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That's the main point - "Spam" implies multiple reproduction (a crossposted article only has to be transferred once), and very wide dispersal.

Keeping the latter in mind, the anniversary of the C&S Green Card Lottery post should really be April 12-14th (the script ran for nearly three days). The March postings were on a much smaller scale, and mostly to groups outside North America (those with a toplevel country code, like fr.*).

There's an interesting 1994 interview with loony paranoiac Martha Siegel here.

Where are they now, I wonder? Institutionalised? Jailed? I somehow doubt they're Rich, even though they fully deserve to be by 2004 economic standards.

Please take a look at http://www.antispews.org for more information before using SPEWS.

Actually, antispews.org is likely being operated by spammers, as the Osirusoft FAQ suggests. (If nothing else, they are spammers of USENET newsgroups, since they kiboze for references to "SPEWS" and troll in response, much as Serdar Argic once did with "Turkey".) Naturally, spammers are pissed off at SPEWS, because it is simply put the most effective tool presently in the field for denying spammers access to (1) victims, and (2) willing ISPs to host them. Innumerable spammers have been terminated as a result of SPEWS listings.

There is no conceivable informed controversy as to whether or not SPEWS is effective at getting spammers off the Net. Whether or not SPEWS is a good tool for your site to use as a tool for reducing your spam count is quite another question. In my personal experience (as a security and email administrator for my site, which is a research institution) SPEWS is extremely valuable. I read my mail logs and ascertain that SPEWS usage blocks spam, with a remarkably low incidence of false positives.

In the past week, our incoming mail server has blocked 969 messages on account of SPEWS, with zero reports of false positives from our users. (To be honest, we get about one such report a month, and we whitelist the offending IP address. It's usually in China; we have several Chinese researchers.) Our locally maintained blacklist blocks about twice as much spam, and our use of sbl.spamhaus.org blocks about five times as much -- but that is biased by the fact that we consult those lists before SPEWS, and there is a good deal of overlap between them.

I would not recommend that ISPs who offer email service to their users use SPEWS by default, though it would be a valuable optional service. The DNSBLs I would recommend everyone use are:

• sbl.spamhaus.org, which lists only netblocks occupied by known repeat spam offenders
• relays.ordb.org, which lists only open mail relays; and
• proxies.relays.monkeys.com, which lists only open proxies.

These are all low-to-no-false-positives lists which I feel comfortable recommending to every ISP regardless of its stance on SPEWS.

Just like the good old days...

It's nice to see some people defending the right to have a useful e-mail account--maybe one day (far in the future) we can reclaim USENET and the web too...

The best part is when Shatner makes an unannounced appearance and all of them join in a rendition of "Tamborine Man"

I'm not falling for your disinformation, you NRO patsy!

All discerning people realize that, although it is passed off as a harmless lark, "Where's George" is something much more sinister!

&ltfnord!&gt
Starting in 1997, MKULTRA-NG mind-controlled puppets have been indoctrinated to access the "Where's George" site when the recieve a dollar bill with the appropriate command coding on the back. Consciously, they think that they are entering in the Federal Reserve serial number from the bill. But subconsciously, they are entering their MKGUID, which uniquely identifies the MK sleeper agent.

This allows the Illuminati to easily track their agents in the field. If they have new orders for the erstwhile Manchurian candidate, they will be routed to a seperate website with where they will find their updated briefing material.
&lt/fnord!&gt

Of course, the proceeding was totall bullshit, and actually part of the insidious NWO CONTELINPRO program.

"I'm still pissed I never bought a Segar Ardic (sp?) t-shirt"

I still have my Serdar Argic T-shirt, the howling in the wires world tour. I've worn it maybe once, it's always seemed in bad taste.

For those who don't remember, Serdar Argic was a half-human, half-bot who crossposted to almost every Usenet group for months (over a year?) about his pet cause. That cause was whitewashing the Turkish genocide of the Armenians back during the First World War. In fact he claimed the Armenians committed all the crimes, against the Turks. And he had the facts to prove it! Bizarre.

Since he grepped the whole newsfeed and quasi-auto-replied to any post mentioning "Turkey," he became very popular around Thanksgiving...

Routers.
Scientology links.
Open protocols.
Free music.
Post-9/11 web responses.
Chat hosts and BBS admins.
Ancient packet switchers.
Executive buzzwords.
Open Source.
Online directories.
Cyber greed.
That guy who just fragged you in Wolfenstein.
The Imperial Domain Droids.
Well-meaning POW/MIA industry dupes.
The Hamster Dance.
Paranoid cartoon fantasy diagrams.
War, damnation and hypertext.
Swedish fiber stations.
Statutory IRC.
Beepstalkers.
Geeks.

Heh. I read that article about SF ISPs being gobbled up. I got thinking, "hey, that sounds familiar, only it happened here five years ago!"

A really good article about the demise of io.org can be found here.And another version of the story is available here.

It is true. Joe Baptista is a frothing lunatic and a troll, at best. I'd bet that like his other wild threats, he won't go through with this, though it would be amusing to watch. Another link on this loon is here.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

Folks, !Dr. Joe Baptista (that's "not-Doctor") is a long-time net kook/troll/prankster, and this is just his latest desperate plea for attention. Toronto residents have been unfortunatly familiar with his antics for years and years now, and he seems to have recently developed a particular fondness for trying to stir up trouble around DNS issues.

Baptista was last seen threatening to Sue Paul Vixie and MAPS/RBL, but frankly he's a shadow of his former self these days. Way back in tha day, Baptista was a major irritant to the Provincial Government of Ontario, trying to fax bomb them into oblivion.

And let's not even speak of his friend Bob Allisat...