It’s me, live with it

FRIENDSTER IS CLOSING SOON!!!!!
from Mr. Allen Smith (Manager of Friendster)
Friendster system is getting too crowded!! We need you to forward this to at least 20 people. I know this seems like a large number, but we need to find out who is really using their account. If you do not send this to at least 10 Friendster members, we will delete your account.

WARNING!

We want to find out which users are actually using their Friendster accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass this e-mail to every Friendster user that you can. IF YOU DO NOT PASS this letter to anyone. we will delete your account. Sorry for this inconvenience.
 
Is the content of the message spreading widely on the Friendster network. I don’t care about it, because I know very much that it is not true. Why? I’ll explain.

Firstly, the name ‘Allen Smith’ is pretty much as generic as ‘John Smith’. Frankly, I think the hoax will be much more believable if they use the name ‘Andrew Pulowski’. Seriously, generic names just saps the credibility of a message like a black hole.
Next, for each new member in Friendster, they will get more money, eitheer from advertising or whatever, the point is, more users mean smore money and more money means easier maintenance and no member cutout.

Now we’ll go to the technical details. What do you think a message is? Just a collection of characters being sent around? Exactly. The only thing identifying the sender are the ‘from’ field. Of course, Friendster can tell their servers to count every messages passed by their servers. But it’d be a hassle, not to mention pointlessly loading their servers. You see, rather than telling the users to spam each other, they would be better off putting a button on each of their user’s homepage and telling them to click it for a survey.

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/fake-eggs-china.shtml

http://paultan.org/archives/2006/01/01/china/ 

Hoaxindo (indonesian) 

Anyone can clarify this?

Because I don’t think it is a total hoax, I can see some rationality in it.

Chemical ingridients can be bought cheap in bulk. And I won’t be surprised if the cost of making fake eggs is less than the price of real eggs. 

I, unlike most Indonesian, only heard about the ‘voodoo by the phone thing’ yesterday. I then look for some articles about it on the net.

(Yes, I am aware that ’santet’ is not the same thing as ‘voodoo’, but for this purpose, it’ll do.)

For those of you who haven’t heard, you can find article about it here, here, and here. (all indonesian)

Now, those three sites have turned the rumour down pretty nicely. So I’m not going to talk about it. What I’m about to discuss is ‘in what circumstances will your cellphone kill you?’

One part of the rumour states :

"menurut seorang profesor dari WHO itu memang bukan ilmu hitam, tapi sang penelepon mengirim sinar infra merah yang berlebihan ke nomor yang dituju, sehingga memang bisa mengakibatkan sang penerima tewas."

Which roughly translated as:

"According to a ‘Professor’ from ‘WHO’, it isn’t black magic. Instead, the caller sends excessive infrared light to the recepient number, which can make the receiver drop dead unexpectedly in very ugly, brutish way."

Yes, I made that last part up.

Anyway, some things are wrong in the above statement. Firstly, cellphone doesn’t send any infrared light in voice communication, it uses microwave. It does send infrared in data transfer, but even that won’t hurt you. Secondly, do you actually think a ‘Who’ ‘Preuffeseerur’ would be that kind and give away such stupid statement that may cause panic among humankind?

But wait, microwave can kill human, you said. True, but to actually kill human on the spot, how much power do microwaves take? This page at dansdata shows what microwave’s affects to us (find the word ‘microwave’ on the page).

Now, he mentions microwave oven, not microwave used for communication. A microwave oven easily consume hundreds of watts, while a cellphone have to get away with a couple of watts, tops.

So unless you’re using a diesel generator to power up your extremely-modded-phone that can actually receive power from a diesel generator, You can’t kill anyone. If you actually are using one, I’m betting you’ll be dead first.

It’s digital age, but still, the most efficient way of killing someone using cellphone is by throwing it at them with all your might, or using it as blunt melee weapon.