posting from Google Groups (was Re: Math mode wackiness in memoir class.)

In article <1152554625.211771.112910@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Mark Mephinasony <twisted0n3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

[ snip ]

Replying again to address specifics of posting from Google Groups:

Oh, and notice the extra ">" in front of the "From"? That is, as
far as I can tell, part of your posting as provided to me by my NNTP
server. (Anyone else get the same thing? or not? artifact of
posting through Google Groups?)

A Google Groups employee has recently been interfering with my postings
through GG. Initially, they disrupted my postings to a specific thread
in another group -- first, a bogus "posting limit exceeded" message (if
real, whatever "limit" was claimed was set ridiculously low);

Why do you call this message bogus? you might call this a misfeature,
but how do you know it's being applied to you in a way that's different
from how it's applied to others?

followed
by one followup appearing as nothing but "- Show quoted text -" when I
saw it listed the next time I checked the group after posting it. When
I examined it (by clicking the link), I saw that a single > character
had been added. At this point I began to suspect intentional
interference rather than glitches.

I think I've at least skimmed all your messages, and I don't recall
seeing just a "- Show quoted text -" appearing anywhere in them. So
this may be a problem with how your archived messages are shown by
GG's interface rather than with how they're sent out to the rest of
Usenet.

And, as noted, I observed the addition of the ">" before "From"
in a post from someone else also apparently using GG to post, so
again, it seems that this is not just you.

When my followup asking what had
happened was rejected with the bogus "posting limit exceeded" error
message, my suspicions were confirmed: someone with privileged access
to my postings before they propagated, ergo a Google employee, was
intentionally diddling my postings to that thread. (Once is a glitch.
Twice is coincidence. Three times, especially twice in a row, is
intent.)

But it appears that whoever it is has now attempted the same thing in
this froup, trying to alter my posts so they seem to contain no (or
less) original material,

I dunno; most of your posts I've skimmed seem to have quite a lot of
original material. :-)?

Again, I'm not sure that what shows up in GG's interface to its
archives is necessarily an accurate reflection of what goes out to
the rest of Usenet. (If nothing else, they don't show full e-mail
addresses, right?) I'm not sure how you can track that, though,
without the cooperation of others in this or another group.

perhaps in the hopes of hiding them from
people or making people more likely to miss some of what I wrote. That,
and the spurious error messages, indicate a more general aim of
censoring some of my posts, apparently unofficially (if I had done
something wrong as far as they were officially concerned they'd
probably just cancel my account, forcing me to make a new one) and
apparently in multiple froups.

Now I ask: is it one of my detractors here that put the employee up to
this? As far as I am concerned, disrupting my postings (either by a)
altering some of them from what I wrote before sending them out or b)
outright preemptively suppressing me from posting some of them)
constitutes hacking, i.e. computer intrusion, fraud, and abuse, and (in
the unauthorized-modification case) arguably copyright infringement or
plagiarism of some sort. As such, the employee and whomever passed them
the bribe are both liable for civil penalties and possibly criminal
prosecution.

Hope you're now feeling scared, whoever you are. To avoid legal
troubles, here's some advice: leave me alone. Should be simple enough
-- even a three-year old can understand and follow that one, simple
instruction. (Even if three-year olds often don't, they can.)

[ snip ]

--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
.

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