> All he has to do is make a one line diff and take it closed source. > Now it's not under the GPL. Until he does that, any copies randomly floating > around are under the GPL until his copyright expires
wrong.
the new version, with the one line change, is under a new license.
the old version, without the change, is still under the GPL and always will be. The GPL can not be revoked, although (assuming that all copyright holders agree) there is no requirement that future versions have to be under the GPL. if there's only one copyright holder, then he or she can change the license on future versions at will. but they can not revoke the GPL on previous versions.
when the software was originally licensed under the GPL, the author said "here's what you can and can't do with it". note that there was no clause in there for revocation of that license, it was granted in perpetuity. that is a deliberate and well-publicised feature of the GPL.
for those who might like to argue that the GPL is a form of contract (a dubious proposition in itself) and contracts require value to be exchanged by both parties in order to be valid, therefore the GPL "contract" is invalid, consider this: value HAS been exchanged in both directions. the recipient receives the value of the source code, the author receives the value of open source critique and commentary as well as the value of free distribution and publicity.
attempts to "prove" that science is just another religion are always trivially easy to debunk - that's because the people pushing the propaganda don't understand what science actually is or how it works.
> Scientific endeavor is based on faith in the concept of "cause and effect," > which we can never have any (non-circular) reason for believing.
another, more scientific, way of looking at it is that 'cause and effect' is a scientific theory which has a lot of evidence to support it.
in the absence of a better theory which more adequately explains what we observe, it's reasonable to assume that it is correct. i.e. exactly the same as any other well-accepted theory.
you're doing exactly what apple's marketing dept wants, getting sucked into the bullshit hype.
the reason they make such a fuss about keeping it 'secret' is because they want suckers (i.e. YOU) to think that they're in touch with exclusive, important information so that they'll then do a shitload of free advertising for apple in their attempts to tell everyone they know how cool & uber-1337 they are for knowing such top-secret stuff.
> Yes. I have feelings. And then I read a physics textbook and do not see any forces or particles that > mediate joy, sadness, love or feeling ticklish. This suggest to me that there are concepts which are not > explained and perhaps are not explainable by science, although they can be studied by other means.
you're looking in the wrong textbook. try biology instead of physics. more specifically, neoroscience and especially neurochemistry.
BTW, the fact that you have feelings that you don't know how to explain does not in any way provide evidence of the existence of a spiritual realm.
at best, it provides evidence that there are things you don't know or understand and it also provides evidence that you are prone to either just making shit up or believing the first pseudo-explanation that comes along (even if that "explanation" is that it's all too spookily mysterious to ever possibly be explained) instead of trying to understand.
i once worked in a place where the (unofficial but self-evident) criteria for hiring tech support staff was how little money they were prepared to accept. neither knowledge, experience, or aptitude were considered important.
so, of course, most of the hires were completely clueless.
occasionally, though, we'd get lucky and get someone with talent who just didn't have much, or any, experience so had to accept a low paying job.
the inevitable result was that anyone who was any good or had the potential to become good (or even the ability to pick up enough knowledge to bullshit their way into looking as if they were good) stuck around for 3-6 months until they got enough experience to be able to apply for similar positions paying the industry-standard entry-level rate (typically, about 1.5x to twice as much as what we paid them).
leaving us with the complete deadwood who weren't even capable of learning enough to bullshit their way into a better job, who held on desperately to their jobs because they knew they couldn't get or keep another one. it was like a sheltered workshop for technical support retards.
the CS manager (who was far from bright himself) just could not be made to understand that the constant retraining and cleaning up newbie messes etc cost us a lot more than just paying people a decent wage to start with.
> Google is merely an indexing service, not the police or the government.
right, they're not the police or the government.
google does, however, own their site. they can run their site and develop their indexing algorithms however they like to suit their own needs (and, fortunately, their needs include providing relevant search results to end users).
most SEO whingers refuse to acknowledge this - they whine as if they have some *right* to a high PR, that it's unfair that google gives a low rank to their crappy, boring site. they don't, and it's not.
> It's Google's job to reflect the web as it is.
no, it's google's job to make it easy for users to find stuff that they're looking for.
if users can't do that because the first several pages of google results are filled with SEO spammer results then they can't do their job.
this completely sucks from the user's POV. they can no longer find stuff they're interested in, which would eventually make google irrelevant.
it also sucks from google's POV. if they become irrelevant because they can't provide accurate and useful search results then their income stream will ultimately vanish and they will ultimately vanish.
btw, blackhat SEO techniques *ARE* unethical because they are just a form of lying (lying to google's bot, lying to google's algorithms and, ultimately, lying to the end users who use google).
lying for gain or profit is *always* unethical, about the only time lying is ever ethical is when it is done to protect someone from harm, especially undeserved harm.
(and yes, that does mean that most advertising and marketing is also unethical as most of it is based on lying)
I suggest that the W3C should take a look at the whole Flash ecosystem as they think about upgrading the HTTP protocol."
why?
i want inert DATA, not active executable programs when i browse the web.
browsing the web should not require throwing away basic security precautions, nor should it require trusting every developer of every web site out there to not be either incompetent or malicious.
what i really want to see is lots of cheap, high-speed (read *AND* write), high-capacity (in the many-hundreds-of-GB or terabyte ranges) solid-state disks so i can completely replace all my drives in all my machines.
disk drives use a fair amount of power, they run HOT (and the faster they are, the hotter they run), and they're prone to failure.
SSDs have no moving parts, are low power, and low heat.
unfortunately, they're also currently only in small sizes and cost way too much. both of those factors will change over the next few years....then it's goodbye to disk drives forever.
ctually it is easy to argue with the results. This is not justice, but a crime. We must be wary about attitudes which condone vigilante justice. When justice escapes from the hands of the state, and becomes a matter of criminal organizations or private individuals to administer, to the cheers of the mob, society will become dangerous not only for those who find themselves target of this sort of justice, but also those who cheer.
i predicted years ago that one day a spammer would piss off some mafia boss - perhaps offended by all the spam telling him he has a tiny penis - and (very briefly) live to regret it.
unfortunately, this is probably a turf-war incident rather than a pissed off spam-victim.
...only they're not so innocent, are they? Let's face it, most spams centre on something at least a little grey in its legality. If the users weren't gullible, greedy, shady and stupid enough to be drawn, spam would have no value. Let Darwinism run its course, please. Trying to protect people who really don't want to be protected is just prolonging the agony - for all of us.
it's not just the idiots who respond to spam who are protected by technical anti-spam measures. in fact, the vast majority of spam recipients don't respond, have never responded and have no intention of ever responding to spam. most are just as annoyed/disgusted/sickened by the spam as we are.
the sad fact is that there will ALWAYS be people stupid enough or greedy enough or lacking in sufficient confidence (or penis length) to respond to spam. ALWAYS. they will never, ever be eliminated. people are stupid (worse, the stupid ones breed more than the smart ones so expect the problem to get worse, not better in future). unavoidable fact of the universe, don't waste your time wishing it weren't so, just deal with it and move on.
and as long as even a tiny fraction of all spam recipients respond to spam then spammers will continue to send their spam. even a response rate of 0.00001% of tens of millions of spams is still a lot of people and can result in a lot of money for the spammer. it's a numbers game. they don't care how many spams they have to send (they dont pay for the bandwidth or the hardware, they hijack other people's), they don't care how many non-customers they piss off. they only care about the tiny percentage of paying morons.
so, yes, i'm all for user education and applying social solutions to social problems. i don't expect them to do the job all by themselves (or even to do a particularly good job). technical solutions are also needed and CAN do a pretty good job (i.e. 99% or better elimination of spam)
As far as I can see, the only thing SPF is useful for is to get a list of servers from which e-mail for that domain may originate.
amazing! you've cleverly deduced that SPF's sole function is exactly what it is documented to be.
many people think or claim or assume that SPF is supposed to be an anti-spam system. it's not. and never was. it has always and only been an anti-forgery system - a way for domain owners to list exactly which servers are allowed to send mail claiming to be from their domain.
whether recipient mail servers choose to examine or act upon that information is entirely up to them - it can be ignored entirely, or it can be used to reject mail from unauthorised sender machines, or it can be used to affect a spamassassin score....but that's not the point. the point and purpose of SPF is that it provides a method for domain owners to publish that information about their domain.
challenge-response has been done before. it was broken then, and it's still broken now.
this seems to be a minor variation on the same stupid idea behind other challenge-reponse systems like TMDA - with the same problems (esp. backscatter to the forged addresses) that they all have.
the stupidity is further compounded by the author not understanding the difference between message From headers (which are just comments, not addressing information) and message envelope.
The only place this fails is if the spammers as part of their owning of zombie hosts begin to check for the proper SMTP server to relay through and configure accordingly. Admittedly, this is not too difficult to do, but they aren't doing it yet.
it's not difficult to do, but most spammers WON'T do this for two related reasons:
1. it destroys the scaling benefit they get from having many thousands of spam-spewing zombies. i.e. instead of having hundreds or thousands of zombine machines directly sending spam from a particular ISP's network, all those zombies would be trying to relay through the same smarthost (or set of smart-hosts).
2. it means that their spam is subject to any anti-spam and/or rate-limiting controls on the ISP's mail server...either greatly slowing down the delivery of their spam, or having it vanish without a trace into the great empty spam-tin in the sky.
any ISP whose servers were used by smarthost-capable zombie-ware in this way would quickly implement anti-spam and/or rate-limiting on their mail servers if they didn't already have them. they would have no alternative if they wanted to keep their mail systems functional....they would die under the load, otherwise.
this is why both dynamic/dialup (DUL) listings and/or blocking outbound SMTP from dialup etc pools are good ideas. it forces all mail from potentially-compromised end-user machines to go via the ISP's mail server where it can be subject to centralised (for that ISP) anti-spam, anti-virus, and rate-limiting controls.
i'd actually like to see spamware zombies start using smart-hosts like this. i'm certain that it would, in a very short time, result in a massive reduction in spam.
which is, no doubt, why spamware authors don't and wont do it.
> > What if I view the page and fail to click on the advertisement? Is that also theft? > > No. You were given the opportunity to view the ad. You are not required to do so, just > that you are given the opportunity for an advertiser to get your attention. If they > fail to do so, that's their problem.
OTOH, by blocking web ads (as i have done since banner ads started being animated in the mid 90s), i am giving the advertiser the opportunity to not annoy me enough that they end up on my boycott list. i *routinely* boycott advertisers that annoy me, and there are many ways for them to get on my shitlist, including: distracting animated gifs, flash (particularly bug-ridden or spyware crap), javascript, spyware, and popups on the web; loud or annoying voices or sounds, soft-porn(*) and other emotional manipulations (including children, especially those with speech impediments) on TV; and banal feel-good and other branding exercises on any medium. they stay boycotted until the annoyance fades and i forget about them...so the more annoying, the longer before i forget.
since they intrude on my home, i hate telemarketers, god-botherers and door-knockers with a passion and when it's my turn to be God Emperor of the Universe, they'll *ALL* be amongst the first lined up against the wall. until then, i'll just have to continue being as rude to them as i possibly can (their obnoxiously rude intrusion deserves a rude response).
since i don't like advertising or the creeps who create the manipulative crap (especially those who think they're being "funny" or "artistic"), there is NO opportunity for an advertiser to engender a positive response in me, ONLY a negative response ranging from mild dislike to vehement loathing and outrage. it truly is far better for the advertiser if i don't see or hear their ad at all.
(but that's not why i block ads - it's not for their benefit at all. i block them because they annoy the hell out of me. my life is far more pleasant when i can block out the raucous arseholes screaming at me to buy their shit)
BTW, when i watch TV it is generally either the ad-free Australian ABC, or with a book in my hand for the ad breaks and a mute button on the remote control.
also btw, i don't bother blocking google ads because they're text - they don't flash, they're not animated, they're not distracting, and they're not annoying. sometimes they're even relevant. i do block google's click-tracking cookie and javascript shit because i don't want them spying on me.
(*) i have nothing against porn in general (other than the fact that 99.99999% of it is tacky crap catering to, and/or creating, an extremely unsophisticated audience with bad taste and backward sexist attitudes - i.e. my attitude to porn is aesthetic and political/philosophical rather than "moral"), but i do object very strongly to emotional manipulation in advertising, including the use of tits and bums and semi-naked women (and men, these days).
it's been my practice for over a decade now to refuse to allow shop staff to search me.
my attitude is that if they want to accuse me of theft, they can do so formally (preferably in writing) and accept the consequences of their slander or libel. it infuriates me that they think they can get away with insulting me by calling me a thief - but without even the guts to make the accusation openly.
when i am asked if they can look in my bag, i say "sure, but there's a $50 fee for a quick peek. or you can call the police and have me charged with theft and i'll allow them to look in my bag. otherwise, the answer is No"
so far, they've all backed down usually without any further fuss, although sometimes a manager is called over and he decides to back down.
the key is to remain calm, polite, and steadfast in standing up for your rights.
once or twice, i've had to point out that preventing me from leaving will result in abduction and/or false imprisonment charges, and that touching me in any way will result in assault and battery charges.
relax. it's just a pre-election stunt (and recycling of old, abandoned policies from previous pre-election stunts) from a PM who is decidedly on the nose with voters (finally!) and looking increasingly desperate.
it'll blow over soon enough and be ignored and forgotten, just like all the other times the ironically-named Liberals (i.e. australia's proto-fascist party) have brought out this stupid policy.
1. hotmail's mail servers are their private property. they get to choose what mail they want to accept, not you and not any other sender. if they want to block your mail or your newsletter, that's your tough luck. you have no say in it whatsoever. their server, their rules.
2. hotmail's customers, however, have a right to complain. if the mail service they are using or paying for is blocking legitimate mail that they want, then they should complain. ultimately, this probably means they should get themselves a mail service provider which doesn't block mail that they want, or at least takes reasonable action to minimise false-positives.
> People who are smoking it just want to get high.
you say that as if it's an inherently bad thing....as if people haven't been "getting high" in countless ways for as long as we've been around (and even longer - it's not just humans that go out of their way to get high, many animals do too. primates do now, and our evolutionary ancestors probably did too).
in a probably-futile attempt to dispel, or at least undermine, your ignorant wowser attitude to "getting high", here's a list of just *some* of the basic ways that people use to get high (each of which has countless variations and specific details):
exercise, eating, fasting, sex, drugs, meditation, religion, music, dance, sugar, gambling, travel, adventure, thinking, and many, many more.
Slashdot Mirror
> All he has to do is make a one line diff and take it closed source.
> Now it's not under the GPL. Until he does that, any copies randomly floating
> around are under the GPL until his copyright expires
wrong.
the new version, with the one line change, is under a new license.
the old version, without the change, is still under the GPL and always will be. The GPL can not be revoked, although (assuming that all copyright holders agree) there is no requirement that future versions have to be under the GPL. if there's only one copyright holder, then he or she can change the license on future versions at will. but they can not revoke the GPL on previous versions.
when the software was originally licensed under the GPL, the author said "here's what you can and can't do with it". note that there was no clause in there for revocation of that license, it was granted in perpetuity. that is a deliberate and well-publicised feature of the GPL.
for those who might like to argue that the GPL is a form of contract (a dubious proposition in itself) and contracts require value to be exchanged by both parties in order to be valid, therefore the GPL "contract" is invalid, consider this: value HAS been exchanged in both directions. the recipient receives the value of the source code, the author receives the value of open source critique and commentary as well as the value of free distribution and publicity.
what an ingeniously fool-proof way to commit suicide - deliberately piss off a large herd of enormous elephants.
attempts to "prove" that science is just another religion are always trivially easy to debunk - that's because the people pushing the propaganda don't understand what science actually is or how it works.
> Scientific endeavor is based on faith in the concept of "cause and effect,"
> which we can never have any (non-circular) reason for believing.
another, more scientific, way of looking at it is that 'cause and effect' is a scientific theory which has a lot of evidence to support it.
in the absence of a better theory which more adequately explains what we observe, it's reasonable to assume that it is correct. i.e. exactly the same as any other well-accepted theory.
who cares?
you're doing exactly what apple's marketing dept wants, getting sucked into the bullshit hype.
the reason they make such a fuss about keeping it 'secret' is because they want suckers (i.e. YOU) to think that they're in touch with exclusive, important information so that they'll then do a shitload of free advertising for apple in their attempts to tell everyone they know how cool & uber-1337 they are for knowing such top-secret stuff.
and you suckers fall for it every time.
actually, in this analogy, the zone transfer request is more like knocking and asking "can i come in?" (i.e. "can i have this zone file?").
if the DNS server is left in default configuration, then the answer is "No, you can't have it".
if the DNS server is deliberately reconfigured to allow the transfer, then the answer is "Yes, here it is".
so this ruling is the equivalent of successfully having someone convicted of trespass after you've given them permission to enter.
> Yes. I have feelings. And then I read a physics textbook and do not see any forces or particles that
> mediate joy, sadness, love or feeling ticklish. This suggest to me that there are concepts which are not
> explained and perhaps are not explainable by science, although they can be studied by other means.
you're looking in the wrong textbook. try biology instead of physics. more specifically, neoroscience and especially neurochemistry.
BTW, the fact that you have feelings that you don't know how to explain does not in any way provide evidence of the existence of a spiritual realm.
at best, it provides evidence that there are things you don't know or understand and it also provides evidence that you are prone to either just making shit up or believing the first pseudo-explanation that comes along (even if that "explanation" is that it's all too spookily mysterious to ever possibly be explained) instead of trying to understand.
and there's also just plain failing to give religious leaders (and religion in general) an undeserved privileged position of input & influence.
is he a scientist? a physicist? then what makes him - or anyone - think that he's automatically entitled to a soapbox at a scientific institution?
his belief in and advocacy for mythical being(s) doesn't give him any credibility or authority in such a setting.
i once worked in a place where the (unofficial but self-evident) criteria for hiring tech support staff was how little money they were prepared to accept. neither knowledge, experience, or aptitude were considered important.
so, of course, most of the hires were completely clueless.
occasionally, though, we'd get lucky and get someone with talent who just didn't have much, or any, experience so had to accept a low paying job.
the inevitable result was that anyone who was any good or had the potential to become good (or even the ability to pick up enough knowledge to bullshit their way into looking as if they were good) stuck around for 3-6 months until they got enough experience to be able to apply for similar positions paying the industry-standard entry-level rate (typically, about 1.5x to twice as much as what we paid them).
leaving us with the complete deadwood who weren't even capable of learning enough to bullshit their way into a better job, who held on desperately to their jobs because they knew they couldn't get or keep another one. it was like a sheltered workshop for technical support retards.
the CS manager (who was far from bright himself) just could not be made to understand that the constant retraining and cleaning up newbie messes etc cost us a lot more than just paying people a decent wage to start with.
> And if you see me in your rearview mirror, get out of the way.
with any luck, automated driverless cars will make driving so un-fun that arseholes like you will voluntarily stay off the roads.
> Google is merely an indexing service, not the police or the government.
right, they're not the police or the government.
google does, however, own their site. they can run their site and develop their indexing algorithms however they like to suit their own needs (and, fortunately, their needs include providing relevant search results to end users).
most SEO whingers refuse to acknowledge this - they whine as if they have some *right* to a high PR, that it's unfair that google gives a low rank to their crappy, boring site. they don't, and it's not.
> It's Google's job to reflect the web as it is.
no, it's google's job to make it easy for users to find stuff that they're looking for.
if users can't do that because the first several pages of google results are filled with SEO spammer results then they can't do their job.
this completely sucks from the user's POV. they can no longer find stuff they're interested in, which would eventually make google irrelevant.
it also sucks from google's POV. if they become irrelevant because they can't provide accurate and useful search results then their income stream will ultimately vanish and they will ultimately vanish.
btw, blackhat SEO techniques *ARE* unethical because they are just a form of lying (lying to google's bot, lying to google's algorithms and, ultimately, lying to the end users who use google).
lying for gain or profit is *always* unethical, about the only time lying is ever ethical is when it is done to protect someone from harm, especially undeserved harm.
(and yes, that does mean that most advertising and marketing is also unethical as most of it is based on lying)
won't somebody think of the children!!!
or the terrorists?
or the athletes?
perfect! that's it: won't somebody think of the terrorist athletic children????
done. now wait for the next opportunity to demand even more fascist laws and regulations.
why?
i want inert DATA, not active executable programs when i browse the web.
browsing the web should not require throwing away basic security precautions, nor should it require trusting every developer of every web site out there to not be either incompetent or malicious.
and low power means low heat.
what i really want to see is lots of cheap, high-speed (read *AND* write), high-capacity (in the many-hundreds-of-GB or terabyte ranges) solid-state disks so i can completely replace all my drives in all my machines.
disk drives use a fair amount of power, they run HOT (and the faster they are, the hotter they run), and they're prone to failure.
SSDs have no moving parts, are low power, and low heat.
unfortunately, they're also currently only in small sizes and cost way too much. both of those factors will change over the next few years....then it's goodbye to disk drives forever.
yes, but this is a spammer we're talking about.
i predicted years ago that one day a spammer would piss off some mafia boss - perhaps offended by all the spam telling him he has a tiny penis - and (very briefly) live to regret it.
unfortunately, this is probably a turf-war incident rather than a pissed off spam-victim.
it's not just the idiots who respond to spam who are protected by technical anti-spam measures. in fact, the vast majority of spam recipients don't respond, have never responded and have no intention of ever responding to spam. most are just as annoyed/disgusted/sickened by the spam as we are.
the sad fact is that there will ALWAYS be people stupid enough or greedy enough or lacking in sufficient confidence (or penis length) to respond to spam. ALWAYS. they will never, ever be eliminated. people are stupid (worse, the stupid ones breed more than the smart ones so expect the problem to get worse, not better in future). unavoidable fact of the universe, don't waste your time wishing it weren't so, just deal with it and move on.
and as long as even a tiny fraction of all spam recipients respond to spam then spammers will continue to send their spam. even a response rate of 0.00001% of tens of millions of spams is still a lot of people and can result in a lot of money for the spammer. it's a numbers game. they don't care how many spams they have to send (they dont pay for the bandwidth or the hardware, they hijack other people's), they don't care how many non-customers they piss off. they only care about the tiny percentage of paying morons.
so, yes, i'm all for user education and applying social solutions to social problems. i don't expect them to do the job all by themselves (or even to do a particularly good job). technical solutions are also needed and CAN do a pretty good job (i.e. 99% or better elimination of spam)
amazing! you've cleverly deduced that SPF's sole function is exactly what it is documented to be.
many people think or claim or assume that SPF is supposed to be an anti-spam system. it's not. and never was. it has always and only been an anti-forgery system - a way for domain owners to list exactly which servers are allowed to send mail claiming to be from their domain.
whether recipient mail servers choose to examine or act upon that information is entirely up to them - it can be ignored entirely, or it can be used to reject mail from unauthorised sender machines, or it can be used to affect a spamassassin score....but that's not the point. the point and purpose of SPF is that it provides a method for domain owners to publish that information about their domain.
challenge-response has been done before. it was broken then, and it's still broken now.
this seems to be a minor variation on the same stupid idea behind other challenge-reponse systems like TMDA - with the same problems (esp. backscatter to the forged addresses) that they all have.
the stupidity is further compounded by the author not understanding the difference between message From headers (which are just comments, not addressing information) and message envelope.
it's not difficult to do, but most spammers WON'T do this for two related reasons:
1. it destroys the scaling benefit they get from having many thousands of spam-spewing zombies. i.e. instead of having hundreds or thousands of zombine machines directly sending spam from a particular ISP's network, all those zombies would be trying to relay through the same smarthost (or set of smart-hosts).
2. it means that their spam is subject to any anti-spam and/or rate-limiting controls on the ISP's mail server...either greatly slowing down the delivery of their spam, or having it vanish without a trace into the great empty spam-tin in the sky.
any ISP whose servers were used by smarthost-capable zombie-ware in this way would quickly implement anti-spam and/or rate-limiting on their mail servers if they didn't already have them. they would have no alternative if they wanted to keep their mail systems functional....they would die under the load, otherwise.
this is why both dynamic/dialup (DUL) listings and/or blocking outbound SMTP from dialup etc pools are good ideas. it forces all mail from potentially-compromised end-user machines to go via the ISP's mail server where it can be subject to centralised (for that ISP) anti-spam, anti-virus, and rate-limiting controls.
i'd actually like to see spamware zombies start using smart-hosts like this. i'm certain that it would, in a very short time, result in a massive reduction in spam.
which is, no doubt, why spamware authors don't and wont do it.
> > What if I view the page and fail to click on the advertisement? Is that also theft?
>
> No. You were given the opportunity to view the ad. You are not required to do so, just
> that you are given the opportunity for an advertiser to get your attention. If they
> fail to do so, that's their problem.
OTOH, by blocking web ads (as i have done since banner ads started being animated in the mid 90s), i am giving the advertiser the opportunity to not annoy me enough that they end up on my boycott list. i *routinely* boycott advertisers that annoy me, and there are many ways for them to get on my shitlist, including: distracting animated gifs, flash (particularly bug-ridden or spyware crap), javascript, spyware, and popups on the web; loud or annoying voices or sounds, soft-porn(*) and other emotional manipulations (including children, especially those with speech impediments) on TV; and banal feel-good and other branding exercises on any medium. they stay boycotted until the annoyance fades and i forget about them...so the more annoying, the longer before i forget.
since they intrude on my home, i hate telemarketers, god-botherers and door-knockers with a passion and when it's my turn to be God Emperor of the Universe, they'll *ALL* be amongst the first lined up against the wall. until then, i'll just have to continue being as rude to them as i possibly can (their obnoxiously rude intrusion deserves a rude response).
since i don't like advertising or the creeps who create the manipulative crap (especially those who think they're being "funny" or "artistic"), there is NO opportunity for an advertiser to engender a positive response in me, ONLY a negative response ranging from mild dislike to vehement loathing and outrage. it truly is far better for the advertiser if i don't see or hear their ad at all.
(but that's not why i block ads - it's not for their benefit at all. i block them because they annoy the hell out of me. my life is far more pleasant when i can block out the raucous arseholes screaming at me to buy their shit)
BTW, when i watch TV it is generally either the ad-free Australian ABC, or with a book in my hand for the ad breaks and a mute button on the remote control.
also btw, i don't bother blocking google ads because they're text - they don't flash, they're not animated, they're not distracting, and they're not annoying. sometimes they're even relevant. i do block google's click-tracking cookie and javascript shit because i don't want them spying on me.
(*) i have nothing against porn in general (other than the fact that 99.99999% of it is tacky crap catering to, and/or creating, an extremely unsophisticated audience with bad taste and backward sexist attitudes - i.e. my attitude to porn is aesthetic and political/philosophical rather than "moral"), but i do object very strongly to emotional manipulation in advertising, including the use of tits and bums and semi-naked women (and men, these days).
it's been my practice for over a decade now to refuse to allow shop staff to search me.
my attitude is that if they want to accuse me of theft, they can do so formally (preferably in writing) and accept the consequences of their slander or libel. it infuriates me that they think they can get away with insulting me by calling me a thief - but without even the guts to make the accusation openly.
when i am asked if they can look in my bag, i say "sure, but there's a $50 fee for a quick peek. or you can call the police and have me charged with theft and i'll allow them to look in my bag. otherwise, the answer is No"
so far, they've all backed down usually without any further fuss, although sometimes a manager is called over and he decides to back down.
the key is to remain calm, polite, and steadfast in standing up for your rights.
once or twice, i've had to point out that preventing me from leaving will result in abduction and/or false imprisonment charges, and that touching me in any way will result in assault and battery charges.
in other words, "a hodge-podge mix of people" have had their privacy invaded so the correct response is to invade the privacy of everyone.
similarly, a "a hodge-podge mix of people" have been beaten up and mugged, so the correct response is to beat up and mug everyone.
this proves the need for a Department of Enforced Equalisation.
it's only fair.
relax. it's just a pre-election stunt (and recycling of old, abandoned policies from previous pre-election stunts) from a PM who is decidedly on the nose with voters (finally!) and looking increasingly desperate.
it'll blow over soon enough and be ignored and forgotten, just like all the other times the ironically-named Liberals (i.e. australia's proto-fascist party) have brought out this stupid policy.
1. hotmail's mail servers are their private property. they get to choose what mail they want to accept, not you and not any other sender. if they want to block your mail or your newsletter, that's your tough luck. you have no say in it whatsoever. their server, their rules.
2. hotmail's customers, however, have a right to complain. if the mail service they are using or paying for is blocking legitimate mail that they want, then they should complain. ultimately, this probably means they should get themselves a mail service provider which doesn't block mail that they want, or at least takes reasonable action to minimise false-positives.
> People who are smoking it just want to get high.
you say that as if it's an inherently bad thing....as if people haven't been "getting high" in countless ways for as long as we've been around (and even longer - it's not just humans that go out of their way to get high, many animals do too. primates do now, and our evolutionary ancestors probably did too).
in a probably-futile attempt to dispel, or at least undermine, your ignorant wowser attitude to "getting high", here's a list of just *some* of the basic ways that people use to get high (each of which has countless variations and specific details):
exercise, eating, fasting, sex, drugs, meditation, religion, music, dance, sugar, gambling, travel, adventure, thinking, and many, many more.