On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Tim May wrote:
> Nope, my archives, going back to 1992, show that this was your first
> post. (Though I delete trivial posts and"me toos" and spam, so
> perhaps I deleted your gems...)
Probably not. I've tended to lurk here, at first because it's a bit hard
to reply when your only contact with a list is somebody's monthly zipped
archives that you're downloading and later because I tend not to post if I
can't add anything useful to the conversation. Not to mention I was
probably subscribed under a different name altogether, last time.
> Physician, heal thyself. If you want more discussion here, start by
> contributing.
Here's the way I see it. I am saying something substantive. I'm saying
"There's a hell of a lot of spam here, and it's really negatively
affecting the signal to noise ratio. Should I do what I can about it, or
is someone already doing something about it. Or has it been decided that
the best thing to do is for individuals to filter it out, and ignore it,
for some reason. And if so, what is/are the reason(s)."
When I posted that, the only traffic I'd seen from the list was a lot of
spam, one thread that was flat out stupid, in that the information is
easily available to anyone with half a clue (how to make bombs) and one
thread that was flat out stupid in that announcing that you want kiddie
porn, especially on a list like this one, is just asking for the local
authorities to come beating on your door (unless you actually live in a
place where child-porn is legal, in which case it's stupid for the same
reason the bomb question is stupid). The recipe for chocolate bombes was
amusing, but not exactly why I've ever read cypherpunks (not a criticism
of the author, I think it was a clever response, but a statement of
opinion on why I have read cypherpunks in the past).
Apparently, due both to provider mail problems and to some wrong
assumptions on my part with writing procmail rules, there was a bit more
signal and a lot more spam. Looking at the archives at inet-one.com now
(which perhaps I should have done before I originally posted, but I was
working under the assumption that I was getting all list mail, which was,
apparently, a bad assumption) there's a lot more signal than I
thought. And I'm not getting large chunks of it. So I may have more local
problems than I realized.
This is a good thing, I was getting very afraid that I was just going to
have to write off cypherpunks as 'yet another thing that was cool but got
killed with the increasing commercialization and rise of fascism (oops, I
mean government-interference) and general cluelessness of the net',
unsubscribe and get on with my life. I was apparently wrong. I'm glad,
personally. I don't have the knowledge to recreate cypherpunks, never
claimed to. I don't even claim to be able to start too many intelligent
conversations here. I do claim to be able to do something with spam, like
read headers and scream at upstream providers and occasionally even get
something done about it. I do claim to be able to contact 'legitimate'
business who's resources are being misused (as seems to be the case with
some of the spammish stuff here) and get them to remove cypherpunks off
their lists and maybe educate them about the ways their site is being
misused and suggest ways they could prevent it. And sometimes they do
listen, at least enough of the time that it seems worth my time to do
it. Esspecially if there's actual signal here, which there does seem to
be. But I don't want to double someone else's effort, and I don't want to
step on anyone's toes, should there already be a list-wide solution that I
don't know about.
> Oh, and "toad.com" is hardly the place to post.
<shrug> it was the address I had, or rather, it was the address that I had
that seemed to be the right list. If you'd like to tell me where I should
be posting (no, /dev/null is not exactly what I'm thinking) and why, I'll
certainly consider your thoughts.
Vinnie
--
Wise were my fathers | [EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED]
who carved intricate flowers |
on samuri swords -- Leslie Fish |
