On Wed, Mar 29, 2000 at 12:42:14PM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote: > A. swbell has frequent problems with their mail-servers, both inbound > (POP) and outbound (SMTP). I don't know (or care) what OS they run. > > B. When I got my DSL line, swbell was the *only* ISP possibile in > houston. That's part of what is (very) darkly humorous about the blacklisting bigots -- they don't have much of a grasp of realities in the telecom marketplace at the consumer level. For instance, when regulations preventing phone companies from providing both local and long distance service in the same LATA were lifted, part of the agreement said that those same phone companies had to permit competition on the local loops if they wanted to peddle long distance to their local customers. Needless to say, a great many phone companies can now sell you both local and long distance service, but local phone service competition is still almost unheard of. (Just one example: BellSouth here in Louisville has been successfully stonewalling competing DSL providers on their wires for at least a year, and are lobbying the state legislature for exemption from a bill that would compel public utility companies in general to permit competition.) The cable companies are similarly trying to maintain monopolies over their wires. The result of this is that there is actually very little competition among ISP's in any given geographic locality in the United States *except* in the dialup market. So when the bigots tell you to exercise your "rights" as a consumer and change ISP's, they're either ignorant of this reality, or winking at each other from behind their nailed-up IP's, knowing you'll either be paying a lot for shitty service, and the privilege of getting off the DUL blacklist (but you'd better pray they haven't blacklisted your ISP!). They're like little kids who torture small animals -- as long as they're not getting hurt themselves, it's just good clean fun to fuck with the pathetic little creatures. > C. Even though it's now possible to get other ISPs, it would roughly > double my current ISP bill. The blacklisters consider price no object, when it's someone else's money. > D. DUL is discrimination, pure and simple. If Debian chooses to add a > warning header based on it (so that those who choose to can filter), > that's fine. If Debian starts to reject list mail based on DUL, I'd > strongly consider leaving the project. Agreed. > Joseph's arguments, while occasionally strident, are not foolish. I > find it interesting that his opponents devolve into name calling and > obscenity. Well, he could comport himself in such a way as to make his critics look worse -- and he does have a history of being on the wrong side of some issues :) -- but he's not in the wrong this time. I have noticed that after screeching for statistics that would "prove" that usage of DUL on murphy would all but eliminate spam on the Debian mailing lists, none of those screechers has bothered to actually reply to the following fact that Jason offered: > DUL would seem to effect at most maybe 10 people, but it hasn't actually > been shown to stop any spam - so this needs more investigation. No blacklister has offered suggestions for followup on this issue -- they simply continue to reiterate their faith in the righteousness and universal applicability of the DUL blacklist (and wander off on tangents about ORBS). They remind me of Creationists, who will marshal "facts" in defense of their position, but when those "facts" are discredited, will simply fallback on repeated blunt assertions of their conclusion, not caring that their premises have been obliterated. -- G. Branden Robinson | When I die I want to go peacefully in Debian GNU/Linux | my sleep like my ol' Grand Dad...not branden@ecn.purdue.edu | screaming in terror like his passengers. roger.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |
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