Re: Cowboys herding cats

In article <guiecf$26u$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, kfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
I've been fighting spam for over a quarter century. That's one of
the stupider approaches. The (mis)quoted email address *already*
appeared, correctly, in the newsgroup, and any spammer with a standard
newsfeed already harvested it.

Possible, but for every spammer doing that (if there are any) there are
probably hundreds of spambots scouring the web. And google groups are on
the web.

Mangling quoted addresses only
interferes with legitimate communication, not with spam. It's like a
lock that keeps the legitimate residents out but doesn't stop burglars.

If it stops most of them that would have gotten in otherwise, it's a lot
better than nothing.

Of course, anyone who doesn't want to be spammed will have already taken
precautions with their posting address anyway, but if there are
uncautious newbies anywhere they would be on the Google Groups. It's
good that they're getting some help. If it slows down the torrent of
spam hitting or trying to hit my /dev/null I'm glad for that, too.

If you had a full featured browser, you could go to Google groups,
and get the unmunged version after solving a CAPTCHA. Its a
feature, not a bug.

Sure, if you assume that everyone on Usenet is also on the Internet,

Everyone but you and Tina Hall. And even she has Internet now. Even if
she doesn't use it most of the time.

that everyone has a graphical browser,

Well, everyone does. Nobody will consider the 0,0001% who do not. That's
how it is.

and that it's a trivial effort to get our of your newsreader,
fire up your browser, go to Google Groups, locate Google's copy of the
message you were just reading, and solve the CAPTCHA, several times
for each message you read in a high-volume newsgroup.

Now, they wouldn't do that. This feature is intended mostly for the GG
users themselves. Anyone viewing a full newsfeed would not need to get
your address from a quoted post, they could get it from the original
unmunged one.

Google's algorithm is stupid enough that it often mangles message-ids,
apparently mistaking them for email addresses.

Okay, Google - I assume, as I've for the longest time not had any desire
to look at GG - does some things wrong. What a surprise.

If they were based upon a text-only platform they'd still be doing the
same things wrong. It has nothing to do with graphical browsers being
teh evil.

You should still be happy that Google Groups exist, since Usenet would
be alot more dead without them right now. For many, they will probably
remain the last resource for accessing it.

I'll also mention that your text often consists of alternating long
and short lines. Is this another "feature"?

FWIW I don't see any such thing.
Your posts, his posts, they both look the same in my newsreader.


rgds,
netcat
.

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