cs.utexas.edu discrimination charged
Cyronwode
The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
post to the internet from commercial domains.
(1) ===============
> From Cyro...@aol.com Mon Oct 9 17:47:10 1995
>
> 12 hours ago i tried to post to the newsgroup alt.lucky.w by using the
> public e-mail gateway address alt-l...@cs.utexas.edu.
> I sent other messages directly to the group at the same time via
> my AOL (aol.com) usenet connection. The AOL messages
> showed up in the newsgroup within minutes, but the messages sent
> to the group via the gateway @cs.utexas.edu
> have not shown up yet. Nor have they bounced back to me.
>
> How long is a reasonable time to wait before concluding that this
experiment
> was a failure?
>
> Any reply would be appreciated.
>
> catherine yronwode
> cyro...@aol.com
(2) ===============
Subj: No Subject
Date: Mon, Oct 9, 1995 6:24 PM PDT
From: flet...@cs.utexas.edu
X-From: flet...@cs.utexas.edu (Fletcher Mattox)
To: Cyro...@aol.com
CC: postm...@cs.utexas.edu, ty...@houseofkaos.abyss.com
Catherine, our gateway has been the target of so much abuse
(forgeries, spam, multi-level marketing scams, advertising,
and just plain clueless posts to inappropriate newsgroups)
by AOL users that I have blocked all mail from that domain.
Why not ask AOL administrators to carry alt.lucky.w rather
than depend on our gateway?
(3) ===============
[from catherine yronwode (cyro...@aol.com) to flet...@cs.utexas.edu
(Fletcher Mattox)]:
Excuse me? You have blocked your PUBLIC gateway to AOL users?
In the first place, i can easily access alt.lucky.w from AOL's gateway.
That's not the point.
In the second place, you are about four months behind the times as far as
AOL being the domain from which most spam and forgeries are currently
sent; my own experience shows Prodigy leading AOL in commercial sex spam
by about 100-to-1 at the present time. That's not the point, either.
The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
simply because of the name of their carrier, WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
Be advised that in rural areas, such as mine, AOL is the only service
provider with a local number.
Be advised that due to your actions, i lost two posts i wrote -- thus you
have destroyed my time, the only thing that is truly mine. You vaporized
these posts unilaterally, without telling.me. You did not provide the
normal internet courtesy of bouncing them back so that i could resend them
via AOL and if i had not inquired about their status, i would have never
known that you destroyed them.
Be advised that as a responible citizen who has done no wrong and who pays
taxes for the support of pubic educational institutions, i take this
discrimination against myself very personally.
1)
I am hereby formally requesting a list of ALL domains which you block from
access to the gateway @cs.utexas.edu.
2)
I am hereby formally requesting the name of your supervisor, if any, or
the person who has authorized this blockage-by-domain, if any other than
yourself.
3)
I am hereby formally requesting the name or names of those who instituted
the policy of refusing to send "mail refused" or other appropriate "bouncd
mail" messages to senders whose posts have been blocked-by-domain without
their knowledge.
4)
I am hereby formally requesting information on the percentage of the
Univeristy of Texas computer sciences department budget that is derived
from public (local, state, and federal) funds.
I am taking it upon myself to expose your unfair practices and to bring to
public light your egregious discrimination against those who are too poor
to have their own corporate internet access, too independent-minded to
suck at the teat of an .edu account, and too rural to get anything but AOL
without paying long-distance fees.
Change your policy or read about yourself in the newspapers -- and all
over the net.
(Readers: Please forward to any and all individuals, media outlets, and
usenet newsgroups you deem appropriate. I shall be posting this in as many
of the administratively-oriented usenet newsgroups as i can. AOL personnel
and AOL members: i advise you to contact Fletcher Mattox personally, with
a CC to me.)
catherine yronwode
cyro...@aol.com
Richard P. Bainter
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>University of Texas (cs.utexas.edu) Discrimination Charged
>
>The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
>University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
>post to the internet from commercial domains.
My gods!!!
>Excuse me? You have blocked your PUBLIC gateway to AOL users?
The gateway is not public, but is used as a public *convience*. It is
for use by the University of Texas at Austin faculty, staff and
students. I'm quite certain it could be easily removed from "public"
usage.
>The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
>(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
>and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
>simply because of the name of their carrier, WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
>without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
Why are you not screaming about the discrimination being done by such
organizations on the University campus as the RecSports facility that
only allows UT faculty, staff and students to use their facility, and
even then at a fee? Why are you not screaming about the discriminition
by public schools to not allow you to walk in and use their computers
for your own uses?
>Be advised that due to your actions, i lost two posts i wrote -- thus you
>have destroyed my time, the only thing that is truly mine.
If your time to post to such groups as alt.lucky.w are so valuable, why
do you use something that is not 100% guaranteed to work everytime?
(Just because you have revived the newsgroup it's not important?) Usenet
news is a widely distributed, unreliable transport mechanism. If my news
spool drive were to die today, I wouldn't bother recovering it from tape.
>Be advised that as a responible citizen who has done no wrong and who pays
>taxes for the support of pubic educational institutions, i take this
>discrimination against myself very personally.
Your paying of those taxes allow you the ability, assuming you meet the
criteria, to go to these institutions at a reasonable cost. It does not
allow you to utilitize all of the facilities that are provided by the
institution.
>1)
>I am hereby formally requesting a list of ALL domains which you block from
>access to the gateway @cs.utexas.edu.
By what authority? Have you proved discrimination? Have you provided a
court order? Or do you want this as a favor such as the one that the
*existance* of this mail gateway was?
>2)
>I am hereby formally requesting the name of your supervisor, if any, or
>the person who has authorized this blockage-by-domain, if any other than
>yourself.
Try the President/Chancellor of the UT systems. They are the supervisor
of every employee of the University of Texas system. You complaining to
them, Fletcher's supervisor, or just make enough noise will probably get
the gateway removed completely so that there are not problems associated
with it.
>3)
>I am hereby formally requesting the name or names of those who instituted
>the policy of refusing to send "mail refused" or other appropriate "bouncd
>mail" messages to senders whose posts have been blocked-by-domain without
>their knowledge.
Why would this even be polite or common practice? Yes, mail does this,
but from my reading of the documents associated with the mail gateway
software this isn't even a common function. *shrug*
>(Readers: Please forward to any and all individuals, media outlets, and
>usenet newsgroups you deem appropriate. I shall be posting this in as many
>of the administratively-oriented usenet newsgroups as i can. AOL personnel
>and AOL members: i advise you to contact Fletcher Mattox personally, with
>a CC to me.)
I bet you don't even cross post the message and send individual copies,
thus proving that AOL users are a high cause of spam'ing of the Usenet
newsgroups.
Now that you have made your demands of Fletcher/UT's CS department, I
will as well.
1) I demand that you limit the usage of the mail <-> news gateway to
only those users within the University of Texas at Austin system.
2) I demand that you filter all news through the CS department machine
to remove all posts from AOL. (Okay, so maybe that's more of a wish.)
Btw, I don't speak for Fletcher or UT.
Ciao,
Pug
--
Richard Bainter Mundanely | System Analyst - OMG/CSD
Pug Generally | Applied Research Labs - U.Texas
p...@arlut.utexas.edu | p...@eden.com | {any user}@pug.net
Note: The views may not reflect my employers, or even my own for that matter.
Russ Allbery
> I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to
> the gateway because of domainism
Which is a lie.
> (2) not notifying AOLers trying to use the service that he was doing this.
Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own the
Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
Fletcher doesn't have to explain himself to anyone.
> Messages that they sent simply never appeared.
Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
to mooch off other people, then.
> Is your response to this still tough roogies?
Yup.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
Jared Shope
>over the net.
She is pretty fierce in the rest of this, but I have to agree with her. After
reading newsgroups consistently every day since moving from AOL last July, I have
seen all kinds of spams from Prodigy, and NONE from an AOL user. I am not saying
there weren't any, just that they were not spammed to the groups I have been
reading.
Obviously, this Mattox guy doesn't read many groups-or just the ones I don't
read.
But I agree that it is absurd to block AOL users because they left all those "mee
too" messages last spring & summer. That, at least, seems to be cleared up thanks
to ruthless intimidation & single-minded efficiency (just a little joke).
I am getting tired of all those 900 numbers spammed to Usenet from Prodigy.
---rant snipped
>(Readers: Please forward to any and all individuals, media outlets,
and
>usenet newsgroups you deem appropriate. I shall be posting this in as
many
>of the administratively-oriented usenet newsgroups as i can. AOL
personnel
>and AOL members: i advise you to contact Fletcher Mattox personally,
with
>a CC to me.)
>
>catherine yronwode
>cyro...@aol.com
--
Dale Smith, Ph.D. Phone: 800-753-2326
Quantitative Analyst Email: ada...@ix.netcom.com
ADAM Investment Services (Put my name in the Subject field!)
Atlanta GA Home Email: dts...@mindspring.com
Opinions I express here are my own and not my employer's.
Chip Rosenthal
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>University of Texas (cs.utexas.edu) Discrimination Charged
>
>The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
>University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
>post to the internet from commercial domains.
You know what really stinks about this new information superduper
highway.
No....it's not the clueless newbies who spam all over incarnation
because they don't know how to crosspost properly.
Neither is it the clueless newbies who repost private email without
permission.
What really sucks is the "information consumers" who pay their $20/month
and feel the world owes them something in return. These are the
net.vampires that just suck and suck and contribute nothing.
The entire AOL.COM phenomena is symbolic of this whole thing. I
remember back when GNN did a feature article on the AOL Gopher server,
replete with screen shots. It's a good thing they gave screen shots,
because there was no other way to see the AOL gopher. AOL, it seems,
is willing to foist tens of thousands of people onto our servers, but
lord forbid they should provide anything in return.
But that's ancient history right? No, not really. Today, WWW has
pretty much supplanted Gopher, and AOL continues to contribute zilch
to the net. Sure, now there is a www.aol.com, but it's nothing but
a one-page advertisement for their services.
So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
service offered to UT users, and with informal and unofficial access
granted to the public, whining that they don't like it.
Well...tough roogies. This is the Internet. If you don't like it,
then do your own. Oh dear...I forgot...you and your ilk want to do
nothing more than consume down the Internet with a mouseclick.
Never mind.
For the record, the utexas email gateway is operated with an extremely
high level of diligence and professionalism. A lot of effort has
gone into preventing this service from becoming a launching point
for net.abuse.
So here's what I have to say about this whole controversy: Atta boy,
Fletcher! Keep up the great work. I and many others appreciate
everything you do for Usenet and the Internet.
Disclaimer: No, not every AOL.COM user is a twit. In fact, some of
the coolest folks on my mailing lists are AOL users. (Most of them,
however, seem to move off once they decide they don't need the training
wheels any longer.) It just seems, however, that AOL attracts more
than their fair share of twits.
--
Chip Rosenthal Ban excessive reposts: /^X-Mailer: Mozilla/h:j
Unicom Systems Development
For a good time: http://www.unicom.com/john-hiatt/
PGP key: http://www.unicom.com/personal/chip.html
David Smith
: So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
: service offered to UT users, and with informal and unofficial access
: granted to the public, whining that they don't like it.
I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to
the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to
use the service that he was doing this. Messages that they sent simply
never appeared.
Is your response to this still tough roogies?
--
David Smith * "Cryptography : The Language Our Government Doesn't
bla...@bga.com * Want You to Learn" Next EFF-Austin general meeting
President, EFF-Austin * Monday, October 16th, 1995, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Board of Directors, CTCLU * La Madalein, 3418 North Lamar
Chip Rosenthal
>I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to
>the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to
>use the service that he was doing this. Messages that they sent simply
>never appeared.
>
>Is your response to this still tough roogies?
Pretty much, yeah.
If you don't like it, don't use it. It truly is that simple.
The only thing Fletcher owes you or me is not to damage the net through
the gateway via spews and spams and such. That, fortunately, is not
a problem. In fact, this whole issue stems from Fletcher acting on
the massive abuse and torment heaped on the gateway by AOL.COM users.
I'd be disposed to be sympathetic to the specific problem you raise
if it wasn't done through such a whiny, obnoxious spam. In fact, if
the AOL luser had directed that specific request to Fletcher *politely*,
she might have gotten satisfaction. (My reference point is many moons
ago, Fletcher modified the way cs.utexas.edu produces bounces messages
in response to a comment I made via *polite* *private* email.)
Bob Izenberg
(Quoting Chip Rosenthal) # :
# : So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
# : service offered to UT users, and with informal and unofficial access
# : granted to the public, whining that they don't like it.
#
# I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to
# the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to
# use the service that he was doing this. Messages that they sent simply
# never appeared.
#
# Is your response to this still tough roogies?
If you were to ask me instead of Chip, I'd say yes. Regarding
distilled point (1), I can imagine a decision such as Fletcher
made being done by the numbers, not by hoopla about AOL having
a bad rep... In fact, I have heard that AOL invited their
domain to be blocked from the gateway after they received
complaints about spam originating from aol.com . Fletcher may
have already had something public to say on that subject. As
regards (2), well, he had an arrangement with somebody at AOL.
It is not incumbent upon him to take it any further... Don't
see how he could, not being a wheel at AOL. If AOL doesn't
advertise propagation problems caused by a bad rep amongst
news admins, that is surely not the news admins' collective
fault. Ask long-time news admins if they know, even only
in camp-fire tales, of sites that have filtering in place
for Fidonet re-broadcasting... I did, in a state far, far
away, to keep a neighbor from sending every article that they
received back to me with new article IDs (meaning, they showed
up as "new" when they really weren't, causing some distress.
I blocked them because of noise they were injecting into the
system.... that they were unable to fix themselves. AOL
should have a kiddie pool mini-Usenet, supervised, where new
net citizens can learn what they need to know to play well with
others, without spattering the neighbors with baby food as
often as they do now. Letting AOL's users inject noise, in
the form of spam, pyramid schemes (illegal!) and other
detritus, into the networks outside aol.com is bad
citizenship. They know it, and in the case of the UT
mail-to-news gateway, suggested how to deal with it.
The poster of the original complaint may not have chosen
a provider with the best reputation at this time, but by
the poster's words, chose to be in character with the
worst of what people say about that provider's customers.
Followups directed to austin.internet .
Bob
--
============================================================
Bob Izenberg home: 512-442-0614
b...@io.com work voice/fax: 512-250-4227/250-6424
============================================================
Richard P. Bainter
>: So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
>Is your response to this still tough roogies?
I would say yes. The gateway was there as a public convience, not a
service. Just because it is a public University doesn't mean that the
public has use of all, or any, of the services provided. It does mean
that if they meet criteria X they can go to the school at a reasonable
cost. The Unversity can, at it's whim, make things available for public
consumption.
If I were to setup a gateway at ARL:UT, which is associated with the
University of Texas, (mostly because they sign my paycheck and we are
on their property) there would be no need for me to notify anyone but
UT, and specifically ARL:UT personal of any changes of the gateway. If
I decided to be polite I could notify the entire world, but where do I
stop? After posting to a newsgroup? After sending mail to every user who
sends mail to it? After sending mail to every usenet/news account on
every domain in the world? (I'm sick of the listserv/majordomo crawler.)
As far as we know at this point, Fletcher notified the administrators
of the site in question that it would/did occur or even did it at their
request. That in my opinion is above and beyond the call of duty. (Heck,
I think providing the service to anyone not at UT, and specifically in
the CS department, is above and beyond the call of duty and I'm glad
Fletcher provides it, but I don't want to see him continuing to take
flack for being a nice guy.)
Usenet is not a reliable service. Things disappear all the time. If my
newsfeed disk crashes while I have news spooled for a downfeed site,
should I notify the downfeed site? If I do, should I notify the upfeed
site? Should I have them notify all of theres in order for the users who
posted the messages in that batch will find out? I say "No" to all of
these and think any other answer is unreasonable.
Btw, in case you haven't noticed, news never changes, it just cycles
through every few hours. New people, same topics, same BS.
Ciao,
Tom Coradeschi
>University of Texas (cs.utexas.edu) Discrimination Charged
>
>The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
>University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
>post to the internet from commercial domains.
It also exposes a serious breach of netiquette, which is to say, the
public posting of private email.
[snip]
>The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
>(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
>and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
>simply because of the name of their carrier, WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
>without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
Being publically funded does not mean being openly accessible to the
public. If this were the case, you wouldn't need an AOL account, would
you? You'd just use one of the systems the US Government operates with
your tax dollars, no?
As another example, the building I'm sitting in is was built and is
maintained with taxpayer money. I dare you to drive up and attempt to gain
access. (The armed guards may have a few ideas to the contrary, if you
do.)
The rest of your post is fairly hilarious, but I note that you failed to
post it to rec.humor. Was that an oversight?
tom coradeschi <+> tc...@pica.army.mil
http://k-whiner.pica.army.mil/tom/tom.html
Agris Taurins
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>University of Texas (cs.utexas.edu) Discrimination Charged
>
>The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
>University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
>post to the internet from commercial domains.
>
>(1) ===============
>
[deleted story about trying and failing to post to "alt.lucky.w" via
cs.utexas.edu]
>(2) ===============
[deleted email response from flet...@cs.utexas.edu]
I do hope you asked permission before posting Flectcher's email to the
public.
>(3) ===============
>
>[from catherine yronwode (cyro...@aol.com) to flet...@cs.utexas.edu
>(Fletcher Mattox)]:
>
>Excuse me? You have blocked your PUBLIC gateway to AOL users?
>
>In the first place, i can easily access alt.lucky.w from AOL's gateway.
>That's not the point.
Gee, I would think that it would be a point to consider. Why don't you
just post to the group from AOL?
>
>In the second place, you are about four months behind the times as far as
>AOL being the domain from which most spam and forgeries are currently
>sent; my own experience shows Prodigy leading AOL in commercial sex spam
>by about 100-to-1 at the present time. That's not the point, either.
>
>The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
>(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
>and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
>simply because of the name of their carrier, WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
>without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
The University of Texas (I'm assuming that's what 'utexas' is. I'm too lazy
to go look it up to be sure) is a public institution, this is true. It
hardly gives you the right to use their services unless you are
appropriately assoicated with it as either a student, faculty member or
on the staff.
NASA is a public institution, but that hardly gives me the right to and
demend a seat on the next shuttle mission.
>
>Be advised that in rural areas, such as mine, AOL is the only service
>provider with a local number.
Your point being?
>
>Be advised that due to your actions, i lost two posts i wrote -- thus you
>have destroyed my time, the only thing that is truly mine. You vaporized
>these posts unilaterally, without telling.me. You did not provide the
>normal internet courtesy of bouncing them back so that i could resend them
>via AOL and if i had not inquired about their status, i would have never
>known that you destroyed them.
Funny that you should use the word "courtesy," since that's all we're
talking about. UT has no OBLIGATION to do anything with your posts.
>
>Be advised that as a responible citizen who has done no wrong and who pays
>taxes for the support of pubic educational institutions, i take this
>discrimination against myself very personally.
>
[several silly "demands" deleted]
>
>I am taking it upon myself to expose your unfair practices and to bring to
>public light your egregious discrimination against those who are too poor
>to have their own corporate internet access, too independent-minded to
>suck at the teat of an .edu account, and too rural to get anything but AOL
>without paying long-distance fees.
I guess I still don't get it. With all it's faults, AOL is still a provider
of 'net access. You can obviously afford access to IT, ergo you can
afford access to the 'net. What's the problem?
Are you under some delusion that 'net access is a right?
>
>Change your policy or read about yourself in the newspapers -- and all
>over the net.
>
>(Readers: Please forward to any and all individuals, media outlets, and
>usenet newsgroups you deem appropriate. I shall be posting this in as many
>of the administratively-oriented usenet newsgroups as i can. AOL personnel
>and AOL members: i advise you to contact Fletcher Mattox personally, with
>a CC to me.)
Go for it. Everyone has the right to make as big a fool of themsevles as
they want.
>
>catherine yronwode
>cyro...@aol.com
--
Agris Taurins (tau...@penguin.inetnebr.com) ..this sig under construction..
Fletcher Mattox
a wide range of newsgroups. I've tried to identify them all and
to redirect followups to austin.internet. --Fletcher ]
In article <45efns$p...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
> Excuse me? You have blocked your PUBLIC gateway to AOL users?
Catherine, I suspect the above misunderstanding lies at the heart
of your post. If so, let me make this real clear from the start:
Our mail-to-news gateway is not PUBLIC (or even public). It never has
been and never will be.
I designed it many years ago at the request of our local user community.
Some of them preferred an email interface to USENET because they felt the
traditional UNIX news posters were awkward. At the time, it seemed like
a useful hack so I provided it.
However, the software had no access control; anyone with email
connectivity could use it. Over the years knowledge of our gateway
spread slowly around the network. This was mostly by word of mouth.
More recently it has been accelerated by (unsolicited and unauthorised)
references in books, mailing lists, and on USENET itself. When people
asked me if they could use it (back in the old days, folks were polite
about using resources which did not belong to them), I agreed. We had
the resources so why not share? My only condition: don't do anything
that would embarrass the University of Texas.
The point is: I have never, ever, advertised this gateway in a public
forum. This is not a public gateway, even if some of the public thinks
it is. If you feel that AOL (or any random organisation) has the *right*
to use our computing facilities, then you are mistaken.
>The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
>(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
>and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
>simply because of the name of their carrier,
With regard to why aol.com is blocked, the straw that finally broke this
camel's back was a particularly aggressive spam of over 1000 newsgroups
from an AOL address which brought our gateway to its knees last February.
(Not to mention my mailbox which had overflowed with messages from very
angry USENETers.) When I complained to the AOL administrators, they
agreed I should block all future posts from AOL. In fact, if memory
serves me, *they* requested the action. Even if they hadn't, I would
have done it anyway. Moreover, I reserve the right to block anyone from
using our gateway if I think it will reflect poorly on the University or
the Department of Computer Sciences. This policy has the full support
of the Department and will not change. Sorry.
>WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
>without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
Hm. You seem to have found a way to protest this unannounced practice. :-)
More seriously, I agree that this is a little rude. I don't like
doing it. Maybe I can find some time to change its behaviour in
the future, but that approach is not without problems too.
(Did I mention this was unsupported software?)
On the other hand, when you inquired about your "lost" posts, I
answered your query honestly, quickly, and politely. I even suggested
an alternative. I assume you haven't forgotten that--after all you posted
my email all over USENET.
By the way, our gateway averages about ten posts per day from AOL addresses.
(And several hundred on spam days.) They are all dropped on the floor.
This has been going on since last February when I blocked AOL. How many
inquiries have I received about "lost" posts over this time period?
Exactly two. Yours was the second. I find this amazing. It's all
junk mail to most AOLers--no one cares enough to inquire. They just keep
sending mail into a black hole, perhaps with the eventual expectation
that it will magicly start working.
> ... you are about four months behind the times as far as
>AOL being the domain from which most spam and forgeries are currently
>sent;
I agree with you (in part) here, too. AOL administrators have become
much more responsive to USENET abuse than they were a year or so ago.
I'm *very* grateful for that. In fact, I probably would have lifted
the block on AOL if you had asked nicely rather than attempting to bully
and intimidate me.
Fletcher
Richard P. Bainter
Jared Shope <ada...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>She is pretty fierce in the rest of this, but I have to agree with her. After
>reading newsgroups consistently every day since moving from AOL last July, I have
>seen all kinds of spams from Prodigy, and NONE from an AOL user. I am not saying
>there weren't any, just that they were not spammed to the groups I have been
>reading.
Well, how long has the filter been in place? How long does a site have
to play nice before they are allowed to play again? Seems to me that
once a site proves they are bad, it should take them *much* longer to
prove they are good.
Mike Byrnes
<r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>to mooch off other people, then.
------> Damn right!
Byrnes out...
--
Mike Byrnes
mby...@tpoint.net
Dave Hayes
internet casting their judgement upon those new people which they
perceive as lesser individuals for some reason, usually connected
to some obscure notion of what a clue is and what people should
know instead of what they do know.
Naturally, this brings out the best in me.]
ch...@unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
>What really sucks is the "information consumers" who pay their $20/month
>and feel the world owes them something in return. These are the
>net.vampires that just suck and suck and contribute nothing.
And what, pray tell, can anyone contribute to the internet on AOL?
Aren't you blaming 3.5 million (is that figure right) for the actions
of a provider?
Did you ever think that maybe some of these people wouldn't be net
vampires if they weren't ostracized so intensely and so often?
>Well...tough roogies. This is the Internet. If you don't like it,
>then do your own. Oh dear...I forgot...you and your ilk want to do
>nothing more than consume down the Internet with a mouseclick.
>Never mind.
Did you ask if this person COULD do their own? Are you aware that not
a lot of people know how to run an ISP or manage mail gateways?
>For the record, the utexas email gateway is operated with an extremely
>high level of diligence and professionalism. A lot of effort has
>gone into preventing this service from becoming a launching point
>for net.abuse.
For the record, this isn't about the gateway anymore. It's about the
professed netiquitte everyone is supposed to have and how that seems
to supplant the regular ol' fashioned politeness some of us were
raised with.
Geez, the person just wants to communicate with others. Why are you
and your ilk (of which I am sadly a part) trying to control this so
much?
--
Dave Hayes -- Institutional NETworks - Section 394 -- JPL/NASA - Pasadena CA
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov da...@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh
Imagination is not a talent of some men, but it is the health of every man
Russ Allbery
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>> Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own
>> the Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
> Why do you think this is?
> Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
> communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
That's the point, Dave; it wasn't. She could have just used AOL's posting
service. If she weren't out pursuing a Cause, this wouldn't have been a
problem in the first place.
> You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
> many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some arbitrary
> standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
Funny, we seem to be doing fairly well. Okay, I recommend that no news
administrator say that they are providing a service according to your
definitions of providing and service. Then we can go on running things the
way they are now and the definition problem will be solved.
> This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
Your free speech, no. We like our version, and it works great for us. Why
should we bother with yours? If it ain't broke....
>> Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than
>> trying to mooch off other people, then.
> Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
> rules" paradigm is?
Ignoring for the moment that she had a news service she'd already paid for
and was just refusing to use it.... No, I don't. I'm not sure I
particularly care, though.
Russ Allbery
>> In fact, if the AOL luser had directed that specific request to Fletcher
>> *politely*,
> Did you see the first message that was sent?
Yes. If the AOL user had directed that specific request to Fletcher
*politely*....
Cyronwode
flames and all -- i would like to comment, if i may.
But first, my apologies all for coming on so harshly. I regret that my
anger got in the way of cooperation and communication.
Second, my apology to Fletcher Mattox for posting his private email to the
net. I knew when i did it that it was wrong and i did it on purpose
because i was angry -- and that was doubly wrong of me.
Third, if those who flamed me or called me clueless for multiposting when
i shoud have crossposted would THINK for a minute, they'd realize that the
reason i wanted to use the UT gateway in the first place is because AOL
does not support crossposting. I can no longer crosspost to any group
because the only gateway i'd ever known has barred all AOL users. I HAD to
multipost. Get it? And no, i am not a mad spammer. The aborted crosspost
that i had tried to send through UT (which started this mess) was meant to
go to 5 groups in the same hierarchy; it concerned an RFD on a new group's
formation within that hierarchy. I am also not trying to get some kind of
"free ride" out of UT. The second abortive post i tried to send via the
gateway was a single (not crossposted) test message to see if a small,
obscure alt.* group could receive posts via cs.utexas.edu. I'd gotten
reports that a couple of friends could not access it because their ISPs
(and UUNET) didn't consider it a "valid" group. The group is "valid" to
AOL and Delphi and many other .com services, so i didn't need the gateway
for myself -- but i figured that if i could test-access it via UT, i could
tell my friends to use that route while they were trying simultaneously to
get their ISPs to pick it up.
Fourth, i use AOL because i live in a rural area and they provide a local
phone number, not because i like their corporate attitude or their service
policies or their pretty little graphics. Or their prices. But even at
$3.00 an hour, AOL is cheaper for me than a long-distance call every time
i go online.
Okay, onward --
David Smith, bla...@bga.com, wrote:
> I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access
to
> the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to
> use the service that he was doing this. Messages that they sent simply
> never appeared.
David gets my thanks for making explicit what i only succeeded in garbling
with my anger. I feel that domainism is not a good idea -- but given that
UT did, i contend that they should have sent bounced mail messages, as a
matter of routine. Without notification, one could (and i did) resend
messages, blaming the vagaries of the net for the problem and never
knowing that one had been excluded from a service one had previously had
access to. I have heard from another responsible AOL user that he did the
same thing -- he had formerly had good results with the UT gateway and had
not been notified that AOL was excluded, so he sent and resent his message
in vain. Non-notification is not courteous. In the end, not knowing why my
posts would not go through, i had to ask someone else to establish a
crossposted thread to the 5 groups i was trying to reach about the RFD.
(AOL will allow me to join a crosspost in progress, but not originate
one.) I never did get that test message sent.
Chip Rosenthal, ch...@unicom.com, wrote:
> if the AOL user had directed that specific request to Fletcher
*politely*,
> she might have gotten satisfaction. (My reference point is many moons
> ago, Fletcher modified the way cs.utexas.edu produces bounces messages
> in response to a comment I made via *polite* *private* email.)
I agree. I should have tried that first. I did not because i was very
angry at the way i was being treated. I feel that domainism is irrational
and i strongly felt that refusing to send bounced mail messages to AOL
customers was vindictive. I believed that i could not expect satisfaction
from someone who i believed was operating irrationally and vindictively. I
have since learned that Fletcher Mattox is not irrational in the least,
and i regret having made that assunption. It still strikes me as petty of
him to not send bounced mail messages to AOL. We all know that it would
have been simple to do so.
Bob, b...@io.com, wrote:
> Letting AOL's users inject noise, in
> the form of spam, pyramid schemes (illegal!) and other
> detritus, into the networks outside aol.com is bad
> citizenship.
Bob, you are confusing clueless newbies with spammers. Big mistake. There
was indeed a rash of spamming from AOL accounts when AOL sent out a
gazillion free trial disks earlier this year. But most spammers these days
are following the Jeff Slaton model and not bothering to use AOL, easy
though that may be.
Jared Shope <ada...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>She is pretty fierce in the rest of this, but I have to agree with her.
After
>reading newsgroups consistently every day since moving from AOL last
July, I have
>seen all kinds of spams from Prodigy, and NONE from an AOL user. I am not
saying
>there weren't any, just that they were not spammed to the groups I have
been
>reading.
and Dale Smith, ada...@ix.netcom.com, adds:
> I saw a lot of shit posted to AOL last spring & summer
> [snip]
> As far as the newsgroups I read, there have been quite a number of
> posts from Prodigy users re 900 nos & spam from other places. But my
> unscientific survey says that the spam & silly messages is coming from
> just about everywhere.
Thanks, for the confirmation, Jared and Dale. I read a lot of groups in
several hierarchies and the current domain-of-choice for commercial sex
spam is Prodigy, while Netcom seems to be hosting more than its share of
mental-case spammers. But, don't worry -- before you can work up a head of
steam bashing Prodigy or Netcom, this will change. Net abusers are like
travelling thieves -- they take what they want and run.
When the problem of spamming is actually ADDRESSED and SOLVED, domainism
and AOL-bashing will not be among the solutions.
Richard Bainter, p...@arlut.utexas.edu, wrote:
> Well, how long has the filter been in place? How long does a site have
> to play nice before they are allowed to play again? Seems to me that
> once a site proves they are bad, it should take them *much* longer to
> prove they are good.
Good questions. Here's what Fletcher, flet...@cs.utexas.edu, had to say:
> This has been going on since last February when I blocked AOL.
[snip]
> AOL administrators have become
> much more responsive to USENET abuse than they were a year or so ago.
> I'm *very* grateful for that. In fact, I probably would have lifted
> the block on AOL if you had asked nicely rather than attempting to bully
> and intimidate me.
Okay, Fletcher, one again, i want to apologize to you personally and in
public for posting your email and for reacting so vehemently when i should
have written to your directly and with more tact. I also realize, as per
your explanation, that the UT gateway is not "public," even though i was
told that it was and have assumed it was.
I am asking you nicely (pretty please? with sugar sprinkles?) to lift the
block on AOL users. As you noted, you only get an average of 10 AOL posts
per day, anyway. If they are like me, they are simply folks who need a way
to make legitimate (not spamming) crossposts and test posts.
(In case you are curious, yes, i have asked AOL many times to support
crossposting, for over a year now -- to no avail...yet.)
If you do not wish to lift the block against AOL, can you direct me to
another gateway that WILL accept AOL posts for the purpose of limited
crossposting and test posting?
Thanks.
catherine yronwode
cyro...@aol.com
Russ Allbery
> el...@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher) writes:
>> Never do anyone favors on Usenet. You'll surely come to regret it.
> If you ever regret a favor, it wasn't a gift in the first place.
That's a nice slogan, but it doesn't seem particularly comforting when you
do someone a favor and the next month have fifty people filling your mailbox
with gripes and complaints about how you won't do the same thing for them.
Human beings possess an absolutely astonishing capability to take other
people's volunteer efforts as things that they somehow have a God-given
right to continue to use in perpetuity.
Dave Hayes
>That's the only way to protect yourself from presumptuous idiots like
>"Cyronwode".
I suppose that you've never lost access to your favorite part of the net
before.
Presumptuous? Looks like a mirror to me.
>Never do anyone favors on Usenet. You'll surely come to regret it.
If you ever regret a favor, it wasn't a gift in the first place.
--
Dave Hayes -- Institutional NETworks - Section 394 -- JPL/NASA - Pasadena CA
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov da...@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh
No snowflake falls in an inappropriate place.
Mike O'Connor
Ellen Keyne Seebacher <el...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
:Fletcher Mattox: I advise you to drop the whole damned gateway, posthaste.
:That's the only way to protect yourself from presumptuous idiots like
:"Cyronwode".
I disbelieve. Appeasing the lowest common denominator leads down an ugly
path toward dismantling the Internet community. Clueless people ought to
be educated or curtailed, but not deferred to.
:Never do anyone favors on Usenet. You'll surely come to regret it.
This from someone whose Organization: header reads: "Coalition for
Traditional Usenet Values"? Myomy... 'tis a sad day, indeed...
...Mike
--
Michael J. O'Connor Internet: m...@dojo.mi.org
InterNIC WHOIS: MJO http://www.coast.net/~mjo
"Sir, I must protest! I am not a merry man!" -Worf
doug
>Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>>Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own the
>>Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
>
>Why do you think this is?
>
>Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
>communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
Well, that's an overreaction, and is a bit immature, IMHO. USENET isn't a
magical free speech medium. A lot of hardworking sysadmins are behind it.
Many of them contribute extra time to the 'Net out of their own good will.
You are ignoring practical considerations that these sysadmins have to deal
with, such as dealing with snotty, clueless users who think the world (and
the Internet) owes them something.
>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
Fletcher wasn't offering a *public service*. It was an unadvertised,
unsupported "feature". He could have cut off everyone outside of utexas,
and it would have been his prerogative. Who are you to say?
>This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
And you didn't understand this situation.
>>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>>to mooch off other people, then.
>
>Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>rules" paradigm is?
An argument entirely "ungermane" to the issue at hand. I suppose you would
ask the TV stations for free airtime? Of course, you don't have to pay
them anything, because hey, they're the ones with all the money and the
broadcasting stations, they owe it to you, right?
I must say your point of view got me a bit exasperated. I honestly just
don't understand your point. The reality of the situation is that some
Internet services will always be limited. If you have trouble using one
service, try another. It's the way of the net. Noone is trying to censor
your free speach, since there's always another avenue.
Cheers,
Doug
Mike McNally
>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
I disagree with this assertion. They indeed provide a service; they
just don't provide it to everyone. I see no reason to interpret
"provide a service" as necessarily meaning the same thing as "provide
a service to everyone".
>This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
"Free" on whose dime?
>>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>>to mooch off other people, then.
>Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>rules" paradigm is?
So whose free speech are you paying for nowadays?
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
| Nobody's going to listen to you if you just | Mike McNally (m...@tivoli.com) |
| stand there and flap your arms like a fish. | Tivoli Systems, Austin TX |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Christopher Davis
DH> You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
DH> many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
DH> arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
ckd@kragar ~ > tn netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov nntp
Trying 137.78.128.5...
Connected to netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov.
Escape character is '^]'.
502 You are not in my access file. Goodbye.
Connection closed by foreign host.
DH> This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
DAVE HAYES IS CENSORING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--
Christopher Davis * <c...@kei.com> * <URL:http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/>
512/03829F89 = D7 C9 A7 80 8C 84 3F B2 27 E1 48 61 BF FC 18 B4
1024/66CB73DD = 46 8E FD F5 12 8E 13 4C 2C 8A 92 A3 B0 D5 2A 5E
[ Public keys available by finger, WWW, or keyserver ]
Christopher Davis
CR> But that's ancient history right? No, not really. Today, WWW has
CR> pretty much supplanted Gopher, and AOL continues to contribute zilch
CR> to the net. Sure, now there is a www.aol.com, but it's nothing but
CR> a one-page advertisement for their services.
Actually, not quite true. In my experience, mirrors.aol.com is a
wonderful resource for anonymous ftp archives. Sure, that alone doesn't
restore the balance, but at least it makes the tradeoff a *little* more
even.
Dave Hayes
>Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own the
>Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
Why do you think this is?
Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>to mooch off other people, then.
Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
rules" paradigm is?
--
Dave Hayes -- Institutional NETworks - Section 394 -- JPL/NASA - Pasadena CA
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov da...@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh
A person was frighteningly ugly. Once he was asked how could he go on
living with such a terrible face. "Why should I be unhappy?", answered
the man. "I never see my own face; let others worry."
The Gentleman
ada...@ix.netcom.com (Jared Shope ) wrote:
}OK, I think that a public gateway should be exactly what it is-public.
}In other words, what use is a public gateway when some people can't use
}it?
'Public' is a word that is getting over-used here. In this particular
case, the gateway is as public as Fletcher chooses to make it. And no one
should be second-guessing him, it is his site. He is charged with keeping it
running, not with providing free service to the public. To the extent that he
chooses to do so, he is owed thanks. He does not deserve this crap.
}
}It is a different matter as to whether a public gateway should exist at
}all. Just look at "The Long March" email spam. Part of it came from a
}SFSU gateway, or something like that.
That was bogus. The emails never went through SFSU, they were forged
to make it appear that they had in order to make tracking more difficult.
}
}My point being that maybe there should not be any public gateways. This
}is my personal opinion, and yes, I do know that some people can't post
}any other way. Maybe the gateways should be restricted to only those
}domains which are email only. Whoever runs the server could email a
}request for access. After checking out that this is a "real" provider
}(uh, there may be some problems here ... no flames, but I think it
}could be solved), then access could be enabled.
Every system on both Usenet and the Internet is the sole *domain* of
its owners and administrators. Except where their method of operating
represents a threat to the whole, what they do with it is their business.
As I said before, Usenet is all about doing things you don't have to
do. It wouldn't exist if everyone was keeping score.
Regards,
The Gentleman
--
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at
one end and no sense of responsibility at the other
-Ronald Reagan
The Gentleman
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) wrote:
}ch...@unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
}>I'd be disposed to be sympathetic to the specific problem you raise
}>if it wasn't done through such a whiny, obnoxious spam.
}
Same to you. Have you read all of the posts about this, or did your
psychic newsreader filter them?
}
}>In fact, if
}>the AOL luser had directed that specific request to Fletcher *politely*,
}
}Did you see the first message that was sent?
Did you? What about the second, her response? This person from AOL
is raising unholy hell because somebody at another site had the temerity to
actually not allow them to use that site's equipment. Are you going to grant
me and everyone else the unlimited right to make use of your equipment? After
all, her logic applies even more to you, you're a federal site, not an
educational one.
If so, I would like to make use of all your bandwidth to send my swap
file to myself in order to verify the contents and the integrity of the
intervening connections. I may need to do this 50 or 60 times. A day. I
would also like to store my collection of porn, around 300 meg, on your spool.
Three to five times, for sufficient redundancy to avoid corruption. You have
a problem with that? HOW DARE YOU! I'M A TAXPAYER, I BOUGHT THAT EQUIPMENT!
This was exactly the person's logic.
Dave Hayes
>I'd be disposed to be sympathetic to the specific problem you raise
>if it wasn't done through such a whiny, obnoxious spam.
Patent bull puckey.
>In fact, if
>the AOL luser had directed that specific request to Fletcher *politely*,
Did you see the first message that was sent?
--
Dave Hayes -- Institutional NETworks - Section 394 -- JPL/NASA - Pasadena CA
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov da...@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh
"What lies behind and what lies before us are small matters compared to
what lies within us." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Tim Skirvin
>Did you ever think that maybe some of these people wouldn't be net
>vampires if they weren't ostracized so intensely and so often?
Dave, most of 'em don't even *know* they're "ostracized so
intensely and so often".
The fact of the matter is that I actively discourage people from
getting AOL accounts, and it's for more reasons than their annoying
antics.
Nobody has any responsibility to give AOL users everything they
want. There are plenty of legitimate reasons *to* cut off access from
them, mostly involving their inability to add anything to the net
besides on Usenet and through email.
- Tim Skirvin (tski...@uiuc.edu)
--
<a href="http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/tskirvin">Skirv's Homepage</a>
<a href="http://arh0062.urh.uiuc.edu/killfile.html">The Daemons</a>
Dave Hayes
>In news.admin.misc, Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
>>> Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own
>>> the Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
>> Why do you think this is?
>> Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
>> communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
>service. If she weren't out pursuing a Cause, this wouldn't have been a
>problem in the first place.
I can't believe your arrogance, it's bigger than *mine*.
You really believe she doesn't have a problem?
Did you ask her about this?
>> You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>> many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some arbitrary
>> standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
>Funny, we seem to be doing fairly well. Okay, I recommend that no news
>administrator say that they are providing a service according to your
>definitions of providing and service. Then we can go on running things the
>way they are now and the definition problem will be solved.
*sigh*
>> This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
>Your free speech, no. We like our version, and it works great for us.
Who's "we"?
>>> Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than
>>> trying to mooch off other people, then.
>> Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>> rules" paradigm is?
>Ignoring for the moment that she had a news service she'd already paid for
>and was just refusing to use it.... No, I don't.
Obviously.
>I'm not sure I particularly care, though.
That's the problem.
--
Dave Hayes -- Institutional NETworks - Section 394 -- JPL/NASA - Pasadena CA
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov da...@jato.jpl.nasa.gov ...usc!elroy!dxh
The foolish reject what they see, not what they think;
The wise reject what they think, not what they see...
John Stanley
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>The following exchange of e-mail exposes misuse of public funds at a State
>University. It concerns all 3.5 million AOL users and countless others who
>post to the internet from commercial domains.
What is this "post to Internet"? Why are all these commercial domain
users posting to the Internet? Or do you mean "USENET"?
>> Any reply would be appreciated.
This was a lie. You didn't seem to appreciate the reply you got.
>Excuse me? You have blocked your PUBLIC gateway to AOL users?
It isn't a public gateway.
>The real point is this: as a public institution, supported by tax-payers'
>(local, state and federal) money, you are telling me that you are unfairly
>and without forewarning discriminating against portions of the public
>simply because of the name of their carrier, WITHOUT TELLING THEM SO, and
>without allowing them to protest this unannounced practice in any way.
You seem to be protesting this practice, aren't you?
>Be advised that in rural areas, such as mine, AOL is the only service
>provider with a local number.
So? AOL also provides, as you admit, USENET access.
>Be advised that due to your actions, i lost two posts i wrote -- thus you
No, due to your actions. You called it an experiment. If you didn't
have some idea that it wasn't going to work, it wouldn't be an
experiment, now would it? YOU didn't keep copies of material YOU wrote.
That's your fault.
>I am taking it upon myself to expose your unfair practices and to bring to
>public light your egregious discrimination against those who are too poor
>to have their own corporate internet access, too independent-minded to
>suck at the teat of an .edu account, and too rural to get anything but AOL
>without paying long-distance fees.
It is exactly this sort of whiny, "expect the net to exist for their
personal pleasure" attitude that had me spend a lot of time
investigating the NCSA web server, which would allow me to shut out AOL
connections. I didn't dissallow connections at that time, even though
AOL felt justified in prohibiting access to AOL's web server. Perhaps it's
time to act, now.
>Change your policy or read about yourself in the newspapers -- and all
>over the net.
Get a clue. The "public money" you are yapping about was spent for
computers to perform specific functions, and the money spent on admin
salaries was spent for them to support those functions. When the cost
of keeping a courtesy gateway, in either CPU or admin time, is great
enough to be detrimental to the proper functioning of the system, the
courtesies get cut. Instead of cutting it completely, the costliest
part was cut. That means AOL, which has no need to use the gateway in the
first place, so any use is extra cost.
Since AOL pays NOTHING for the support of the gateway you are whining
about, you have NO right to complain when AOL users don't get to use
it. The admin you are trying to blackmail into doing your bidding isn't
paid to run a gateway for you to experiment with. Your AOL fees buy you
AOL access, and NOTHING ELSE. Whatever else you find on the net is a
courtesy. It's someone else spending their time and money making your life
better.
Take your attitude and stay on AOL. You do nothing but reinforce the
stereotype of whiny brat AOL users thinking the net exists for their
pleasure and at their bidding.
John Stanley
Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>I suppose that you've never lost access to your favorite part of the net
>before.
If the utexas email gateway is someone's favorite part of the net,
considering that they already have the ability to post directly to the
groups they are interested in, then they are idiots.
>If you ever regret a favor, it wasn't a gift in the first place.
And what dictionary do you use that says that a favor has to be a gift?
Matt Schnierle
In article <45fdho$o...@giga.bga.com>, bla...@bga.com (David Smith) writes:
>Chip Rosenthal (ch...@unicom.com) wrote:
>
>: So, now we have an AOL user whining that the utexas email gateway, a
>: service offered to UT users, and with informal and unofficial access
>: granted to the public, whining that they don't like it.
>
>I narrowed the complaint down to that Fletcher was (1) blocking access to
>the gateway because of domainism and (2) not notifying AOLers trying to
>use the service that he was doing this. Messages that they sent simply
>never appeared.
>
>Is your response to this still tough roogies?
I don't know if that is his response, but it sure is mine. If he is offering
a service with no conditions or responsibilities, he can pretty much do as he
pleases. Why should he notify AOLers? They obviously figured it out.
Bottom line: Nobody at utexas is under any obligation to allow anyone to use
their gateway. If you happen to be one of the 2 zillion netizens not at AOL,
then consider yourself lucky.
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--Matt "and yes, I'm an EFF member" Schnierle
_______________________________________________________________________________
Matt Schnierle py...@oak.grove.iup.edu http://www.ma.iup.edu/~pyld/
WWW,finger, or keyserver for PGP key. These views are mine, not IUP's (I hope)
"It could not be one man's dream, if it were not already another man's
possession." --unknown
Chris Lewis
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
>> el...@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Ellen Keyne Seebacher) writes:
>
>
>
>do someone a favor and the next month have fifty people filling your mailbox
>with gripes and complaints about how you won't do the same thing for them.
Been there, done that.
>Human beings possess an absolutely astonishing capability to take other
>people's volunteer efforts as things that they somehow have a God-given
>right to continue to use in perpetuity.
My favorite version is "No good deed left unpunished". We invented it
when Baptista blew the 416 area code mail-fax gateway off the air with
a fax spam. Then he started to send out press releases about how it was a
conspiracy.
--
Chris Lewis: _Una confibula non sat est_
Latest psroff: ftp://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/psroff3.0pl17/*
Latest hp2pbm: ftp://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/hp2pbm/*
NNTP AUTHINFO GENERIC info: ftp://ftp.uunet.ca/distrib/chris_lewis/generic/*
Tom Davidson
Slimey Bastards!!!
CrossPosted from comp.dcom.telecom
Patrick Townsend, Author, moderator
-------------------------------------------------
Today students, we shall examine different government agencies and their
purposes.
FCC - The Federal Communications Commission has the responsibility of
regulating the airwaves and the phone companies.
FAA - The Federal Aviation Administration has something to do with
airplanes and their flying around in the USA.
Let's see ... what about the United States Customs Service?
Well ... they are in charge of manufacturing and distributing child
pornography on the Internet. They have a pretty large operation for
that in south Florida now. Their objective is to entrap whoever they
can by sending it out through email to see who takes the bait. They
also get involved in 'hot chat' looking for people interested in the
garbage they have for sale.
Now of course if they were to send it out from a site with an address
ending in .gov or .mil or similar, only someone like your Editor, who
fell off the back of the turnip truck yesterday would be inclined to
exchange any correspondence with them at all. So they had to find some
other Internet service provider willing to give them a few bogus accounts
and ficticious names to use.
Wait a minute, I hear you saying ... what sort of service provider would
deliberatly allow child pornography to be pushed out into the net via
their site? Well, America OnLine would do it. When Steve Case was
approached by the Customs 'service' asking for a few accounts and screen
names to be used specifically for the purpose of sending out child porn
to unsuspecting netters, he agreed. After all, the FBI was already doing
their thing on AOL, so why not let Customs in on it also?
By their own admission in recent articles in the mainstream press, the
United States Customs Service took over a child pornography operation
in Florida about two years ago, and has continued to operate it. What
they did not go into detail about however was how they go about finding
people they can set up. And that is what it amounts to; it is a numbers
game to get as many arrests and convictions as possible. Someone has
decided there are zillions and thousands of pedophiles on the net and
they have to all be rounded up -- no matter who gets hurt in the process.
Customs uses screen names such as 'Confused Teen' to hang around on line
in places like the gay chat rooms on AOL, along with Teen Chat and
Romance Connection, two other popular chat areas on that system. They
do it with the full knowledge and blessings of AOL management. Confused
Teen and his 'younger brother' start up conversations with suspected
pedophiles -- users whose names have been supplied to them by AOL --
to see what they can get cooking ... and a couple of 'teenage girls'
(yeah ... you bet!) work the heterosexual side of the house making
the same kind of agressive approaches.
Soon enough, the conversations get steamy and the guys respond like,
well, like guys will respond. Pretty soon the .gif files start coming,
etc. Then comes a little more hardcore stuff and maybe you would like
to order more, eh? It can be sent direct to your computer from ours,
here in south Florida at the offices of the US Customs Service, d/b/a
Confused Teen. Of course they don't tell you *that*. And if you don't
want to order it today, we will keep sending you a little every few
days until you do decide to order some.
Some AOL users were just junking it on arrival. Deleting the mail and
ignoring it. Now and then one might send it to TOSAdvisor with a com-
plaint, but not often; you know how it goes. When Customs tried to
arrest a couple people they had *entrapped* into purchasing their stuff,
the people quite correctly managed to get it deleted from the computer
before the federal officers got there which made it hard for the Customs
people to prove the 'pedophiles' were in possession of it.
To fix that little problem, AOL agreed to change the email software so
that users CANNOT delete mail they receive. All email received there
is now stored *in your account, in your storage space* until AOL gets
good and ready to delete it. If the user attempts to delete unwanted
mail, he gets back a system response saying 'We have removed the delete
function from mail since you don't need it any longer. We will delete
it in a few days. In the meantime, we will just save it over here in
another folder for you.' ... how terribly thoughtful and gracious of
them, don't you think? It sure makes it a lot easier to be certain
that someone will be 'in possession' of something nasty when the law
comes a-calling at their door.
-------------------------------
That's what happened to a Chicago Police officer here recently. A very
high-ranking officer, a watch commander in his district ('watch commander'
here is the title for the supervising officer of an entire police
district for certain hours of the day) wound up with child pornography
in his email at AOL. By coincidence -- the merest coincidence of course --
federal agents were at his house *the day it arrived* with a search
warrant. How is that for slick timing? <grin> ...
The media in Chicago has withheld his name from publication to protect
his privacy in this early stage of the investigation. He has been
temporarily assigned a job with no public contact pending a complete
investigation. He maintains his complete innocence, and we shall see,
I guess, what we shall see as things move along.
--------------------------------
And I bet all this time you thought the pedophile stink over at AOL
consisted of users complaining that other users were bothering them ...
or kidnapping their children. Its understandable you feel that way,
since that's what AOL would like to have you believe. And yes, there
is a grain of truth in that I suppose, but the reality is some of the
tax dollars you pay are being used to pay the salaries of some slimeballs
whose job is to sit at a keyboard and try to entrap you into accepting
child porn so they can come out and arrest you for being in possession
of it the next day.
One has to wonder if Steve Case really likes having that sort of thing
go on over his network. Cynics might say that Case has found that federal
judges and federal agents are really good at enforcing the TOS which
his Guides are rapidly losing control over ... but others suggest that maybe
the real reason he tolerates the spying on and entrapment of users is
because he has no choice in the matter. Maybe the feds got something
on him and got him to flip also, eh? Maybe his arm (or something else) is
getting twisted to force his cooperation.
It is getting harder and harder these days to sing 'America the Beautiful'
and really mean it. Ugly things are all around us and show no signs of
going away anytime soon.
-------------------
In other news about the recent AOL busts, the two guys here in Chicago
who were arrested *and charged* -- out of what was it, over a hundred
people hassled? -- have already had their day in court. Yep, that quick.
Mr. Zucker had his pre-trial hearing on October 5 and he pleaded guilty.
Mr. Zemke's attorney said to my correspondent that "there won't be any
trial", so I guess we can figure that one out also.
PAT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only in America... and any other Quasi-Police state....
Yeesh...
TD
Russ Allbery
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>> That's the point, Dave; it wasn't. She could have just used AOL's
>> posting service. If she weren't out pursuing a Cause, this wouldn't have
>> been a problem in the first place.
> I can't believe your arrogance, it's bigger than *mine*. You really
> believe she doesn't have a problem? Did you ask her about this?
Let's see...the first post was because AOL wouldn't let her crosspost and
the gateway would. Okay, I suppose that's fairly reasonable, but it
certainly isn't restricting her free speech. She could have still posted,
just not as well. The second post was to test propogation from
cs.utexas.edu; I don't consider that a problem that the University of Texas
is required to help her with.
The point is that if the gateway isn't working, she's already paying for her
own posting service that works just fine and carries more groups than Texas
does. So AOL was banned. Life is unfair. Get a different provider or use
the resources you're actually paying for. It's this "I'm a taxpayer, so I
*OWN* EVERYTHING you've EVER TOUCHED!" crusade that gets on my nerves.
>> Your free speech, no. We like our version, and it works great for us.
> Who's "we"?
My different posting personas. ;) If you want me to provide a list of
people who agree with me, at least on this point, I could probably come up
with something. I think you know that.
>> Dave writes:
>>> Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>>> rules" paradigm is?
>> Ignoring for the moment that she had a news service she'd already paid for
>> and was just refusing to use it.... No, I don't.
> Obviously.
>> I'm not sure I particularly care, though.
> That's the problem.
Not for me. :) Do you realize just how controlling fighting other people's
paradigms is?
Vartan Narinian
>
>> IMHO, if you don't like it, start your own gateway. No site /has/
>>to accept your messages.
>
>This person cannot do this from AOL. So this is an unfair challenge.
>
>Again, we have standard elitist operating procedure from a net.vet.
Why don't YOU start a public mail-to-news gateway on your machine,
elxr-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov?
And why don't YOU allow everyone on the net to read news from your
server, netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov? I tried it out and it says
"502 You are not in my access file. Goodbye." What's going on? Are you
perhaps giving reading and posting privileges based on the domain of
the caller?
Oh, I see, another standard elitist operating procedure from a net.vet...
--
Vartan
Ian G Batten
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
> reason i wanted to use the UT gateway in the first place is because AOL
> does not support crossposting. I can no longer crosspost to any group
> because the only gateway i'd ever known has barred all AOL users. I HAD to
> multipost. Get it? And no, i am not a mad spammer. The aborted crosspost
So isn't the real solution to the issue to get AOL to fix their
software?
ian
Russ Allbery
>> Human beings possess an absolutely astonishing capability to take other
>> people's volunteer efforts as things that they somehow have a God-given
>> right to continue to use in perpetuity.
> I can understand this perception if they've ever watched a tree bear
> fruit.
Yup. They often have no concept of the amount of work that the orchard
owner put into getting the tree to bear fruit, given the chronic lack of
water in the area, the insect infestation last month, and the other drains
on his resources.
At least they pay for the fruit.
Joel B Levin
"domainism" ?
Cheez.
Nathan J. Mehl
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) writes:
>I suppose that you've never lost access to your favorite part of the net
>before.
She has not lost access to her 'favorite' part of the net.
She pays for AOL service. AOL provides the newsgroup in question.
The only thing she 'lost' was the ability to post to that newsgroup
via a service which she does not pay for, and was never guaranteed
(or even offered).
Unless there is an obscure clause in the AOL user's agreement that
states that payment of AOL's service fees ensures access to the
equipment of the University of Texas, she has no grounds for
complaint.
--
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
If you think I speak for my employer, they'll be happy to correct you.
Nathan J. Mehl -- BBN Planet System Operations -- nat...@bbnplanet.com
<A HREF="http://web.near.net/~nmehl">homepagesque</A>
Nathan J. Mehl
da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) writes:
>Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
>communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
There is an unexamined assumption in the above paragraph.
Hint: it has more to do with Dave Hayes' own agenda than with the
substance of c.y.'s complaint.
Peter J. Scott
> >Well...tough roogies. This is the Internet. If you don't like it,
> >then do your own. Oh dear...I forgot...you and your ilk want to do
> >nothing more than consume down the Internet with a mouseclick.
> >Never mind.
>
> Did you ask if this person COULD do their own? Are you aware that not
> a lot of people know how to run an ISP or manage mail gateways?
This from the man whose solution for anyone bothered by spam is for them
to write their own NNTP software to filter it out based upon regular
expressions...
--
This is news. This is your | Peter Scott, NASA/JPL/Caltech
brain on news. Any questions? | (Peter....@jpl.nasa.gov)
Disclaimer: These comments are the personal opinions of the author, and
have not been adopted, authorized, ratified, or approved by JPL.
Bob Izenberg
Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
# Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
# communication is blocked,
...or when the tranquilizers run out,
# that person tends to get a little testy.
# Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money
# make the rules" paradigm is?
Is AOL free? If the original poster's complaint was that
the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
free service which the poster has attempted to use has
policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
providers?
Bob
--
============================================================
Bob Izenberg home: 512-442-0614
b...@io.com work voice/fax: 512-250-4227/250-6424
============================================================
Dave Ratcliffe
- In article <45ikp3$k...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>, da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) wrote:
- }ch...@unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
- }>In fact, if
- }>the AOL luser had directed that specific request to Fletcher *politely*,
- }
- }Did you see the first message that was sent?
-
- Did you? What about the second, her response? This person from AOL is
- raising unholy hell because somebody at another site had the temerity to
- actually not allow them to use that site's equipment. Are you going to
- grant me and everyone else the unlimited right to make use of your
- equipment? After all, her logic applies even more to you, you're a
- federal site, not an educational one.
More than that, since Dave is constantly harping about open access for
everyone now is a perfect time to back up all the words with some
action.
Here's your chance Dave. Open your own gateway and make all the AOLers
happy. Prove that all your jawflapping has something behind it.
Your move....
--
Dave Ratcliffe da...@frackit.com
Harrisburg, Pa. dave.ra...@f210.n270.z1.fidonet.org
-------------------------------------------------------------------
# Origin frackit -*- The Unix/Usenet side of the tracks
Draper Kauffman
Hayes) wrote:
> For the record, this isn't about the gateway anymore. It's about the
> professed netiquitte everyone is supposed to have and how that seems
> to supplant the regular ol' fashioned politeness some of us were
> raised with.
>
> Geez, the person just wants to communicate with others. Why are you
> and your ilk (of which I am sadly a part) trying to control this so
> much?
Because said user chose to communicate at the top of her lungs, in a
shrewish tone of voice, citing all sorts of imaginary "rights" she hadn't
paid for and that weren't granted to her by any court or legislature.
Because she didn't bother to get her facts straight before screaming in
everyone's face. Because she flamed a highly respected and hard-working
Internet administrator for doing what _her_ provider recommended he do, as
a result of garbage inflicted on Usenet by other people on _her_ site.
And because people who built the Net out of their sweat, enthusiasm, and
generosity don't care a whole lot for people who loudly and offensively
claim that they're entitled, as a legal right, to use resources created by
others.
Let's see...did I leave anything out? :)
Dave, the lady can communicate all she wants. She is, isn't she? It
isn't a matter of control at all. Just a good natured flamefest directed
at another abusive newbie who doesn't have the common courtesy to ask
questions first and figure out how things work before she screams, "MINE!
MINE! MINE! ALL MINE!" at a few million people. Her attitude is no
different in principle from the Green Card nitwits.
It's a cliche that the Internet is a cooperative anarchy. And cooperation
runs on courtesy. "Please" and "Thank you!" get a lot more help than
"Gimmee! Gimmee!" When some idiot abuses one of the good guys, it's quite
natural for those who appreciate the Net and its creators to respond.
Draper
--
Draper Kauffman (dra...@io.com, http://www.io.com/)
Re: babies and some notable AOL subscribers --
"A bairn's a bairn: wet at baith ends and no very smert in the middle."
-- Dorothy Dunnett (best said in a broad Scots accent)
The Gentleman
}In article <45ij8a$j...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>,
}
}# Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money
}# make the rules" paradigm is?
}
}Is AOL free? If the original poster's complaint was that
}the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
}value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
}free service which the poster has attempted to use has
}policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
}poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
}anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
}providers?
And AOL takes a lot of coins. I *think* they have it down to $2.00 an
hour, but that can still add up quick.
Anyway, some people who should know better seem to be forgetting that
the net is not a homogenous body. It is thousands of systems, in over a
hundred countries, and each one has its own lord and master. It is no more
appropriate for her to complain about how Fletcher run his site than it would
be for me to complain about how Dave runs his.
BTW Dave, can I move my porn collection to your spool yet?
John Henders
>And why don't YOU allow everyone on the net to read news from your
>server, netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov? I tried it out and it says
>"502 You are not in my access file. Goodbye." What's going on? Are you
>perhaps giving reading and posting privileges based on the domain of
>the caller?
Dave's already answered this several months ago. His bosses won't let
him. Of course, you could ask why Dave is so insistant that others
follow the principles he has problems following himself. It certainly
makes him look like a hypocrite.
--
Artificial Intelligence stands no chance against Natural Stupidity.
GAT d- -p+(--) c++++ l++ u++ t- m--- W--- !v
b+++ e* s-/+ n-(?) h++ f+g+ w+++ y*
Orc
Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>ckd@kragar ~ > tn netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov nntp
>Trying 137.78.128.5...
>Connected to netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov.
>Escape character is '^]'.
>502 You are not in my access file. Goodbye.
>Connection closed by foreign host.
>
>DAVE HAYES IS CENSORING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, his choice of employer might have something to do with it.
____
david parsons \bi/ o...@pell.chi.il.us
\/
pet...@ibm.net
>In article <45ij8a$j...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>,
>Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>
>
>the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
>value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
>free service which the poster has attempted to use has
>policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
>poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
>anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
>providers?
>
>--
I believe she mentioned that she lives in a rural area that has no ISPs (without
long distance charges). She stated that AOL was her only option.
Pete DeLine
Senior Software Engineer
pet...@ibm.net
Seth Breidbart
>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
OK. So somebody at UT can't call himself providing a service. Happy
now?
>This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
Interesting form of free speech you believe in. Anybody can say
anything he wants, except if he's at UT, he can't say he's providing a
service. You're right, I don't understand.
>>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>>to mooch off other people, then.
>Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>rules" paradigm is?
Is it more or less controlling than the "Dave Hayes makes the rules"
paradigm?
(At least this way, since I have some money, I get to make some of the
rules. Since I'm not Dave Hayes, the other way, I'd get to make none.)
Seth
Saul Tannenbaum
> I believe she mentioned that she lives in a rural area that has no ISPs (without
> long distance charges). She stated that AOL was her only option.
No, she stated that AOL was the only option cheap enough to suit her
budget. You get what you pay for.
- Saul
--
--
Saul Tannenbaum, Manager, Academic Systems | "It's still rocket
stan...@emerald.tufts.edu | science" - Vint Cerf
Tufts University Computing and |
Communications Services |
Norman Richards
Seth Breidbart <se...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <45ij8a$j...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>,
>Dave Hayes <da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
>>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
>OK. So somebody at UT can't call himself providing a service. Happy
>now?
Well, thanks to the efforts of the original poster, dave and others, they
are no longer providing this "service" to users outside of the CS dept at UT.
I hope the original poster is proud of her efforts.
______________________________________________________________________________
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned
like a child. When I became a man, I realized nothing much had really changed."
o...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Matt Schnierle
In article <45ij8a$j...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>, da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave Hayes) writes:
>Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
>>Which is quite understandable, given people like Cat who think they own the
>>Internet and have a God-given right to use other people's computers.
>
>Why do you think this is?
>
>Like it or not, the net is about communication. When someone's
>communication is blocked, that person tends to get a little testy.
So?
>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
Back to the original point: utexas _never_ provided a supported service to
those outside utexas. If you reread the post by Fletcher, you will see that
he never publically announced the service, he simply has not excersised his
authority to restrict it untill now. It is not like lycos saying no to AOL
connections. Lycos announces and proclaims netwide availablility. The utexas
gateway never did.
>This is why I keep saying you people don't understand free speech.
>
>>Perhaps people should use the service they're paying for rather than trying
>>to mooch off other people, then.
>
>Do you realize just how controlling the "those who have money make the
>rules" paradigm is?
I do. It is the very paradigm that allows you to argue your platform of
total, complete, free speech, particularly with regard to spam.
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_______________________________________________________________________________
Matt Schnierle py...@oak.grove.iup.edu http://www.ma.iup.edu/~pyld/
WWW,finger, or keyserver for PGP key. These views are mine, not IUP's (I hope)
"Children are not being assaulted by images that appear on a computer
screen. Any Internet user knows it is quite difficult to stumble across
pornography." --Senator Russel Fengold
Cedric Chin
In article <draperk-1310...@isis.io.com>, dra...@io.com (Draper Kauffman) writes:
|> In article <45ikmh$k...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>, da...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov (Dave
|> Hayes) wrote:
|>
|> > For the record, this isn't about the gateway anymore. It's about the
|> > professed netiquitte everyone is supposed to have and how that seems
|> > to supplant the regular ol' fashioned politeness some of us were
|> > raised with.
|> >
|> > Geez, the person just wants to communicate with others. Why are you
|> > and your ilk (of which I am sadly a part) trying to control this so
|> > much?
|>
|> Because said user chose to communicate at the top of her lungs, in a
|> shrewish tone of voice, citing all sorts of imaginary "rights" she hadn't
|> paid for and that weren't granted to her by any court or legislature.
|> Because she didn't bother to get her facts straight before screaming in
|> everyone's face. Because she flamed a highly respected and hard-working
|> Internet administrator for doing what _her_ provider recommended he do, as
|> a result of garbage inflicted on Usenet by other people on _her_ site.
|> And because people who built the Net out of their sweat, enthusiasm, and
|> generosity don't care a whole lot for people who loudly and offensively
|> claim that they're entitled, as a legal right, to use resources created by
|> others.
|>
|> Let's see...did I leave anything out? :)
Yes! You haven't read her letters, have you? (;
**Anyway** From reading the postings, it's not obvious anyone knows who
Catherine Yronwode is. (Or rather, was, since this is dated information.)
CY was an editor for Eclipse Comics (I **think** it's out of business after
the great B&W implosion) and wrote letters to comic books in terms not unlike
those she's written on the net. Her columns are less... demanding.
So. If you're now unhappy with her behavior, and don't mind dipping down
to her level, waste your time on the comics newsgroups on finding out what
she does, then calling an Internet boycott of whatever comic book company
she works for (no guarantees that she's still in the business).
Not that I'm suggesting it, of course...
Cedric.
Vartan Narinian
>
>I don't know if that is his response, but it sure is mine. If he is offering
>a service with no conditions or responsibilities, he can pretty much do as he
>pleases. Why should he notify AOLers? They obviously figured it out.
On the other hand, it would have been nice if he returned the email with
a note saying "Your message is returned to you unprocessed. We currently
do not accept email from your domain." Just like anon.penet.fi used to
do with the binaries newsgroups.
I'm sorry to see the gateway go. However I'm sure Dave Hayes will be happy
to set up a gateway for AOL'ers. C'mon Dave. As someone else said, put your
gateway where your mouth is!
--
Vartan
Cyronwode
> Is AOL free? If the original poster's complaint was that
> the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
> value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
> free service which the poster has attempted to use has
> policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
> poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
> anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
> providers?
Please re-read what i wrote. I don't need or use gatewayed
e-mail-to-usenet services. I have no usenet propagation problem with AOL.
I was trying to send a test message for a friend (whose ISP did have a
propagation problem) through the UT gateway to see if HE could access an
usenet newsgroup that way. I just wanted to help him out by geting some
information for him. The reason that i got ticked off was that i thought
the test had *failed*. Had i gotten a bounced mail message, i would have
known that i could not MAKE the test from my domain. Some of you folks
know enough about logic to understand why a dispositive result can be as
valuable as a positive one and why it is annoying to get a report that
seems dispositive but turns out to be simply...the void.
catherine yronwode
Michael Handler
(o...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
> Well, thanks to the efforts of the original poster, dave and others, they
> are no longer providing this "service" to users outside of the CS dept at
> UT. I hope the original poster is proud of her efforts.
And herein lies the eventual demise of many, if not all, mailing lists
and other services run on university or corporate machines.
Good job, Catherine. Real good. ::ppppppppppbbbbbbbllllllltttt::
Given the increasing brainless idiocy of new Usenetters, as evoked in the
form of Catherine Yronwode, it appears that the only recourse is to run
your mailing lists and services on private sites or ISPs who don't give a
flying f*ck when some ignorant luser whines about "SENSORSHIP!!!" or
"public resources". And each day, more of the cooperative spirit of the
old-time net dies.
I hope you're happy with what you have wrought.
--
Michael Handler <gre...@netaxs.com> Philadelphia, PA
Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics
J.D. Falk
> I believe she mentioned that she lives in a rural area that has no ISPs (without
> long distance charges). She stated that AOL was her only option.
AOL is never the /only/ option. And, with AOL charging almost
US$3.00 per hour, long distance isn't all that much more expensive.
--
---------========== J.D. Falk <jdf...@cybernothing.org> =========---------
| All the world's indeed a stage |
| And, damnit, I'm a stagehand. |
----========== http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/home.html ==========----
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The Gentleman
over not having been allowed to use a piece of equipment you didn't pay for
has removed a longstanding and useful net asset from usability. As such, I
don't really care if you found the lack of response upsetting or not. Hell,
if you had gotten a response you probably would have been in here screaming
about unsolicited EMail.
In other words, buzz off. You are going to find few people here
willing to listen to your whining.
Winston Edmond
: I was trying to send a test message for a friend (whose ISP did have a
: propagation problem) through the UT gateway to see if HE could access an
: usenet newsgroup that way. I just wanted to help him out by geting some
: information for him. The reason that i got ticked off was that i thought
: the test had *failed*. Had i gotten a bounced mail message, i would have
: known that i could not MAKE the test from my domain. Some of you folks
: know enough about logic to understand why a dispositive result can be as
: valuable as a positive one and why it is annoying to get a report that
: seems dispositive but turns out to be simply...the void.
"dispositive"??? I'm not sure there's any hope for you. :)/2
If, as you seem to be claiming now, your objective was merely to say that
the utexas gateway should bounce any email it didn't post, your method of
saying it (via a long list of "demands" and accusations) was poorly
considered and ineffective in achieving your objective. Next time, try
asking politely instead of getting "ticked off" and making threats
publically.
-WBE
Cedric Chin
In article <45qvl8$o...@oban.cc.ic.ac.uk>, v...@ic.ac.uk (Vartan Narinian) wrote:
> I'm sorry to see the gateway go. However I'm sure Dave Hayes will be happy
> to set up a gateway for AOL'ers. C'mon Dave. As someone else said, put your
> gateway where your mouth is!
Nah. Since AOL has access to all these groups, we should let cywronwode
post these messages for us. In fact, since I have bought comic books from
her erstwhile company, Eclipse, **part of my money** has gone to support
her lifestyle, and she owes us this service as much as utexas did.
Okay, pick one:
a) Y'know, the name of those two lawyers escape me. Whatever happened
to them?
b) May cywronwode burn in "Good Intentions" hell and be reincarnated as
a system administrator.
c) Who'd win? cyronwode or all the .marketplace or "me too's" who need
help posting to newsgroup xyz because cywronwode took away their
email-to-news access?
I bought books from her company. I feel so sullied.
Cedric.
Cedric Chin
Warning: Flamage ahead.
In article <45qv7o$g...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, cyro...@aol.com
(Cyronwode) wrote:
> Bob Izenberg wrote:
>
> > Is AOL free? If the original poster's complaint was that
> > the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
> > value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
> > free service which the poster has attempted to use has
> > policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
> > poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
> > anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
> > providers?
>
> Please re-read what i wrote. I don't need or use gatewayed
> e-mail-to-usenet services. I have no usenet propagation problem with AOL.
> I was trying to send a test message for a friend (whose ISP did have a
> propagation problem) through the UT gateway to see if HE could access an
> usenet newsgroup that way. I just wanted to help him out by geting some
> information for him.
I have read several of your letters in various publications (typically those
with comics), and have developed a thick skin to your disingenuous (sp) polite
behavior.
Blah blah. "I didn't do it for myself, but my poor friend." My, isn't the
Niagra Falls unusually voluminous today.
> The reason that i got ticked off was that i thought
> the test had *failed*. Had i gotten a bounced mail message, i would have
> known that i could not MAKE the test from my domain.
Thus FURTHERMORE showing your lack of understanding the internet, which is
causing all the problems in the first place.
There IS a protocol for testing your message and had you known it, you would
not have caused all the trouble in your self-righteous fervor that you have.
> Some of you folks
> know enough about logic to understand why a dispositive result
"Dispositive"??? Have I set my calendar a year forward???
Oh wait -- there's the definition of "dispositive". Right next to
"multiposting".
> can be as
> valuable as a positive one and why it is annoying to get a report that
> seems dispositive but turns out to be simply...the void.
I have read several of your letters in various publications (typically those
with comics), and have developed a thick skin to your disingenuous (sp) polite
behavior.
"The void"??? Stick your metaphors where the Penumbra doesn't shine. All I
know is that because you prefer "logic" to the actual goings on of the
workings of the internet, we have one less service.
Logic can go to "simply... the void". Myself, I prefer to know how the net
works and act accordingly.
I can't believe that in all my years on the net I've acted like a so-and-so
and can't even top what cwronwode has done in <insert time here> to do.
Information is sooooo sexy, and Ignorance has such repercussions.
Cedric.
Cedric Chin
rights, responsibilities, etc. that our right to free speech in the "real
world", it DOES NOT. Empirically, the net is a privelege, and not a right.
The metaphor of "the great frontier" is one that I dislike, but it applies
here: You only have as many rights as those around you will give you.
Look. I want you to have as much access to the net as you want. But your
lack of netiquette exemplifies the behavior of AOL'ers and those who demand
"rights" from the internet and their repercussions -- which, on the whole,
spell fewer and fewer free, useful services we come to not only enjoy, but
rely upon.
In article <45inj1$n...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, cyro...@aol.com
(Cyronwode) wrote:
> Having read what others had to say in response to my original post --
> flames and all -- i would like to comment, if i may.
What the Internet does have is netiquette. That, at best, are the rules
and customs we subscribe to. Rules and customs are the flip-side
of rights and priveleges. Actually, the internet has as many rights as
it has rules -- barely any.
You, fellow netter, have violated one of those customs: Publicly posting
private correspondence. Under few circumstances is this the proper way
of behaving on the net.
Obviously, your intentions are good. But they clearly show your lack of
understanding how the net -- for better and often for worse -- works.
You don't drive a car without knowing the rules of the road. You don't
act on the net without knowing how it works.
<apologies deleted>
> Third, if those who flamed me or called me clueless for multiposting when
> i shoud have crossposted would THINK for a minute,
I will gladly "think for a minute" if you and other AOL'ers would take the
time to understand the subculture and behavior of the internet, instead of
trampling upon it like you own it. By your violation of internet custom, it
is evident that you have acted before you have understood. As a result of
your misguided intentions, we now have one less service on the internet.
How soon will people like you strip us others of all the other services
we enjoy? A year? A decade? A week???
> they'd realize that the
> reason i wanted to use the UT gateway in the first place is because AOL
> does not support crossposting.
Crossposting is often an abuse of the internet. In essense, you are unhappy
that you cannot break another custom of the internet: crossposting.
Crossposting is NOT a highly approved practice on newsgroups, precisely
because newgroups, by their definition -- and hopefully implementation --
attempt not to share common interests, and a posting is placed only on the
newsgroup of its interest.
Yes, plenty of people crosspost. Not many have posted information useful
to the groups they post too. Even fewer have approvable behavior on the
internet.
> I can no longer crosspost to any group
> because the only gateway i'd ever known has barred all AOL users.
Then complain to AOL. That you cannot even distinguish a **University**
site from a **business** provider shows your lack of understanding the
internet.
> I HAD to multipost. Get it?
I have been on the internet for over a decade and post frequently on the
newsgroups that I have inhabited (I'll spare you the list, but the
highlights include soc.singles, talk.abortion, and rec.games.magic).
[Oboy, you're in trouble, says half of news.admin.misc.]
NEVER have I **had** to crosspost (that you use the word "multipost"
further shows to me your misunderstanding of the internet) during this
entire time. NOR have I read a crosspost (at best a few) which **had**
to be crossposted.
<stuff about UT deleted>
I'll let those more familiar with this particular case comment. Myself,
my thesis is the need for internet users to know how the internet works
before its control is passed from a friendly anarchy to a faceless controller.
> Fourth, i use AOL because i live in a rural area and they provide a local
> phone number, not because i like their corporate attitude or their service
> policies or their pretty little graphics. Or their prices. But even at
> $3.00 an hour, AOL is cheaper for me than a long-distance call every time
> i go online.
Cry me the Styx.
> I am asking you nicely (pretty please? with sugar sprinkles?) to lift the
> block on AOL users. As you noted, you only get an average of 10 AOL posts
> per day, anyway. If they are like me, they are simply folks who need a way
> to make legitimate (not spamming) crossposts and test posts.
I have read several of your letters in various publications (typically those
with comics), and have developed a thick skin to your disingenuous (sp) polite
behavior.
> (In case you are curious, yes, i have asked AOL many times to support
> crossposting, for over a year now -- to no avail...yet.)
That's not our problem. It's yours. You picked AOL, you complain to it.
By complaining using the wrong channels, the wrong etiquette, the wrong
attitude, you have shut down a valuable service to the internet community.
Good work -- at least the owner of the shop can replace the china.
> If you do not wish to lift the block against AOL, can you direct me to
> another gateway that WILL accept AOL posts for the purpose of limited
> crossposting and test posting?
>
> Thanks.
I have read several of your letters in various publications (typically those
with comics), and have developed a thick skin to your disingenuous (sp) polite
behavior.
Gah. From your letters, I can't believe that I haven't seen this coming.
> catherine yronwode
> cyro...@aol.com
I hope you receive plenty of postings from idiot .marketplace posters who
don't have access to .marketplace newsgroups and whine when they break
netiquette because they "have to" post on the parent newsgroup.
Cedric.
Ronald F. Guilmette
>In article <45inj1$n...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
>Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>> reason i wanted to use the UT gateway in the first place is because AOL
>> because the only gateway i'd ever known has barred all AOL users. I HAD to
>> multipost. Get it? And no, i am not a mad spammer. The aborted crosspost
>
>So isn't the real solution to the issue to get AOL to fix their
>software?
No. The _real_ solution is to create a special network just for stupid
people... and then make sure that it is throughly isolated from the
_real_ Internet. That way we won't all have to listen to this kind
of crap.
Actually, I think things are going that way anyway... except for the
isolation part. The stupid people are already flocking to the high-
hourly-charge services like AOL, Compu$pend, Plodigy, etc. You know,
the ones that make it possible for even illiterates to ``Surf the Net''
via simple key-clicks.
Now all we have to do is make those services into one big net of their
own, and then cut them off from the intelligent part of the Internet
and we will be home free.
--
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, CA -------- Infinite Monkeys & Co. ------------
---- E-mail: r...@monkeys.com ----------- Purveyors of Compiler Test Suites -
------ (c) Copyright 1995 by Ronald F. Guilmette; All rights reserved. -----
Tim Pierce
>In article <DG9C3...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Ellen Keyne Seebacher <el...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>:Fletcher Mattox: I advise you to drop the whole damned gateway, posthaste.
>:That's the only way to protect yourself from presumptuous idiots like
>:"Cyronwode".
>
>I disbelieve. Appeasing the lowest common denominator leads down an ugly
>path toward dismantling the Internet community.
I don't understand how dropping the gateway was a nod toward
"appeasing the lowest common denominator." It seems to me it
appeased no one, let alone Ms. Cyronwode.
>:Never do anyone favors on Usenet. You'll surely come to regret it.
>
>This from someone whose Organization: header reads: "Coalition for
>Traditional Usenet Values"?
Sure. "Traditional" Usenet was a place where you could afford to
do someone a favor without it coming back to haunt you.
--
By sending unsolicited commercially-oriented e-mail to this address, the
sender agrees to pay a $100 flat fee to the recipient for proofreading
services.
B. Martin
<r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
[Much Deleted]
>It's this "I'm a taxpayer, so I
> *OWN* EVERYTHING you've EVER TOUCHED!" crusade that gets on my nerves.
Do you realize that most state univeristy systems are subject to that
state's open meetings laws? In the states I am familiar with, the average
taxpayer can attend any lecture s/he chose on a random basis. Most just
do not choose to use this right (and it is a right under most open meeting
laws). Multiple attendance is regulated because of the question of
tuition.
Likewise, most technical equipment on the campuses of state universities
is likely required to be accessible to qualified users by similar
legislation and with appropriate arrangements to prevent chaos. Thus, a
gateway operated by a state institution likely must be made accessible to
all state citizens with equipment/knowledge of using that gateway. The
commercial provider is not relevant becuase the provider is not being
punished by the actions. The actionds of the administrator is more
analogous to denying campus to citizens of city 1 because of other
citizens of city 1 were unruly. It simply can't be done this way at a
state university.
Now, much of this is likely applicable to citizens of Texas in this case,
but the general principles remain. Denying access to a specific user
based on previous acts by other people is essentially prior restraint and
out of place for a government representative.
B. Martin
David Smith
: Miss, I don't give a flying... Never mind. Miss, your public whining
: has removed a longstanding and useful net asset from usability.
Fletcher Mattox took the gateway down because Fletcher Mattox took the
gateway down.
Saying that it's CY's fault for complaining is just bs.
--
David Smith * "Cryptography : The Language Our Government Doesn't
bla...@bga.com * Want You to Learn" Next EFF-Austin general meeting
President, EFF-Austin * Monday, October 16th, 1995, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Board of Directors, CTCLU * La Madalein, 3418 North Lamar
Russ Allbery
> Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> It's this "I'm a taxpayer, so I *OWN* EVERYTHING you've EVER TOUCHED!"
>> crusade that gets on my nerves.
> Do you realize that most state univeristy systems are subject to that
> state's open meetings laws? In the states I am familiar with, the average
> taxpayer can attend any lecture s/he chose on a random basis. Most just
> do not choose to use this right (and it is a right under most open meeting
> laws). Multiple attendance is regulated because of the question of
> tuition.
At every university that I have ever attended, anyone would be able to
attend a lecture with little difficulty -- the only exception being courses
that are overcrowded and have no room for another person. I wasn't aware of
a particular law regulating that, but it really doesn't matter. What
tuition buys is written acknowledgement that you have taken the class for
credit, usually in the form of transcripts or degrees. If someone wanted to
attend random classes, I don't know of any instructor who would object.
> Likewise, most technical equipment on the campuses of state universities
> is likely required to be accessible to qualified users by similar
> legislation and with appropriate arrangements to prevent chaos.
Since this requirement would mean that any state citizen has the right to
get an account on any university computer system, and since that obviously
is not the case, I must conclude that you do not know what you're talking
about. Feel free to provide actual statutes and case law to prove me wrong.
> The actions of the administrator is more analogous to denying campus to
> citizens of city 1 because of other citizens of city 1 were unruly. It
> simply can't be done this way at a state university.
However, it is done that way on Usenet and will continue to be done that way
on Usenet whether you like it or not. On this matter, what Fletcher did was
right, and if the law says he shouldn't have done it, then the law is
wrong. Full stop.
> Denying access to a specific user based on previous acts by other people
> is essentially prior restraint and out of place for a government
> representative.
The administrator of a computer system for the computer science department
of the University of Texas is not a government representative.
I quite frankly find this attitude appalling. The computer systems at a
university are there for the use of the students and staff. The amount of
tax money you pay that actually goes to the computer system is infintessimal
to the point of nonexistance. And the amount of processing time that
computer used to run the gateway was certainly not the entirety of the
capabilities of the machine. I certainly agree that the purpose of a
government is to serve its people, and that government must be watched
closely since it attracks unscrupulous people, but that is not what was
happening here.
Here is an example of a volunteer service run by someone in their free time
because it was a good idea and someone found it helpful. That act was in
the grand tradition of the Internet, and echoes thousands of other acts by
thousands of other people, who together are responsible for the
communications medium that we use today. Those acts are not your "right,"
nor is the use of them something that you "deserve." They are gifts, given
freely and with good will, with the assumption that they will be returned in
kind by the rest of the community.
Into that environment, you would bring laws and rights, and claim that you
have a right to another person's free time. To me, this is like the
Englishman landing on the shore of New England and proclaiming that he now
owns North America. Well, sir, there are people who live here, who work
here, and whose labor has made this land what it is today, and you have no
claim to that. We welcome all comers, and anyone who is willing to join the
community and provide something useful, to add to it for the benefit of
everyone, can easily join and enjoy all of the conveniences that those
before them have built. But demand it all as your right, as something that
we are *obligated* to provide, and it will all slip through your hands like
water.
Perhaps you are one who has already provided something useful to the
community, and who is well aware of how the Internet is structured. If so,
I presume you understand what I'm talking about, and you can take this post
as directed towards those like Cat Yronwode who obviously don't. But it
didn't sound that way to me.
As people come on the Internet saying that they *deserve* these services,
that they are their *right*, you will see more of what just happened. The
gateways will close because they are no longer worth the bother of
maintaining. Those of us who maintain archives and ftp sites, mailing lists
and FAQs will decide we have better things to do with our lives than deal
with endless complaints, and will close up shop. What will be left will be
a sterile world of laws and regulations, where everyone is equal in poverty
and all real discussion, all real sharing and growth and expansion of
communication takes place in secret and underground so as to avoid the
oppressive bureaucracy.
In that day, I will take great pleasure in going to those people like Cat
Yronwode and telling them that, in the end, they got *precisely* what they
deserved.
--
Russ Allbery (r...@cs.stanford.edu) http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~rra/
Russ Allbery
> Fletcher Mattox took the gateway down because Fletcher Mattox took the
> gateway down.
> Saying that it's CY's fault for complaining is just bs.
However, saying that the attitude exhibited by people like Yronwode is
largely responsible for the disappearance of services like Fletcher Mattox's
is *not* BS, and I think Fletcher's message made it reasonable clear that
complaints about the gateway were a large part of what made it not fun any
more.
Regardless of what kind of spin you want to put on this, Cat Yronwode will
be remembered as the person who provided the last straw that resulted in the
closing of a gateway that was very popular and widely used. And as far as
I'm concerned, the reputation she'll get from that is well deserved.
Dave Ratcliffe
- The reason that i got ticked off was that i thought
- the test had *failed*. Had i gotten a bounced mail message, i would have
- known that i could not MAKE the test from my domain. Some of you folks
- know enough about logic to understand why a dispositive result can be as
- valuable as a positive one and why it is annoying to get a report that
- seems dispositive but turns out to be simply...the void.
Catherine, meet the word "negative".
Word "negative", meet Catherine.
BTW Catherine to my knowledge there is no requirement (and I just
checked the RFC to make sure) for a bounce message to be generated if
delivery isn't possible.
--
Dave Ratcliffe da...@frackit.com
Harrisburg, Pa.
Russ Allbery
> P.S. I've come to the conclusion that the Dave Hayes guy is one of the
> largest net-morons known to man. Would it be considered net-abuse if I
> setup a automated program which would automatically send out a followup to
> each of his innane postings saying that? (I'm sure Dave Hayes wouldn't
> mind. That would just be exercising my free speech rights according to
> him.)
Dave Hayes doesn't deserve that.
I disagree with him on many points, and we tend to get into arguments about
one thing or another with rather regular frequency, but during the time I've
been reading news.*, he's earned my respect. One of the most valuable
services a person can provide someone else is to help them hone their own
beliefs and better argue their principles, and Dave has done that for me
more than once. For that, if nothing else, I owe him thanks.
He expresses an unpopular position, and one which I disagree with as well,
but he argues it fairly well. Unlike most people here, myself included, he
rarely makes obvious mistakes.
Someone recently said, in a posting I dearly wish I had saved, that social
skill is the ability to engage in discussion with someone with whom you
wholeheartedly disagree.
Matt Schnierle
In article <45qvl8$o...@oban.cc.ic.ac.uk>, v...@ic.ac.uk (Vartan Narinian) writes:
>py...@grove.iup.edu writes:
>>
>>I don't know if that is his response, but it sure is mine. If he is offering
>>a service with no conditions or responsibilities, he can pretty much do as he
>>pleases. Why should he notify AOLers? They obviously figured it out.
>
>On the other hand, it would have been nice if he returned the email with
>a note saying "Your message is returned to you unprocessed. We currently
>do not accept email from your domain." Just like anon.penet.fi used to
>do with the binaries newsgroups.
He might have, but keep in mind that AOL all but _told_ him to kill access
from their domain. Why did'nt AOL inform its users that they could no longer
use the utexas gateway?
>I'm sorry to see the gateway go. However I'm sure Dave Hayes will be happy
>to set up a gateway for AOL'ers. C'mon Dave. As someone else said, put your
>gateway where your mouth is!
Oh, but he can't. His bosses won't let him. I think that Fletcher Maddox
ought to accuse the Big Guys (tm) at JPL of restricting free speech by _not_
offering a gateway. Oh, the irony!
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_______________________________________________________________________________
Matt Schnierle py...@oak.grove.iup.edu http://www.ma.iup.edu/~pyld/
WWW,finger, or keyserver for PGP key. These views are mine, not IUP's (I hope)
"It could not be one man's dream, if it were not already another man's
possession." --unknown
Robert Dorsett
>In article <45inj1$n...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
>Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>> reason i wanted to use the UT gateway in the first place is because AOL
>> does not support crossposting. I can no longer crosspost to any group
>> because the only gateway i'd ever known has barred all AOL users. I HAD to
>> multipost. Get it? And no, i am not a mad spammer. The aborted crosspost
>
>So isn't the real solution to the issue to get AOL to fix their
>software?
If AOL wants to be a net.good.citizen, the real solution is to get AOL to
set up a mail-to-news gateway....
--
Robert Dorsett Moderator, sci.aeronautics.simulation
r...@netcom.com aero-si...@wilbur.pr.erau.edu
ftp://wilbur.pr.erau.edu/pub/av
John Stanley
>
>BTW Catherine to my knowledge there is no requirement (and I just
>checked the RFC to make sure) for a bounce message to be generated if
>delivery isn't possible.
RFC 1123 Para. 5.3.3 deals with SMTP agents, and says "MUST" with regard
to notification of delivery failure.
Howerver, if you look at it as the message was delivered to the gateway
and the gateway dropped it, then this paragraph does not apply.
Cyronwode
> If, as you seem to be claiming now, your objective was merely to say
that
> the utexas gateway should bounce any email it didn't post, your method
of
> saying it (via a long list of "demands" and accusations) was poorly
> considered and ineffective in achieving your objective. Next time, try
> asking politely instead of getting "ticked off" and making threats
> publically.
> -WBE
Right, dude.
Look, i already apologized, in public, and repeatedly, for shooting my
mouth off. Maybe you didn't see those posts. The first apology was posted
24 hours after my first -- and ONLY -- angry post. We are talking about
stuff that appeared on my server a WEEK ago by now. Telling me what i
should have done a week after i already told everyone i was sorry and that
i myself knew that i should have done elsewise is kinda like...well, the
cliche phrase is "whipping a dead horse."
But, hey, you're right. I should have been polite. We both know that. And
so does everyone else who is following this thread. Okay?
catherine
Peter Vorobieff
Russ Allbery <r...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
>However, saying that the attitude exhibited by people like Yronwode is
>largely responsible for the disappearance of services like Fletcher Mattox's
>is *not* BS, and I think Fletcher's message made it reasonable clear that
>complaints about the gateway were a large part of what made it not fun any
>more.
>
>Regardless of what kind of spin you want to put on this, Cat Yronwode will
>be remembered as the person who provided the last straw that resulted in the
>closing of a gateway that was very popular and widely used. And as far as
>I'm concerned, the reputation she'll get from that is well deserved.
Many people who did provide valuable volunteer services to Usenet in the past
got burned out and left not because of some giant challenges or some monstrous
net.villains threatening them - rather because of constant lack of ANY
gratitude and constant nagging of lesser creatures.
"The straw that broke the back of the camel" indeed.
Michele Tepper
>
>Look, i already apologized, in public, and repeatedly, for shooting my
>mouth off. Maybe you didn't see those posts. The first apology was posted
>24 hours after my first -- and ONLY -- angry post. We are talking about
>stuff that appeared on my server a WEEK ago by now. Telling me what i
>should have done a week after i already told everyone i was sorry and that
>i myself knew that i should have done elsewise is kinda like...well, the
>cliche phrase is "whipping a dead horse."
Let me try an analogy here. You walk in to a restaurant carrying an Uzi
and a hand grenade and threaten to blow everyone in the joint to Kingdom
Come if you don't get precisely the sort of service you want right away.
Rather than deal with bozos like you, the restaurant shuts its doors.
The patrons of the restaurant, who are rightfully pissed off that you
behaved like such an aggressive spoiled brat, blame you for your
behavior. Is an apology going to be enough to make things right so
everyone can be best friends again? I don't think so.
>But, hey, you're right. I should have been polite. We both know that. And
>so does everyone else who is following this thread. Okay?
It's too fucking late for that. You've destroyed something useful,
you've earned the enmity of untold thousands, and you've branded yourself
as a shmuck in an international forum. Start up your own well-managed
gateway, maybe you'll get forgiven... but I wouldn't count on it.
--
Michele Tepper "Willful ignorance, that's my motto."
mte...@panix.com -- Harry Teasley
Dave Ratcliffe
- In article <DGKC...@frackit.com>, Dave Ratcliffe <da...@frackit.com> wrote:
- >
- >BTW Catherine to my knowledge there is no requirement (and I just
- >checked the RFC to make sure) for a bounce message to be generated if
- >delivery isn't possible.
-
- RFC 1123 Para. 5.3.3 deals with SMTP agents, and says "MUST" with regard
- to notification of delivery failure.
-
- Howerver, if you look at it as the message was delivered to the gateway
- and the gateway dropped it, then this paragraph does not apply.
That's the way I was viewing it since there had been no mention of prior
problems further back on the mail chain. And I neglected to check on the
SMTP specs as well. Thanks for looking it up John.
Matt Schnierle
In article <45qv7o$g...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, cyro...@aol.com (Cyronwode) writes:
> Bob Izenberg wrote:
>
>> Is AOL free? If the original poster's complaint was that
>> the service for which they are presumably paying is a bad
>> value because it has poor Usenet propagation, and that a
>> free service which the poster has attempted to use has
>> policies that prevent her from so doing, then why did the
>> poster not pursue one of the other avenues available to
>> anyone with the coins to spend on Internet service
>> providers?
>
>Please re-read what i wrote. I don't need or use gatewayed
>e-mail-to-usenet services. I have no usenet propagation problem with AOL.
>I was trying to send a test message for a friend (whose ISP did have a
>propagation problem) through the UT gateway to see if HE could access an
>usenet newsgroup that way. I just wanted to help him out by geting some
>information for him. The reason that i got ticked off was that i thought
>the test had *failed*. Had i gotten a bounced mail message, i would have
>known that i could not MAKE the test from my domain. Some of you folks
>know enough about logic to understand why a dispositive result can be as
>valuable as a positive one and why it is annoying to get a report that
>seems dispositive but turns out to be simply...the void.
Then how can you explain you tirade about demanding an explanation for this
and that, and demanding that Fletcher Maddox tell you who his immediate
supervisor is, and ranting about the availablility of a "publically" funded
service (by virtue of the fact that it is at a state univeristy)? That is the
real issue that pissed people off.
You then attempted to deflect those glaring weaknesses in your presentation by
babbling on about a test message, and the lack of response.
Do I smell a KoTM nominee? Just maybe......
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_______________________________________________________________________________
Matt Schnierle py...@oak.grove.iup.edu http://www.ma.iup.edu/~pyld/
WWW,finger, or keyserver for PGP key. These views are mine, not IUP's (I hope)
"The Dave Hayes Psychic Newsreader...why settle for a newsreader less
intelligent than you are?" --Russ Allbery in news.groups
John Stanley
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>recognize my name, but you're confused about the facts. No big deal, but
>reality is always easier to digest than fiction.
Is this the same reality where we have the admin of a gateway conspiring
to refuse to send bounce messages to AOL users specifically, when we all
know how easy it would have been to write the code to generate those
bounce messages?
Cyronwode
> Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >Look, i already apologized, in public, and repeatedly, for shooting my
> >mouth off. Maybe you didn't see those posts. The first apology was
posted
> >24 hours after my first -- and ONLY -- angry post. We are talking about
> >stuff that appeared on my server a WEEK ago by now. Telling me what i
> >should have done a week after i already told everyone i was sorry and
that
> >i myself knew that i should have done elsewise is kinda like...well,
the
> >cliche phrase is "whipping a dead horse."
> Let me try an analogy here. You walk in to a restaurant carrying an Uzi
> and a hand grenade and threaten to blow everyone in the joint to Kingdom
> Come if you don't get precisely the sort of service you want right away.
Uh...does the phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will
never hurt me" ring a bell with you? Why do you think that phrase is a
part of our vocabulary? Could it be because most of us realize -- through
experience -- that there is a true difference between physical threats and
verbal taunting?
I posted a *message*, for the love of pete! You call this "an Uzi and a
hand grenade"? GIVE ME A BREAK. What kind of drama queen are you?
Pretending that words (presented electronically from an unseen person) are
analogous to physical threats (like guns and hand grenades) is sloppy
thinking that can lead to no productive results. It seems to have led
*you* to confuse free will with coersion (see below).
> Rather than deal with bozos like you, the restaurant shuts its doors.
> The patrons of the restaurant, who are rightfully pissed off that you
> behaved like such an aggressive spoiled brat, blame you for your
> behavior. Is an apology going to be enough to make things right so
> everyone can be best friends again? I don't think so.
Sorry, but you are SERIOUSLY mistaken in your analogous attribution of
causality here. I apologized FIRST. Several days LATER (4 days on my
server) Fletcher closed the gateway. Think about what you wrote
immediately above -- which implies the opposite -- and see below for how
this reversal of timed events has led you to not only to confusion about
causality but has also contributed to your confusion of free will with
coersion.
> > But, hey, you're right. I should have been polite. We both know that.
And
> > so does everyone else who is following this thread. Okay?
> It's too fucking late for that.
This is a repeat of the above. Once again, you have the time sequence
reversed. The apology came DAYS before Fletcher closed the gateway. You
imply otherwise. You are not straight on the facts (or you may be chosing
to deliberately obscure them).
> You've destroyed something useful,
No, i did not. *Fletcher* took the gateway down. No amount of *words*
could have forced him to. It was his choice. His free will. Live with it.
By manufacturing the analogy of physical force ("an Uzi and hand
grneades") you prop up the false construct of my having coerced Fletcher
to shut the gateway and thus you attribute final cause ("destroying
something useful") to me.
Had you refrained from leaping into the bogus physical threat analogy, you
would not have made this mistake.
Had you refrained from reversing the sequence of events -- whereby (my
post>my apology>Fletcher closing the gateway) became (my post>Fletcher
closing the gateway>my apology) -- you would not have made this mistake
either.
> you've earned the enmity of untold thousands, and you've branded
yourself
> as a shmuck in an international forum.
Granted, i have earned some enmity for my original post, which i deeply
regret -- and, judging by writers such as yourself, i am the *subject* of
some enmity, but i cannot accept that i have "earned" enmity for
FLETCHER'S actions.
> Start up your own well-managed
> gateway, maybe you'll get forgiven... but I wouldn't count on it.
To tell the truth, being "forgiven" by people who cannot think straight,
and/or who argue from specious analogies, and/or who may be deliberately
twisting facts to suit a flawed premise is not a high priority on my list
of life goals.
Michele Tepper
>mte...@panix.com (Michele Tepper) wrote:
>
>Pretending that words (presented electronically from an unseen person) are
>analogous to physical threats (like guns and hand grenades) is sloppy
>thinking that can lead to no productive results.
Words that threaten legal and media action against the recipient are as
real as physical threats, and perhaps more dangerous.
Since you *still* haven't gotten it, I'm not going to waste my time
attempting to reformulate what has already been so eloquently said by
others. I'm just going to repeat what Tim Pierce said, since he
said it so well (and, unsurprisingly, so tersely):
-----begin included message-----
In article <4602l7$a...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
Cyronwode <cyro...@aol.com> wrote:
>I did
>nothing to close down that gateway,
That is not correct.
Your presumptuousness and selfishness contributed to the
increasing difficulties that Fletcher Mattox experienced running
his gateway. Your eagerness to bring legal claims of
discrimination against the University of Texas, however
groundless, added weight to the burden he already carried. Your
threats of negative media exposure reduced his incentive to
continue providing this service -- for anyone. Your
vindictiveness has brought about the egalitarian atmosphere that
you so desperately wanted; does that please you?
You are certainly not to shoulder complete blame for the
deactivation of the utexas gateway. Fletcher made that decision
on his own, and anyone here must recognize that it was the result
of many, many incidents over the last several years. However, the
fact that you are not solely responsible for this action does not
absolve you. It is quite obvious that you "did something" that
partially had the effect of destroying the system.
Even more galling, however: despite your halfhearted apologies for
acting rashly, you do not seem to comprehend just how destructive
it is to treat volunteered, shared resources as a *right*. You do
not seem to recognize the long-term, irreversible damage of acting
as though such services as these *belong* to you in some way.
Attempting to bluster or bluff those who give freely of their
resources into kowtowing to your imagined authority only hurts us
all in the end, and even after this very graphic demonstration of
Usenet politics you seem not to have learned the lesson at its
core.
I am quite firmly in Russ Allbery's camp on this one. If history
remembers you as the person who killed the cs.utexas.edu gateway,
it will be exactly what you deserve.
-----End included message-----
For those who already have clues and do not need to be force-fed them, my
apologies for the repetititition.
Tim Pierce
Cedric Chin <inv...@leland.stanford.edu> wrote:
>I bought books from her company. I feel so sullied.
I feel sullied just reading your posts. Do you suppose you could
stop whining about Eclipse Comics for a few minutes and stay on
topic? Thank you.
Russ Allbery
> Uh...does the phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will
> never hurt me" ring a bell with you? Why do you think that phrase is a
> part of our vocabulary? Could it be because most of us realize -- through
> experience -- that there is a true difference between physical threats and
> verbal taunting?
Look, you need to get this straight. You. Threatened. Someone's. Job.
What, does it take a sledgehammer to get this through your skull? You don't
think that hurts him any? You don't think raising cane with his boss would
have any impact on the person whatsoever?
This isn't some big game, and we aren't all toys for your personal
amusement. You don't get to just yank people around like this and then walk
away saying "it's not my problem." We're actually going to (gasp) hold you
accountable for what you're doing. There are actual people being those
e-mail addresses, people who can actually be affected by what you write.
Welcome to the real world, my friend. We bite back.
> Sorry, but you are SERIOUSLY mistaken in your analogous attribution of
> causality here. I apologized FIRST. Several days LATER (4 days on my
> server) Fletcher closed the gateway.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything. You acted like a moron.
One of a long string of morons, a disproportionate number of which have come
from AOL. Fletcher decided he'd had about enough of dealing with morons who
do nothing but complain about a service that he's providing in his spare
time and who just use and use without giving anything back, and closed the
gateway down.
Whether or not you apologized is IRRELEVANT! Whether or not you're sorry
now is IRRELEVANT! There are some things in life that can't be fixed by
saying "I'm sorry." It's absolutely astonishing that you haven't learned
that before now.
> No, i did not. *Fletcher* took the gateway down. No amount of *words*
> could have forced him to.
Guess what; the entire world doesn't reduce neatly to forced and didn't
force. You may want to try coming down out of your black and white fantasy
world into the one the rest of us live in sometime. *You* and *your
message* are the proximate cause for the closing of the gateway, and no
squirming, whining, and backpedalling is going to get you out of that.
And you're really making a good showing here, BTW. Not only did you not get
smart and let the subject drop, you're actually flaming people for
expressing indigation and then lying about your affiliation with Eclipse.
Good show, Cat. Nothing like demonstrating to the entire world the kind of
scum you really are.
> It was his choice. His free will. Live with it. By manufacturing the
> analogy of physical force ("an Uzi and hand grneades") you prop up the
> false construct of my having coerced Fletcher to shut the gateway and thus
> you attribute final cause ("destroying something useful") to me.
Wonderful straw man. If you ever feel like addressing what people are
actually saying, do let us know.
> Granted, i have earned some enmity for my original post, which i deeply
> regret -- and, judging by writers such as yourself, i am the *subject* of
> some enmity, but i cannot accept that i have "earned" enmity for
> FLETCHER'S actions.
However, emnity on Usenet is not something that is accepted or not
accepted. It's earned, and you've earned yours well. Hope you enjoy it.
John Littlefield
(Cyronwode) wrote:
<<-------------------- Begin Included ---------------------------------->>
---------------------=> text deleted <=-----------------------------------
> > You've destroyed something useful,
>
> No, i did not. *Fletcher* took the gateway down. No amount of *words*
> could have forced him to. It was his choice. His free will. Live with it.
> By manufacturing the analogy of physical force ("an Uzi and hand
> grneades") you prop up the false construct of my having coerced Fletcher
> to shut the gateway and thus you attribute final cause ("destroying
> something useful") to me.
>
> Had you refrained from leaping into the bogus physical threat analogy, you
> would not have made this mistake.
>
> Had you refrained from reversing the sequence of events -- whereby (my
> post>my apology>Fletcher closing the gateway) became (my post>Fletcher
> closing the gateway>my apology) -- you would not have made this mistake
> either.
>
> To tell the truth, being "forgiven" by people who cannot think straight,
> and/or who argue from specious analogies, and/or who may be deliberately
> twisting facts to suit a flawed premise is not a high priority on my list
> of life goals.
Catherine,
You are not only wrong in your view of the story, but you are missing the
point as to how you have completely set off the internet community as a
whole.
On the heels of the FBI arresting Internet 'sex-offenders' (not my
personal opinion), and the increased media attention on government
misappropriations, to accuse someone of improprieties and to threaten
their job _is tantamount to serious physical threat_! You may want to go
back and re-read your email to Fletcher, which very strongly and clearly
pointed out that you were not only upset, but that you intended to make a
big, public issue about it; and that you would not stop until you had
_blood_, preferably Fletcher's and that of the University of Texas (and
with all of the news stories lately, it is easy to conceive that you
wouldn't have been happy until you had won a multi-million dollar lawsuit
against UT - claiming that you had suffered serious emotional distress due
to this service not being available).
If you don't think about what I just said, then it will seem as if these
were the ramblings of a paranoid individual who thinks that the world is
in a state of chaos. Well, if you take the time to reflect (objectively)
on these things, you will notice that everything I mentioned, as a
possible scenario, can be found in the headlines of recent newspapers.
You have done an unpardonable 'net sin', which was to
- violate the respect and regard of communication on the net, by going
off the deep end immediately, instead of being civil about it
- threaten the job of someone who is an innocent victim in this
situation
- threaten the personal well-being of the same individual, because
the things which you threatened could easily turn into jail time
if the right 'liberal' jury got ahold of this one
(I personally believe that Fletcher has no guilt to speak of, and
that this country has lost its sense of Justice - notes for another
thread)
- attack a service which was not a right, but a priviledge
- think only of yourself, and not another person:
I work in the computer industry, and know what it is like to do work
which you love. It is not hard to consider that Fletcher may have
created the gateway in question, on his own time, not using any time
which he was paid for by the University of Texas system. It is also
easy to believe that he had to constantly fight the UT politics to
keep the thing going as long as it did, for reasons less than you
have given him.
As far as the sequence of events is concerned, IT DOESN'T MATTER!
You said things that cannot be excused. After your first adversarial
message, the timeline no longer mattered. You had set things in motion,
which no act of god or nature could stop.
If I were in your position, I would stop responding to the thread about
this, and suck up the criticism like a big girl. It will eventually
stop. BTW: I wouldn't have joined this thread if you had not become so
incensed with defending yourself; you see, someone who is truly sorry for
their actions, does not go around defending their position after the fact.
$.02
Sincerely,
John Littlefield
==============================================================================
Go after what you want with zeal, even at the risk of making mistakes; it is
in these mistakes that we learn, and come closer to our goal.
-- The Peter Principle
------------=><=-------------+----------=><=--------------------=><=----------
\_ \_ \_\_\_ \_\_\_ | John C. Littlefield III lit...@mcc.com
\_\_ \_\_ \_ \_ | MCC Membership Services 512/ 338-3458 phone
\_ \_ \_ \_ \_ | 3500 West Balcones Ctr. 512/ 338-3898 fax
\_ \_ \_\_\_ \_\_\_ | Austin, TX 78759-5398 http://www.mcc.com/
------------=><=-------------+----------=><=--------------------=><=----------
**************************************************************************
The views expressed are personal and are not those of MCC, this news
server, or anyone else, whether expressed or implied!
erik seielstad
: In article <45p7r1$7...@panix3.panix.com>, Seth Breidbart wrote:
: >In article <45ij8a$j...@elxr.jpl.nasa.gov>, Dave Hayes wrote:
: >>You can't provide a service ("millions of people communicating
: >>many-to-many"), selectively restrict that service based on some
: >>arbitrary standard, and still call yourself providing a service.
: >OK. So somebody at UT can't call himself providing a service. Happy
: >now?
: Well, thanks to the efforts of the original poster, dave and others,
: they are no longer providing this "service" to users outside of the CS
: dept at UT. I hope the original poster is proud of her efforts.
how do you know they ever provided "service"? It was obvious that
users of AOL couldn't use it (even though you may have seen articles
from AOL users posted from that address).
And if you used the address to post to a group you don't get
locally - you may never know if it was distributed either.
-erik
--
--
er...@acs.brockport.edu | SUNY College at Brockport,
Systems Programmer/Analyst | Brockport, NY 14420-2982
Richard P. Bainter
You posted a message that is the equivalant of sending USMail to the
person in question. As well, this message demanded a bunch of
information and actions. Not to mention that you were incouraging people
to foward the message to the media. The only thing that would come out of
that is Fletcher to be fired, or atleast severely inconvienced. Now I
would feel severely threatened, not to mention unappreciated, by that.
Btw, would it have been different if he has used the example of someone
handing a bank a piece of paper with the message that it was a holdup?
How about a email to the President of the US saying that they were going
to kill him? After all, both of these are *just* messages.
>Sorry, but you are SERIOUSLY mistaken in your analogous attribution of
>causality here. I apologized FIRST.
Only *after* he had to deal with your ranting and raving. As well, the
appology seems to have only been posted to news.admin.misc, and not
news.groups, austin.internet, austin.talk or austin.polotics. (Did I
miss any of the newsgroups you failed to cross post to?)
>Several days LATER (4 days on my
>server) Fletcher closed the gateway.
I have the following dates on news messages, and I'm *very* close to
cs.utexas.edu's newsfeed. (1 node inbetween)
Original Post - Oct 10 17:37
Fletcher's followup - Oct 11 17:18
"Appology" - Oct 12 04:56
Retiring of gateway - Oct 13 17:17
As I see this, the first post arrived at the end, or after the workday.
Thus Fletcher gets in in the morning, has to deal with the idiocy
involved, and then make his followup. The next day when he gets in, he
has somewhat of an appology, as well as a number of supportive messages
and possibly more hostile messages. This gives him a little less than 3
work days, from start to end, to investigate how difficult the program is
to modify, when was the last time it was worked on, and if he truly had
the time.
Note, I didn't even go into the fact that he works in an understaffed
Computer Science department running their servers and whatnot.
>>> But, hey, you're right. I should have been polite. We both know that.
>And
>>> so does everyone else who is following this thread. Okay?
>> It's too fucking late for that.
>This is a repeat of the above. Once again, you have the time sequence
>reversed. The apology came DAYS before Fletcher closed the gateway.
The apology came a day *after* Fletcher had explained himself. Him
having to take the time to research and explain it is the demise of the
whole thing. Not the fact that you weren't sorry for being rude and
inconsiderate.
Btw, if you read the message that the gateway sends back, you will see
that the *last* straw was in fact your original message.
Later this week we were bullied in news.admin.misc,
see <45eg9h$p...@newsbf02.news.aol.com> for details.
Yes, I admit that he's had other complaints and problems, it just so
happens that yours was the last one involved, and made *publicly* as
opposed to privately. Someone else used proximate to describe the
issue wonderfully.
1: immediately preceding or following (as in a chain of events,
causes, or effects) <an interest in proximate, rather than ultimate,
goals --Reinhold Niebuhr>]
Ciao,
--
Richard Bainter Mundanely | System Analyst - OMG/CSD
Pug Generally | Applied Research Labs - U.Texas
p...@arlut.utexas.edu | p...@eden.com | {any user}@pug.net
Note: The views may not reflect my employers, or even my own for that matter.
Ken Arnold - Sun Labs
>The Gentleman (gent...@sisna.com) wrote:
>: Miss, I don't give a flying... Never mind. Miss, your public whining
>: over not having been allowed to use a piece of equipment you didn't pay for
>: has removed a longstanding and useful net asset from usability.
>
>gateway down.
>
>Saying that it's CY's fault for complaining is just bs.
Fletcher Mattox said, in his email, that it was one, but not the only,
reason. It is not unreasonable to assume that, being a very public and
very recent and (presumably) rather major aggravation, that Ms.
Y______'s complaining was the straw or fifteen that broke the camel's
back.
Although you never blame the placer of the final straw *completely*,
they bear significant responsibility, especially when their action was
intrinsically irresponsible, and hence, unecessary.
Ken Arnold
Matt Schnierle
In article <45unp2$r...@giga.bga.com>, bla...@bga.com (David Smith) writes:
>The Gentleman (gent...@sisna.com) wrote:
>: Miss, I don't give a flying... Never mind. Miss, your public whining
>: over not having been allowed to use a piece of equipment you didn't pay for
>: has removed a longstanding and useful net asset from usability.
>
>Fletcher Mattox took the gateway down because Fletcher Mattox took the
>gateway down.
Because of people like CY who were not even utexas users bitching and moaning
and complaining. Maddox stated that it "was no longer fun" or something to
that effect, and it is _clear_ that Yronwould (sp--as if I care) was the straw
that broke the camel's back on this one.
>Saying that it's CY's fault for complaining is just bs.
No, her complaint was bullshit. Care to debate her complaint on its merits?
Hell, that's already been done, but I know that there are those types who
enjoy getting slayed in a public forum....
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_______________________________________________________________________________
Matt Schnierle py...@oak.grove.iup.edu http://www.ma.iup.edu/~pyld/
WWW,finger, or keyserver for PGP key. These views are mine, not IUP's (I hope)
"Maybe we should have a new .cool domain, only for people that are cool enough
to know about it." --Paul Phillips in news.admin.net-abuse.misc
Cyronwode
> In this attempt to give the impression that you were just another wage
> slave at Eclipse, you fail to mention that you owned a significant
> percentage of the company and held the job of editor-in-chief for much
> (most?) of its history.
Eclipse was founded as a partnership in 1978. In 1985 Eclipse became a
corporation, with shares divided among 5 people, of whom i was one. At no
time during my ownership of those shares was i allowed to sign checks on
the corporate business account -- only Jan Mullaney, Dean Mullaney, and
Bruce Palley were. I was only allowed to sign checks on the petty cash
account (kept at a balance of under $2,000) in Dean's absense. I was never
allowed to participate in corporate board meetings held by Jan, Dean, and
Bruce. In 1993 i lost my job at Eclipse and traded my shares in the
company to Dean Mullaney as part of our divorce settlement. In 1994
Eclipse declared bankruptcy. Of the 17 years of Eclipse's existence, i was
editor-in chief for 9. I earned between $23,000 and $25,000 per year
during that time, about what i would have earned as a low-level editor at
DC -- and a fair wage, as far as i was concerned.
> Until the summer of 1993 you seemed quite happy
> to perpetuate the public perception of Eclipse as a successful
partnership
> between you and Dean.
Well, that is a complex matter, not entirely suitable for discussion in
this arena. I did my job, and in part my job consisted of presenting the
image of Eclipse as "successful." That you saw this as indicative of my
having a "successful partnership [with] Dean" may be the result of your
confusing my relationship to Eclipse with my relationship to Dean. What
went on behind the scenes between the two of us was not revealed until
after we were no longer partners, but accounts have appeared elsewhere in
print (in The Comics Buyer's Guide and The Comics Journal), so this is not
news: For the record, although Eclipse was a successful 5-owner
corporation, my personal realtionship with Dean (which began in 1981) was
not successful. It was a relationship that afforded considerable
intellectual pleasure but virtually no emotional pleasure to me, primarily
because i was often physically assaulted by Dean (both at home and in the
office, in front of employees). In 1989, we entered counseling because of
these spousal battery issues. The counseling, which continued for two and
a half years, mitigated the problem considerably, but obviously not to the
point where marriage or friendship could endure.
catherine yronwode
Dave Ratcliffe
- Look, i already apologized, in public, and repeatedly, for shooting my
- mouth off.
Too little, too late.
- Maybe you didn't see those posts. The first apology was posted
- 24 hours after my first -- and ONLY -- angry post. We are talking about
- stuff that appeared on my server a WEEK ago by now. Telling me what i
- should have done a week after i already told everyone i was sorry and that
- i myself knew that i should have done elsewise is kinda like...well, the
- cliche phrase is "whipping a dead horse."
-
- But, hey, you're right. I should have been polite. We both know that. And
- so does everyone else who is following this thread. Okay?
In addition to your already proven lack of knowledge of the net it
appears we can now add the lack of knowledge of the effects of
propogation delays.
Steve Blair
>> Of the 17 years of Eclipse's existence, i was
>> editor-in chief for 9. I earned between $23,000 and $25,000 per year
>> during that time, about what i would have earned as a low-level
>> editor atDC -- and a fair wage, as far as i was concerned.
Gee what a nice salary, more than most college sysadmins make.
nah nah nah, gonna threaten Lazlo next? For that kinda money
you could live in Guyana real nicely..and AOL wouldn't trouble
you(or you , us(more importantly))....
--
Thanks
Steven C. Blair
------------Austin is closed until further notice---------
<A href="file:/dev/mouse">Click here to disable mouse.</A>
Robert Dorsett
>
>Uh...does the phrase "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will
>never hurt me" ring a bell with you? Why do you think that phrase is a
>part of our vocabulary? Could it be because most of us realize -- through
>experience -- that there is a true difference between physical threats and
>verbal taunting?
Uh, babe, after years of dealing with customer issues, and believe me, I've
seem some whoppers, your vitriolic message caused even me to raise an eyebrow.
You can apologize and kowtow all you want: it still doesn't excuse the fact
that you're not the most pleasant type of human being, taking out your
frustrations on someone you obviously thought you had some power over. But
not only that: your ego needed the massaging of exposing your poor victim to
his peers. Why else post here?
But guess what: he wasn't a victim, you weren't the hero, and now you're
despised. Well, that's the way some things work out. Saddam Hussein took
on Kuwait, you took on Fletcher Mattox. And now his friends have come to
his defense. It speaks volumes that he hasn't had to post a single message
in rebuttal.
Time to get used to it and move on with life.
>Sorry, but you are SERIOUSLY mistaken in your analogous attribution of
>causality here. I apologized FIRST. Several days LATER (4 days on my
>server)
Well, your server's AOL, so that's worth about what it cost us. Uh, what did
it cost you, again?
>Granted, i have earned some enmity for my original post, which i deeply
>regret -- and, judging by writers such as yourself, i am the *subject* of
>some enmity, but i cannot accept that i have "earned" enmity for
>FLETCHER'S actions.
Well, given that most of us are relatively bright people, and I've noticed
quite a few Old Names coming to HIS defense, I wonder why everyone's
criticising your actions.
>> Start up your own well-managed
>> gateway, maybe you'll get forgiven... but I wouldn't count on it.
>
>To tell the truth, being "forgiven" by people who cannot think straight,
>and/or who argue from specious analogies, and/or who may be deliberately
>twisting facts to suit a flawed premise is not a high priority on my list
>of life goals.
If you don't want to watch people bitch about you, and if you've determined
that our opinions don't amount to anything, why the plaintive attempts to keep
salvaging your rep? It's not going to work: and it probably reflects another
aspect of that sad little girl who tried to intimidate what she thought was
a faceless civil servant.
This flame war has now entered level 3: net.psychoanalysis.
PS: The reason *I* dislike you is because you DID incite cs.utexas.edu's
withdrawal of its gateway, which has already caused a backlog of messages on
newsgroups I administer, and still has me scratching my head on what the
best alternative would be for the loss of such a simple and elegant news
posting mechanism. This will end up costing me dozens of hours as I imple-
ment new processes and software. You were whining about losing two messages
for what, alt.lucky? Where do I send the bill for MY lost time?
Bah.
Cedric Chin
|> Norman Richards (o...@cs.utexas.edu) wrote:
|>
|> : Well, thanks to the efforts of the original poster, dave and others,
|> : they are no longer providing this "service" to users outside of the CS
|> : dept at UT. I hope the original poster is proud of her efforts.
|>
|> how do you know they ever provided "service"? It was obvious that
|> users of AOL couldn't use it (even though you may have seen articles
|> from AOL users posted from that address).
Okay, let's amend it to "service used in a responsible manner". The reason
why AOL'ers were blocked was that a) they were misusing it and b) AOL requested it.
(Insert whining about Eclipse comments here to annoy Tim.)
Cedric.
c...@flubber.cc.utexas.edu
>Why did'nt AOL inform its users that they could no longer
>use the utexas gateway?
Perhaps announcing the unavailability of an unannounced service would
cause more trouble than it saved?
If Matts statement was intended as sarcasm, I missed the wry smirk.
cheers,
cb
--
Cyberspace Buddha /(o\
c...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu \o)/
Not your fathers buddha.
Bob Izenberg
# No, i did not. *Fletcher* took the gateway down. No
# amount of *words* could have forced him to. It was his
# choice. His free will. Live with it.
Hmmm... Let's play "what if." What if you didn't gripe
to Mr. Mattox, and didn't publish your gripe far and wide?
Sure, some other miscreant could have come along and been
a rude jerk. They'd be pilloried as you have been.
But if no one had done so, the mail-to-news gateway would
still be there, barring other catastrophic events. Take
the responsibility for what you did.
Now, if you were a system administrator, and you had to
choose whether to make a service available to the Net at
large, and to commit your time to maintain it, how would
the events that we're discussing affect your decision?
Bob
--
============================================================
Bob Izenberg home: 512-442-0614
b...@io.com work voice/fax: 512-250-4227/250-6424
============================================================
Rich Jankowski
> Having read what others had to say in response to my original post --
> flames and all -- i would like to comment, if i may.
<Apology deleted>
You need to get something straight, the fact that the gateway was run by
U Texas does *not* give you the right to use it as you wish. Something that
is funded by the government is not yours, try walking into a sub and demanding
to see the nukes. You have this misconception, that most AOL users have, that
the Internet belongs to them. They think that the AOL disk, once it falls out of the
latest issue of "Online Word", is their ticket to do as they wish on the Internet. Look
at the way they advertise, "At 10:05 he got his copy of America Online, by 10:15 (after
a few GPFs) he was tearing through the Internet.". The Internet doesn't belong to you,
the Internet doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the ISPs, the .govs, the .edus, the people
who's job it is to maintain it. That sure as hell isn't America Online or their users. In my
relatively short time on the Internet, I have seen more spam from AOL than any other service.
They should've closed the gateway down to AOL and all of the other "online services".
AOL has done nothing for the Internet but send millions of people, who don't care to learn
anything about what they are accessing. Wow, they bought Webcrawler, big whoop.
The damage they have done, with their porn trades and spamming is unfixable. Whenever
someone hears the Internet they think of AOL pedophiles exploiting children. Wouldn't it be
great if every server in the world killfiled everthing from AOL until AOL starts letting their users
know that they don't own the Internet? They do nothing to let their users know what the Internet
is all about. They just hope that the idiot loads the disk and pays the bills. You Cat are living
proof of this. Before coming back here with your "half assed" apology, go to your local bookstore
and find a book about the Internet. It may be instinct for you, but stay away from the "Dummys"
ones. Try "Zen and the Art of the Internet". Please read about the Internet, before you fuck something
else up.
P.S. Your apology pretty much sucks. Your credibility went out the window.
_________
Rich Jankowski
ri...@intac.com
Cyronwode
> Now, if you were a system administrator, and you had to
> choose whether to make a service available to the Net at
> large, and to commit your time to maintain it, how would
> the events that we're discussing affect your decision?
Good question. My answer is in 5 stages of increasing limitation. It does
not include shutting down the gateway.
(1)
If my system had the capacity to handle the current volume of
mail-to-usenet traffic from Compuserve, Prodigy, Netcom, Delphi and the
like, i think i would have accepted the offender's apology, talked things
over with AOL, and gone on from there.
(Incidentally, i got a message from Zac at AOL the day before the gateway
was closed saying that the newsgroup admin (Bob) was on vacation but that
they hoped to resolve the situation with Fletcher on Monday. Fletcher
closed the gateway before that happened.)
If i (as hypothetical system administrator again) could not get AOL to
promise to police their spam (although, you will recall that Fletcher said
in his adieu that they ARE paying attention to it now), i would write out
a bounced mail messge to be sent in response to the "average of 10 per
day" messages the gateway received from the AOL domain. ("Your message is
being returned because due to prior abuse, AOL and UT have agreed that the
cs.utexas.edu mail-to-usenet gateway is not open to senders from AOL until
further notice.")
(2)
If i felt that my gateway was overtaxed with messages from .com users in
general, i would have written a bounced mail message and henceforward
would have *politely* bounced ALL messages from .com domains. ("Your
message is being returned because the cs.utexas.edu mail-to-usenet gateway
is not open to senders from commercial internet service providers.")
(3)
If i felt i was still doing too much work, i would have written a bounced
mail message and henceforward would have *politely* bounced ALL messages
not originating at UT, other Texas .edu sites, or other .edu sites around
the country. ("Your message is being returned because the cs.utexas.edu
mail-to-usenet gateway is only open to senders .edu sites.")
(4)
If i felt i was still doing too much work, i would have written a bounced
mail message and henceforward would have *politely* bounced ALL messages
not originating at UT, or other Texas .edu sites. ("Your message is being
returned because the cs.utexas.edu mail-to-usenet gateway is only open to
senders from .edu sites in Texas.")
(5)
If i felt i was still doing too much work, i would have written a bounced
mail message and henceforward would have *politely* bounced ALL messages
not originating at UT. ("Your message is being returned because the
cs.utexas.edu mail-to-usenet gateway is only open to senders from
utexas.edu.")
Thanks for asking.
catherine yronwode