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

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On 7/16/02 9:49 PM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

> You can document your policies, and the person who wants to sign up can
> decide whether they can deal.

I don't think that's always good enough. You have to do what you can to back
the policies up. Unless, of course, your policy is "you're screwed if you
post to my list, and good luck stopping the spammers". Which is,
effectively, what "make the owner of the mailbox handle it" does as a
policy. Although I doubt you'd phrase it quite that way...

>> But I'm not bitter.
> 
> Naw.  Not at all.

What has me pissed off is that I thought we did a pretty good job of fixing
the weaknesses of Mailman in 2.1, and figured maybe we'd have some time to
sit back and think through some really nice conceptual breakthrough type
stuff. And now, we're slogging in the trenches again looking for ways to
keep the bullets out of the latrine long enough to get anything
accomplished....


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

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

Newbie. 

> But that brings us almost immediately around to "why use email to do a
> Usenet's job"... which *LOTS* of mailing lists are doing, frankly.

Because usenet is so broke none of us even think of fixing it any more?

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

>> Sometimes, the best solution is a public flogging, to teach everyone else to
>> be more careful next time. But if you overdo it, people tune you out, too.
> 
> You've jumped ship before.  So have I.

Hell, I turned jumping ship into an art form. In my heyday, usenet people
set their clocks by it. Well, maybe their calendars.

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

> They'll learn, eventually.

Not that I've noticed.

>> We're working on that (a quiet voice whispers: "but a f---ing mac already!
>> It has unix inside for all you geeks, too!")
> 
> <roar>

Heh. A unix box with a pretty damn good gui, in a lap top so you can carry
it anywhere, for about a grand. Effing wow.

Oh, never mind..... (giggle)

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

I am amazed.

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

You flatter me. I think.


-- 
Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/

The Cliff's Notes Cliff's Notes on Hamlet:
    And they all died happily ever after