O_o A bit.... Morbid that... *shiver*
*sigh* I remember 2000, when Bush's appointment was controversial but ultimately seemed like a relatively harmless idiot with a reasonably competent staff being put in power. Now I worry about what this maniac has in store for the world and who in hades actually voted for him...
"The idea that it was someone "whose pages were shut down with admirable dispatch" founders somewhat on the fact that we're talking about literally hundreds of different URLs, all of which were blatantly pornographic in content and all of which were completely fake."
Depends, what you need to keep in mind that legitimate porn site operators and spammers are two different creatures, though sometimes easy to confuse. Running a porn site is itself not illegal in most places, it's also perfectly possible to run one in an ethical manner without recurring to spamming tactics. This sort of restraint is in fact becoming highly advisable as spam awareness becomes more common, if you want your site to stay alive and provid long term profit, you don't spam. So what's with all the spam then? Simple, different group of people, the porn spammer isn't a typical porn site owner, rather than operating a handful of themed or generic sites he has instead set up anything between dozens and thousands of sites with more or less identical content, the sites gets spammed out on the principle that with this many sites all sending money to one location there'll be a guaranteed income BEFORE the sites get shut down for violating their host's spamming policy. Now if you have a particularly inept spammer it's easy enough for him to make 2 mistakes: 1. severely overspam; 2. set up all the sites through a single provider. The result is that complaints will come in fast n furious in the thousands, the host will note a single customer owns all the sites in question, and pull the plug in one mass termination. Hosts aren't paragons of virtue, but they'll only tolerate spamming and other TOS breaches from a paying customer as long as their own existence isn't threatened, generate enough complaints and even the so called "bullet proof" hosts will dump you like a hot potato or risk getting cut off by their upstream provider. Finally, if a spammer wants to get dumped REALLY quickly, he'll open the accounts using stolen credit cards to begin with. I'll grant it's certainly not impossible you were deliberately targeted, but it's not as likely as you'd think, there are more effective and far more subtle ways to down a site in any case.
Ted Rall: My post will have nothing to do with him *nodnod* (sorry, couldn't resist :) )
Behold today's top news item in the UK: "Holocaust on a plate"
Unfortunately that link isn't recent, for some reason the latest and greatest hasn't surfaced yet. Namely that this display is on its way to the UK and has hit a significant snag. Whilst the PETA UK site proudly announces it will be opening its UK tour in London, not... going... to... happen. As the Greater London Authority, led by our beloved (total wanker actually :P) Mayor Ken Livingstone, has banned the event.
PETA as usual? No, this definitely has to be a new record. So here're some specific thoughts:
1. Of course it's utterly offensive, effectively comparing Jews (of which I am one) to cattle and chickens. Obviously they're going for massive shock value, but to me this raises the question of relationship between shocking conduct and deeply offensive conduct, must the two go hand in hand? I generally think not, though on the one hand it's pertty much guaranteed you'll offend SOMEONE if you act in any form of outrageous manner, I feel it's an entirely different thing to very deliberately set out to offend a large group of people.
2. That being said, the jewish communbity AND the GLA are over-reacting. Yes this is utterly abhorrent, but it's not, as many are saying, anti-semitic, just insulting. As such banning the expo is pointless, just beause they appear in London does NOT mean I or anyone else has to go see the damn thing, let them express themslves freely, and let US express ourselves by not showing up.
3. Finally, and I suppose most relevant to this discussion, does this work? I think it's completely pointless, obviously not a single soul in the jewish community will get behind this movement, all we're feeling is revulsion and grief, not sympathy for the cause OR the animals, heck I'm going to go out and buy a couple extra steaks to spite these people :P. The rest of the world has mixed reactions, I listened for 2 hours to a cross section of londoners calling in to discuss this nonsense, some people amazingly enough felt they could agree full on with the holocaust=slaughterhouse/factory farm comparison, others were revolted, very few were indifferent. But does any of that matter? Those who were agreeing were already vegetarians, each n every one of em, and I doubt any meat eaters will change their ways over something this agressive. Logic suggests the correct application of shock effect would be to get the ministers responsible and other people in authority to actually visit some of the worst slaughterhouse sites in the middle of a workday, with the intent of promoting stronger enforcement of anti-cruelty legislations. Comparing jews to cattle to convert meat eaters into vegetarians? Not a very good strategy.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
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| 2005 | 1 |
| 2004 | 4 |
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