> What do you think about this and have you seen this popular site before?
> This was taken from a web site http://www.afvr.org
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It sounds very reasonable to me. The
> suggestions offered by AFVR are very good ones. Now, good luck in
> trying to get them implemented, maybe with a couple more tweaks.
> PAT]
Pat,
There are appropriate forums for discussing this issue, but I don't
count news groups on animation, amateur radio, satellite television,
and even telecom, to be among those forums.
These guys spammed almost every news group with this. As far as I'm
concerned, if they spam, the message goes out with the messenger, no
matter how worthy it might be. I don't acknowledge spammers except to
report them to their ISP to have their account cancelled.
Given your attitude towards spam, I'm surprised you would pay them any
attention.
Ben
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let's examine your last paragraph, Ben.
In case there is any doubt in anyone's mind, I **hate** spam. So much,
in fact, I rarely read Usenet newsgroups nor use the computer for
anything other than maintaining this newsgroup and my own web pages.
If I were just starting out on the net, in 2004 instead of 1981,
chances are I would not even do that much. Therefore, if that AFVR
message was 'spammed into several groups' I really would not know. It
showed up *here* (c.d.t.) ONE TIME ONLY and the message was of
reasonable interest in and of itself. Let's say the poster has a
'clean record' where I am concerned. Even though I pay little attention
to Usenet, or the net in general, I *do* know what spam looks like and
I get a lot of it.
Normally 'Spam Assassin' gets a few hundred for me each day, and
somewhere around 85 percent of my regular (non-spam, in theory)
mailbox is spam also. Spam is when I: (a) get several identical items
in the mail each day, (b) receieve mail purported to have been sent
by myself, (c) receive mail with my name in the subject line, (d) get
mail from known spammers, or known spam subject lines, and a few other
clues which I consider to be my own business. Believe me, Ben, you do
not see 99.5 percent of the mail which reaches my box because it is such
trash. I have adjusted the point-scoring thing on Spam Assassin as
closely as I can without losing *legitimate* mail as well. So you may
have well regarded that message as spam, but we are getting some
replies to it so not everyone thinks it is spam. In any event, please
do not blame any contradictions in my 'attitude about spam'. PAT]
Ben Bass (benbass@verizon.net)