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Gotcha! DNS Popup Scammer Fined $1.9 Million
Mister B writes: "A scam artist who trapped surfers mistyping their URLs (including those for children's websites) and barraged them with popup ads for pr0n and gambling has been busted to the tune of about $2 million. Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! The FTC has a sense of humour nevertheless: the case name is 'Cupcake Party' (the scammer did business under 'Cupcake') :-) . More details at MSNBC and the FTC."
Can they be jailed if they refuse to pay?
Oh yeah. Bill Belsey and the Bling Bling.
Too bad he pronounced it wrong. He's not that black.
because they start quickly and come with the O/S. Oh, and cuz mozilla does not let them go forward/backward through history using mouse4 and mouse5 buttons!!! :)
Finally, justice served... I've been waiting a long time to see this hapen.
--Goat
CEO, Goat Software
Goatblog
He must be getting paid per impression. What good is a pr0n or casino ad targeted at cartoon network fans? The don't have any money.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
If only the entire world were avid slashdot readers, we may not ever have to hear another annoying person
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
The court also has barred the defendant from participating in advertising affiliate programs on the Internet, and has ordered him to give up more than $1.8 million in ill-gotten gains.
People like this will always keep doing shit like this as long as there are enough morons out there to manage to give this dude $1.8 million.
Come on people, wake up.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Please everyone knows it's all about Opera.
Sure, it sucks that you get hit with a bunch of pop-up ads, but what did he do that's illegal? You typed in the wrong URL that led you to a perfectly valid site and pull down data from it. Be more careful typing next time.
Is your browser retarded?
Not only is this the fault of people using internet browsers to exploit a known design flaw, it is also the fault of browser providers for doing nothing to correct that design flaw. I hope the FTC fines Microsoft next.
Cupcake party!
The FTC has a sense of humor, just unbelievable
They actually do, by disabling Javascript. The only you are missing is the purdy tabulations and hypertext links changing colors, oh the humanity!
Time to make money !!!! .com(s) may be over, but IT booms is still there :)
Is there anyone I can sue ??
> the world may never know....
1... 2... 3... *crunch*
Sorry, ask somebody else.
Derelict
Just wait until the FTC goes surfing for warez. Maybe they'll shut the bogus warez sites down as well and we'll finally be able to download Microsoft Bob by doing a search on Google.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
This website pops up 64 popups every time you visit it. Which is likely to be once, after you realize your mistake, you won't come back.
This is considered criminal behavior. But what about companies like X10 or Casino-On-Net that you see about 30 ads an hour for, every time you try to use the web? In the end it is those companies that make you close more ad windows. I think that those are far more guilty. What about the pr0n ads that won't let you use the back button to leave, and if you try to close the window, they re-open themselves? I shudder to think how many thousands of popups from those companies I've closed in my lifetime.
Of course, it's the browsers themselves that are allowing these popups to happen. I would bet that companies like Doubleclick are paying M$ and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers. But I'm a conspiracy theorist.
-Evan
I work with joecartoon.com, and I know they will be VERY happy to see this, as they had already sued Zuccarini to get about half a dozen mispellings of that domain name turned over. I was the one that actually transferred them _from_ Zuccarini to the joecartoon.com servers - I never had any contact with Zuccarini tho - just his laywer.
That sounds ummm... nefarious, no... scary, no.... Damnit I thought the government was supposed to have neat code names/case names, not irrelavent/inane ones. Oh well, good for them, nail that annoyance! Now how can we sic 'em on pop unders and pop ups in general?
Which URL did the FTC guy mistype to get all the stuff...
How can internet stuff be a crime? Comon! Its just a lame-ass program trapping lame-ass mis-spelling lame-asses. One million? Two millions? By hitting my neighbor in the head I would be fined much less than this. I just laugh of the USA and its stupid political laws. LOL!
They actually do, by disabling Javascript. The only you are missing is the purdy tabulations and hypertext links changing colors, oh the humanity!
Well that, and the ability to log into "dot net" sites like Hotmail so you can do your daily chore of shoveling the day's accumulation of ~100 pornographic spams into the trash. (If you don't, Microsoft will clear room for the spam by deleting the juicy old letters from ex-girlfriends you have in there.)
But have you tried oatmeal? Don't knock it until you've tried it.
From the article: FTC investigators said Zuccarini makes from $800,000 to $1 million per year by charging advertisers whose ads appear on the browser windows.
In this case the advertisers are getting screwed more than the poor sap who fat-fingered the URL. My question is "Do companies who advertise on the web have any control over how their ads are used?" Cupcake is getting paid by the popup and is really sticking to these advertisers and even moreso because the ads aren't really reaching a target market. I would think the advertisers have more to lose than the person browsing. With that in mind, how hard would it be to script a browser to feed off these popups by creating false hits and start bankrupting advertisers who really don't care how their ads are used.
'Same speed C but faster'
What's the problem with misspelled domain names? People should know how to spell something before they type it in, or if they are unsure they should use a search engine that can correct their misspellings to learn the proper spelling like Google does.
What the guy did was wrong but trying to regulate misspellings is a bad idea. Every inch you give the government to regulate things on the internet is a mile that they will take in the future.
The loopholes for this are abounding. The next guy to try this scam is going to do it in another country to avoid prosecution. There is no way you are going to stop this kind of behavior. We're better off telling people to make sure they have the name spelled correctly before typing it in or to check with a search engine first. Once these con's realize it's no longer profitable they will stop doing what they are doing.
Or write something yourself, yeesh. There are solutions. Life is not a conspiracy theory.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I've been using Mozilla for a year now. What are these things you speak of called "pop ups"??
Here are some of the scammed domains they are talking about
http://www.caroonnetwork.com
http://www.cartoo
http://www.artoonnetwork.com
http://
http://www.cartoonnetork.co
http://www.cartoonnetwrk.com
http://www.catoon
http://www.cartoonnetwok.com
[alk]
What's funny is that MSNBCs website actually pops up an ad when you go to that URL ;)
Rather ironic.
Cor
I was about to reply with something about trolling until i realized the sarcasm in your post.
Good Job, I'd give ya +1 funny, if I moderated, which I don't
IIRC, some guy was murdered after spamming/hacking(?) some mafioso's computer in NY.
I'd rather have a 2 million dollar fine which I can't pay anyhow.
What's wierd about this is that whenever I, er, my friends go to pr0n sites, loads of windows pop up in much the same fashion as described in the article...heck, I, my friends I mean, think it's just more quality content than they truly deserve.
burn their butts big time & big bucks!!
...maybe they'll shut down Comp-U-Geek next.
I'm glad only a few people use browser's that block pop-ups. If everyone blocked pop-ups, then advertisers would just use harder to get around schemes, such as putting the content of the page in the pop-up and the ad in the page your browser goes to, or larger ads in the page.
Slashdot knows a lot of their users block pop-ups so they put their ads on the pages they serve, plus they serve them from images.slashdot.org so that people can't block it on their hosts file.
As long as only a small percentage of people block pop-ups and use hosts files I can surf the internet without seeing X-10 ads ever, so you should tell people that they shouldn't block pop-ups and that it hampers their web surfing experience.
Cupcake's lawyer: "Good news, Cupcake. I just got back from a meeting with the prosecution.
Cupcake: Ok, and what did they say? I'm anxious to know just how bad off I am. Fill me in."
Cupcake's Lawyer: Sure thing. Here's the deal -- The have decided to SEE HOT CHIXXX WITH YOUR NEW X10 CAMERA!!! FREE!!!!!!!!! HOT!!! FREE!!
Cupcake: Yeah, very funny. Now get serious, i'm paying you by the hour. What happened at the meeting?
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT NOW!!!! FREE HOT!!! NOW FREE!!!! NOW FREE HOT!!! "
Cupcake: "Stop it!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "So, we're not going to have to worry about the fact that the judicial process in these sorts of matters can tend to take HOT XXX HORNY SLUTS!!!!! "
Cupcake: "STOP!!!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT HOT FREE HOT NOW!!!! NOW!!! NOW!!!!!!!! FREE NOW!!!! so, you wont be going anywhere for a while. In the meantime, i've asked the presiding judge to look into the prosecutions CASINO ON-NET!!!!!!"
Cupcake: "STOP!! STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!!!! NOW!!"
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT FREE XXX!!!! XXX NOW!!!! XXX NOW FREE!!!! FREE!!! HOT CASINO!!! HOT CASINO FREE!!!!!!!!!! FREE HOT XXX NEW CASINO!!!! FREE CASINO!!!, so gimmie a call when you decide what to do, and we can go from there. Talk to ya HOT!!!! XXX!!!! FREE HOT!!! then."
Cupcake: But wait a minute! You havent told me......
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!! HOT XXX CASINO!!! FREE CASINO HOT!!!"
Cupcake: "But!.... But wait!! Dont go yet! You havent..."
Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Bowie J. Poag
Doubtly they'll strip it in Netscape thus you'll soon have it in Netscape 7 or whatever. BTW why not to install mozilla right now?
It was a Misrosoft operating system even they would
like to forget.. The entire idea was that it was a 'user agent', an entire operating system based on the same annoying principles as Clippy.
The sucker also required a P100 in the days a DX66 was all any sane user was buying..
Notable info about it, it was the brainchild of Melinda, Bill's wife.
No, i'm sorry but i don't see the crime here. Sure the guy is a complete f*cking asshole, but thats still legal (unfortunately, as there are many many assholes around). If you type in the wrong url, thats your fault. If he was spoofing other sites or using they're graphics, thats a copyright issue. But opening pop-ups no matter how many is the fault of the browser.. and seeing as most people use IE, its Microsofts fault, just like with vbs virii (funny how its always their fault)
"Victims of the scam should contact the commission"
What victims??!? the stupid users who used stupid browsers that have bad security? (yes pop-ups are a security issue when they start eating your resources). What about the stupid advertising companies? he was in breach of their contract, they should have cancelled it.
Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! - judging by the use of the word "task bar" lets assume he was using MS Windows
Well thats what you get when you use MS windows and IE. I would be pretty ticked too, but not at the site, at the appalling software design of Microsoft who hand the responsibility off saying "ohhh trusted system" no it isn't, its simple. Don't let sites spawn 100's of windows with your browser. Put in the necessary function to filter this, let the user say yes or no, let them close all the spawned windows at once, make the browser scan the script for this stuff. stupid developers.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
And if it was released today in the era of millions of AOL idiots it would be the world's record selling GUI.
well what can we say if he was using ie:
he was ASKING for it!
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
...you should be punished to a VERY VERY high degree and with severe criminal penalties.
It is inexcusable for people to be able to perpetrate such fraud and deception against people and expect to get away with it through denial and clandestine methods.
He KNOWS he was doing something wrong and took extensive measures to hide himself from prosecution. These are not mistakes. These are not errors of judgement. These are not crimes of passion nor momentary lapses of reason. This is an evil bastard who, without remorse wanted to turn a buck at everyone's expense.
People who unintentionally kill someone are more severely punished than this malicious person. It just seems to me that people don't "hate" crime enough to care about really addressing the problem.
And it's also sad that with the millions of complaints by millions of citizens (and consumers) that it takes some annoyed government official to really get the ball rolling to address the problem of scum on the internet.
So the message is that it's okay to piss off anyone except the people who can personally do something about it. The government doesn't represent the people any more... the government just represent themselves for their own purposes.
(If you don't, Microsoft will clear room for the spam by deleting the juicy old letters from ex-girlfriends you have in there.) Wow, and I thought I was the only one who kept those mails for years.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
A few weeks ago, my boss' 8-yr-old daughter was at school, in the computer lab. She went to go to Yahoo's kid site, Yahooligans, but mistyped it - www.yahooligons.com. She got the porn ad page. So, to her credit, she backed out. To her ANTI-credit, though, she went back, called a friend over to check it out. I can imagine this girl going "Look! BOOBIES!" *laugh*. Another nearby kid saw this, and told a teacher. The principal wanted to suspend her for a week - the parents (who rushed to the school when they heard about this) managed to talk them down to a day.
A couple of days later, I start sniffing around WHOIS records, and whose name do I find attached to the domain? John Zuccarini.
Glad to see this scumbag getting what he deserves.
INAL
If the case is criminal, absolutely. If you think the fine is excessive (which is unconstitutional), you could appeal it to a higher court. If you don't get the appeal and you don't pay the fine, you definitely could be jailed.
If the case is civil, you can't be jailed for refusing to pay. However, they can send deputies to collect any property you have an auction it off. (remember OJ Simpson) However, some of your property is protected by law, for example, your house, and they can not take that.
As stated before, this case is civil.
Agent K: No, ma'am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of. May we come in?
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You actually use hotmail for something other than a "convenience" email address for registering for web sites that you don't want spamming your real address?
I was browsing and tryed to downlaod a patch. And guess what ? My window suddenly resized down and all I saw was a casino ad...
After I re-enabled popup in opera Is aw what was happening : they loaded in the main window the ad, then make a popup resuming the old content of the mainwindow in a freaking pop up.
Clever. If it becomes mainstream you can forget anti popup software and opera special feature.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
hanging is to good for him, burning is to good for him, he ought to be cut in to a bunch of little bitty pieces and scattered to the four corners of the globe...
I hope the webmaster of http://www.slashdor.org/ doesn't get any funny ideas from reading this.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
you ever tried tweakxp program? it has popup blocker and ad blocker feature under internet tweak bar? it works for me i was so sick of damn ads and popup that it waste my time
on 56k modem!
Forcing Gophers to smoke pot when they really intended to go to Slashdot to bash Microsoft.
http://www.stashdot.org/
Although the /. post mentions 64 windows, this article only mentions 32. Although another 32 were opened, nobody said the staff member bothered to close them. Perhaps he used his reset button... probably faster that way ;)
Anyone who has read Greg Bear's book, _Queen of Angels_ will like this one. We start up list that isn't maintained in any one location to avoid being shut down. This list will consist of the real physical addresses of known spammers/con-artists and the crap they're peddling. Business addresses as well as their home addresses will be listed. We post this list on several web sites and newsgroups so anyone who wants to beat the shit out of these bastards can have their way. The law is never going to be able to keep up with technology, so we take it upon ourselves to make life as a spammer dangerous. I'd be willing to bet that spam would decrease considerably after a few smackdowns.
I have been using Mozilla for so long, I have forgot what POP[up|under] ads are. I dont even see banners any more (for the most part).
Mozilla Rules!
The above is not worth reading.
Maybe it's just common sense to me, but if you mistype a URL, it only makes sense that you're not going to go where you think you're going to go. So some spammer capitalizes on this and puts up porn pop-up ads for mis-typed URLs.
Big whoop. Annoying, but $1.8 million worth of annoying?
How about a company that asks you if you want to receive email spam (eg: Microsoft with Hotmail), and then changes your answer from no to yes later on down the road, without ever telling you about it? To me, that sort of thing is much more sinister. Of course, THEY'LL never get in trouble for it.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Let's do the same thing with abortion doctors and homosexuals next! Us Slashdot readers are so smart -- we know some stuff about computers! -- that naturally we have the right to pass mortal judgement on everyone.
This happened to me a while back. I was eh, looking for the 'White house' website and then somehow, cough, I got to the 'White house pr0n' page. Cough. It was a really, annoying yeh. Come to think of it, I never did bother goin back to find the real 'White house' website. :)
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
it prevents someone from using javascript to open widnows by giving you the option not to allow this. I guess IE does not have this functionality. Ever since this came in mozilla I no longer get ANY popup add at all.
Only 'flamers' flame!
(Shitty Joke) waste my time on 56k modem. Too late, you've allready come to Slashdot. -Applause here- (/Shitty Joke)
Mod me down, fine with me, it's my real karma I try to keep up.
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
spam like green eggs and ham is well
hmm
not tasty to say the least
PI is at your six maybe? best to stay aware....
I just went to some of the sites that are so evil. I got zero popups and the main window resized. (Yawn) Maybe the FTC isn't smart enough to load PopupStopper? (www.panicware.com) Surely people are not still allowing popups to open on their web browsers? LOL
You actually use hotmail for something other than a "convenience" email address for registering for web sites that you don't want spamming your real address?
Back in 98 I did, before the Borg took it over and promptly messed it up with their spammer-friendly systems that leak valid usernames to anyone with nothing of value to sell.
That's business with dot NET.
Someone did do this for abortion doctors. Many were harassed, a couple were killed.
The guy who set up the list on his web page went down for manslaughter and accomplice to murder.
Its not a matter of being shut down, anyone associated with this list would be prosecuted.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
You have a very good point. I certainly wouldn't want anyone dead. However, it's important to acknowledge that abortion is a very controversial subject. SPAM and aggressive online marketing on the other hand is a definite no-no. I would find it hard to believe that the people that create this crap truly believe that what they're doing is justifiable. The only justification they have is the lack of laws which allows them to continue intruding our computers. I've talked to so many parents that feel helpless. They want their kids to have access to the wealth of information on the internet, but they know that there is no silver bullet when it comes down to blocking inappropriate material. It would be no different if someone hopped in a plane and dropped hardcore porn over a city knowing that schoolyards would be hit.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've accidently run into this turd's pop ups. Having to reboot my stupid Win98 machine because of this jerkwad is not something I enjoyed. He gives legitimate suppliers of adult entertainment a bad name.
In Windows, even though mozilla should be used over IE, hold down alt+f4 and your windows will miraculously dissappear! Wow!
I really don't think what he is doing should be illegal. Frowned upon, sure... but we're heading towards letting the government have too much control over our sovereign Nation. Little actions similar this end up with decisions like The Digital Millennium Copyright Act...!
slahsdot.org
It just needs some pop ups.
I just find the precedent that someone gets fined $1.8M for having domains that are kind of similar to the domains that some big companies have scary. A figure that large seems to come out of thin air. I mean, who got harmed? The advertisers got their money's worth, and no kid is going to confuse the product of "cartoonnetwork.com" with a bunch of big breasted women.
Particularly chilling is that WIPO considered registration of "guinesssucks.com" a trademark violation in his case (trademarks are only intended to identify a specific product; they are not intended to let trademark owners control what people say about the product).
I think this is a dangerous threat to free speech. Sure, this particular guy isn't particularly nice. But what if you or I want to create a web site "sony-service-sucks.com", where we exchange grievances about Sony service and perhaps organize a class action lawsuit? What if your domain name happens to be confusingly similar to someone's trademark and they don't consider your business legitimate and have the legal dollars to "prove" it?
Trademark holders are trying to expand their right from being able to merely control that a trademark refers without confusion to their product to a right of complete control of who uses the trademark under what circumstances in any domain, and to prohibit any kind of negative speech about their product. And they are succeeding. That should worry us all.
Shut your fucking trap you faggot asshole.
Fair enough, in the seventh you say he is a sleezebag, but what on earth does this have to do with free speech? Next thing you'll say, free speech means you can shout louder or broadcast white noise louder than anyone else; URL I dunno but there is also the argument against shouting 'fire' in a packed theatre which doesn't belong to you.
That's precisely the problem, people out there really do call Miss Cleo, buy "make my penis 25% larger" products etc... These schemes are nothing but looting of dumb people.
Just because there is no shortage of dumb people, I don't think we all have to resign ourselves to death by porn spam. Maybe this actually exists, but I'd like to see some online division at the FBI or FTC which aggressively goes after SPAM groups which don't honor remove requests, and scams designed just to take people's money. I'd really like to see Miss Cleo, fake human growth hormone pseudoscience, etc.... all put out of business. I wonder what percent of the American economy is just bs scams.
This may be an impossible problem, given it's global nature, but there is so much **** just in the US, there's plenty that could be done.
It wasn't an operating system -- just a shell replacement for Windows.
Here are some more evil scammers sites that are out to get us:
http://www.slahdot.org/
http://www.slasdot.org/
http://www.slshdot.org/
They try to sell you domain registration and mail-shipped OS ISOs.
...back then, Window's was just a shell replacement for DOS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Totally agree with ya. Taken a classical conditioning course? They should give the person some prision time. And a beating cuz he deserves it. Then maybe, spammers will learn never F*Ck with the consumer.
Let's slashdot them!
My brother was trying to see if something was being sold on ebay, but he accidentally typed ebat. That caused a bunch of pop-up ads to show up and it ended up being a website for "Hot Latino Sluts". I'm sorry, but that is bullshit.
Yeah its real legitimate to profit from what is essentially videotaped prostitution where both participants are paid. Blah.
....I remember the day I bothered changed my default homepage from www.netscape.com was the day the Netscape homepage started popping up windows/ads. People kept telling the netcenter people (who ran the website) that they were going to start *losing* hits because this was bothersome enough to get people to change the homepage. But the website guys kept saying "but it generates *even more* hits. Of course, the people in charge of the website were pretty clueless anyway.
It's the stupid people out there that make the smart people rich. Someone once said a sucker is born every few seconds, and they were so right! If you don't believe me, look at how rich Bill Gates is off of stupid people.
CODITO, ERGO SUM: I Code, therefore I am.
you're right, some better answers can be found here :)
You have a very good point. I certainly wouldn't want anyone dead. However, it's important to acknowledge that SPAM and aggressive online marketing is a very controversial subject. Abortion on the other hand is a definite no-no. I would find it hard to believe that the people that provide abortions truly believe that what they're doing is justifiable. The only justification they have is the lack of laws which allows them to continue providing abortions. I've talked to so many parents that feel helpless. They want their kids to interact with the opposite sex, but they know that there is no silver bullet when it comes down to preventing pregnancies. It would be no different if someone hopped in a plane and started providing abortions in a city knowing that fetuses would be killed.
They're much, much worse. Not just popups - they will hijack the browser entirely. One of the things they do is, whenever get a DNS error (because you mistyped a URL, or because of a DNS failure), you get redirected to their "search engine", which basically just serves paid-for ads. And oh, they plug themselves into the IE built-in search facility to. More here (the link is to a site that explains in detail what lop.com does; this is not a link to lop.com)
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Let's say "Comfy Rest" hotels' world wide phone number is 555-1212.
Could I now get fined for purchasing all the "near miss" numbers and doing phone solicitation to those wrong number dialers?
ex: you dial 555-1211 by accident. Instead of getting "comfy rest" reservations, you get a recording trying to sell you a bottle of "Miracle Max's Life Restorer" pills.
Would that cause a $1.8B lawsuit? Me thinks not. So why this judgement?
I can only hope this gets overturned in a higher court.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
I was surfing some p0rn sites and this one site actually changed my DNS error page settings! Therefore every time a site doesnt come up it sends me to F*$&in www.lop.com. Maybe I should have the FTC fine those bastards.
Not speech. Commercial activity. Selling things is not speech (even in the extended, legal/US-constitutional sense of the word).
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
It is not a question of free speech but a question of boundaries; he crossed my boundaries and violated my space when he typo squatted this domain name in a form that my nieces could easily accidently access.
I guess you don't have kids (nor nieces), so you can't understand.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
It says that even after knowing what the fake site was, and the pictures that it contained she WENT BACK TO IT in school to show a friend.
I think a day suspension was a exterme punishment indeed, but going back to it does warrent a punishment. (In school officals minds, I don't agree with it at all but that is the way they think.)
When I was in high school it was like a dictator ship you have NO rights what so ever.
Privoxy (formerly JunkBuster Internet Proxy) does a great job of blocking the slashdot ads, and ads from most other sites on the internet. Even if you have a fast internet connection, time invested to install it is greatly paid back in not waiting and being annoyed by ads!
Privoxy is once again under active development... which is a true success story of the GPL, where a group of interested individuals picked it up after JunkBuster's decided to abandon further development (partly over concern for liability in creating derivitive works of web pages by suppressing the ads)
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
*Ahem*
There are a gazillion exceptions (think child pornography, nazi propaganda, copyright...) I hate to break it to you, but the world isn't black and white. There are exceptions to every rule, even this one.
Besides, pretending like there is some profound ideological difference between a) fining this man for using pop-ups and b) removing the means for this man to use pop-ups is just plain silly.
But this rant is pointless, since the obvious point of course is this: this has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the medium he uses to convey his "message." He is entitled to say "FREE XXX PORN!! HORNY XXX SLUTS!!" all he wants, he just can't do it this way. Very much like someone can't be allowed to go to a schoolyard where 7-year olds are playing and start screaming "HORNY TEENAGE SLUTS."
Were this not moderated to 5 it would not be worthy of a reply. Actually, it isn't now either. I should have modded you to hell instead of writing this tedious rant.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
This is not about free speech. It's more like free typos which is NOT up for grabs by sleazeballs. It's more like misleading billboards which look like hiway signs. It's more like false and deceptive advertising which doesn't look like advertising. Free speech does not include my right to sell your email address to spammers and your home telephone number to telemarketers.
Someone who obviously missed the CS ethics class.
It does pose a very interesting question. If you could become quite wealthy due to sleezy and underhanded action(s) which would ultimately damage your reputation and that of the Internet, would you? Perhaps this would make a good poll question.
I'd really like to see Miss Cleo, fake human growth hormone pseudoscience, etc.... all put out of business.
Check it out.
"The cup... the drop... it's a YES!"
So whatm she looked at some boobies - get a life neurotics..
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Not illegal here - what would you do if he set up show in another country?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
What about the Telephone Consumer Protection Act? The one that says telemarketers can't call a residence with an autodialer and artificial or prerecorded voice messages. And that they must maintain a "Do Not Call" list for anyone who requests removal from their calling list.
This Act does not limit free speech IMHO, because it allows for non-profit or political calls, but it does protect the consumer from the nuisance and harassment of telemarketers. Now all we need is a form of the law for email and web browsers.
If everyone blocked pop-ups, then advertisers would just use harder to get around schemes, such as putting the content of the page in the pop-up and the ad in the page your browser goes to, or larger ads in the page.
Not quite. There is a disturbing trend of Flash-based ads becoming popular on sites like IGN and Gamespy. These ads are even more annoying that the occasional pop-up, because a) they fly across your screen and b) are difficult to close down(very,very small 'x' close button).
This isn't really a 'security' issue, and the only way to solve this problem is a) sue/fine all companies that misuse computer resource and/or b) disable Flash.
... What did he do wrong?
/. summary and the MSNBC article and have yet to find some insight as to why this is conisdered a crime.
I read
I'm allowed to create a site with advertisements on it, but not if someone else has a website with a similar address? Really, WTH are they arguing that is winning these suits?
// No, this is not intended to be a joke.
Everyone should use Mozilla and disable the popups. Edit->Preferences->Advanced->Scripts_and_ Windows.
So, I hit the MSNBC link from the article, and it immediatly pops open two ad windows, one of which has an onClose event attached to it to pop a third window. LOL!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I guess you still think it's free speech when your next door neighbor exercises his first amendment rights with his 6,000 watt boom box in the middle of the night.
Agent Gay: No, ma'am. We at the GBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of. May we borrow some butter?
Since when has nazi propaganda been illegal? In fact, since when has any propaganda been illegal? I shudder to think if the day when it is, lest the US Government try to make the distinction between good and bad propaganda for the people.
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
I don't know the laws forward and backwards, but just using my common sense, I see that what he's doing is wrong and if it's not illegal, it should be made illegal. Do you really agree that he just was conducting his own advertizing business and using the "mistyped" URLs was just a coincidence ??? If he had one or two sites like this, maybe, but not if he had a whole bunch of them, and according to the article, he even redirected the users to the correct sites. I think his intentions are pretty clear and if the laws allow loopholes for this kind of people, these loopholes should be closed.
Now only one thing bothers me... the case of Lindows vs Windows... by the same logic, Lindows is doing the wrong thing, and we want them to succeed, right ?
Set up a distributed Spam-site list that work with squid, and when it gets a request for a know spam-ste, it redirects you to the real page. Like the email spammer lists.
You could even enable logging, and get it to send emails to the spammers telling them how much money they've lost...
I wish you shithead holier than thou slashdot readers would THINK just one minute. I would guess at least half of the fat fingered ppl who typed in cartonnetwork are kids who csn't spel BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL LEARNING. I would wager you couldn't spell either when you were seven. Or were you some kind of super genius? Now because of Zuccarini, they are instead learning about Internet Sleaze, Pornography, and Bestiality.
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People like you are ignored in any serious debate. Politics is about compromises. Get over it.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Now your kids are going to get a inadequte education because your private school will refuse to give them anything below C's cause their mommy and daddy will take them to another private school.
Meanwhile the kid becomes a lazy student that dosen't know how to study like he is going to have to at college.
Are you insane? As someone who attended both private and public schools (private until high school, and then public high school), I can assure you that you have it totally backwards. The private schools were WAY harder than the public schools. You worked your ass off because 1) your parents were paying the bills, and they made sure you were using it, and 2) the private schools could kick you out if your grades started slipping. You want to talk about grade inflation, it was a total joke at my public high school. It was all about "equalizing" the students, not hurting anyone's "self esteem" and respecting "alternative learning models". It was a complete fiasco. Not to mention that the school tended to get better funding when the grades started to go up.
In fact, I was pretty much able to coast my way through high school, particularly the first year since I arrived at least a year ahead of all the other students. There is absolutely no incentive to challenge the students in public schools. It's just crank them through the system. How do you think it happens that students are graduated unable to read? Think that ever happens at private schools? That answer would be "hell no".
I had other friends who continued on to private high schools, and their college move-on rate was something like 98%. Those students worked their ass off. At the time, I thought I was "lucky" because my work load was so much less than theirs, but in retrospect I really regret that my study habits weren't honed as well.
Sometimes I really think that sending children to public school should be considered a child-abuse crime by the parents. Public schools suck.
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hawk
Opera reminds me of IE 2.0
Thats a good enough reason for me why not to use it.