Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Reneging, Wandering, Spamming
See, what we really meant was ... From the inimitable jamie: In February we reported that the .cx registrar was offering free domains to open-source projects. Now, their Board of Directors claims this is "inconsistent with the basic principals [sic] of fairness...this policy has been cancelled." Their FAQ has been changed from this to this accordingly. The board meeting promises "existing registrants will be 'grandfathered-in' and a new second level registry for the oss community will be established." Presumably that means new applicants will get YourOpenSourceProject.free.cx or something. Props to jmason and TBTF for the above links.
LinuxBierwanderungenrundeninkreisen, oder? One of the cool things about Free software is that there's an attitude of joviality and conviviality among its users and developers -- as evidenced by the recurring Linuxbierwangerungen, as reported in Slashdot last week. Even the WSJ notices, evidently: alanw writes "This article is fairly accurate, although we were mostly drinking real ale, not lager."
The article also mentions the oh-so-intriguing idea of simultaneous, net-linked Bierwanderungen on different continents. I vote for the mountains of Maine, New Hampshire or Tennessee as good trial U.S. locations -- if you know any organizers, make sure they leave comments below about a U.S. Bierwanderung!
Opting in, Sir? Opting out? Headphones, Sir? Red Wine? White wine? discHead writes "The Mail Abuse Prevention System has announced that a temporary restraining order filed to prevent them from listing Harris Interactive in the Realtime Blackhole List has been denied."
So long as no one is required to abide by the list that MAPS creates of mail abusers, would a restraining order preventing them from listing a spammer (by their definition) ever work? I rather hope not.
No, not the envelope with "those" pictures, the envelope with the winners! Tim McNerney writes: "The second round winners in the Software Carpentry competition have been announ ced. Though the test harness category got dropped in the process, the config, build and track categories all have winners along with judge's commentary. Next step is to choosing developers to implement the winners." And speaking of lucky winners (you may not already be a winner, in this case), at0m writes "The Haiku Generator Challenge has been completed, and the results have been posted. For those who are not familiar with the contest, the goal was to create a program that used a user-inputted RDF file and created three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. To see the winning entries, visit the challenge page. dotcomma has also announced a new, less difficult challenge, which can be found here."
Drunk Linux users
.cx domains
Will forget to register
Sysadmins can choose to censor inbound mail to their customers. It's their bandwidth, there servers, etc. Just like the phone company can block incoming calls to your home phone whenever they want to, and your landlord can lock you or whoever else out of your house because you're just renting it, it's *the landlords* house.
And it's not your bandwidth, it's your upstreams. Just remember that when they decide to censor you because of an opinion, or the type of content on your servers. In the end, Worldcom is going to be able to control what you say. You're laying the groundwork for it.
RBL is censorship. If you support RBL, you have to admit that some censorship is ok.
> Didn't Colorado recently pass an anti-spam law?
Yeah but it was one of those lame "must start with ADV" things. Unenforceable across state lines, incompatible, etc.
I did find it kind of amusing that Qwest does use the ADV subject in their emails to me, even though I'm a subscriber to their ISP service, so they don't really need to. Already raises my opinion of them from the rock bottom USWest occupied.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
As does the English country names and code elements page on the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency Web site. (The French country names and code elements page says it's "CHRISTMAS, ÎLE".)
I was just thinking about that and was going to supply a really nice one, but got the following message;
/. has finally started thinking proactively about the spammers here :/
Lameness filter encountered. The following post, though comprised of 3 lines- 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively does not reference a season! Try again next fall, eh bub?
Guess
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
This atricle says that Namezero has canned their agreement with INA to register domains through them. So if you sign up for a domain now, you probably won't get it for a while... I don't see why they just don't use their venture capital to register domains as an official registar!
> their customers. It's their bandwidth, there
> servers, etc
Unless contractually bound otherwise, yeppers. You might try reading your service agreement with your ISP. Spam is expressly FORBIDDEN in most every one I've come across.
>Just like the phone company can block incoming
>calls to your home phone whenever they want to,
If you don't pay your bill, they can and will. Otherwise, nope... the telcos operate a public utility, not a PRIVATE network. Even though the phoneCo may, itself, be a company, not a utility comission, special restrictions and obligations are placed upon it in exchange for it's having a monopoly and for the right to run its lines on the public right of way.
>landlord can lock you or whoever else out of your
>house because you're just renting it, it's *the
>landlords* house.
Under the correct circumstances, he can. Your lease is a *CONTRACT* between you and your landlord. Quit paying your rent, and yep, you'll be evicted in no time flat. OTOH, if he locks you out just because he's feeling contrary that day, you can have his ass in court.
>Worldcom is going to be able to control
>what you say.
Nope. Worldcom has common carrier status. Read up on it. They share similar legal protections and obligations as a phoneCo.
>RBL is censorship. If you support RBL, you have to
>admit that some censorship is ok.
Nope. RBL is simply a list of IPs that spam out junk mail to people who don't want it. Essentially, it is a list of reviews, nothing more, nothing less. Refusing to carry trafic from those assholes is no morally different than buying a copy of Zagats Restraunt Guide at Borders, and refusing to eat at any place where the reviewer got salmonella.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
What assholes. They'll probably give us:
YourOpenSourceProject.goatse.cx.
kwsNI
Sorry but so called "passive OPT-IN" does not equal Opt-IN. By making their opt-in boxes checked by default they are relying on people not taking the time to read the entire web page when signing up for a service or just overlooking the check boxes all together.
If I signed up for a webmail services and happend to miss a checkbox that automatically signed me up for a daily rush of unwanted mail to my account, does NOT mean that I either asked to be on it, or even wanted to be on it in the first place.
Also remember that people subscribing to and using services like MAPS, are simply deciding what type or who they will accept email from onto their own "private" servers. Even alot of TOS's of isp's will state that not only do they not allow sending spam from their servers, they don't have to accept it on their servers either. If a customer doesnt like it they are more than able to use another mail service, whether thats web based, remote pop3 or just switching to another isp all together.
The last thing I ever want is some government organisation telling me what I'm allowed or not allowed to accept or block on servers that I own and my private property.
Drunken German Linux users reading computer generated spam written as haikus from a ripoff .cx server.
Did I miss anything?
Kalrand
-the voice of reason
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
Interestingly, if Harris were to somehow win this one it would probably be worse for them than if they lost it.
First, granting an injunction on the RBL would be prior restraint and is pretty unlikely in any case.
Second, refusing to grant the preliminary injunction is also the judge's way of saying "Look, you guys aren't going to win anyway."
Unfortunately MAPS didn't just post the damn actual ruling (I like that better than idiot-simple non-lawyer explanations of what a judge said), but I bet it has something about "likelihood of prevailing on the merits" with judge-talk for "not bloody likely" somewhere near it.
Configuration and build tools become a lot easier if you modify the language itself to have a decent module system, and create well-defined module-based interfaces for the different platforms. I would claim that the amount of time and effort to fix C/C++, and the amount of retraining required for programmers is small compared to a solution that doesn't change the language and instead relies on external tools to do half a job with what will end up being a much more complex tool.
Something similar happened with COM/ActiveX: nominally, COM/ActiveX software is written in plain C/C++. But no C/C++ programmer can write COM/ActiveX software; instead, they have to learn what amounts to a whole new language and runtime. There, too, a modification to the language would have been overall more rational.
Yes, for lots of political reasons people like to cling to the illusion that tools and languages are separate, and that they can stay backwards compatible if they don't touch the language. But that really is an illusion, and one that costs the industry dearly in the long run.
In a nutshell, my message to the Software Carpentry would be: we have had enough half-baked solutions like this. Think about how to fix C and add a decent module system and correct cross-module type checking to the language itself. Something like that should be implementable as a simple "xC" to C translator and work across platforms, and it can probably even be backwards compatible in most areas that count.
You can already get a free domain name from namezero.com. They forward to your web-host, and you just have to put up with a small advert frame at the bottom.
... server. There is an interface through which you can add xxx@mydomain.com, but as with the www.mydomain.com aliases NZ offers, they are only forwarding aliases and nothing more. Not that I'm putting NZ down (I happen to have an NZ domain), I'm just pointing out that NZ domain != 'real' domain.
Yup. There are a couple of drawbacks, however (in addition to the ad frame). You can't set up your own DNS. In other words, you can't set up blah.mydomain.com to point to 111.222.111.222, etc. This means that you can't set up any kind of server for use with this domain, whether a mail, WWW, IRC,
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Without a double opt-in I could go to the Harris web site and fill in the opt-in form with "lk@caralis.com". Assuming that email is legit :) it has been added to the Harris database as an "opt-in" subscriber and will receive the full amount of traffic sent.
--
I'd install FreeBSD before I'd install Linux.
Throw asside the "You have no choice if your ISP uses it" argument. Ask your ISP before joining. Good idea for both sides sence your better off with ISP side filtering if you like filtering.
But it's not really IMAPS fault so much as AboveNet who uses it for peer filtering. That means any traffic that might go through them.
It's been said you can bypass AboveNet but exactly how you bypass any commen net carryer... let alone a backbone... is a carefully guarded secret.
No someone else handles my route tables and thats normal.. anyway such a procedure is the same as opt out and give it up thats exactly the problem we have with spam...
But.... AboveNets abuse of the list is something for a spammer to take up with Above not with RBL.
RBL presents a list for volintary filtering. Thats it's designed intent thats it's goal. Thats what the corts should look at.
I don't actually exist.
OpenNIC supports the .oss domain, whose intent is for open source projects.
For more info, goto:
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
If you don't mind owning a .com.country domain, then there's a really free alternative: nic.ar.
.com.ar domain for free. .ar stands for Argentina, but what the heck, it's not worse than having a Christmas Islands domain!
They let you register any
http://nic.ar
The main page is in Spanish, but if you take a carefull look, it has an English link that will have all the info translated.
The procedure to register a domain with them is not very simple and it takes around a week until it's working properly. If anyone needs help, you can mail me and I will explain the procedures and the forms to fill in.
And again: they don't charge any fees. Null, nothing, zero money to have your own domain.
Just to be sure that no one who has gotten a restraining order issued is accidentally contained on any of those lists, it will be necessary to keep another list:
There are currently valid restraining orders prohibiting inclusion of the following addresses in the list. Any such addresses must be removed from all copies:
foo.bar.com
spam.twice.a.day.com
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I beleive it is in some places. Didn't Colorado recently pass an anti-spam law? In any case it IS a civil, if not criminal offence. AOL's single redemming quality is that they have in the past, and continue to, sucessfully sue many spammers.
>Bandwidth is not a public commons.
(almost) Exactly the point. It's private property.
>band of Sysadmins who have no business blocking
>people's recipt of email.
Here is where you are flat-assed wrong. I have EVERY business doing whatever the hell I please.
It is *MY* hardware.
It is *MY* software.
It is *MY* bandwidth.
It is *MY* root login.
I have every right to refuse to carry traffic from yesmail, harris, or from any other fool. I can pass said traffic to the designated receiver, send it to Zimbabwe, or drop it into
You don't like that? Tough cookies. Unless you and I have a contract that says otherwise, if you don't like my policies, you're more than welcome to take a long walk off pier39 into the bay.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Now I shall remember the name Accipiter as a boring self-righteous idiot. Although, given your .sig, you didn't need to even type anything to put that across.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Well, we are working on that (but pursuing rquality, not accredition; ICANN is not a legitimate authority for issuing accredition). If you went to the OpenNIC site this evening, you'll notice that the latest news item is that I'm an official candidate for the ICANN Board ... ;-)
-robin
They were taking BSD, Artistic, and MPL-clone licensed software projects as well as GPL and LGPL stuff. One of my freinds got a .cx domain early on for a BSD licensed project for which he had yet to actually release source. He initially tried for portman.cx and natalieportman.cx, to be funny (he was actually going to change the name of his ICQ clone to make the domain 'fit'. NPICQ isn't that bad, is it??)
Oh, and it's Network Solutions you have to worry about. They've shown complete disregard for anything other than how much money they can rape out of the lesser registrars. On my personal list of worries, the FSF comes in somewhere after dying in a vat of preprocessed grits at Quaker..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Are u serious or being facetious? Ghod I worked as a sysadmin for 2 years and the job can burn a regular person out in under 3 months.
Yeah any joe schmoe can build a F1 formula racer after taking a class on changing the oil in his car and playing with legos when he was 3 right?
Please.. like the previous poster mentioned u have made your ignorance obvious with that post.
How about you try managing several hundread machines, running several thousand websites, add and remove hundreads of user accounts, configure routers, add pop and net connections for new customers. At the same time wardning off crackers, paying attention to security lists about the latest exploits and applying patches to said hundreads of servers.
How about checking those machines everyday for any signs of failing hardware, replacing it and having to deal with vendors that flatly refuse to acknowledge that 4 out of the 8 cpus in the sparc your company just forked out $60K for aren't working.
Then try doing this knowing that you are on call 24/7 and that you are guaranted to be woken up at 3 am to handle a service call by a user who screwed up their website and needs a backup restored NOW!
Besides that you're right a sysadmin's job is a piece of cake.
Sure it is! Microsoft just innovated it, remember?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
MAPS is based in the United States. If you don't like it, start your own damn RBL. Nobody's forcing you to use theirs (which is exactly the point of all of this).
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I think Rob throws out the newest 25% of accounts, so that 169xxx should be old enough any day now, as I've seen 220xxx accounts come into existence. Once they hit the mid-230's, that should open up.
Interestingly, if Harris were to somehow win this one it would probably be worse for them than if they lost it.
With Harris removed from the RBL database by injunction after all that publicity, a significant number of sysadmins at major ISPs are likely to put them in their individual blackhole lists or configuration files. This will disrupt their mail about as badly as the RBL would.
But with Harris in the RBL they can easily get out again. All they have to do is convince MAPS they've cleaned up their act. With Harris in individual blackhole lists at a hundred or a thousand ISPs, getting out is NOT automatic, or easy.
First, they'd have to get the word out to ALL those sysadmins and convince EACH of them to do some extra work. As a former unrepentant spammer who went so far as to sue to block MAPS, forcing those sysadmins to do extra work already, they'll have little sympathy among even those sysadmins who DO get the word. So some won't pull them out, and their mail will continue to be disrupted.
Then they'll have to hunt down all the disruptions and talk to all those remaining ISPs. And some still might not pull them out. The next step is back to court for injunctions on those remaining ISPs - probably repeatedly as more are identified. And to prevail they'd have to prove that the ISPs have an obligation to forward their mail. Even if that succeeds their mail could be disrupted for years.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What's creepy is that the question even came up, that someone thought that the government had the right to censor the blacklist.
It makes me wonder if someday some spammer could raise a stink and actually successfully get such a restraining order. Maybe it would be a good idea for the list to be distributed across multiple jurisdictions.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
>because AI bots havn't been perfected yet.
Proof positive right there that you've never BEEN a sysadmin. Or for that matter, quite likely have never done time on the helldesk either. It's more work than you think.
But back to the spam arguement...
You seem to be confused as to the difference between a PUBLIC service, and a PRIVATE network.
For starters, your analogy does not hold water:
>That's like saying that as a landlord of a
>building you have the right to read through my
>mail and throw out anyhting that looks like junk
>(or if you prefer bulk) mail right?
The proper analogy is to say that as the owner (leasor actually) of a telephone line, I have EVERY right to prevent people from coming into *MY* home, placing long distance calls on *MY* line, or receiving long distance collect calls on *MY* line.
>In fact if you so much as read another's private
>email correspondence from start to finish you have
>commited a violation of privacy of the user.
Wrong. On *MY* PRIVATE network the traffic is MINE until it leaves my system. I have every right to look at, or
If you don't like that, get a contract that specifies otherwise, or encrypt all your mail (preferably both). And get a new job where they don't monitor employee computer useage while you're at it.
>The point is that civil rights supercede in every
>instince your right to do whatever the hell you
>want.
Wrong again.
Your arguement applies only if it's the govergnment doing the spam blocking.
On a PRIVATE network, which *I* own and adminster (wether I personally own all the hardware, own 51% of the stock in the company, or simply write the service policy that users agree to when they sign up) civil rights do not apply.
If I own a message board, I can block any message that contains the word "fuck" (or "fred" or "lederhosen") if I care to (I don't). If it's an email service, I am entirely within my rights to block spammers. If it's a usenet gateway, it is my right to block the alt heiarchy if I want (I don't, but I impose an upper size limit on it).
The point is that I have no obligation beyond what is in the *CONTRACT*. Is you don't like my terms, you don't have to do business with me.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
.cx is Christmas Islands.
Kalrand
-the voice of reason
It always annoys me when something like this happens. I'm glad to see that the gub'ment has allowed the RBHL to do what it needs to do.
this isn't denying anyone from sending spam...it's just saying "hey, you may wanna take note of these guys"
just the same as the usenet death sentancing that's going on....It's not law, or anyone fscking anyone over. It's just a respected group keeping a database of known evil-doers. Am i the only one who can't believe the gub'ment actually made a correct decision on this one?
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
uhh..
Maybe because you can't buy a TLD?
New gTLDs have to be approved by ICANN, and the FSF already proposed a
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
nic.cx says it's for Christmas Island.
I saw a YesMail opt-in form at the 50megs.com sign up. AFAIK, YesMail is an opt-in newsletter.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
It really shows the mentality/maturity behind some of our "peers".
I find it commendable. If he's going to post a comment, he should be willing to take responsibility for it through moderation and know that his reputation will be affected.
to tiny69: Get a life. I for one hope you get your account cancelled, and have your IP address blocked from accessing this site. Not necessarily because you are a "FIRST POSTER!" (that is a big part however), but that you were *stupid* enough to do it LOGGED IN!
You're replying to a first post, flaming the poster not for his comment, but for not checking the "Post Anonymously" box. And you think he needs a life? A bit hypocritical, don't you think? I also have to point out that this doesn't make his +5 Insightful comment is any less interesting.
First Posting is childish. But to use your account is just plain stupid. From here out, everyone knows *exactly* how to judge everything you say.
Hope it was worth it.
Slashdot does have a moderation system. It works. If the moderators agree that First Posting is childish, he'll get modded down, and those of us who browse at +1 won't have to see it.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
---
A call for intervention
"We would much prefer the fairness of an American court system and a jury than a group of self-appointed zealots for Internet e-mail," Black fumed. "We would prefer to have Congress set the rules.
---
Who the Ffsck do these American wankers think they are telling the rest of the world that the US court is the only way to get justice and "fairness"? Who the hell is the US congress to tell the rest of us how to live our lives, and do our business?
Regardless of the debates between MAPS and the other black holing mob, the point is that FREE CHOICE is what drives system administrators and companies to use these anti-spam methods.
Harris can go jump - and any US court that tries to tell ME to remove MAPS filtering from one of my Australian based systems will be told where to insert their heads.
I was amazed at what the winning program generated when pointed to slashdot.org.
Natile Portman
eating hot grits, Penis Birds
are what Slashdot is.
Kalrand
-the voice of reason
Would it work against MAPS itself? Yes, MAPS is subject to court orders just like everyone else. But if, say, MAPS were to commend that xyz.com be blackholed, and others chose to follow that advice, would it work against them? Nope. Unless and until the court gains jurisdicition over others, the court order would not be binding on those not party to the action. Is that what you were getting at?
BTW, the MAPS press release notes that they have retained Michael Grow of the Arent, Fox law firm in D.C. to represent them. Heavy hitter, knows his stuff, works for a firm which has "gotten" the Net for a whole lot longer than most.
I have a .cx account, but I'm going to get a domain somewhere else real soon now... Here is the email they sent me (one of them anyway), emphasis (with <B>) is mine:
You have received this email because you have previously registered
your details on www.nic.cx or www.niccx.com. Your contact ID is CX22291.
We have received a lot of feedback about our last email and would like
to say a big thank you for that. Although we weren't able to reply to
every single one, we have taken them all into consideration when we
decided about the future of NICCX.COM.
We at NICCX.COM have finally decided not to become a registrar in the
new shared registry system that is currently being developed by Dot CX.
The main reasons for this are as follows:
- Most of you have told us they wouldn't accept to pay any more money
for their cx domain. A substantial increase of registry fees would
be inevitable if we were to participate in the shared registry.
- We have always tried to be 'the registrar with a difference'.
The terms and conditions for registrars in the new registry system
wouldn't leave us too many options on how we handle registrations.
For instance we wouldn't be able to offer 'test registrations'
(ie. you register and set up your domains first, and pay only
after it's all working), or free/discounted domains for certain
groups (open source developers, CX residents, etc) anymore.
We will however continue to provide the same level of service until the
end of your domain's registration term. At the end of that term you will
have to transfer the domain to a new registrar if you want to keep it.
You will be informed about how to do that when your domain expires.
Dot CX have set up a new (draft) privacy policy. It can be found at
http://www.dot.cx/policies.privacy.cfm
Under the new policy, personal details like address, phone number and
email are not accessible via the WHOIS anymore.
Please send your comments and enquiries to policy@dot.cx
Because of the new policy, we have agreed with Dot CX to keep accepting
payments for EXISTENT registrations until the 15th of August (2000-08-15).
This means you can still extend your domain's registration period for the
old registry fee (10.- UK Pounds per year), but have to accept the new
terms and conditions. After that time we will accept NO MORE payments.
Again, thanks for all your feedback and we are looking forward to staying
in touch with you for upto 5 more years.
Thank you for your attention.
Regards,
Hostmaster@niccx.com
You can already get a free domain name from namezero.com. They forward to your web-host, and you just have to put up with a small advert frame at the bottom.
-jc
I'm glad that the RBL is able to list Harris for being clueless about their spam problems. I'm not glad that there's a restraining order for YesMail. BUT -- I'm glad that YesMail's IP addresses are already public, and many sites are blocking them now for their fsck'ed up action.
---
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
---
Nope, you're dead wrong.
To begin with, MAPS does not block anyone's email (except, perhaps, to their own servers). Other networks/ISPs may use MAPS' list to block email coming into *their* network from sites on the list, but that's well within their rights.
Further, MAPS doesn't go out and actively look for companies that don't meet their standards. The operate _only_ in response to well-documented complaints from users who either never opted in in the first place, or who did opt-in but who the company refused to allow to opt back out. And they always try to contact the alleged spammer, explain to them why what they are doing is wrong, and get them to change to more responsible list management practices. An RBL listing is a last resort, reserved for companies that absolutely refuse to clean up their acts.
Among other things, the companies in question appear to have gotten into trouble with MAPS either because they used a sleazy, non-obvious pre-checked opt-in box, or because they failed to confirm that email addresses they were given actually corresponded to people who wanted to opt-in.
After all, it is trivial to (accidentally or purposely) subscribe someone else's email address to an opt-in list on a company website -- it is up to the owner of that website to make sure the person who signed up actually has that email address.
Confirmation is trivial -- just send an email to that address with a web link for the user to click on or an email address to reply to, and you've proved who they are. End of problem.
This is actually of significant benefit to the savvy marketer. It allows them to eliminate bad addresses easily ("mickeymouse@nowhere.invalid"), and tends to produce a much higher response rate in subsequent marketing messages.
Domain names have several rules that must be followed. .net, .jobs and the like.
And so I must wonder if this concern only projects under the GPL? What I fear most is a rise of partisanship in the handling of the assignment of domain names like theses ones, as well as some of the newly proposed extensions like
My biggest interest is the handling of projects under GPL-Compatible lisences such as the MPL and the QPL.
I therefore propose not to allow the handling of new domain names, .cx or otherwise, be controlled by a single entity which might be subjected to pressure from interest groups like GNU, with all due respect that I hold for that organization.
--
Kiro
See http://slashdot.org/com ments.pl?sid=00/07/29/1816254&cid=15. The newest version of the SlashCode put a karma limit of 50. Anything over that is frozen. Start searching the threads for karma and frozen, you'll see a lot of this. Personally, I've had a ton of posts go up and down, it hasn't changed my karma since 8/1/00.
kwsNI