Hold on to your news servers

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Sheesh. I'm getting tired of increasingly large logs of cancels and
reposts. I think we should start treating all cancels that are sent out by
someone who is not a moderator or the original poster as an abuse.

Anyone who cancels someone elses post who is not a moderator or the
original poster should lose their account/job at ISP/etc.

So lets start sending in complaints...

    --Dean

Hey guys, this is a heads-up about Karl Denninger's new clean-news
system. I haven't seen any posts on this list about it. His message
describing the implementation is attached below, posted "publicly" on
chi.internet. (skip the quoted stuff)

Karl is about to send out cancel messages, cancelling _every_ Usenet
binary that is not PGP-signed by someone registered with his system.
He says that these cancels will only go out to people he explicitly
peers with, and not Usenet at large. He then adds that what these
peers do with the cancel msgs is their own business.

Folks, the goal is good, but the implementation is bad.

These cancel msgs will leak out to Usenet at large. History proves
this; leaking of net.*, bofh.*, clari.*, etc. occurs all the time
despite admins' best efforts.

And when these cancels leak, every news server on Usenet will
* suddenly be receiving _thousands_ of additional cancels, and
* 99.9999% of the binaries out there will disappear from your servers.

I do not want to be handling the support calls when this occurs.

If you are interested in this issue, there is a discussion on
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, thread "Karl Denninger loses his marbles..."

Or ask me, I'm more than happy to outline the technical ramifications
of this, and why it's a bad idea, in more detail. I'll cut and paste
from my e-mails to Karl. :slight_smile:

Jeff
(news admin/consultant)

P.S. Had mailer problems. Apologies if you are seeing this twice.

Path:

news.teleport.com!uunet!in3.uu.net!nntp.ntr.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-xf
er.newsread.com!netaxs.com!newsread.com!news.mcs.net!ddsw1!news.mcs.net!not-
for-mail

2

Yeah, since Karl's not "the boss" at MCS anymore, it would be kinda
amusing to have MCS get flooded with complaints that one of their
users (Karl) was abusing the network. :slight_smile:

Wonder if that would be an appropriate use of the RBL? :slight_smile:

3

This is why we dropped our UseNet feed three years ago, during the CoS
cancel-bunny wars. We saw, even then, Windows programs that would allow an
end-luser to generate cancels. When I saw three of them offered at
shareware.com I knew UseNet was in trouble. When I started to see the
cancel rate go *way* up, I dropped the feed.

4

It would be even more amusing given that it would be false (hint: I've had
colocation offers from a number of places across the country).

Since I know the people who own MCSNet, and further know that they can be
just as much of a prick as I can, I suspect such complaints would get
round-filed - especially given that they would be false.

5

And you'd complain to...who? Karl's an independant entity now.

6

This is just a perfect example of what i am begining to get annoyed by.
Please list, i think everybody is pretty dead set on their opinions at
this point, and talking about it isnt going to help much. It's obvious
that karl is set in doing what he's doing, and it's obvious that pretty
much the rest of the list is set against what he's doing. I for one, am
willing to see how it works out.

IF and WHEN karl gets everything up and running will be the only way for
sure to know. If his system works out, some of the posters are going to
feel pretty foolish.

If his system doesnt work out, then i'm sure we will get spammed again on
the list with a bunch of "told ya so's" etc. So please let's just drop
this thread and await the outcome.

Yeah, since Karl's not "the boss" at MCS anymore, it would be kinda
amusing to have MCS get flooded with complaints that one of their
users (Karl) was abusing the network. :slight_smile:

Wonder if that would be an appropriate use of the RBL? :slight_smile:

  _ __ _____ __ _________
______________ /_______ ___ ____ /______ John Gonzalez/Net.Tech
__ __ \ __ \ __/_ __ `__ \/ __ /_ ___/ MDC Computers/netMDC!
_ / / / `__/ /_ / / / / / / /_/ / / /__ (505)437-7600/fax-437-3052
/_/ /_/\___/\__/ /_/ /_/ /_/\__,_/ \___/ http://www.netmdc.com
[---------------------------------------------[system info]-----------]
  9:05pm up 34 days, 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.03

7

Correct :slight_smile:

What's even more fun is that since the system doesn't EMIT any articles
it consumes (it emits only cancels, sourced there) you can't figure out
where it gets its feeds from.... good luck getting the system's feeds
cut off under those circumstances :slight_smile:

8

When I was a customer of Karl's, I thought that despite his shortcomings,
he had a soul that had some qualities worthy of redemption, sort of like
Darth Vader of the Internet.

The instant I ceased being his customer (when he sold out without telling
his customers they were sold out) I thought it was possible the power of
the Dark Side was too great for him.

Its posts like this one that prove to me inconclusively that unlike the
wizened old man in the big black suit, Karl has a fair market value of
$6.57 for his chemical composition and that's it. I firmly and truly
believe now that Karl sits back on a daily basis a wonders "Gosh, what
segment of the net haven't I pissed off today. I wonder how I could get
THEM mad, too?"

I wish there was an RBL for _PEOPLE_ so that the dips in the clue-field
caused by the likes of Karl could just be put in a list somewhere and
completely negated everywhere else in the net.

*sigh*

9

Not when all of your USENET peers start droppin yer ass.

10

What Usenet peers (and what server) would those/that be Jamie?

Second, precisely how are you going to figure out where the clean-news system
is getting its feeds from, given that it does not emit any messages that it
receives, and thus, you have no means to trace those feeds?

11

Karl, I find your solution rather distasteful, but I must note that any cancel
message issued on Usenet is, by nature, an advisory and can be ignored if
the news server admin chooses to do so. That having been said, I still don't
like the idea.

12

Wait. Are you just talking about issuing cancels *locally* on *your* news
server? If so, I doubt that any of us have anything at all to complain about.

If not, then, as we know, the typical way to issue a cancel is to send out
a control message. Am I missing something here?

13

Yes.

The only messages this server will emit will be cancels, and it will emit
them only to those who DELIBERATELY peer with it.