Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!unocss!fritz
From: fritz@unocss.UUCP (Tim Russell)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Tired of bogus subject lines?
Message-ID: <1650@unocss.UUCP>
Date: 9 Sep 89 13:20:29 GMT
References: <7921@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: U. of Nebraska at Omaha
Lines: 44

spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) writes:

>So, I whipped up the enclosed program and installed it in our news
>library with the following sys file line:

>complain:world,all:BU:/usr/lib/news/complain < %s

>It sends mail to the author of the article complaining about the
>non-standard, non-conformant use of that string.  If enough of you
>out there install it on your systems too, maybe the volume of mail
>will convince people to fix the software.

   Boy, Spaf, I always thought you could be a jerk at times, but this really
tops all. Nothing like wasting net bandwidth to send mail to an audience in
which:

     1) The vast majority probably have no idea that their software is even
        performing this "unspeakable" act.

     2) Probably 99% have no control over the software.  Not everyone has
        root access on their machine, Spaf, or is able to compile their
        own copy of nn just to support your rn-bigotry.

   Yes, nn had this "feature" at first, and we (the nn-using community) voted
to get rid of it.  But there are busy sysadmins out there who don't keep up,
and it's hardly fair to bug their unsuspecting users with potentially
hundreds of messages just because of this.  I should know, our admin is
that way, and if nn wasn't a user-supported program I have no doubt that
we would still be at that patchlevel.

   One would hope that such flagrant abuse of the network would be avoided
by someone as "professional" as you, but instead you're setting the worst
kind of example, that of tying up network resources all over the country
just because you're annoyed that you can't follow a message chain.  Oh
boo-hoo, Spaf, you poor poor man.

   I hope every single message your cute little program sends bounces and
fills up your disk and you miss your news completely.  You're a jerk.

-- 
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 Tim Russell, Computer Operator  | Internet: russell@zeus.unl.edu
 Campus Computing                | Bitnet:   russell@unoma1
 University of Nebraska at Omaha | UUCP:     uunet!zeus.unl.edu!russell