the "Internet's Vietnam"

[Matt Magri]

Jim Browning (jfbb at ATMNET.NET) wrote, of Jim Fleming:
> You are (intentionally, I believe) disrupting legitimate work people are 
> trying to accomplish on this and other mailing lists by stealing mind-share 
> (processor cycles, if you will) to the extent that no one can do anything 
> but deal with your off-topic posts.  [ ... ]

I don't think it's intentional (in the sense you mean), I think he
has a serious problem. At any rate, he has no power to compel people
to have to deal with his posts. That's a choice that a number of people
on this list have made for reasons which I'm sure are well-intentioned
but are, regardless, misguided. I will repeat my suggestion that people
spend their time on posts more deserving or their attention. If you are
unable to resist the siren's call, please use procmail or some other
mail filter program to make those seductive messages disappear. Then
maybe we wouldn't be greeted with 50 messages in the morning, all of
them off-topic.

>                    [ ... ]     I and others have asked politely, both 
> publicly and privately, that you limit your posts to the topic the list was 
> established to address.  You refuse to do so.      [ ... ]

I don't think he is able to. I would hope that the last 24 hours of
traffic will have convinced even the most diehard repliers that there's
no point in "correcting" him. If you feed it, it _will_ grow.

>                         [ ... ]         This post can only be 
> considered SPAM, as it is a post that is just as inappropriate to this 
> forum as a commercial solicitation would be.

Hm, that's a bit of a stretch, tho I sympathize with your frustration.
He's not the problem, tho. It's that otherwise reasonable people who
feel the need to engage in the illusion of a discussion with him.

> ATMnet will henceforth treat your organization as we would that of any 
> other SPAM spewer, by filtering traffic from addresses you are associated 
> with.

Unfortunately, this mail comes from netsol.com, not unety.net. As I
said earlier, tho, a simple mail filter would take care of it without
any sweat. Don't treat this as you would SPAM, treat as what it is, a
net.hazard. Avoid it like you would any other pothole. As for the
people who insist on driving their car right into it, I hope that
they'll realize that they're only making the hole larger and, as a
result, harder for the rest of us to get around to on our way to work.

Matt