For the record, my personal opinion is:
- sending unmonitored requests to an unknown URL space is dangerous.
- because the list of URL's was automatically generated it sounds like
a robot, and should have obeyed /robots.txt.
- lanl's sledgehammer approach is over the top and counterproductive
- POST forms at lanl would have prevented this.
- if everybody took half an hour longer to prepare their emails to the
mailing list, misunderstandings here would have been reduced.
- if people resisted ad-hominum attacks, the discussion would be more
productive.
These sound to me like obvious points hardly requiring further
discussion. But, I believe in freedom of speech, so "carry on", as they say.
HOWEVER, as a mailing list administrator, I do draw the line at email
spoofing. Note the facts below, and draw your own conclusions.
Either it is an extremely well organised setup against Paul,
or it is a patheticly executed spoofing attempt by Paul. I will not waste
more time on further investigation.
Not only does this break ettiquette, it means my equipment is being used
in what I consider hacking activity which could (with other names than
"nobody@aol.com"), result in liability issues for me. This is unacceptable.
Using "nobody@aol.com" incidentally also means the spoof affects AOL,
which happens to be my employer. Not clever.
This annoys me no end -- I have better things to do with my time
than policing a mailing list.
So: STOP SPOOFING. Be prepared to back up your own statements. Otherwise
leave the list and don't come back. That goes to everyone. Oh, and please
do resist the temptation to counter-attack here...
-- Martijn Koster
> Date: Thu, 11 Jul 96 10:09:14 -0700
> From: Majordomo
> Subject: SUBSCRIBE robots
>
> <nobody@aol.com> has been added to robots.
> No action is required on your part.
--- >From: <nobody@aol.com> >Date: Thu, 11 Jul 96 13:12:29 -0400 >Message-Id: <9607111712.AA02856@castalia.physics.yale.edu> >To: robots@webcrawler.com >Subject: Re: nastygram from xxx.lanl.gov > >Begin Forwarded message: > >From: ShariLee@aol.com >Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 15:37:18 -0400 >Subject: Best of the Net award > >... >In the June issue of Science & Engineering Network News, >we wrote a review of the online efforts of the Physics e-Print Archive at >xxx.lanl.gov. >This site received an exceptionally high score, rating 9.1 out of 10.0! >(the review is attached...)--- >Date: Thu, 11 Jul 96 10:18:27 -0700 >From: Majordomo >Subject: UNSUBSCRIBE robots ><nobody@aol.com> has unsubscribed from robots. >No action is required on your part.--- # Note the message-id in the "Best of the Net award" finger @castalia.physics.yale.edu [castalia.physics.yale.edu] ... gingsparg PG at LANL p3 1:23 Thu 13:01--- finger ginsparg@castalia.physics.yale.edu ... Last login Thu Jul 11 13:01 on ttyp3 from qfwfq.lanl.gov----- Martijn
Email: m.koster@webcrawler.com WWW: http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/mak.html