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The kings of nothing
9 comments- TAGS:eddie davidson, Robert Soloway, Spam King
- IT TOPICS:Security
Headline writers oversimplify things sometimes -- "hackers" when we are speaking in fact of crackers (or simple crooks who happen to use computers to do their thing), for instance. I try to be diligent about usage, and I think other knowledgeable editors try too, but honestly? You get lazy, and you want to convey an idea that This Thing Is Like That Thing in a limited amount of space. And so you slop things up occasionally.
That said, I ask that everyone who reads this -- colleagues, tech friends, everyone who has cause to speak of these matters -- promise that we are dropping the phrase "spam kings" when what we mean is "prolific spammers." Robert Soloway, sentenced this week in Seattle for slinging garbage into your inbox and mine, isn't a king; he's a felon and a lying weasel. He's king of nothing worthwhile, nothing good, nothing royal. The only reason to talk about the guy at all is to make sure that the shunning and dishonor continue long after the judicial system has washed its hands of the guy.
And Eddie Davidson, the Colorado dirtbag who started the week by escaping his minimum-security correction facility and ended it by shooting his wife and three-year-old daughter to death (and, yeah, himself -- pity he didn't do that one first)? Isn't, wasn't a king of anything. He was a toad who slung junk mail for a shady stock. He was a coward and a murderer who did all this evil behind a crime you can do by yourself in your basement in your underwear. If you need a noun to apply to someone like that, find a noun besides "king" -- perhaps something that fits comfortably after the words "piece of." The criminal element deserves no respect, even lazy-headline respect, from decent folk.
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