TELECOM Digest Editor wrote (in private correspondece to me):
> When I use the term 'spam-enablers' the kinds of netizens I am speaking
> about.
I think so, but could you elaborate please?
Thanks,
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED
Company website: http://JustThe.net/
Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/
E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I borrowed permanently that phrase (at
least the '-enabler' portion) from a Kansas guy we all know and love,
Dr. Fred Phelps of Topeka. Fred has several highly successful web
sites based out of his home in Topeka (assuming 'highly successful'
can be defined as high-volume, high traffic sites, even if the content
is by and large gibberish or pseudo-intellectual nonsense.) Fred first
coined the -enabler suffix to deal with what he sees as a world-wide
scourge, gay people. Two of his web sites http://www.godhatesfags.com
and http://www.smellthebrimstone.com are absolutely priceless. In
fact, please check out that second link here and now:
http://www.smellthebrimstone.com then return here and continue
reading. 'Smell the Brimstone" asks if you can smell what hell has
cooking for all of us, sung to the tune 'America the Beautiful' by
Katherine Lee Bates, (a/k/s/ 'Materna') your choice of Windows Media
or Real Player. Did you see Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, the New York
Fire Department and Condi Rice in the little video? Then as time
permits look at his several other web sites including
http://www.priestsrapeboys.com and http://www.godhatesamerica.com and
http:/www.yourpastorisawhore.com They are all quite funny, and in
Fred's opinion, quite serious.
Dr. Phelps certainly does not mince words. Most people in Kansas
absolutely hate the old guy; in fact when we had the obligatory
state constitutional amendment thing against same sex marriage here,
it _almost did not pass_, so many people thought that "if we go for
that, the world will think we are on the side of that crazy man over in
Topeka, Fred Phelps", so it barely -- just barely -- squeaked though.
Anyway, his use of 'fag-enablers' inspired my use of 'spam-enablers',
as netizens who simply try to either totally ignore the way spam/scam
and viri has rooted itself in our net almost entirely rendering the
net useless for anything which is not sex-pornography based or commer-
cially (in many odd ways) based. Some enablers just ignore it and live
with tons of crap to be weeded out each day and far too often almost
total breakdowns of their personal networks. Other enablers apologize
for it, (i.e. "isn't it too bad there is so much spam"), or they are
forever adjusting and fine-tuning their filters, trying to avoid
losing good messages while avoiding the 'bad' messages.
But never does an enabler approve of finding a bonfide, known,
confirmed spammer (that is to say, someone whom our computer forensics
experts have idenfified as such, not just some hapless soul whose
zombie computer was used, etc), dragging the person through the town
square, whipping and beating him, holding him up to the ridicule of
netizens everywhere, giving the person a 'fair trial' complete with an
eight to ten year sentence in prison. An enabler would be horrified by
that. An enabler makes excuses, i.e. "our net is not set up to work
like that", "it is not the job of ICANN", "Vint Cerf and his visions
of the net back in 1994 cannot be blamed," etc, etc, etc I have heard
all the excuses, so have most of you. And here is another good one: it
is called 'if/then' and it goes like this: if netizens take Action A
(whatever that is, postage stamps, certain required indicia in the
headers of all outgoing mail) then the spammers will take Action B to
offset it. In other words they will forge the indicia to get
themselves through, or maybe they will spend the pittance remittance
required for postage to be able to continue dummping their loads of
trash and since the ISPs cannot be trusted to continue their research
work, we netizens (or you guys, they mean to say) will be right back
where you started, and those of us (insert here someone like 'move
on') will be in dire straits because we cannot afford to pay the
postage bill and we will have to go out of business and cancer
inquirers will not be able to get needed help either. Those kinds of
rationales are what qualify EFF (a signatory to the move-on petition)
to be Spam-Enablers.
Okay Steve, is that sufficent elaboration on the term 'Spam-Enabler'?
No one objects to your using Band-Aids as needed (spam filters) to
temporarily rescue your net which has fallen on hard times; what some
of us object to is the use of the same band-aid to patch what long
ago became a horrendous, huge, gaping hole in the side of the dike,
which only gets worse as time goes on.
Geoffrey Welsh provided me with a slogan which I use in the mast head
of each issue here (if you only read c.d.t. or one of the RSS
syndicate feeds or 'Digest_Online' then you don't get to see it) which
says in part "We are not naive enough to think Spam will ever go away,
but we must continue to fight it as we do all crime". Very true, but
if there is some particular crime in your physical community (wherever
you live) which routinely had reached the 85-90 percent or higher
level in permeating the the actions of the people in your town (as
spam has done to us here in virtual-land), wouldnt you say it was time to
get down to business and rid ourselves once and for all of the plague?
I certainly would say so. I think it is time to begin requiring
licenses for computers. Six or eight digit numbers (like MAC numbers)
on every computer as part of the indicia, available to one and all too
see (mock, etc). We might not know WHO was the present owner of the
machine but we would know WHICH machine was making the nuisance of
itself and being such an affront to everyone else. Publish those
numbers as part of _every_ email indicia. You don't like that? Well
fine, then shut up and don't say anything on the net at all. I
suppose we could even find a useful function for ICANN out of all
this; as the keeper of the license numbers with a requirement that
users selling/trading/stealing computers from others were required to
notify ICANN abut the machine's new location. PAT]
Steve Sobol (sjsobol@JustThe.net)