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."
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".)
> 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
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
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...
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
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
---
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 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
Haiku Offtopic
In a slashback on Haiku
Cheap crack suspected