[Mailman-Developers] Opening up a few can o' worms here...

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 10:44:41PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
> On 7/16/02 9:49 PM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
> > You can document your policies, and the person who wants to sign up can
> > decide whether they can deal.
> 
> I don't think that's always good enough. You have to do what you can to back
> the policies up. Unless, of course, your policy is "you're screwed if you
> post to my list, and good luck stopping the spammers". Which is,
> effectively, what "make the owner of the mailbox handle it" does as a
> policy. Although I doubt you'd phrase it quite that way...

I was on 14 mailing list for 6 years; I saw no appreciable amount of
spam *at all*...

> Heh. Wanna guarantee messages get bounced all over the place? Just use the
> "V" word in an email. You know which one I mean. You'll set off alarms all
> over the universe. It's more fun than running through a parking lot seeing
> which cars have movement detectors on the alarms. Not that, um, I do that,
> you know.

<grin>

> > Yeah.  I keep forgetting that not everyone has spent 17 years on
> > Usenet.
> 
> Newbie. 

I can still remember the month that I ceased to be able to read *the
entire feed*.  I'm not *that* much of a newbie; though, admittedly, B2.9
is about the oldest news system I had to deal with.

> > But that brings us almost immediately around to "why use email to do a
> > Usenet's job"... which *LOTS* of mailing lists are doing, frankly.
> 
> Because usenet is so broke none of us even think of fixing it any more?

People tell me that all the time.  I use slrn... and I don't see it,
much.

> I love to say "if all you have his a hammer, everything is a nail". In this
> case, email is our hammer, and mail lists aren't always appropriate for
> hammering, but have you seen what those idiots did to our screwdriver? I
> ain't picking that up, not without tongs and a blowtorch.

Perhaps I'm lucky, perhaps I'm blind...

> > You've jumped ship before.  So have I.
> 
> Hell, I turned jumping ship into an art form.

I know; I saw the website.  :-)

>                                                 In my heyday, usenet people
> set their clocks by it. Well, maybe their calendars.

:-)

> I finally grew up, too, and learned to both manage my stress levels and
> accept my responsibilities.

I construed jumping ship *as* doing those things.

> > They'll learn, eventually.
> 
> Not that I've noticed.

Well, stupidity is supposed to be expensive.  And painful.

> >> We're working on that (a quiet voice whispers: "but a f---ing mac already!
> >> It has unix inside for all you geeks, too!")
> > 
> > <roar>
> 
> Heh. A unix box with a pretty damn good gui, in a lap top so you can carry
> it anywhere, for about a grand. Effing wow.

:-)

> > My sister runs a page that's always in the top 3 on Google in her
> > keyword, on a user-named account on Mind-link.  Been there over 6 years
> > now.  She's had a pseudo-bogus address in her POP3 domain buried in a
> > mailto: on there for over a year.
> > 
> > *One* piece of spam.
> 
> I am amazed.

I have just +hacked the mailto that is in *my* weblog as the comment
address.  We'll see what happens.  I'm not all that important, but...

> > She's not exactly a low profile target.
> > 
> > You, OTOH, are.  How well "hidden" were your honeypot machines?
> > "plaidworks.com" is likely not a low-profile domain, neither.
> 
> You flatter me. I think.

Maybe.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

   "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?"
     -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")