johnpalmer

As if speaking to the spammers would help, but...

"You know why I'm reporting you? Because you're giving fallacious investment advice for the sake of hurting others to help yourself, and trying to spread financial innumeracy.

"You... now, you I'm reporting because you're giving an IP address, not a doman name address... and not only that, you're trying to *DISGUISE* it. That means you *KNOW* you're a scamster and a liar and a cheat and a few other words not fit for polite company."

(Okay, okay... I just can't think of anything imaginative enough. When have I ever censored my thoughts based on polite company?)

"You, I'm reporting because I'm sick and tired of losers who send out MMF posts without even knowing what MMF is, nor knowing enough history to understand why losers started including the "Read this post... then read it again!" came about."

(For those of you who don't know enough MMF history because of good taste in reading material, "MMF" stands for "Make Money Fast", and it's the entire Internet chain letter business that you see on newsgroups and in email. "Read this, and then read it again!" was, in context, supposed to mean "read it a second time,and you'll understand how brilliant this is.)

"You, you're MMFing too, and you've disgraced the name of any math teacher you've ever had, you've perverted the grand art of numbers, you've shamed any statistician who has ever had contact with you. You've shown disrespect for that most beautiful and noble of fields of scholarship, the one that gives us the language for all of our solid learning. You've spattered knowledge with dung, and been the swine trampling pearls underfoot... 100,000 participants getting 100,000 more participants each means having more participants than there are people on the planet, and you're claiming to have MATHEMATICALLY proven that your scam works. I'd compare you to the offspring of a sphyllitic camel and a dung beetle, but only if it was stillborn and, thus couldn't be harmed by the insult! Oh, yeah, and you're ugly, and your mother dresses you funny. So I'm reporting you, too."

(I *CAN* be imaginative, on occasion, you see...)

"You, I'm reporting for abuse of exclamation marks. You, I'm reporting for abuse of enthusiasm, but willing to grant you a single point in your favor for avoiding the abuse of exclamation marks.

"YOU, on the other hand, I'm reporting only because I can't find you and beat the living snot out of you.
(nb: there isn't very much living snot in a person, and it rarely is exuded as a result of a beating, so this really is a pretty serious threat) *YOU* are pretending that I *ASKED* for this."

(There are other spams that make me want to do serious harm to the sender, of course... this is just the only amusing one I can think of).

I think personal information needs to be declared to be created by the person it represents, and that by living the life that is described by that personal information, the person is setting that information into a solid form... it should thus, be copyrighted by the person it represents, and the use of that information without express permission, and especially the use of it in derivative works, should be forbidden. Free speech is all well and good... but spamming (and collection of email addresses, etc.), data mining and selling, and so forth, are not what should be considered protected, IMHO, because the information being used is not the owned by the compiler, IMHO... it's owned by the people who it represents.