Not Your Typical Data Driver Column -- Visual Studio Magazine

Data Driverby David Ramel

Not Your Typical Data Driver Column

Dear ‹FirstName>,

In these trying times you occasionally just need to take a break from the business of data and have a good laugh. Which is what I did when I received the following e-mail, purportedly from a real data-related vendor. I'll protect that innocent by anonymizing the company/personal details in italics, but otherwise the message is presented as received:

Dear ‹FirstName›,

We're ‹insert emotion› to announce our research is nearly complete. In just a few ‹random time duration›, we'll be announcing the new Company Name Telepathy Source and Destination, allowing the everyday man and woman to read minds into an SSIS data stream.

Imagine being able to:

Read the entire encyclopedia in a matter of minutes

Output your wife's thoughts to find out how she really feels

Learn a new skill in seconds like Neo from the Matrix

Over the past week we've run a contest to see who can be the first to view this amazing research and I'm happy to announce that Person's Name is our winner. If you are Person's Name, please click the below link to see our research. If you are not Person's First Name, please do not click below. We operate solely on the honor system at Company Name.

Person's Name Click Here

‹Emotional Stub›,

CEO's Name, Founder of Company Name

So, I don't know if it was meant to harvest contact information or install malware or what, but it certainly provided some much-needed ‹insert pleasant emotion› to the Data Driver. What's the clumsiest troll you've ever received? Comment here or drop me a line.

Posted by David Ramel on 10/05/2011

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Mads Kristensen Eyes MCP Server for Visual Studio Copilot

"What MCP server would be helpful to use with Copilot in Visual Studio? I want to write one."
Two Different Takes on Cursor/Copilot Vibe Coding Supremacy

Cursor and GitHub Copilot go head-to-head in a pair of firsthand reviews. One coder returns to Copilot after it adds support for top LLMs. A coding writer falls for Cursor’s conversational style and beginner-friendly flow.
Linear Regression with Two-Way Interactions Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of linear regression with two-way interactions between predictor variables. Compared to standard linear regression, which predicts a single numeric value based only on a linear combination of predictor values, linear regression with interactions can handle more complex data while retaining a high level of model interpretability.
Vibe Writing

Why outline when you can prompt? Vibe writing is the new vibe coding, and yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Next-gen SQL Projects with Microsoft.Build.Sql

SQL development is evolving fast, and Microsoft's Drew Skwiers-Koballa will explain it all in a featured session at the VS Live! @ Microsoft HQ developer conference being held at the company's Redmond campus in August.