God bless Rep. Heather Wilson. At least there is ONE person in our government who cares about problems that the citizens actually care about, and that actually affects us.
I couldn't care less about some fucking fish going extinct. However, I certainly do care about spammers stealing my bandwidth and my ISP's bandwidth.
Any e-mail I get which I did not solicite, or which is not from soneone I know/met, is SPAM. If a company sends me information on their latest products, and I have never asked that company to send me information, that is spam. Obviously, ALL of the get-rich-quick, see-pussy-now e-mails are SPAM.
The 1st Amendment doesn't give you the right to STEAL. Yes, that's what spammers do -- they STEAL. They steal MY bandwidth, and they steal MY ISP's bandwidth. Hence, they steal our(mine, and the ISP's) money.
It was clear the judges were biased. They did not ask ONE hard question of the lawyers representing the MPAA/CSS concerns. They asked hard questions of Ms. Sullivan but questions a fucking 1st grader could answer of the MPAA/CSS lawyers.
For a defiend function, there are an infinite # of ways to write a program. However, this is ONLY ONE optimal way to write a program(that is, the way w/c makes the asm output as small as possible, and thus makes the program run as fast as possible and on as little RAM as possible.)
Ok, this woman is a pretty good lawyer, but did anyone notice she said something really dumb?
"You paid your $25 for "Schindler's List," you took it home, you're color blind. You want to use DeCSS to download it and change the [pixels] from blue to green so you can see it better."
Schindler's List -- except for one brief part -- was ENTIRELY IN BLACK AND WHITE. There are no "blue pixels" to change to "green pixels".
This is a good point, and one which I failed to talk about in my original posting. Let me clarify -- I don't think that a professor should spend 15% of his time grading the paper of each student, but of all the students together. Now, as for a 15 page paper, it should take a professor more than a minute or two to read through it. And professors should also be doing more than simply reading though students papers and slapping a grade on them at the end. I go to a good university(UOR) and almost all of the professors write detailed comments on my essays, even when I get perfect grades. This is what I mean when I say spending time on a students paper -- suggesting improvements either for revisions or for the future, and once in a while remarking on something the student did exceptionally well(to help the student). This is what students are paying professors for.
Of course, some professors don't do this and some TAs don't do this. Some of them simply place a grade on the paper when they're done reading it, based on their valid interpretation of the merit of the paper. The idea being that a professor/TA should not waste time commenting on a persons paper when that person might not pay any attention to it: if the students wants clarification on why they got their grade, they have to go to the professor. I have to admit, you can argue that this benefits the student just as much as if the professor commented lavishly, as it teaches the student that if he needs to go out an ask people to explain their impressions of him.
However, ultimately, a large part of what we as students are paying for is detailed comments on essays we hand in.
Here's an interesting issue. If a student taking a course where a writing requirement is also a very apt programmer, and writes an artificial intelligence program which he can interact with, supply data and information, and which will then write his paper for him, is this fair game?
Look, there are some fairly obvious reasons as to why cheating is bad or immoral. (1) A student is getting credit for something he didn't do; (2) One student is parasiting off of another; (3) Other reasons which I'm too lazy to go into, so instead of pasting and copying the comments of other slashdotters, I'll simplly say read the below comments.
Now, that said, there is also one obvious reason why cheating is not beneficial to the cheater himself: (1) If he is cheating because he doesn't understand the material, he isn't learning the material; (2) If he is cheating because he understands the material, but is too lazy or was too lazy to do the "grunt work," this breeds an attitude of laziness. As far as I can see, each is as bad as the other, if they are a pattern. Of course, most of us who are or were good students did cheat sometimes, or help other people to cheat, but this was something we did once or twice a year: in other words, it was a rarity.
Of course, cheating CAN also be beneficial to a person, if his goals are financial success, reputation, or other EXTERNAL valuables. How do you think despots and dictators "get elected fairly elected"? By cheating. They rig the system. So, in so far as external goods -- namely, power, money, fame, etc -- cheating does benefit the person cheating, IF they do not get caught, or IF when they are caught, nothing is done.
The lessson here: If you're going to cheat, DON'T GET CAUGHT. The only reason for cheating is the belief that it will allow you to obtain external goods(i.e., a better grade, thus possibly better money in the future) than you would have gotten otherwise. So its obvious that IF YOU GET AWAY WITH IT, cheating is GOOD for you if your only criteria is external goods like money, fame, power, grades, etc. However, it does not increase your worth as a person, nor make you any more knowledgeable(except, perhaps, in how to cheat).
Now, that I've talked about why cheating is "bad"(I quote it because only religious zealots and other oh-so self-righteous moralists believe in "absolute morality"), and about the benefits and costs of cheating to the cheater, let me identify part of the problem.
As another slashdotter said, part of the problem is the professors. Many students don't feel that professors spend a lot of time on their papers. This may be because some professors do not comment on papers alot, and for various other reasons. A student is not motivated to write a good paper if a professor is going to spend 10 minutes grading it, and it is not fair to ask a student to write a solid 10-page paper if the professor is going to spend one minute on each page. So, in short, professors have to spend an appropriate amount of time on the papers they grade, relative to the standards(length/quality/etc) they set for their papers. If a professors term-paper assignment costs a student 15% of his time, then a professor should devote 15% of his time to grading the papers he receives.
Ok, I will start off by saying that the basic premise of your argument is completely false, and this makes you seem very ignorant to anyone who knows anything about biology/evolution/natural selection. You said that:
>
This is completely false. Natural selection and evolution are not conscious forces which act in anticipation of approaching problems. Furthermore, natural selection can not possibly lead to reduced fertility: offspring of reduced fertility are selected AGAINST by necessity, as they can not replicate as efficiently, or not at all, if they are completely infertile.
Your next ignorant statement:
>
Well, you got part of it right: infertility can be caused by a "mutation" -- as in, a DNA base-pair substitution, a frame-shfit mutation, an inversion, or possibly even the insertion of a transposable element into the middle of a gene, as well as possibly by ectopic recombination between parental chromosomes(note, the latter two are not "mutations" as we normally think of them).
Now, regarding the incorrect part of your statement, mutations do not occur "to control the size of a population". They are random occurences which happen for no particular reason -- just by chance(as in a base-pair substitution) or bad luck(as in a transposable element inserting into the middle of a gene): or at least, they happen for no evolutionary reason. In fact, no mutation or certain recombination of genes "happens for a reason" -- it simply happens by chance. Deleterious mutations or gene-combinations are negatively selected against, because they reduce viability; beneficial mutations or gene-combinations are positively selected for, because they reduce fertility. Note, this is not a "conscious" action on the part of "natural selection": individuals with bad mutations or gene combinations will be less viable and will not reproduce as well.
In case you have not comprehended my point, let me clarify: there is NO selective pressure on the human species to have a certain portion of its species being infertile. Furthermore, evolution does not anticipate a problem, such as overpopulation, and evolve, via natural selection, a solution to that problem. A problem -- such as overpopulation -- is encountered by a species and then natural selection operates to eliminate those members of that species which can not deal with the problem very well(or rather, to eliminate those genes). Populations expand and expand until they deplete the available resources, then they naturally shrink: namely, some of the individuals in that population die.
Now, it seems clear to me that this is something critical for ANYONE to understand, if they are making comments about evolution and natural selection: in fact, it was first pointed out by Darwin -- in most species, more offspring are produced than can possibly survive on the given resources. This is, in fact, *necessary* for natural selection to occur.
Now, the unstated idea motivating your comment seems to be the idea of eugenics. I am not intrinsically against eugenics, but I am also a strong supporter of individual liberty. Your arguments that people who are sterile are somehow "inferior" and people you wouldn't want replicating is ludicruous: many people who are sterile are very productive members of society. I think that your mind is twisted on a logical fallacy, regarding the association between cases of mental retardation and sterility, so let me clarify. IF someone is mentally retarded, it is LIKELY that they are infertile. However, IF someone is infertile, that does not necessarily imply tha they are inferior in any way: IF A THEN B, does imply that IF B THEN A is true.
Now, getting back to the eugenics. As I said, I am not intrinsically opposed to eugenics, however I am a strong supporter of individual liberty/freedom. I see many ethical dangers in eugenics in that it could be a tool for racial bigotry(i.e., eugenically "breeding" blackness out of the population because it is "inferior"). There are also practical problems with eugenics: it does not work well. For example, I would say it would be good if we could "breed" criminal tendancies out of our population -- thus, we would sterlize all people convicted of serious crimes, of whom were were sure they were guilty. However, this will not successfully breed criminal tendancies out of our population, because of the problem of heterozygosity and epistatic interactions.
Regarding heterozygosity, A and a(for the dominant and recessive forms) may lead to a phenotypic "normal"(AA or Aa) and a phenotypic criminal(aa) person. Simply sterlizing all criminals will not mean that in the next -- or in ANY -- following generation, there will be no criminals, as Aa individuals can mate with Aa individuals, leading to aa individuals.
Epistatic interactions also pose another problem for eugenics to ever work in a practical sense, which I will not go into.
So, in conclusion, your comments illustrate an ignorance both about the reason sterility exists, and about the practicality of eugenics, as well as an incredible indifference to the rights of individuals who have done nothing wrong.
Look, there are all these oh-so self-righteous religious and non-religious zealots talking about how "immoral" it is to genetically engineer human being, or how "immoral" it is to use gene-therapy on people to fix genetic problems: that is their morality. No one else gives a damn. If you do not like the idea of genetically modifying a human being, then DON'T DO IT. But don't tell other people that they have to follow your morality. If someone wants to use genetically alter their gametes to create a genetically altered child, that is THEIR right to do so. If someone wants to use gene therapy to alter their own genes, to alleviate a susceptibility to a certain disease, or for any other reason, that is THEIR right. Simply put: MY body, MY right. Why don't we stop with the over-dramaticization of the issue here -- this is not the end of the world.
You stupid cunt, the owner of a building or house is under no obligation to buy financially taxing security. As an owner of a house with a gun in it, along with several knives, I am under no obligation to lock the doors when I leave the house -- the same thing applies for Napster: forcing them to implement security mechanisms is an unfair financial burden on a small company, and a violation of their rights.
"Ok, maybe their methods aren't the best but we should all realize that the music industry has our best interests at heart when they do things like this. They really aren't concerned with profit or maintaining their monopoly, no, by doing this they hope to continue to produce quality music at a reasonable price for the consumer."
LOL, that's a damn good joke -- great sarcasm there; you've made it pretty obvious by your humor that the exact opposite of everything you said above is what motivates the RIAA.
This from yet another pussy who refuses to show his/her name. Ok, if you READ some of the above links, you'd know that the results COULD:
(a) Be shared only with SDMI, in which case the person who cracked SDMI would receive an award of up to 10,000 dollars.
(b) Be displayed publicly, in which case the personwho cracked SDMI wouuld forfeit the reward.
Next time, read up before you say stupid assinite shit.
Btw, Intellectual Freedom means that the results of any study done on a security system can be publicized. If you don't allow the people at Princeton to publicize their results, it hurts US, obviously, but ALSO the artists -- b/c if the artists don't know about the weaknesses, they will endorse this CRAP.
Next time, try to say something intelligent.
IP "rights" should not be placed as paramount over intellectual freedom, freedom of speech, freeom of thought, fair use, or anything for that matter: IP rights are a necessary evil, that's all.
This from a pussy who couldn't even post his real name. Call it what you want, asshole -- it may not be a full fledged website -- but what's important is that it's now one(of probably many) online "web pages" where the results of Princeton's work can be found:
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Challe ng e.htm
Everyone, save this to your hard drive, print it out, post copies of it on your website, on Yahoo Clubs, on i-drive -- everywhere. Here is my copy of it:
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Challe ng e.htm
Look, I am ALL for the right to freely express one's self, and the right to pass information along. However, YOU do not have the right to send me crap if I ask you to stop, and I really do NOT want you or some other SPAMing fuck wasting my bandwidth in the first place with some 10Mb porno add of a woman sitting on her fist, OKAY? Yes, there is the right to free speech. But you don't have the right to USE MY TIME/MY MONEY/MY ISP's bandwidth(thus driving up MY ISP cost) to freely express yourself. If you want to deliver graphic ads to me, you should have to ask me to opt-in with a small text message first.
This is really no different than the fax case. Yes, these groups have the right to express themselves: but they don't have the right to sell my fucking fax number to millions of other companies, and WASTE my ink, or waste my paper, or waste MY time. What these fax-SPAMers do is USE MY MONEY to advertise THEIR PRODUCTS. This is WRONG.
Now, as for my opinions on distributing DeCSS, the ppl who distribute it PAY for their server access, or set up their own servers. As for Napster and other stuff, information should be freely exchangeable between voluntary participants, irrelevant of the kind.
The key word there is between voluntary participants. You do not have the right to send me large 10Mb animated e-mails to advertise YOUR products any more than do anti-choice nut-cases have the right to hammer a burning cross in my yard to "freely express their hatred of women". That is what you are doing: using MY physical property, MY money, to express yourself.
Hey, asshole, these fuckers who send us spam mail through the post office make our stamp prices go up. And these fuckers who send us e-mail SPAM STEAL OUR bandwidth, and STEAL bandwidth from the ISP, thus making our ISP costs go up. They also put undue burden on OUR computer systems with their graphics/animation-intensive e-mails. Btw, its not like this person was suing for millions of dollars(only a few hundred): was suing for the PRINCIPLE. SPAM should be OPT-IN, not OPT-OUT, and someone's "right" to "express himself," should NOT come at the expense of MY system, or of MY ISP's resources.
If a law is wrong, you have no obligation to obey it. Justice is more important than the law, which is simply an approximation of justice. If we all just "followed the law" when we thought it was wrong, the holocaust would have been justified, as would have slavery. This crap with Intellectual Property is no different -- IP laws have been bastardized to the benefit of corporations, at the expense of the consumer. They were originally meant to PROMOTE progress, by giving ppl motivation to invent, but yet give the public access to material: and were supposed to last a LIMITED(3-10yr) time period, and it would be reasoanble to say that that time period should be less for modern technology, b/c it evolves so rapidly, NOT more.
You also have to realize that the founding father's never meant for IP laws to be used as a weapon of corporations against the individual's right to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, or the right to fair use(which now, b/c of the DMCA and its corporate backers, is practically non-existant; my right to fair use includes the right to make and give away copies, as long as not for money).
IP laws as they currently are in their highly restrictive and long-lasting state clearly hinder MY right to freedom of expression/thought: for how can I freely THINK if some corporation decides what information(be it art, music, comp. programs, or literature) I can/can't have access to? The answer is, I CAN NOT have that freedom if I am restricted such for long periods of time, as IP law currently allows.
When it comes down to MY right free thought/expression and MY right to fair use, versus the corporation's right to "their IP," their rights are irrelevant. Free speech is infinitely more important than "intellectual property".
>>it looks like they want to scare individual >>users from even trying to share movies,
>And the problem here is?
The problem is that any tactics which can be used to stop people from "illegally sharing movies/mp3s/whatever" are draconian, Orwellian, *1984*ish, and big-brotherish in nature...as they either:
1. Destroy the right to privacy
2. Destroy the right to fair use
3. Put the burden of proof on YOU to prove your innocence(i.e., they would not have to prove that it was actually YOU who was doing that, and not some hack who hacked into your system and then d/led stuff to their comp via that)
4. Unfairly burden ISPs, by forcing them to waste THEIR time and THEIR money to block/filter such stuff, and hunt down invidiaul violators.
5. Unfairly burden companies that provide services such as Napster by forcing them to add worthless bloat to their software to prevent such activity, or to add useless members to the company just to "monitor online activity".
>I don't understand why people are so defensive of
>pirates...they don't feel in the least bit guilty
>about the fact that they're committing a criminal
>act.
So what, it's criminal? Prostitution is criminal, and so is euthenasia. Just b/c something is illegal says nothing about the morality of it. There are a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be. And why the fuck should we feel guilty? The music industry doesn't feel guilty when they rig the radio stations so you ONLY hear the good music on their albums, and don't know if there is bad music on their albums, or how bad it is; they also don't feel guilty when they rip you off by charging you 100 times the cost of production on CDs, do they? No.
>And these are the ones that get hurt by the
>revenue lost.[referring to ppl who work for the
>music industry]
Bullshit, there has as of yet been one stat that shows that MP3 and movie trading actually hurts sales. The vast majority of ppl who trade this stuff online are ppl who would never have brought it it weren't free.
Look, the music and movie industry is really mad b/c they're afraid: afraid that they won't exist soon. They realize that the internet, Napster, and such online services are fastly making them and all their marketing rip-offs obsolete and unneeded. Artists will soon be able to get publicity entirely by online advertisement, and then get further publicity by using online revenues to create TV commericial publicity.
The music artists aren't the one's getting hurt here, and neither is the music/movie industry at the moment. The music/movie industry is threatened with obsoleteness and non-existence. So naturally, they are fighting back with everything they have. They are in the same position that whalers were in when electricity was invented: now that something better is here, they are useless, no longer needed, trash, and unemployed. Tough shit, it's a fact of life. Electricity comes along, and the people who hunted whales for their oil(hence fuel for light) are no longer needed. Tough shit. Calculators come along, and the people who made slide-shfit rulers are no longer needed -- tough shit. Computers come along, and the people who made type writers are no longer needed -- tough shit. New inventions always come along that make yesterdays workers obsolete and useless. Big deal. It's the way of the world. Now it's the music companies and movie making companies that are threatened with that prospect: who cares. No corportaion has the right to exist anyways -- they only exist as long as the public deems them necessary, and then go bankrupt.
Look, Apple's IP is not threatened here at all. I mean, saying that "it can be used for copyright violations" is like saying that you can use a paint program for copyright violations, and thus it shouldn't be allowed -- bullshit. This current idealogy sponsored by evil corporations that "anything that can be used to violate IP is bad and should be gotten rid of" is bullshit, and it's an extremist solution, which puts our nation on the slippery slope down to *1984*.
Here's what it comes down to -- the consumer's rights to fair use. A consumer has the right to do any damn thing he wants to to a product he buys(aside from use it to harm ppl). As a WinME user, I have the god damned right to download a program that allows me to skin my WinME GUI to look like MacOSX if I want to. MacOS users have the god damned right to download a program that allows them to change the way their GUI looks. As a result of our right to customize our personal copy of our OS to our liking, other's also have the right to release tools that aid/assist in this customization at any level. Also, @pple and other evil corporations such as M$ do not have the right to determine what software should and shouldn't be distributed. We allow people to buy guns, despite the fact that it's possible to use them to harm others; it is also reasonable that I should be able to distribute any kind of software I want to, despite the fact that it may/can be used for illegal purposes.
I think Apple also have to wake up and stop being so arrogant. They are full of shit regarding "their IP." Take their new MacOSX OS, and it's Aqua GUI, with transparent windows, and gradiated glassy styles. Transparent windows were first used in the *nix world, and are a feature of almost every *nix skinning util: in fact, there was even a Windows skinning tool that allowed for transparent windows before Mac ever started work on Aqua. As for the gradiated glassy styles of title-bars and buttons: do you really think that someone at theme.org didn't already have that sort of thing in their own skin? Come on. Anything that Apple could possible do with their GUI was already done -- at least in part -- on the Open Sourced world or with skinning programs. They probably browsed through themes.org looking for ideas, and now that they're commercializing them, they want to turn around and sue people for "stealing their IP," which they stole from themes.org.
Ok, for the part about having one list on the internet of e-mails that do not want to receive SPAM, this would be something that would be independant of governments in terms of it's maintenance, but which government's(that agreed to the thing) would force SPAMers to reference against when sending SPAM. This site would be mirrored accross the world, and would be maintained by volunteers(i.e., like the ppl who volunteer to use their time developing GNU software, despite there being no money in it), or not at all. Maintenance would only be required when problems arose, such as a large proportion of the e-mails on the list being non-existent.
Also, this is not really necessary at all, but just a nice bonus. The most important part of my proposed legislation was the OPT-IN part, which stated that spammers would need to send small TEXT-only messages asking people if they would like to receive info e-mail on , and that if no response was received, they would have to stop sending e-mails to that address. This way, freedom of speech would be protected(in that they could send messages anonymously, with non-email in the TO field) but the rights of the ISP and the person receiving the e-mail would also be protected: in that the person receiving the mail wouldn't have to get that crap again if he didn't respond, nor would the ISP have to use that bandwidth again were that person not to respond, and that both would have legal optioins available to stop further violations.
Now, to be quite frank, I really don't give a shit about the "rights" of SPAMers. Their "right" to free speech does not mean they have the right to steal the ISPs bandwidth, or to hog MY resources and time -- just like anti-choice fanats don't have the right hinder my use of an abortion clinic by blocking the entrance, nor do SPAMers and pop-up junkies have the right to hinder my use of my computer by wasting precious RAM.
Of course, this list would have to be something which SPAMers could use to prevent their e-mails from being sent to certain locations, but of which the contents would not be known by the SPAMers, or be made available to anyone else, aside from the volunteers who may occasionally work on the list to eliminate redundant and fraudulent applications.
It would have to actually be maintained as some sort of filtering executable program with protections against reverse-engineering, so that the average stupid SPAMer would never know what names he was filtering out(i.e., this program would have to be like some sort of patch to an e-mail program, making it delete any messages with the given address in their TO field, without allowing the user to realize this[i.e., say it's sending these messages even when it's deleting them]).
A version of this "patch" would also have to be available for every major type of operating system -- BeOS, Mac, Win9x/+, *nix, Amiga, etc, etc -- and for every major type of e-mail program on those operating systems.
"Legislation reintroduced in Congress this year would require that unsolicited e-mails carry accurate return addresses and allow consumers and Internet providers to sue spammers who ignore requests to be removed from mailing lists."
This does not go far enough. There should be required CLEAR markers which all SPAM messages have to bear, indicating the type of SPAM they are: (1) SPAM that is trying to get you to buy something (2) SPAM that is trying to get you to join some organization or participate in some poll, etc or (3) Chain mail SPAM(i.e., those stupid poems you get about touchy-feely friendship). Thus, all SPAM sent should have the following in its headers:
SPAM1i [for case (1) SPAM]
SPAM2i [for case (2) SPAM]
SPAM3i [for case (3) SPAM]
This way, ISPs and private users can easily filter out SPAM to their choosing; for example, ISPs could choose to filter out all SPAM messages after the 1000th SPAM message of the day, or whatever.
Also, SPAM should NOT be opt-out, it should be opt-in. Hence, all initial SPAM messages would follow something like this:
Title(SPAMXi)
Body -- "Would you like to receive info- emails about . . . "
And should be limited to being a certain size, with no pictures, no color text, no tricks or frills: no pop-up IE windows of little girls fucking allowed!
This way, any SPAM sent would not clog up bandwidth as much, nor put as much a burden on the receiving person's computer. IF a return e-mail is NOT sent by the potential "customer" then the SPAMer must NOT send any requests for info-email subscriborship again to that address. Hence, this effectively means that any "legit" spammers will have to send their legit e-mail addresses(even if it's just a buffer Yahoo! address) in order to ever send that person anything again.
This way, SPAMers DO have the right of freedom of speech: they just have to ask if they want to be heard first. This is reasonable. For example, when those Born-again fucks come to your door or those Jehova's Witness fucks come to your door, they have to introduce themselves and their topic: and if you don't want to hear them, they have to get the fuck off your yard. This does not violate their right to free speech, and at the same time protects *your* rights. What I propose would allow a similar thing to be used for e-mail.
As an additional protection, there should be a government run list which lists the e-mails of ALL users who do not want unsolicited SPAM e-mail, and which all SPAMers would have to check to make sure that they weren't sending messages to any of those e-mails.
Also, ISPs should be allowed to adopt reasonable policies for filtering out unnecessary SPAM -- I am all for the right of people to freely express themselves, but that doesn't mean they can do so and make your ISP(and hence you, eventually) pay for it. All freedoms and rights cost something: the price should be paid by the person excercising the right, not other people. You SPAMing fucks do not have the right to cost ISPs millions of dollars and make my ISP bills go up.
I would like to comment on the posting of one fuck, a spammer(who refused to post an e-mail address), who said "I make a legitimate living by using SPAM to support my business". No, asshole, you don't. You are stealing from the ISPs, hogging bandwidth that should be *mine*, and making my ISP bill go up: you are also burdening MY computer unnecessarily with your crap.
On a tangent note, I would like to say that this all relates to pop-up windows, non-closable windows, large animated ads, and misleading web-page descriptions. All of these are things that are similar to SPAM: they are techniques to benefit the person who created them, which do so at the COST of me, my ISP, and the internet search services.
This burdens my ISP because they have to waste bandwidth on that crap -- all advertisments should be small, with minimal graphics, and minimal animations. Advertisements about as frequent as are on Yahoo! and the main page of slashdot are acceptable: anything else is NOT.
This burdens search engines because their service quality is degraded and user opinion of them reduced when clicking on a link that says "President Clinton" brings you to a website that says "Blowjobs Anonymous".
Most importantly, this puts undue burden on ME because it wastes the bandwidth that I am paying for, and stresses my CPU, my GPU, and my RAM: in short, it puts undue burden on everything that I have paid for. In addition, it may even crash my computer. As I have a very recent computer(1.1GHz, GF2 GTS, 256 MB SDRAM), this is not terribly bad for me -- however, it is still unacceptable.
You SPAMing and pop-up freaks can argue that you have the "right to free speech" -- which you do. You DO NOT, however, have the right of free speech at MY cost: your free speech has to cost YOU, not ME. You may have the right to give a speech in a public area, but you don't have the right to steal my microphone so that you can give that speech.
Slashdot Mirror
God bless Rep. Heather Wilson. At least there is ONE person in our government who cares about problems that the citizens actually care about, and that actually affects us.
I couldn't care less about some fucking fish going extinct. However, I certainly do care about spammers stealing my bandwidth and my ISP's bandwidth.
Any e-mail I get which I did not solicite, or which is not from soneone I know/met, is SPAM. If a company sends me information on their latest products, and I have never asked that company to send me information, that is spam. Obviously, ALL of the get-rich-quick, see-pussy-now e-mails are SPAM.
The 1st Amendment doesn't give you the right to STEAL. Yes, that's what spammers do -- they STEAL. They steal MY bandwidth, and they steal MY ISP's bandwidth. Hence, they steal our(mine, and the ISP's) money.
Stop spamming.
Stop stealing.
It was clear the judges were biased. They did not ask ONE hard question of the lawyers representing the MPAA/CSS concerns. They asked hard questions of Ms. Sullivan but questions a fucking 1st grader could answer of the MPAA/CSS lawyers.
For a defiend function, there are an infinite # of ways to write a program. However, this is ONLY ONE optimal way to write a program(that is, the way w/c makes the asm output as small as possible, and thus makes the program run as fast as possible and on as little RAM as possible.)
Ok, this woman is a pretty good lawyer, but did anyone notice she said something really dumb?
"You paid your $25 for "Schindler's List," you took it home, you're color blind. You want to use DeCSS to download it and change the [pixels] from blue to green so you can see it better."
Schindler's List -- except for one brief part -- was ENTIRELY IN BLACK AND WHITE. There are no "blue pixels" to change to "green pixels".
This is a good point, and one which I failed to talk about in my original posting. Let me clarify -- I don't think that a professor should spend 15% of his time grading the paper of each student, but of all the students together. Now, as for a 15 page paper, it should take a professor more than a minute or two to read through it. And professors should also be doing more than simply reading though students papers and slapping a grade on them at the end. I go to a good university(UOR) and almost all of the professors write detailed comments on my essays, even when I get perfect grades. This is what I mean when I say spending time on a students paper -- suggesting improvements either for revisions or for the future, and once in a while remarking on something the student did exceptionally well(to help the student). This is what students are paying professors for.
Of course, some professors don't do this and some TAs don't do this. Some of them simply place a grade on the paper when they're done reading it, based on their valid interpretation of the merit of the paper. The idea being that a professor/TA should not waste time commenting on a persons paper when that person might not pay any attention to it: if the students wants clarification on why they got their grade, they have to go to the professor. I have to admit, you can argue that this benefits the student just as much as if the professor commented lavishly, as it teaches the student that if he needs to go out an ask people to explain their impressions of him.
However, ultimately, a large part of what we as students are paying for is detailed comments on essays we hand in.
Here's an interesting issue. If a student taking a course where a writing requirement is also a very apt programmer, and writes an artificial intelligence program which he can interact with, supply data and information, and which will then write his paper for him, is this fair game?
Look, there are some fairly obvious reasons as to why cheating is bad or immoral. (1) A student is getting credit for something he didn't do; (2) One student is parasiting off of another; (3) Other reasons which I'm too lazy to go into, so instead of pasting and copying the comments of other slashdotters, I'll simplly say read the below comments.
Now, that said, there is also one obvious reason why cheating is not beneficial to the cheater himself: (1) If he is cheating because he doesn't understand the material, he isn't learning the material; (2) If he is cheating because he understands the material, but is too lazy or was too lazy to do the "grunt work," this breeds an attitude of laziness. As far as I can see, each is as bad as the other, if they are a pattern. Of course, most of us who are or were good students did cheat sometimes, or help other people to cheat, but this was something we did once or twice a year: in other words, it was a rarity.
Of course, cheating CAN also be beneficial to a person, if his goals are financial success, reputation, or other EXTERNAL valuables. How do you think despots and dictators "get elected fairly elected"? By cheating. They rig the system. So, in so far as external goods -- namely, power, money, fame, etc -- cheating does benefit the person cheating, IF they do not get caught, or IF when they are caught, nothing is done.
The lessson here: If you're going to cheat, DON'T GET CAUGHT. The only reason for cheating is the belief that it will allow you to obtain external goods(i.e., a better grade, thus possibly better money in the future) than you would have gotten otherwise. So its obvious that IF YOU GET AWAY WITH IT, cheating is GOOD for you if your only criteria is external goods like money, fame, power, grades, etc. However, it does not increase your worth as a person, nor make you any more knowledgeable(except, perhaps, in how to cheat).
Now, that I've talked about why cheating is "bad"(I quote it because only religious zealots and other oh-so self-righteous moralists believe in "absolute morality"), and about the benefits and costs of cheating to the cheater, let me identify part of the problem.
As another slashdotter said, part of the problem is the professors. Many students don't feel that professors spend a lot of time on their papers. This may be because some professors do not comment on papers alot, and for various other reasons. A student is not motivated to write a good paper if a professor is going to spend 10 minutes grading it, and it is not fair to ask a student to write a solid 10-page paper if the professor is going to spend one minute on each page. So, in short, professors have to spend an appropriate amount of time on the papers they grade, relative to the standards(length/quality/etc) they set for their papers. If a professors term-paper assignment costs a student 15% of his time, then a professor should devote 15% of his time to grading the papers he receives.
Ok, I will start off by saying that the basic premise of your argument is completely false, and this makes you seem very ignorant to anyone who knows anything about biology/evolution/natural selection. You said that:
>
This is completely false. Natural selection and evolution are not conscious forces which act in anticipation of approaching problems. Furthermore, natural selection can not possibly lead to reduced fertility: offspring of reduced fertility are selected AGAINST by necessity, as they can not replicate as efficiently, or not at all, if they are completely infertile.
Your next ignorant statement:
>
Well, you got part of it right: infertility can be caused by a "mutation" -- as in, a DNA base-pair substitution, a frame-shfit mutation, an inversion, or possibly even the insertion of a transposable element into the middle of a gene, as well as possibly by ectopic recombination between parental chromosomes(note, the latter two are not "mutations" as we normally think of them).
Now, regarding the incorrect part of your statement, mutations do not occur "to control the size of a population". They are random occurences which happen for no particular reason -- just by chance(as in a base-pair substitution) or bad luck(as in a transposable element inserting into the middle of a gene): or at least, they happen for no evolutionary reason. In fact, no mutation or certain recombination of genes "happens for a reason" -- it simply happens by chance. Deleterious mutations or gene-combinations are negatively selected against, because they reduce viability; beneficial mutations or gene-combinations are positively selected for, because they reduce fertility. Note, this is not a "conscious" action on the part of "natural selection": individuals with bad mutations or gene combinations will be less viable and will not reproduce as well.
In case you have not comprehended my point, let me clarify: there is NO selective pressure on the human species to have a certain portion of its species being infertile. Furthermore, evolution does not anticipate a problem, such as overpopulation, and evolve, via natural selection, a solution to that problem. A problem -- such as overpopulation -- is encountered by a species and then natural selection operates to eliminate those members of that species which can not deal with the problem very well(or rather, to eliminate those genes). Populations expand and expand until they deplete the available resources, then they naturally shrink: namely, some of the individuals in that population die.
Now, it seems clear to me that this is something critical for ANYONE to understand, if they are making comments about evolution and natural selection: in fact, it was first pointed out by Darwin -- in most species, more offspring are produced than can possibly survive on the given resources. This is, in fact, *necessary* for natural selection to occur.
Now, the unstated idea motivating your comment seems to be the idea of eugenics. I am not intrinsically against eugenics, but I am also a strong supporter of individual liberty. Your arguments that people who are sterile are somehow "inferior" and people you wouldn't want replicating is ludicruous: many people who are sterile are very productive members of society. I think that your mind is twisted on a logical fallacy, regarding the association between cases of mental retardation and sterility, so let me clarify. IF someone is mentally retarded, it is LIKELY that they are infertile. However, IF someone is infertile, that does not necessarily imply tha they are inferior in any way: IF A THEN B, does imply that IF B THEN A is true.
Now, getting back to the eugenics. As I said, I am not intrinsically opposed to eugenics, however I am a strong supporter of individual liberty/freedom. I see many ethical dangers in eugenics in that it could be a tool for racial bigotry(i.e., eugenically "breeding" blackness out of the population because it is "inferior"). There are also practical problems with eugenics: it does not work well. For example, I would say it would be good if we could "breed" criminal tendancies out of our population -- thus, we would sterlize all people convicted of serious crimes, of whom were were sure they were guilty. However, this will not successfully breed criminal tendancies out of our population, because of the problem of heterozygosity and epistatic interactions.
Regarding heterozygosity, A and a(for the dominant and recessive forms) may lead to a phenotypic "normal"(AA or Aa) and a phenotypic criminal(aa) person. Simply sterlizing all criminals will not mean that in the next -- or in ANY -- following generation, there will be no criminals, as Aa individuals can mate with Aa individuals, leading to aa individuals.
Epistatic interactions also pose another problem for eugenics to ever work in a practical sense, which I will not go into.
So, in conclusion, your comments illustrate an ignorance both about the reason sterility exists, and about the practicality of eugenics, as well as an incredible indifference to the rights of individuals who have done nothing wrong.
Look, there are all these oh-so self-righteous religious and non-religious zealots talking about how "immoral" it is to genetically engineer human being, or how "immoral" it is to use gene-therapy on people to fix genetic problems: that is their morality. No one else gives a damn. If you do not like the idea of genetically modifying a human being, then DON'T DO IT. But don't tell other people that they have to follow your morality. If someone wants to use genetically alter their gametes to create a genetically altered child, that is THEIR right to do so. If someone wants to use gene therapy to alter their own genes, to alleviate a susceptibility to a certain disease, or for any other reason, that is THEIR right. Simply put: MY body, MY right. Why don't we stop with the over-dramaticization of the issue here -- this is not the end of the world.
You stupid cunt, the owner of a building or house is under no obligation to buy financially taxing security. As an owner of a house with a gun in it, along with several knives, I am under no obligation to lock the doors when I leave the house -- the same thing applies for Napster: forcing them to implement security mechanisms is an unfair financial burden on a small company, and a violation of their rights.
This from yet another pussy who refuses to show his/her name. Ok, if you READ some of the above links, you'd know that the results COULD:
(a) Be shared only with SDMI, in which case the person who cracked SDMI would receive an award of up to 10,000 dollars.
(b) Be displayed publicly, in which case the personwho cracked SDMI wouuld forfeit the reward.
Next time, read up before you say stupid assinite shit.
Btw, Intellectual Freedom means that the results of any study done on a security system can be publicized. If you don't allow the people at Princeton to publicize their results, it hurts US, obviously, but ALSO the artists -- b/c if the artists don't know about the weaknesses, they will endorse this CRAP.
Next time, try to say something intelligent.
IP "rights" should not be placed as paramount over intellectual freedom, freedom of speech, freeom of thought, fair use, or anything for that matter: IP rights are a necessary evil, that's all.
This from a pussy who couldn't even post his real name. Call it what you want, asshole -- it may not be a full fledged website -- but what's important is that it's now one(of probably many) online "web pages" where the results of Princeton's work can be found:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
Er, the website is:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
Everyone, save this to your hard drive, print it out, post copies of it on your website, on Yahoo Clubs, on i-drive -- everywhere. Here is my copy of it:
e ng e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Chall
here is my copy of the SDMI documentation:
g e.htm
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tweak/SDMI%20Challen
Look, I am ALL for the right to freely express one's self, and the right to pass information along. However, YOU do not have the right to send me crap if I ask you to stop, and I really do NOT want you or some other SPAMing fuck wasting my bandwidth in the first place with some 10Mb porno add of a woman sitting on her fist, OKAY? Yes, there is the right to free speech. But you don't have the right to USE MY TIME/MY MONEY/MY ISP's bandwidth(thus driving up MY ISP cost) to freely express yourself. If you want to deliver graphic ads to me, you should have to ask me to opt-in with a small text message first. This is really no different than the fax case. Yes, these groups have the right to express themselves: but they don't have the right to sell my fucking fax number to millions of other companies, and WASTE my ink, or waste my paper, or waste MY time. What these fax-SPAMers do is USE MY MONEY to advertise THEIR PRODUCTS. This is WRONG. Now, as for my opinions on distributing DeCSS, the ppl who distribute it PAY for their server access, or set up their own servers. As for Napster and other stuff, information should be freely exchangeable between voluntary participants, irrelevant of the kind. The key word there is between voluntary participants. You do not have the right to send me large 10Mb animated e-mails to advertise YOUR products any more than do anti-choice nut-cases have the right to hammer a burning cross in my yard to "freely express their hatred of women". That is what you are doing: using MY physical property, MY money, to express yourself.
Hey, asshole, these fuckers who send us spam mail through the post office make our stamp prices go up. And these fuckers who send us e-mail SPAM STEAL OUR bandwidth, and STEAL bandwidth from the ISP, thus making our ISP costs go up. They also put undue burden on OUR computer systems with their graphics/animation-intensive e-mails. Btw, its not like this person was suing for millions of dollars(only a few hundred): was suing for the PRINCIPLE. SPAM should be OPT-IN, not OPT-OUT, and someone's "right" to "express himself," should NOT come at the expense of MY system, or of MY ISP's resources.
If a law is wrong, you have no obligation to obey it. Justice is more important than the law, which is simply an approximation of justice. If we all just "followed the law" when we thought it was wrong, the holocaust would have been justified, as would have slavery. This crap with Intellectual Property is no different -- IP laws have been bastardized to the benefit of corporations, at the expense of the consumer. They were originally meant to PROMOTE progress, by giving ppl motivation to invent, but yet give the public access to material: and were supposed to last a LIMITED(3-10yr) time period, and it would be reasoanble to say that that time period should be less for modern technology, b/c it evolves so rapidly, NOT more.
You also have to realize that the founding father's never meant for IP laws to be used as a weapon of corporations against the individual's right to freedom of expression, freedom of thought, or the right to fair use(which now, b/c of the DMCA and its corporate backers, is practically non-existant; my right to fair use includes the right to make and give away copies, as long as not for money).
IP laws as they currently are in their highly restrictive and long-lasting state clearly hinder MY right to freedom of expression/thought: for how can I freely THINK if some corporation decides what information(be it art, music, comp. programs, or literature) I can/can't have access to? The answer is, I CAN NOT have that freedom if I am restricted such for long periods of time, as IP law currently allows.
When it comes down to MY right free thought/expression and MY right to fair use, versus the corporation's right to "their IP," their rights are irrelevant. Free speech is infinitely more important than "intellectual property".
Information just wants to be free.
>>it looks like they want to scare individual >>users from even trying to share movies, >And the problem here is? The problem is that any tactics which can be used to stop people from "illegally sharing movies/mp3s/whatever" are draconian, Orwellian, *1984*ish, and big-brotherish in nature...as they either: 1. Destroy the right to privacy 2. Destroy the right to fair use 3. Put the burden of proof on YOU to prove your innocence(i.e., they would not have to prove that it was actually YOU who was doing that, and not some hack who hacked into your system and then d/led stuff to their comp via that) 4. Unfairly burden ISPs, by forcing them to waste THEIR time and THEIR money to block/filter such stuff, and hunt down invidiaul violators. 5. Unfairly burden companies that provide services such as Napster by forcing them to add worthless bloat to their software to prevent such activity, or to add useless members to the company just to "monitor online activity". >I don't understand why people are so defensive of >pirates...they don't feel in the least bit guilty >about the fact that they're committing a criminal >act. So what, it's criminal? Prostitution is criminal, and so is euthenasia. Just b/c something is illegal says nothing about the morality of it. There are a lot of things that are illegal that shouldn't be. And why the fuck should we feel guilty? The music industry doesn't feel guilty when they rig the radio stations so you ONLY hear the good music on their albums, and don't know if there is bad music on their albums, or how bad it is; they also don't feel guilty when they rip you off by charging you 100 times the cost of production on CDs, do they? No. >And these are the ones that get hurt by the >revenue lost.[referring to ppl who work for the >music industry] Bullshit, there has as of yet been one stat that shows that MP3 and movie trading actually hurts sales. The vast majority of ppl who trade this stuff online are ppl who would never have brought it it weren't free. Look, the music and movie industry is really mad b/c they're afraid: afraid that they won't exist soon. They realize that the internet, Napster, and such online services are fastly making them and all their marketing rip-offs obsolete and unneeded. Artists will soon be able to get publicity entirely by online advertisement, and then get further publicity by using online revenues to create TV commericial publicity. The music artists aren't the one's getting hurt here, and neither is the music/movie industry at the moment. The music/movie industry is threatened with obsoleteness and non-existence. So naturally, they are fighting back with everything they have. They are in the same position that whalers were in when electricity was invented: now that something better is here, they are useless, no longer needed, trash, and unemployed. Tough shit, it's a fact of life. Electricity comes along, and the people who hunted whales for their oil(hence fuel for light) are no longer needed. Tough shit. Calculators come along, and the people who made slide-shfit rulers are no longer needed -- tough shit. Computers come along, and the people who made type writers are no longer needed -- tough shit. New inventions always come along that make yesterdays workers obsolete and useless. Big deal. It's the way of the world. Now it's the music companies and movie making companies that are threatened with that prospect: who cares. No corportaion has the right to exist anyways -- they only exist as long as the public deems them necessary, and then go bankrupt.
Look, Apple's IP is not threatened here at all. I mean, saying that "it can be used for copyright violations" is like saying that you can use a paint program for copyright violations, and thus it shouldn't be allowed -- bullshit. This current idealogy sponsored by evil corporations that "anything that can be used to violate IP is bad and should be gotten rid of" is bullshit, and it's an extremist solution, which puts our nation on the slippery slope down to *1984*.
Here's what it comes down to -- the consumer's rights to fair use. A consumer has the right to do any damn thing he wants to to a product he buys(aside from use it to harm ppl). As a WinME user, I have the god damned right to download a program that allows me to skin my WinME GUI to look like MacOSX if I want to. MacOS users have the god damned right to download a program that allows them to change the way their GUI looks. As a result of our right to customize our personal copy of our OS to our liking, other's also have the right to release tools that aid/assist in this customization at any level. Also, @pple and other evil corporations such as M$ do not have the right to determine what software should and shouldn't be distributed. We allow people to buy guns, despite the fact that it's possible to use them to harm others; it is also reasonable that I should be able to distribute any kind of software I want to, despite the fact that it may/can be used for illegal purposes.
I think Apple also have to wake up and stop being so arrogant. They are full of shit regarding "their IP." Take their new MacOSX OS, and it's Aqua GUI, with transparent windows, and gradiated glassy styles. Transparent windows were first used in the *nix world, and are a feature of almost every *nix skinning util: in fact, there was even a Windows skinning tool that allowed for transparent windows before Mac ever started work on Aqua. As for the gradiated glassy styles of title-bars and buttons: do you really think that someone at theme.org didn't already have that sort of thing in their own skin? Come on. Anything that Apple could possible do with their GUI was already done -- at least in part -- on the Open Sourced world or with skinning programs. They probably browsed through themes.org looking for ideas, and now that they're commercializing them, they want to turn around and sue people for "stealing their IP," which they stole from themes.org.
Ok, for the part about having one list on the internet of e-mails that do not want to receive SPAM, this would be something that would be independant of governments in terms of it's maintenance, but which government's(that agreed to the thing) would force SPAMers to reference against when sending SPAM. This site would be mirrored accross the world, and would be maintained by volunteers(i.e., like the ppl who volunteer to use their time developing GNU software, despite there being no money in it), or not at all. Maintenance would only be required when problems arose, such as a large proportion of the e-mails on the list being non-existent. Also, this is not really necessary at all, but just a nice bonus. The most important part of my proposed legislation was the OPT-IN part, which stated that spammers would need to send small TEXT-only messages asking people if they would like to receive info e-mail on , and that if no response was received, they would have to stop sending e-mails to that address. This way, freedom of speech would be protected(in that they could send messages anonymously, with non-email in the TO field) but the rights of the ISP and the person receiving the e-mail would also be protected: in that the person receiving the mail wouldn't have to get that crap again if he didn't respond, nor would the ISP have to use that bandwidth again were that person not to respond, and that both would have legal optioins available to stop further violations. Now, to be quite frank, I really don't give a shit about the "rights" of SPAMers. Their "right" to free speech does not mean they have the right to steal the ISPs bandwidth, or to hog MY resources and time -- just like anti-choice fanats don't have the right hinder my use of an abortion clinic by blocking the entrance, nor do SPAMers and pop-up junkies have the right to hinder my use of my computer by wasting precious RAM. Of course, this list would have to be something which SPAMers could use to prevent their e-mails from being sent to certain locations, but of which the contents would not be known by the SPAMers, or be made available to anyone else, aside from the volunteers who may occasionally work on the list to eliminate redundant and fraudulent applications. It would have to actually be maintained as some sort of filtering executable program with protections against reverse-engineering, so that the average stupid SPAMer would never know what names he was filtering out(i.e., this program would have to be like some sort of patch to an e-mail program, making it delete any messages with the given address in their TO field, without allowing the user to realize this[i.e., say it's sending these messages even when it's deleting them]). A version of this "patch" would also have to be available for every major type of operating system -- BeOS, Mac, Win9x/+, *nix, Amiga, etc, etc -- and for every major type of e-mail program on those operating systems.
From the article:
"Legislation reintroduced in Congress this year would require that unsolicited e-mails carry accurate return addresses and allow consumers and Internet providers to sue spammers who ignore requests to be removed from mailing lists."
This does not go far enough. There should be required CLEAR markers which all SPAM messages have to bear, indicating the type of SPAM they are: (1) SPAM that is trying to get you to buy something (2) SPAM that is trying to get you to join some organization or participate in some poll, etc or (3) Chain mail SPAM(i.e., those stupid poems you get about touchy-feely friendship). Thus, all SPAM sent should have the following in its headers:
SPAM1i [for case (1) SPAM]
SPAM2i [for case (2) SPAM]
SPAM3i [for case (3) SPAM]
This way, ISPs and private users can easily filter out SPAM to their choosing; for example, ISPs could choose to filter out all SPAM messages after the 1000th SPAM message of the day, or whatever.
Also, SPAM should NOT be opt-out, it should be opt-in. Hence, all initial SPAM messages would follow something like this:
Title(SPAMXi)
Body -- "Would you like to receive info- emails about . . . "
And should be limited to being a certain size, with no pictures, no color text, no tricks or frills: no pop-up IE windows of little girls fucking allowed!
This way, any SPAM sent would not clog up bandwidth as much, nor put as much a burden on the receiving person's computer. IF a return e-mail is NOT sent by the potential "customer" then the SPAMer must NOT send any requests for info-email subscriborship again to that address. Hence, this effectively means that any "legit" spammers will have to send their legit e-mail addresses(even if it's just a buffer Yahoo! address) in order to ever send that person anything again.
This way, SPAMers DO have the right of freedom of speech: they just have to ask if they want to be heard first. This is reasonable. For example, when those Born-again fucks come to your door or those Jehova's Witness fucks come to your door, they have to introduce themselves and their topic: and if you don't want to hear them, they have to get the fuck off your yard. This does not violate their right to free speech, and at the same time protects *your* rights. What I propose would allow a similar thing to be used for e-mail.
As an additional protection, there should be a government run list which lists the e-mails of ALL users who do not want unsolicited SPAM e-mail, and which all SPAMers would have to check to make sure that they weren't sending messages to any of those e-mails.
Also, ISPs should be allowed to adopt reasonable policies for filtering out unnecessary SPAM -- I am all for the right of people to freely express themselves, but that doesn't mean they can do so and make your ISP(and hence you, eventually) pay for it. All freedoms and rights cost something: the price should be paid by the person excercising the right, not other people. You SPAMing fucks do not have the right to cost ISPs millions of dollars and make my ISP bills go up.
I would like to comment on the posting of one fuck, a spammer(who refused to post an e-mail address), who said "I make a legitimate living by using SPAM to support my business". No, asshole, you don't. You are stealing from the ISPs, hogging bandwidth that should be *mine*, and making my ISP bill go up: you are also burdening MY computer unnecessarily with your crap.
On a tangent note, I would like to say that this all relates to pop-up windows, non-closable windows, large animated ads, and misleading web-page descriptions. All of these are things that are similar to SPAM: they are techniques to benefit the person who created them, which do so at the COST of me, my ISP, and the internet search services.
This burdens my ISP because they have to waste bandwidth on that crap -- all advertisments should be small, with minimal graphics, and minimal animations. Advertisements about as frequent as are on Yahoo! and the main page of slashdot are acceptable: anything else is NOT.
This burdens search engines because their service quality is degraded and user opinion of them reduced when clicking on a link that says "President Clinton" brings you to a website that says "Blowjobs Anonymous".
Most importantly, this puts undue burden on ME because it wastes the bandwidth that I am paying for, and stresses my CPU, my GPU, and my RAM: in short, it puts undue burden on everything that I have paid for. In addition, it may even crash my computer. As I have a very recent computer(1.1GHz, GF2 GTS, 256 MB SDRAM), this is not terribly bad for me -- however, it is still unacceptable.
You SPAMing and pop-up freaks can argue that you have the "right to free speech" -- which you do. You DO NOT, however, have the right of free speech at MY cost: your free speech has to cost YOU, not ME. You may have the right to give a speech in a public area, but you don't have the right to steal my microphone so that you can give that speech.