Slashdot Mirror
Spammer's Porsche Up For Grabs
gaurab writes "Anti-Spammers would love this. In this news piece, the BBC reports that AOL is putting up a Porsche it seized from a spammer last year in a sweepstakes. What next -- 'Spammer's House' in another sweepstakes? Is this the sign of things to come? From the story:
'Internet giant AOL has ratcheted up the war against unsolicited e-mail with a publicity-grabbing coup -- an online raffle of a spammer's seized Porsche. AOL won the car -- a $47,000 Boxster S -- as part of a court settlement against an unnamed e-mailer last year.'"
It says so right here:
. as px
Want to own seized property at half the cost? Want to buy a house for a fraction of the mortgage?
http://www.hillnews.com/news/043003/ss_auctions
Bah. Hey AOL, you REALLY want to help rid the world of spammers? ANSWER OUR EMAILS OF ABUSE.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Come'on AOL, give those members who this guy spammed a chance to have at the car with a hammer! Better still offer them a chance to buy the oppertunity to urinate on the upholstery, proceeds to CAUCE! All sorts of fun activities spring to mind. You can the webcast it so the spammer can watch ;-)
Sweepstaking it is sooo tame.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
I believe the whole point of the labour theory of value was to say that commodities aren't being exchanged at their true values (and screw all those horribly confusing use value/value distinctions), not that that makes the theory any easier to accept, since it's obvious that something of high utility that takes someone 1sec. to make is worth more than something completely useless that took years to finish. Marx is definitely very weird.
Quoting from the BBC article - "AOL says the Porsche has "symbolic value""
No shit !
ALL Porsches have symbolic value - that goes deeper than the badge.
If you ever get the chance to own a Porsche, especially an older model, then do spend some time digging around under the surface and get your hands dirty. Every single component of the car has a wonderful consistent feel to the design of it. You can see that a strong single mind stamped its presence on each design decision, right down to the choice of nuts and bolts.
Every peice of a Porsche is brutally simple, with no concessions made for fashion or cost. Its just like a really good peice of software.
Problem is, the Boxster is a damn fine car, but is perhaps the first real Porsche to have made concessions towards fashion and cost. (The VW 924 does not count, since it was a never meant to be a Porsche).
If you win the Porsche sweepstakes, then have a bit of fun in the Boxster, but then sell it, and use the money to get 1973 Carrera 2.4, or build up an insane 2.7ltr 911 RS replica. Then again, its your car, your dream, dont let me force my dream down your throat.
Having said that - whoever wins the Porsche sweepstakes needs to remember 1 very important thing - it is pronounced 'Porrr-Sch-A' not 'Porsh'. Calling a Porsche a 'Porsh' is like calling Bill Gates the 'inventor of the internet.'
Is this legal? If the spammer was unnamed as part of the deal, then the car's serial number will be a dead giveaway to the spammer's identity.
Yes I know it'd probably be at least partially illegal, but it'd be great fun to watch his pop a vein. :)
This seems to me to be very much like the ancient custom of displaying someone's head on a pike in the town square. Sure, many of us would prefer that AOL stay even closer to that tradition, but offering up some spammer's Porche isn't a bad start.
There are two important aspects to this action. First, AOL sending a clear warning to other spammers. "Stay off our network or your house may be next." Second, AOL is appeasing and entertaining its customers. "Be glad you're an AOL customer, because we're actually doing something about spam."
It's all deliciously medieval.