[ih] Spam

[Mike Padlipsky]

At 06:08 PM 9/28/2003, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> > Is there a policy reason for the option not being enabled for
> > the Internet-History mailing list?
>
>Yes. The owner of the list insists that it is bad to restrict
>postings, which means we get more spam messages sent to the list than
>actual content. I do not understand this decision, but I don't believe
>he is likely to ever change his mind.

it happens that i don't agree w/ the decision, either; but i'll certainly 
understand if he continues to adhere to it after you've been ... incautious 
enough to've sent that to the entire list rather than just as a private 
aside to the sender of the first part.  i'll regret it, but i'll understand it.

[sent to the entire list rather than as a private aside in the probably 
forlorn hope that since the sender of the second part appears to believe in 
the power of 'naming and shaming', perhaps he's vulnerable to it 
himself.  i mean, instead of mobilizing hostility by being cute and/or 
snide, if you really want to see things changed, why in the world didn't 
you use the question as an excuse to ask for a poll of the membership on 
the issue rather than being cute and/or snide and almost guaranteeing 
joe'll dig his heels in even harder?]

speaking of naming and shaming, tho, and just for the novelty value of 
seeing at least part of an [ih] 'posting' actually have something to do w/ 
internet history, perhaps somebody whose familiarity w/ the origins of 
'network solutions inc.' is greater than mine [*] would care to comment on 
them, now that nsi's current owner is gathering so much well-deserved bad 
press for its antics in re tacky manipulations of the domain name 
system.  all i recall is what i recounted in an article a certain 
self-satisfied 'publisher' of a certain somewhat widely circulated 
'net-related 'journal' was too ... self-satisfied to publish, namely:

Granted that it's unknowable whether Jon's life was materially shortened by 
the stresses attendant to his attempts to elevate the tastes of his 
governmental sponsors/patrons, but I must confess to an 
emotional  conviction that it was.

This almost certainly stems from my lingering sense of guilt over not 
having argued harder with him when he told me that "the Government just 
gave the Name Server contract to some little Subsection 8 company in 
Washington" (almost certainly not verbatim, but I believe pretty close). I 
replied, "Well, I hope _they_ have the sense to demand that whoever asks 
for the 'Coke' domain at least sent the request in on a sincere-looking 
company letterhead" (probably even closer to verbatim), alluding to an 
earlier-discussed topic, but he merely said "Well, it's _their_ contract 
and _their_ problem now" (or words very much to that effect) and we let it 
go at that.

Not that I have any reason to believe I would've won the argument.  Just 
that I'd feel better now for having tried harder then('92 or '93 it must 
have been, if the putative histories of the DNS, IANA, ICANN, et al. can of 
snakes I've glanced at in the last year or two are correct as to when the 
NIC contract was "re-competed" ... and if memory doesn't serve a fault).

[excerpted from "pipers' rights", unpublished e-ms, copyright 2003 by m.a. 
padlipsky, w/ permission of, and for that matter by, The Author.  the piece 
as a whole, b/t/w, took the position that it was inappropriate to have 
criticized jon postel in a book on the stated grounds that 'he who pays the 
piper calls the tune', after pointing out that jon's funding came mainly 
from the federal government, because pipers have/should have rights w/r/t 
attempting to elevate the tastes of the payers/would-be tune callers.]

discussing how said 'little subsection 8 company' [and for all i know i've 
even forgotten the exact designation of the term used to designate 
nominally 'minority'-owned companies that were given preferential treatment 
in certain contract competitions by the federal government, in the early 
'90s, anyway] not only was allowed to make as much money as it did before 
it was acquired, much less how its subsequent acquirer is getting away w/ 
the games its playing w/r/t the dns [much less, as i'm given to believe, 
w/r/t encryption 'technology', out of the other side of its array of heads 
and/or mouths], would be, i submit, a far better use of [ih] bandwidth than 
fussing about spam.  or, at any rate, than fussing about spam's getting 
thru to [ih].  certainly, if anybody wanted to make some history and use 
this list as a sounding board for polishing an anti-spam approach that'd 
actually work, i'd be glad to see it [tho i can't speak for the list owner, 
of c.].

[*]
make that for smallish values of 'somebody'.  i.e., preferably not the ... 
self-satisfied twit who horned in on the discussion of the "pipers' rights" 
piece after it was rejected by the ... self-satisfied 'publisher', in still 
another blatant, self-serving attempt to show that his familiarity with 
everything to do w/ the 'net is better than anybody else's [and/or to show 
that he was far better at sucking up to 'net-related 'publishers' than i -- 
tho of c. i don't have to be good at it, since i no longer make my living 
off the 'net, unlike said twit].


cheers, map

[whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and create 
a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly customary 
e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing for a long time 
now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't know ... and who's 
further broken down and done http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html , 
rather grudgingly]