Thanks to all who sent remarks on my question about repeated (list)
postings - the SurvPC list is out of any suspicion, I found the culprit:
once again, the incredibly sloppy set-up ("programming" would be too
much of a qualification for what they do there) of the (ex-)public,
Belgian telco service, Belgacom. And I want this to be known as
publicly as possible - I even think of sueing them, as soon as I found a
lawyer who is fit with these technical things - because they made me
lose mail too. Here's what they do:
If there's new mail incoming, it is stuffed into the heap of stored
mail in no whatsoever order at the box/account, the "last (read)" mark
is not kept between connections, there are no "read/unread" marks
either. Effect: deleting downloaded numbers of stored mail may destroy
any number of newly income mails.
The double, triple and sometimes quadrupled appearance of a same mail
which I observed is caused this way too - if a new mail had been
stuffed in somewhere into he range of formerly read, old mail which is
going to be deleted, then some read mail items at the end are left over
(while the newly income items are destroyed). Beautiful.
This adds to their "eating chars" quality; we had an exchange here on
the list about this earlier, on some ISPs doing this - they had their
POP3 server sending out single-dot-lines (end-of-message markers for all
known mail clients, and patently illegal) for instance, in the
following case:
--------------------quote:--------------
<snip from a news magazine>
anti-corruption unit run by Justice Willem Heath last November, but the SA
media has to date treated them with an exaggerated care. The report says the
allegations submitted to Heath
indicate attempts at massive self-enrichment
by former members of Umkhonto weSizwe and political associates
. <==!!!
-------------------unquote.-------------
[ I added the "<==!!!" to make the salient point visible and to secure
its tranmission.]
The original was written/sent from a Mac, before "indicate" was an
(8-bit) opening-quote sign, and after "associates" was a closing-quote
char (even this Mac-8-bit specific), immediately followed by the
period, and after the period is a newline (end of paragraph). Illegal
re-transformation "from 7bit to 8bit" at, and by, the POP3-server of
this Belgacom server results in "eating" the 8-bit signs, inserting
CR-LF sequences in its place, thus isolating the end-period of the text
into an isolated dot on a new line, and thus creating an end-of-message:
broken mail - and possible loss of following mails.
I have a new e-ddress (and an own domain) to definitely avoid that screwed
ex-"public service" - it should work by now: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; the
old and slow box <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, in fact at a South American server,
will remain though - and as soon as the "last mile" will be deregulated
(coming Jan.1st here in Belgium), that Belgacom telco has lost one
bonded client for good.
Not everybody could afford such a radical solution (domain name and
"own" server is 125 USD per year, add the usual dial-up phone fees),
and I think it's important to act against "techno-racism" (as I call
it: M$-corrupted net warlords hiding behind pseudo-"technical"
mechanisms). All witness accounts of similar cases welcome !
// Heimo Claasen // < hammer at inti dot be > // Brussels 2000-10-29
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer
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