Sick of trolls! 3721
No, the filter is relatively stable now - inspite of me scanning 90 news groups (don't have time to read more than a dozen closely) the additions are running less than 2...
Yes, but because they are end, I don't see them, so I don't know what specific reason might have end this or that post. Not that it bothers me. Also, this doesn't show all of the kills, because I also use short term kills in the news reader, to kill threads for 14 days, which usually suffices.
That's been known for years. It's also why I no longer publish an e-mail address. When I opened this account, the salesdroid was perplexed where I got the username I was requesting. He understood the concept of pipingdev-random through uuencode to get a pbuttword, but thought it unusual to do that to get the username.
I normally maintain the filter on weekends, when I can find time to look at what slipped past. Most of what...
The advantage of being a multinational company. From what I've seen, all mail from China to our company is 551'd with a redirect to the local Chinese address. We never see web stuff, as it's intercepted by the DNS and also directed to the Chinese address. From what I understand, the same is true in 40+ other countries. This is a rational response, as (for example) I doubt very many of the staff here can understand Big5.
While spinning my wheels in my copious free time, I decided to check the kill figures for the alternative...
When mail and news were invented, microsoft didn't even have plans for buying QDOS to have something to run on the first IBM PCs, and I rather doubt that Bill was even aware of the IETF. Come to think of it, I'd suspect he's still unaware of it. Remember that both mail and news originally used UUCP, because they predate TCP-IP.
Few people using the Internet even have a faint concept of what a computer is, never mind how to use it. It used to be that the installation program for your newsreader auto-subscribed you to 'news.announce.newusers' and perhaps 'news.announce.important' in the vain hope that the new user would gain minor clue. I doubt that the current rash of application writers are even aware of the groups. The service providers used to ship out a 20+ page document that did a lot of explaining, as well as laying down terms and conditions. The past five ISPs I've had accounts with not only failed to snail-mail anything - they didn't even bother sending an email of any sort. The only mail I ever get from them are the monthly billing reminders. There might be something on the ISP's web page... just checked two, and they are pure advertisements of why you should use this ISP, and don't contain ANY useful information other than a 'subscribe me' form. They don't even have telephone numbers!!!
Old guy
Linux groups from Newsgroups