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xs4all provides its users with a free copy of pgp and documentation. They encourage their users to use them and support their privacy.

I'd love my ISP to do that kind of things.

Background followup. A list of other and related Canadian cases is here. Regrettably, many of the links in this document are broken. I'm quoting highlights here, all quotes from that web page.

The story is convoluted and long. In 1977 the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) alleged that Scientology was practicing medicine without a license. Scientology sued and lost. A Scientologist got a job at the OMA and stole documents - later pled guilty on that.

In 1983, the Ontario Provincial Police searched the Toronto Church of Scientology on a warrant for "tax fraud, criminal fraud and deceit in the sale of courses and E-Meters, and conspiracy to effect an unlawful purpose, i.e., the use of the Guardian Office to commit indictable offenses including theft and breaking and entering."

By 1992 "The theft charges were dismissed due to inadmissibility of documents; the Church of Scientology of Toronto was found guilty on charges of breach of trust, and several of the individual defendants were found guilty on various charges."

The case I cited above was related to this whole can of worms.

Henry Troup - hwt@igs.net

When you have shell-access at your ISP (or have your own *nix-mailserver), see my procmailrc.txt about how to set aside spam (and other bulk-mail) by using procmail . It doesn't call any extra shell-processes, so it must be quite efficient.

The check on the X-ISP-SPAM-Warning: -header(that is added by my ISP)doesn't catch much. There is more than just spammers in the coded IP-ranges, for example M$ Security Bulletins are set aside as well: I read those once every few days by ssh -ing to my ISP's servers and using mutt .

Of course this doesn't solve much. But it does win back some of my time and other limited resources. It's war out there.

An earlier example of attempts to stifle linking---relevant not only here, but foreshadows e.g. the 2600 DeCSS case. Excerpt:

'In article 15, the plaintiffs state that a so-called 'hyperlink', a reference to the location of another document, is also to be considered as "publication and/or duplication by the user and the provider". A hyperlink is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, more than a description of a location that can be activated. Plaintiffs' statement is the same as saying that a library or the writer of a book can be accused of duplication and/or publication because they publish the name, number and location of a certain book or article in a footnote, a bibliography or in an archive entry...

A hyperlink refers to a location. Hyperlinks regularly refer to other hyperlinks. The whole WWW is nothing but a complicated conglomerate of hyperlinks and files. Are all these systems breaking the law in plaintiffs' opinion? Should the whole WWW be indicted whenever there's a document available somewhere that is illegal in plaintiffs' opinion?

A hyperlink does not formally add anything. The publication is a fact as soon as the page is on Internet. Making the document available can only be considered as publication and/or duplication when the number of potential users is increased by this act. But this doesn't apply to Internet, because all users already had access to the files, they just didn't know where to find them yet. Making a catalogue (which is what hyperlinks are basically about) means making data easily accessible. In my opinion, that is not illegal.'

Nope, they'll never wake up. Hubbard himself made a rule about this: Never Defend, Always Attack; Scientologists do what Hubbard says. Scientology does things that generate bad press so often that their oposition has developed a name for it: foot bullet. The Scientologists keep shooting themselves in the foot over and over and over, and they can't stop, because Hubbard himself told them to do it.

OT III Info (level 3)

Bare-Faced Messiah

There are those who still believe that Hubbard died years earlier and that his death was covered up by the messengers while they consolidated their control over the church. There are those who still believe that Hubbard will soon be entering another body, or might even have done so already, prior to resuming his position as the head of Scientology. There are those who still believe that, for all his faults, Hubbard made a significant contribution to helping his fellow men. And there are those who now believe, sadly, that they were the unwitting victims of one of the most successful and colourful confidence tricksters of the twentieth century.

Bare-Faced Messiah

There are those who still believe that Hubbard died years earlier and that his death was covered up by the messengers while they consolidated their control over the church. There are those who still believe that Hubbard will soon be entering another body, or might even have done so already, prior to resuming his position as the head of Scientology. There are those who still believe that, for all his faults, Hubbard made a significant contribution to helping his fellow men. And there are those who now believe, sadly, that they were the unwitting victims of one of the most successful and colourful confidence tricksters of the twentieth century.

Chris Owen exposes all.

They believe that they are superiour beings (members claim to have gained superhuman powers by their Sc.-training). We, the non-members, are just stupid "wogs", who can be cheated, lied to, even killed at will. Hubbard actually promised his members the superhuman power of killing such enemies by mere thought.

They believe that they are superiour beings (members claim to have gained superhuman powers by their Sc.-training). We, the non-members, are just stupid "wogs", who can be cheated, lied to, even killed at will. Hubbard actually promised his members the superhuman power of killing such enemies by mere thought.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~harmwal/issue/wal-01.txt

Look at the example I copied to my website!

These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).

[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

SqyD

These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).

[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

SqyD

These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).

[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

SqyD

These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).

[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

SqyD

These guys have been on the forefront of allmost any ethical debate concerning the Internet and digital freedoms in general. XS4ALL was formed in 1993 by the infamous hackergroup Hacktic(RIP) and was the first dutch ISP to allow access to private persons. Since then they haven't like so many others sold out to profitmaking instincts but kept to their goal of providing high quality, afforable internet access to the masses. Over the years they've suceeded without giving in on netpolitical views like the right to privacy, freedom of speech and freedom of choice.

- On numerous other occasions they've been in court defending the privacy of their costumers and other basic rights.
- Threre's no single ad on any of their pages. They're an internet provider, not a advertising agency! Me and many others will gladly pay some more 's for that.
- They offer analog, isdn(128k), gsm, gprs and adsl access and their service includes free licences for mcafee virusscan and pgp software (all platforms). Do you know any other ISP that does that?
- There's a whole lot of other goodies you don't find at your average ISP: a telnet/ssh shell, static ip with bSMTP (if you want it), adfree secure webmail, and good public irc, gaming and hosting servers.
- Their bussiness services are also quite exelent.
- And they're definitly the only isp in the world that grows marijuana in the workplace!!! (in dutch).

[DISCL: No, I don't own stock or work there, I'm just a ver loyal costumer that has been with them since 1996 both privatly and professionaly.]

SqyD

The essential point is that XS4ALL has no legal conveyance obligation. It has nevertheless given its users and/or customers and/or subscribers (hereinafter referred to as customers) a commitment that it will convey all e-mail messages and has thus imposed a conveyance obligation upon itself.

That is not something you just do - that takes a lot of work I believe. However, here is a pretty good overview of the browsers support for the W3C recommendations: http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?/~ppk/js/b rowsers.html.

• Take all the marketing cruft out of it.
• Provide a distribution with a clean installer, making all the components user-selectable.
• Active Desktop, Web Integration and All The Wizards Must Go
• Mouse pointer shall not have a distracting shadow.
• We do not need a bouncing "Click here to begin", either.
• Fix the default settings for Outlook Express. Remove the ability to run scripts and post in HTML, and make it GNKSA compliant.

Hooray for redheads!

But realistically, ANY manager would do better to read through and UNDERSTAND the Hackers Employment FAQ.

Alyson's not only hot but she's not afraid to play a lesbian role either. Whatta gal!

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.

I cheer for Alyson Hannigan!

How did NR ever lead you to believe that numerical programs can be cleanly written in C? The C code in Numerical Recipes is terrible. The authors basically transplanted their Fortran code directly to C, resulting in unreadable programs. They ignore C conventions, for example by using Fortan-style arrays based at 1 instead C's 0-based arrays. Variable names are most often uninformative, at most two letters. Furthermore their algorithms often implement special rather than general cases of the problems they seek to solve. Finally, while the prose can enlightening, it's been questioned whether the authors are even qualified to write such a book. But don't take my word for it, read NASA/JPL's page `Why not use Numerical Recipes,' which begins with the statement, ``We have found Numerical Recipes to be generally unreliable.''

On the topic of OpenGL, your logic doesn't follow. The mathematical content of the 3D graphics routines is implemented within the OpenGL library (not so much the game itself), and these routines are implemented in C, assembly, and hardware, not because these media provide for the most eloquent expression of mathematics, but because they provide for the fastest implementation, and speed is of primary importance in 3D graphics.

You are right that C++ has some interesting applications in mathematics. See for example Yet Another Computer Algebra System.

Somehow, it is quite hard to _really_ initiate a secure communication without much work.

Indeed.

I want my porn on the screen now, not milliseconds later. I don't want the computer crash either while I'm watching pics of a hot redhead and stroking my one-eyed trouser snake.

I'd love to flick this girl's clit.

PS. Here are some pictures that I assure are worthy of your time.

Try feeling yourself after you click here.

Wank fodder

She can pee on my cornflakes.

agreed, /. should be focused more on another woman. Portman can't live up to the hype..

the samba guys used to use YODL before they switched to docbook. pretty easy to use, and you can convert to other document languages including html, latex, etc.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jantien/yodl/

no, but this might..

Right now I am on a VPN connecting 3 machines: a NT box, my Linux box, and a Win98 box.

As the anonyous coward said a second ago (and nearly as rudely as I am about to) - which bit of VPN didn't you understand. My guess is the Virtual bit.

What you're talking about, (shall I quote the anonymous coward for a rude word to use here), is a NAT'ed Private Network - see that, PN - no V for Virtual anywhere there.

Thankyou.

this is VPN software, as this also claims to be, though it's not very good.

HOT
HOTTER
HOTTEST

HOT
HOTTER
HOTTEST

HOT
HOTTER
HOTTEST

If you have been following this on bugtraq MS hasn't fixed the problem and it is still possible to hide the file. Click this link and a patched IE6 will tell you you're downloading a txt file but it's really an exe. http://kuperus.xs4all.nl/microsoft.txt

Cable companies are used to consumers of one or more of their products who can't do anything more with that product then choosing to consume it or not, after having paid for it. You pay for a cable subscription, one or more extra packages and you hope to receive them when you want to watch. As long as the signal is available everywhere, no problem. Your customers cannot influence the cable reception of their neighbours.

Some 'bad' customers get a cable splitter and connect a second TV to the same cable connection (oh the horror! the cheapskates!). By the way, in my country (the Netherlands) I can't get a second cable subscription in the same house. I'll have to get my own splitter and/or amplifier.

Then cable modems came. And all of a sudden there is a lot more diversity to what people can and can't do with their cable (modem) connection. Even send data back to the Internet! (gasp!). Or even worse, somehow have that Internet available on more then one computer!

So cable companies have to play ISP. Do really new stuff like provide reliable mail and reliable connections to the Internet.

And make users somehow pay for their usage. They try to make this fit into simple models.. Joe Sixpack home user who would have otherwise dialed into AOL for many hours and Brent Bussinessman who wants to be online for the office. Because their billing model can only deal with so many different pricing structures.

There is a different system that might work. The cable company provides 'IP transport' between your cablemodem and the ISP, and the ISP connects you to the Internet and your e-mail, your news and other services.

This model now works for (A)DSL in the Netherlands. The phone company doesn't play ISP, they just connect my line to the DSLAM in the exchange. By my login I select the ISP I want and the rate I want to use (my adsl login is koos@xs4all-basic-adsl) and the router in the telco network sets up a virtual circuit with my ISP, xs4all.
This can work with any transport protocol that supports logins and sessions, like PPPoE and PPTP. Which also lowers the chance of unauthorized hookups and cable packet sniffing.

I get two bills, one from KPN, the phone company for the adsl link and one from XS4ALL, the ISP for the Internet connection and services. If I use too much bandwidth I may get charged extra for that (XS4ALL isn't clear on this matter, I just wish they would say N bytes per month and extra bytes cost you this fee).

Why don't the cable companies go to this model ? The only reason I can think of is that they always had virtual monopolies and don't want to have competitors on their turf. The ISP's are no competitor for KPN since KPN is not an ISP itself. (KPN indirectly owns a number of the ISP's that offer ADSL connections but in the day-to-day reality KPN and the ISP are two different parties to deal with).

This model has its disadvantages. The problem with your connection is in the equipment of the (Telco, ISP) depending on who you ask (ISP, Telco). At this moment, moving from one address to the other and trying to keep a working ADSL connection is a nightmare.

About running servers at home and sharing the connection for multiple computers.. XS4ALL encourages the users to do just that. XS4ALL had deals on cheap routers and tells people that they can run their own webserver, gameserver at home. As long as you don't use up too much bandwidth, which is the only thing that XS4ALL will count for your connection.

Any other classification of your traffic ('business use') is also a violation of your privacy.

Going back to the cable company, the only difference between a 'consumer' and a 'business' subscription would be (for me) that the business connection would be available for at least a certain percentage of the day and that outages longer then a certain time would automatically mean that I get part of the subscription money refunded (a service level agreement).

Cable companies are used to consumers of one or more of their products who can't do anything more with that product then choosing to consume it or not, after having paid for it. You pay for a cable subscription, one or more extra packages and you hope to receive them when you want to watch. As long as the signal is available everywhere, no problem. Your customers cannot influence the cable reception of their neighbours.

Some 'bad' customers get a cable splitter and connect a second TV to the same cable connection (oh the horror! the cheapskates!). By the way, in my country (the Netherlands) I can't get a second cable subscription in the same house. I'll have to get my own splitter and/or amplifier.

Then cable modems came. And all of a sudden there is a lot more diversity to what people can and can't do with their cable (modem) connection. Even send data back to the Internet! (gasp!). Or even worse, somehow have that Internet available on more then one computer!

So cable companies have to play ISP. Do really new stuff like provide reliable mail and reliable connections to the Internet.

And make users somehow pay for their usage. They try to make this fit into simple models.. Joe Sixpack home user who would have otherwise dialed into AOL for many hours and Brent Bussinessman who wants to be online for the office. Because their billing model can only deal with so many different pricing structures.

There is a different system that might work. The cable company provides 'IP transport' between your cablemodem and the ISP, and the ISP connects you to the Internet and your e-mail, your news and other services.

This model now works for (A)DSL in the Netherlands. The phone company doesn't play ISP, they just connect my line to the DSLAM in the exchange. By my login I select the ISP I want and the rate I want to use (my adsl login is koos@xs4all-basic-adsl) and the router in the telco network sets up a virtual circuit with my ISP, xs4all.
This can work with any transport protocol that supports logins and sessions, like PPPoE and PPTP. Which also lowers the chance of unauthorized hookups and cable packet sniffing.

I get two bills, one from KPN, the phone company for the adsl link and one from XS4ALL, the ISP for the Internet connection and services. If I use too much bandwidth I may get charged extra for that (XS4ALL isn't clear on this matter, I just wish they would say N bytes per month and extra bytes cost you this fee).

Why don't the cable companies go to this model ? The only reason I can think of is that they always had virtual monopolies and don't want to have competitors on their turf. The ISP's are no competitor for KPN since KPN is not an ISP itself. (KPN indirectly owns a number of the ISP's that offer ADSL connections but in the day-to-day reality KPN and the ISP are two different parties to deal with).

This model has its disadvantages. The problem with your connection is in the equipment of the (Telco, ISP) depending on who you ask (ISP, Telco). At this moment, moving from one address to the other and trying to keep a working ADSL connection is a nightmare.

About running servers at home and sharing the connection for multiple computers.. XS4ALL encourages the users to do just that. XS4ALL had deals on cheap routers and tells people that they can run their own webserver, gameserver at home. As long as you don't use up too much bandwidth, which is the only thing that XS4ALL will count for your connection.

Any other classification of your traffic ('business use') is also a violation of your privacy.

Going back to the cable company, the only difference between a 'consumer' and a 'business' subscription would be (for me) that the business connection would be available for at least a certain percentage of the day and that outages longer then a certain time would automatically mean that I get part of the subscription money refunded (a service level agreement).

Yes, go to this page. Here you find two perl scripts: one script forwards the spam and another script parses the spamcop reply and automatically reports the spam.

Check here for schematics and other info about smartcards.

There's also source code available to drive the damn machine you can build with the info on the site. AFAIK tested on Linux and FreeBSD and it worked.

I mean, look at this logo on a nokia phone. As soon as you see this logo on a phone, you know trouble is coming. I think it is some sort of curse :)

Btw, if you actually want this logo, go here.

Filtering is trivial, writing & managing filters is easily done (and without needing to know any specific notation), scoring is performed identically, saving text and binaries is accomplished cleanly and with versatility, heck it can even be set to use voice commands and read back material. It honors every obscure usenet convention thown at it (mail-copies-to, X-face, etc.) and follows every good usage guideline plus handles multiple languages with aplomb.

Finally the documentation is simply fantastic. If nothing else this makes it a great program: Clear well-written comprehensive documentation properly laid out, indexed, usefully hyperlinked and always helpful. I can't express how important this is and how useful has been.

Oh yeah, it's a free (as in lucre) Mac application running under both MacOS & MacOS X. However MT-NewsWatcher is good enough friends have kept old Macs just for running it; it's that good.

Depends on your interfaces, of course. If you want to bind the modules together by having them freely call each others functions, this can and probably will become a debugging nightmare.

However, for those cases where you'd already go for a multiprocess design, using a clean protocol that's spoken between the modules, it can be quite a good idea to exploit the simple fact that some languages are better at some things than others.

Eg. my current project, OpenRADIUS has a C core that does low level packet handling, job scheduling, etc., and a module that happens to be written in Perl to easily deal with simple and more complex formatted ASCII tables.

If I would have had to write that module in C as well, it would *definitely* have taken me a lot more time.

When you're running a system with procmail (don't we all?) and better yet: use a mailer which supports piping messages to stdout, you can use these scripts to report spam to spamcop semi-automatically.

Oh, and heres the URL for it.