[109273] in Cypherpunks
Ron G.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Wilson)
Tue Mar 16 01:16:19 1999
X-Envelope-From: <netsurf@sersol.com>
From: "James Wilson" <netsurf@sersol.com>
To: <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 19:37:27 -1000
Reply-To: "James Wilson" <netsurf@sersol.com>
Being a member of The Lumber Cabal and Anti Community I shared the reference
to Ron G, and he asked me to forward the below text, which in no way
represent my opinions (or anyone else other than Ron):
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James Wilson forwarded me a copy of some message posted by some chap who
apparently is using an anon remailer to get into (continue, actually) an
argument with this Gary Burnore bloke and his pals.
This would all be funny, if it weren't so sad.
This Burnore kook flatters himself enormously to think that I have nothing
better to do with my time than to stalk him online.
The truth, however, is that I have a great deal else to do, writing tools
and systems to try to help people get rid of the E-mail spam we all get on a
daily basis.
One of these, the DynamicIP Spam Sources List (DSSL) is already up and
running (see http://www.imrss.org/dssl/) and has been for some time now. I
encourage you all to check it out. It's completely free and it zaps quite a
lot of direct-from-dialup spam... certainly at least 99%.
The other project I've been working my little ass off on is the Internet
Mail Relay Services Survey, IMRSS. (See http://www.imrss.org.) This is a
large/extensive catalog of open mail relays throughout the world, a la the
old ORBS list. This project will soon be fully operational and will also be
quite useful for stopping quite a lot of spam.
I cannot help but agree that _somebody_ in the online world is indeed
obsessed with Gary Burnore, and has been following him around for some time
now, getting into online arguments with him and his friends, and posting
nasty things about him via various anon remailers. All available evidence
indicates that this is indeed the case. But whoever it is, it ain't me.
Rather, it is apparently somebody with too much idle time on his/her hands.
Personally, I have no position on this. If someone out there has been so
thoroughly annoyed by Burnore as to wish to while away his/her days
following Burbore around and getting into silly, pointless, and endless
online arguments with him, well... it's no skin off my nose, and certainly
none of my concern. I would encourage that person however to try to take a
broader view, and to realize that just like there are a zillion spammers
online these days, there are also a zillion kooks. No single one of these
people (in either of these categories) is worth spending too much time on.
Rather, all of us who care about the future of the net (and hope that it
still has one) have a responsibility to look at the bigger picture, to work
to solve the problems (e.g. E-mail spam) that actually threaten the future
of the net as a viable interpersonal communications medium, and to just let
the lesser problems (e.g. online kooks) just roll off of us water off the
back of a duck.
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