a call for peace (Re: SMTP AUTH)

Mon May 2 13:55:19 UTC 2005

in this interminable thread from hell, someone finally said the magic words:

> Thankfully, there's always procmail.

and helpfully gave a specific recipe:

> :0
> * ^From:.*<dean at av8\.com
> /dev/null

now, speaking as someone who went around the loop a few times with dv8 on the
topic of PPLB, i can assure all of you that his mind (or whatever) is pretty
much made up.  all arguing's going to do at this point is (a) fulfill his
fantasies of adequacy/relevance by making him seem worthy of refutation, (b)
cause lurkers and onlookers to scratch their heads and wonder if "there's
gotta be something to this, or why would the volume be so sustainably high
on the thread?", and (c) annoy the hell out of everybody else on the list.

it does no good for me to filter out the crackpots if the rest of you are just
going to keep on replying to same.  so, as RAH had LL say: "never try to teach
a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig."  here's what my thread
reader says this thread looks like.  as you can see, most of the traffic is
in response to a single crackpot.

   [  30: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.] Re: Slashdot: Providers Ignoring DNS TTL?
Y -    [  75: Dean Anderson       ] Re: SMTP AUTH
       <  25: "Patrick W. Gilmore"> Re: Slashdot: Providers Ignoring DNS TTL?
       <  26: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.> 
       <  14: Matthew Sullivan    > 
       <  84: "Edward B. Dreger"  > 
Y -        [  19: Dean Anderson       ] 
               [  22: "Steven J. Sobol"   ] 
Y -                [  32: Dean Anderson       ] 
Y -        [ 116: Dean Anderson       ] 
               [  27: "Edward B. Dreger"  ] 
Y -                [  82: Dean Anderson       ] Re: SMTP AUTH
               [   8: Joe Maimon          ] Re: Slashdot: Providers Ignoring...
Y -                [  25: Dean Anderson       ] 
                       [ 107: Will Yardley        ] Re: SMTP AUTH
                           [  26: David Lesher        ] 
   [  54: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.] Re: SMTP AUTH
       <  24: Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.> 
Y -    <  28: Dean Anderson       > 
           [  19: Richard A Steenberge] 
               [  32: James               ] 
           [  38: Joe Maimon          ] 
       <   9: Randy Bush          > 
       <  33: Matthew Sullivan    > 
       <  23: Tim Wilde           > 
           [  21: David Lesher        ] 

i'm not one of the annointed moderators, but i heard that we were supposed
to practice "peer moderation" and so i'm asking you all to please show a
little discipline before you hit the "FlameCrackpot" key.
-- 
Paul Vixie