1. my corp buzz friends on my google.com account
2. my facebook friends
3. my public buzz friends on my gmail account
4. my twitter account.
5. my quora account

I’m sure that if you get too many friends on any particular network, your participation will decline due to spam and friendships that are too faint to sustain. What is the tipping point and how would you measure it?

This is a supposedly reputable “scientific society” whose sole purpose seems to be to lock up publications behind a pay firewall and spam potential members to encourage them to join. These clowns even throw in a “Free World Clock Calculator”. Is that the kind of professional society you want to belong to?

Here is the latest spam. I am posting it in the hope that it will encourage spammers to spam them.

We have an important chance for you to join ACM, including a world clock calculator, if you respond at:

https://campus.acm.org/public/qjstuwithbook/joinacm2.cfm?client_no=%27%2B%3C%27%2FPL7%2B3%20%20%20%0A&promo=PSAP28SVL

As a member of ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, you will have access to a host of career-enhancing benefits including the newly re-launched “Communications of the ACM” magazine, the most trusted source on advanced computing.

Essential reasons to read “Communications” each and every month:

* News, analysis and insights from the computing world’s leading authorities on the cutting edge of technology
* Balanced and accessible coverage
* Broad and in-depth technical analysis
* Serious and insightful commentary
* Access to an active global community of computing professionals
* Full, real-time, website access to additional content, tools and resources

ACM members are raving about the fully redesigned publication:

“A must-read from cover to cover”
“More articles relevant to my work and interests”
“A top scientific journal”
“Quality technical content”
“More engaging”
“An exciting layout”
“A vastly better magazine”

Learn more about all of the additional benefits of ACM membership, including access to thousands of online books and courses, by visiting:

https://campus.acm.org/public/qjstuwithbook/joinacm2.cfm?client_no=%27%2B%3C%27%2FPL7%2B3%20%20%20%0A&promo=PSAP28SVL

Join ACM today and receive a 15% discount plus an ACM Free World Clock Calculator!

I hope you will take a moment to consider how valuable an ACM membership and “Communications of the ACM” magazine can be to your career!

Sincerely,
Lillian Israel
Director of Membership
ACM
acmhelp@acm.org

ACM Member Services Department
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1-212-626-0500 (Global)
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As science has evolved, we have adopted an informal tradition of putting our research papers on the web, often using free services to do so (e.g., our employer). It’s good to see that Larry’s old page on www.almaden.ibm.com is still around, but Larry also put many of his papers up on a geocities site as well. I remember at the time he died that his geocities page probably wouldn’t last forever, so I quietly made a copy of it on my own site, just to preserve his legacy a bit longer. Now that geocities is finally going away, it reminds me that science (particularly theoretical work) is destined to outlive almost all technology, and it is only through a community of scientists that we will properly curate our work. As my small part of it, I’ve exposed Larry’s original home page on the cstheory.com site.

Followup: the query [site:geocities.com "theoretical computer science"] on google reveals that there are quite a few pages on geocities that are concerned with theoretical computer science. I doubt that many of them are very important, but only history gets to decide what is important in science.

Dear friend,

Thank you and regards,
Jason Lim
Marketing Executive
World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Ltd
5 Toh Tuck Link
Singapore 596224
Tel. +65 6466 5775 ext. 247
Fax. +65 6467 7667
Email: cjlim@wspc.com

1. The fact that they use direct mail marketing in the first place. The email address they used is the one I used to register for SIGIR 2006, so at least they are using the “existing business relationship” loophole.
2. They are still a dead tree society, mailing the CACM to all members. No matter what you think of this periodical, it’s silly for ACM to cling to the old publishing model like grim death.
3. The message is cleverly worded to avoid discussion about the ACM digital library. In fact, ACM membership does not include access to the ACM digital library, so apparently they think membership is orthogonal to science. ACM members still have to pay $5 per article to download from there (nonmembers pay $10). If ACM membership included this instead of the CACM, then I would consider joining.
4. The organization is now using preferential pricing. To quote:
   

   Join ACM today and receive a 15% discount plus an ACM Free World Clock Calculator!

   They included a link “just for me”. What justification is there for me to be offered a lower price than a new PhD in CS? And WTF is ACM doing giving away World Clock Calculators? Did they buy too many of those in the 80s? Do they offer toasters next month?

Can you imagine a world with an ACM that organized as a professional society? As a start, I want them to do the following:

1. put science first by supporting open access to publications (like Usenix)
2. treat their members on an equal footing without preferential pricing
3. didn’t waste resources on useless trinkets
4. didn’t use email to spam potential “customers” (I can’t really call them “members”).

They invited me to “… consider how valuable an ACM membership and Communications of the ACM magazine can be to your career”. I have. They are CRAP.