Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!news.cs.indiana.edu!nstn.ns.ca!uupsi!fozzie!stanley From: stanley@phoenix.com (John Stanley) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: BITFTP Message-ID: Date: 20 May 91 08:21:25 GMT Organization: Mad Scientist Lines: 342 gws@xenitec.on.ca (Geoff Scully) writes: > In article stanley@phoenix.com (John Stanley) writes: > Perhpas you don't realize this (running a PC and WAFFLE, for which you > likely have source), Hahahahaha. False assumption. > but most sites do not have sources to uucico. HDB UUCP is distributed in source, I believe. Perhaps not. I haven't looked, but I bet uucico source is available somewhere via anon-ftp. Well, WAS available. > My > immediate problem is email abuse and the network wide problem it is > causing. Why is the alledged abuse of email at my site a problem for you? Does it fill YOUR spool? Do YOU pay the telephone bill? I think not. If you have a problem at YOUR site, deal with it there. > You continue to miss the distinction after it has been pointed > out to you my multiple posters. I missed nothing. The root cause of the problem, as posted by Mr. Mercer, and which caused him his untold grief and to unload that upon BITFTP, is the failure of uucico to ensure it has disk space to write that for which it ACK's. If this were not the case, there would still be a concern about transfer of this information. The cause of the problem is not BITFTP. The cause is the user who requests more than an upstream site can handle. The request could be made of anyone or anything. Deal with your user, don't cry 'shut off BITFTP'. > You show a serious lack of understanding about what it means to run a > site with *ANY* downstream, which is not surprising since your map entry > shows you to have none (or maybe 1, I can't find an entry for syrgrp in > the maps; Nice map entry too, incorrectly formatted, and of course, I did not post the map. > protecting your anonimity should anyone grow tired of your inane > attitude). If protecting my anonymity were such a concern as you seen to think _I_ think it is, then please explain why I am posting this from MY account and not root? You show a serious lack of concern for those who do not wish to announce to the world that they have major computing resources at the following address, and here is a phone number to call to find out when they are not home. And if I REALLY wanted to be anonymous, I wouldn't have sent in a map entry at all. Mull that over for a while. > The problem has nothing to do with uucico writing on a full > disk, but rather with what fills that disk. If you complain about what fills the disk today, then you will complain about what fills it tomorrow. Today it was mail from BITFTP. Tomorrow it will be mail from somewhere else. The next day it will be news. > Since you seem to like analogy so much, how about if you know your car > is built to protect your life in all cases except when hit by another > car moving more than 55MPH, would you try to educate people not to speed > or would you bitch at your auto manufacturer for not making your car safer? Trying to educate people not to speed is much different from demanding that governors be placed on every car. I would do the former, but not the latter. Mr. Mercer, and apparently you, want the latter. > I don't have any failing here. I don't have a problem with my users. Then why are you arguing so hard that BITFTP is bad, and mailservers are bad, and everyone is abusing the net? > The question at hand is one of respect for the time and resources of > upstream admins. Sending a small list of cable freqs that happened to > originate in a file is not going to bother any admin. The reason that > people are starting to ignore the distinction is because of idiots like > you who claim that if it is ok to send a small file, then all files are > ok. I did not make the blanket claim that email was not for file transfer. All I pointed out is that that claim is ridiculous. If you want to claim that email is not for transferring files larger than X kb, that is something else, but to claim it is not for transfer at all is idiotic. Especially when you consider that UUCP works entirely with FILES. > I ask the > question again. No, this is the first time for this one. The last time it was some anonymous 1/3 of the way stopover. > If I were to agree to handle your mail (read: MAIL) for > free, would you be so discourteous as to send me a book? If you asked for a book, I would send it. If you asked for a BOOK, I would send it. If you didn't ask for it, I wouldn't waste my time sending it. Now, if what you really want to ask is 'would I FORWARD a book through you to someone else' I would say 'yes, until you tell me there is a problem with that.' I would assume that when you agree to handle my mail that you have agreed to handle my mail without restriction, unless and until you say otherwise. If you have specific restrictions in mind when you agree to handle my mail, tell me now. In fact, this is one of the reasons I did NOT look for a free feed when I set this site up. I did not want to be at the mercy of someone who was doing me a favor and thus felt that they could change the rules in mid-stream. I pay my feed in return for unlimited news and mail. > Jim did not single handedly get BITFTP shut down. Nobody "got" BITFTP > shut down. From what I know, Princeton took action on their own inititive, > coincidently the day after Jim's initial posting. This problem has been > building for years, growing in magnitude with every occurrence. The people > at Princeton evidently got tired of hearing about the problem and decided > to put the BIT back into BITFTP. Yeah, I would be tired of it too, if I were them, and posting "what would it take to get BITFTP to shut down" would cause me to take action. > As I said above, niether I or anyone else I am aware of was responible > for you losing your free lunch. People are out there raping women all > the time. Does this mean that because none of my female loved ones have > been raped that I should not speak out against it? If you consider mailservers to be the equivalent to rape, I suggest you get some couseling. > >where the software was, I got 100+k of mail from someone who decided > >that it was being nice to mail it to me without asking if I had already > >received it, much less if I wanted it. > > As you seem to be fond of pointing out, that's your problem. But it would > seem to give you an interest in educating users not to send files by > email. Somehow I doubt you will agree with that. :-) It gave me an interest in educating THAT USER not to send files TO ME, that I had not requested, by mail. I have NO PROBLEM with anyone else sending files by mail to anyone else. I WOULD NOT use the problem I had as a call for a stop to all email because one person screwed up. > >want from them. Well, tough titties for Ontario. When they change their > >opinion, maybe I will change mine. > > They will not change their opinion because they are not in business to > service your every whim and desire. Then they should have no opinion about my 'whim and desire'. It has no bearing on them, and they have no say in the matter. > If they choose to not provide > anon-uucp that is their choice and your tuff luck. If you are not on the > internet and can't find alternative methods, you lose. What do I care > about that? Who is now showing a lack of respect for others? > Do you really think that the rest of the world computer > community at large owes you whatever you may desire, regardless of how > much of their time and money is involved? That is stupid, and you know it. I do expect that someone who sets themselves up as a mail router ACT as a mail router. I do expect that if they have a problem with MY mail that they will contact ME. I do not expect YOU, who has never had one piece of my BITFTP mail pass through your site, to tell me that I am abusing the email system by using BITFTP and that BITFTP should be shut down for all. > Wake up. It is not because of Ontario's or anybody elses problems that > you (and everybody else) have lost their free ftp lunch. It is a constant > pattern of abuse, which you seem to advocate, I have never advocated abuse, and unless you can prove it, stop saying it. It is a lie. > >> The point is, if you want it *now*, you pay for it, > >> not me. > > > > When my mail from BITFTP starts to pass through your site, which is > >the only way you would be paying for my mail, then you have a complaint. > >Until then, don't complain about paying for carrying my mail when you > >don't. > > That was the generic "me" I was using. Why do you take it upon yourself to speak for all "me"s? If none of the "me"s who have handled my mail have complained what makes you think that you have the right to decide for them that I am abusing the system? > Obviously I was not clear enough > for your blinkered field of vision. Let me rephrase. If x user on a > machine not directly connected to the internet wants to get some source > *now*, x user can pay for it (not pay *ME*, or his upstream admins, for > it but pay for it himself, with his machine, his modem, his phone bill > and his time). And I already pay for this myself, with my machine, my modem, my phone bill, and my time. > You are looking for nice safe easy scapegoat to crap on about losing > your free access to ftp, and so you choose to dump on Ontario. No, you chose to speak for Ontario. Oh, poor Ontario will have to pay for Internet access. My access is hardly free, and I hope Ontario has to start paying through the nose for its access. > As has > been pointed out many times now, Ontario is not responsible for your loss, > and yet you choose to make snide comments. Makes you look real friendly. When complaints about BITFTP caused it to shut down, Ontario's opinion was "too bad". When Ontario found out that it might have to pay for Internet access, it wanted sympathy. Sorry. That is a two way street. > The generic "my" again. Even after seeing it used this way multiple times > you still don't figure it out. "My" is a personal pronoun. It means "belonging to me". If you are too stupid to write "at others' expense", which is what you are now claiming you meant, then that is YOUR fault. > What I have told you is how little I care about assholes who think that > mail hubs like mine and Jim's are in business to service the every whim > and desire of sites downstream of them. If you don't want to do it, don't. If you want to drop all mail from or to bitftp, or any other place in the world, on the floor, do it. If you want to restrict mail that passes through to 1kb in size, do so. You are free to do what you want with your systems. You can pull the plug and put them in the river if you want. Reread the last paragraph. I have said it many times before, but you apparently can't understand the simple english contained therein. > In fact I care a great deal about > the net as a whole, and consider people with attitudes like yours to be a > threat to that. My 'attitude' is that it should be up to each site to decide. Your 'attitude' of speaking for all sites everywhere is the danger. > >Or Peter da Silva's mail. Or anyone else's. If you have a problem with > >YOUR user's mail costing you time and money, then YOU deal with YOUR > >user's. > > I won't even comment on this again. That was a generic "my" and a generic > "you" again. My user's mail costs me next to nothing in terms of time and > money, and as I said above, I don't have a problem with users doing huge > file transfers. So, which "my" are you using when you say "my user's mail"? Since you are so adamant that you mean a generic "my", you must mean that in this case, too. Oh, did I guess wrong? > I was refering to a general, recurring net-wide problem, > not to my specific site. Then don't use the word "my". Say "other". Don't make me guess what you mean. > I can't possibly believe that you really expect anybody to buy this load > of bullshit. The reason that they are thinking internet when they set up > ftp is because ftp is an internet protocol. They set up ftp because they are thinking Internet first, not thinking internet because they set up ftp. They think internet, then think of the way to handle the situation on Internet. Since they are not thinking UUCP, they don't think of the UUCP solution. This is not bullshit. This is the way it is. > That was my point. BITFTP provided a way to use FTP on a store and > forward network, without regard to the costs incurred by the storing > sites. You are not using ftp on a store and forward network. It is MAIL on the s&f. The contents of the mail TO bitftp is used as input to an ftp session on an Internet host, which does the ftp on the internet network. The results of the ftp session are put into a file(s) and mailed to the requestor. At that point, the protocol is mail, not ftp. At no time is ftp being passed on a S&F network. > In solving the the problem of not being able > to use FTP from a site not on the internet, it created a whole new set of > problems, and hence was not a viable solution. In solving the problem of moving people and products around quickly, Henry Ford and Mack and created cars and trucks. Cars and trucks created a whole new set of problems, and hence they are not viable solutions. The fact that a new system has problems is not proof by itself that that system is not viable nor worthwhile. > Other solutions have been > proposed here which would solve these problems while respecting the > wishes of the admins of resources used along the way. You want so badly to speak for all the admins, and decide what and who is abusing their systems, why do you now care about respecting their wishes? > A useful statement. Mail will never fill my spool unless some idiot goes > out of his way to fill it. My uucico *does* stop when full. This does not > change the fact that it was an idiot who filled it, nor does it change > the fact that those people who request file tranfers that fill my spool > without checking with me first to see if I have alternatives are idiots. You claim that you have no problem with large file transfers via mail, and yet you claim that those who do it are idiots. Wait, another generic "my"? Clearly you are wrong, since Mr. Mercer's uucico does not stop when full, and my uucico does not, so claiming that "my" uucico stops is wrong. > I have allocated sufficient mail spool to handle 200+% normal mail traffic > for all of my downstream. If it fills, it is becuase of abuse. No, if it fills it is because uucico did not stop accepting things it couldn't handle. > > Your spool will be cleaned up by calling another site's admin? What is > >he going to do, dial into your system and clean it up for you? > > No, but I have found that net.courtesy provides for upstream admins > removing connectivity for abusers. Absolutely. But not for all abusers, and not for all potential abusers. And not for accidental abusers. And how do you handle the next case of abuse? > If a reckless driver smashes into me, I cannot change the > fact that my car and perhaps myself will be injured, however I will I try > to make damn sure that it is a long time before the other driver gets back > on the road. And how does that help you prevent the next fellow who runs into you? It doesn't. Fixing ONE source of 'abuse' does not fix them all. But you DO wear your seatbelt to minimize the damage. Put a seatbelt on your uucico and you won't be killed when the mail hits.