of FFh (that's 255 to you and me) most-wanted Iraqi's. Evidence linked him to a plot to corner the market on binary checksums, a crucial element vital to military communications. A military spokesman said there is no credibility to Abu's claim to be a direct descendant of the inventor of the number zero, adding "Everyone knows that 0 was invented by IBM, under contract with the Defense Department." In the raid, soldiers also confiscated abacusses, slide rules, 4 function calculators, a TRS-80 Model III computer, books of logarithms, and an adding machine, the press center said. Unidentified sources said that a search for a group that was allegedly taking square roots of negative numbers turned out to be imaginary. Anyhow, despite the international ramifications of buying my own number, I was really curious to see what I had to do to get a number for the special limited time offer price... So I visited their order form: We will send the certificate to your e-mail address. Now we have a limited time special promotion. You will get your number only for $4.99. The only thing you have to do is to give the email address and nick of three of your friends!* So go ahead, and save money!Your full name (will be on the Certificate): Your email: Your nick (the name your friends call you): First friend's email: First friend's nick: Second friend's email: Second friend's nick: Third friend's email: Third friend's nick: (*) If you provide fake addresses, than(sic) we charge you $7.99. With providing the email addresses you send a promotion e-mail to your friends. So I guess I got this email because one of my friends bought a number. Which one of you was it? Come on, 'fess up!Unfortunately they are missing a function sell whole ranges of numbers, and they don't have an affiliate program. Because of these oversights, I can only give them a 3-stars out of 5 rating, (with apologies to the owners of 3 and 5). But here are the things I really want to know: - Why are all their examples whole numbers?
- What about imaginary numbers?
- Fractions?
Sadly their site only has a Frequently Unanswered Questions, and the FUQ didn't even include my questions.Of course this all got me thiking about how this could be a vast untapped market. Maybe I should sell unicode characters. Or maybe even chinese ideographs? Quit claim deeds to Black Acre? (P.S. That was an inside joke for lawyers, a law student friend of mine already thought of doing this, and he's now so rich he hasn't even bothered to complete law school!) Send me your ideas about what crazy things you'd like to buy, and I'll sell them to you. Find me three of your friends who will buy the same thing, and as soon as three of each of their friends buys the same thing, you'll receive my Golden Pyrite Pyramid award!
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