Re: New UseNet Gateway under construction

David S. Miller (davem@jenolan.rutgers.edu)
Mon, 26 May 1997 15:32:08 -0400


Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 15:34:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Christoph Lameter <clameter@waterf.org>

I have tried to setup up a new usenet gateway at
news.fuller.edu. The newsserver has public NNTP access. If anyone
needs a feed then please tell me. Help wanted and needed especially
since I dont have much experience with usenet.

Ugh, please do not do this at all. The usenet distribution of the
lists was stopped for two reasons:

1) Allowing posting via usenet brought tons of useless crap to the
lists. Some people can _only_ get these lists via email on the
net, so usenet originating crap postings was not making these
people happy.

2) When the lists can _reach_ usenet (this means read-only is BAD too)
this allows the spam hoarders to collect the addresses of people
who post to the lists for mass mailing purposes, no thanks.

Oh yeah, on number two, transforming the From: header text does _not_
help, I have seen intelligent mass mailing email grabbers which can
not only parse people's signatures, but can also undo most of the
usual transformations people do on their from addresses when they post
to usenet.

Sending anything to usenet is asking for trouble, not matter how you
try to be careful to protect yourself from the spammers. I do not
wish the vger lists to be exposed to this set of problems... I want
them to allow people to get work done, I cannot see how that can be
possible if they are made available to usenet.

Start an entire new news hierarchy if you wish, that exists _only_ in
Usenet and does not have any mailing list subset or origin. But I
think it will just meet the same fate that the comp.os.linux.*
hierarchy sees outside of the announce group, it is utterly useless
for discussion. The only way to pick out the signal from the noise is
to use facilities such as those provided by dejanews.com, and that is
really fucking sad...

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Yow! 11.26 MB/s remote host TCP bandwidth & ////
199 usec remote TCP latency over 100Mb/s ////
ethernet. Beat that! ////
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David S. Miller, davem@caip.rutgers.edu /_____________/ / // /_/ ><