On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 03:35:28 GMT, "Soon_To_Fly"
wrote:

My domain is optonline.net, which is a major cable internet ISP. If you
block optonline.net then you stop email from millions of legitimate
addresses.

Otherwise known as SPAM. The only people I want to hear from in my inbox are

No, there has been great difficulty defining spam, but it is generally
accepted as UBE, or commercial stuff that has not been signed up for.
On thing it is not is simply unsolicited e-mail from the normal person
on use net.

my friends, family and those I have given permission to email me. I am not
trying to be arrogant, but I HATE unsolicited email with a passion.

Then don't post on newsgroups or be thoughtful enough to put a
statement in your sig to reply only on usenet and the reply address is
invalid.
Any one using that approach and posting on use net should at least
make such a statement in their sig.

The original post was of such a nature than many on here would tend to
give it a personal reply and it contains an address for replying. You
only have to remove the characters. Hence it provides a method of
replying directly and has nothing to do with your spam response. He
took a very good approach. That his ISP is out in left field is not
his fault.

My ISP decided to start filtering. The problem was they were
filtering on content and although many argue vehemently to the
contrary I have found that filtering on content gives too many false
positives. My wife and I both do a lot of on-line work and we depend
on e-mail. It used to be something on which we could depend and where
I worked was the same. (I was one of the sys admins). WE also do a
lot of business via e-mail so false positives can cost money.

Fortunately as a dot com I have enough authority on the web hosting I
can set the filters as I wish. So I set them to only tag spam and
viruses as junk mail. The mistakes that system makes is amazing, but
this way I just glance through the *stuff* and delete what I don't
want.

I can understand dumping some ISPs into a black hole that actively
host spammers, but the cable networks with millions of customers have
a tremendous job of eliminating the idiots who do not use any
protection on their computers and then end up and an open proxy or
relay for spammers. Remember that nearly all the viruses so far have
been of a nature that the user does it to them selves. It's not the OS
it's the users.

Some ISPs black hole any of the cable networks. I'd change ISPs in
that case.

One more thing. My address is "munged" but can be figured out. It is
not that way because of spam. In all the years on the net I've never
had a problem with spam and I've had a rather high profile. It is
that way because the average user doesn't practice safe computing. I
saw a figure on one of the news programs and I think one virus checker
uses it in an add, that something like half the computers hooked to
the internet have been infected by a virus or worm at one time or
another. My address is munged because I was receiving bounce messages
due to some one, or more likely several who had me in their address
books had opened that worm attachment going around. They only open
attachments from people they know. They never stop to think those are
the people who have them in their address books and that is the most
likely place for the virus to originate. They should black hole all
the ISPs sending out those bounce messages and the two worst are AOL
and Microsoft. (or they were)

I've taught this stuff at the university level and I can say with
great certainty that the average user is clueless. The people in
those classes were certainly above average, had to use computers on a
daily basis and over 90 % of them were clueless.

Having spent my professional carer in CS I have very little tolerance
for either the poorly designed spam filters, or ISPs who simply black
hole the large providers to the general public. OTOH I agree whole
heartedly with them for black holing the ISPs that support the
spammers.

Oh... The spammers have figured out that a user activated worm can be
designed to harvest e-mail addresses, so many of the computers
infected in the last 6 months have been doing two things. They have
been providing the spamers with millions of addresses that they could
not obtain otherwise AND they are installing trojans in those infected
computers to send spam for them. So we are finding that some of the
people who are vehemently against spam are the ones sending it and
they have no idea it's coming from them.

It's reaching the point where those with infected computers will have
their service terminated and only be allowed back on after they prove
their system is clean. That means paying the ISP to come out and check
it.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com


Richard

"Peter Gottlieb" wrote in message
. net...
I tried to email you but your email system rejected my address:

Recipient address:
Reason: Server rejected MAIL FROM address.
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.0.0 porn spamming network
Remote system: dns;mail.rrcnet.org
(TCP|167.206.5.72|57474|209.105.74.131|25) (rrc2.rrcnet.org ESMTP Hello
from
rrcnet; Tue, 16 Mar 2004 19:51:13 -0600)


Good luck.


"Ben" wrote in message
om...
Hello,
As a senior in high school, i was able to get my private pilot's
license on dec 31, 2003. i love flying(what pilot doesn't, right?)
but i'm looking for a cheaper way to build hours then renting. i was
just playing with an idea, and i wanted your responses. Would an
airplane owner ever offer to share operating expenses for payment to
share a plane? i know that i would have to be put on an insurance
plan, and i of course would pay for over half of the owners insurance
payement, plus whatever kind of costs for annuals and other
inspections. i know this is almost like co-ownership, but i don't
have the resources to be buying a plane. I'm not trying to ask for
something for nothing, as i've said, i'll pay for operating and
insurance costs, as agreed with an owner.

Well, how would you respond to this kind of proposal? let me know!

Thanks in advance,
Benjamin

If you want to email me....
#b#a#s#o#g#@#r#r#c#n#e#t#.#o#r#g#