Advice to new netters panting to try it out and make $50,000 in an afternoon: I can tell you right now what you're gonna get - an extremely full emailbox, a ticked-off sysadmin (because your emailbox is full of letter bombs from irate UseNetters who snapped at seeing this cr*p in their newsgroups for the fifth time in two weeks, and because several thousand *un*snapped-as-yet UseNetters email her directly saying "Talk to this kid; it's illegal, a waste of time, and annoying), and a rapidly-vanishing UseNet access (wave bye-bye to it for a looooong time, if you're not lucky...). The letter itself says it's legal, you say? It's lying; it's known as a Ponzi or pyramid scheme, and is wire fraud for *sending* the letter, *and* postal fraud for receiving any of the money thru the U.S. Mail (can you say Federal Case, boys'n'girls?)...
And you *have* to leave a trail directly to yourself, name and address - or
else it *can't* work (hee hee)... Save yourself the grief: just say NO to
Dave.Rhodes . Recently voted number one on list of people *every* UseNetter
would like to see die an excruciatingly slow and painful death. If we're
lucky, it does not get posted at all (for a day or two).
Contrib. post:
Dave Rhodes was a student at Columbia Union College in Takoma Park, MD.
This is a Seventh Day Adventist college. The posting machine was !cucstud,
aka Columbia Union College, Student. It passed news upstream to uunet.
Cucstud was a 3B2, and there were two or three more. Note this predated
the widespread usage of the pseudodomain of { }.UUCP, and I don't recall
if the site was ever so named.
Needless to say, Leroy Cain, the sysadm, was not amused. This posting was
made in 1987-1988, sometime just after the infamous jj@portal one, and
his incoming mail queue was impressive.
I do not know if Leroy took the matter to the Dean of Students, but do
know he posted an apology, and ensured that Dave would not be doing that
again, at least at THAT site.
As for why I had an account on cucstud, and knew Leroy, when my only
connection was that I caught a bus to work in front of the place every
morning; that's a different story........
--
I like what Dogbert had to say about chain letters: "Don't you think that for your first crime you shouldn't attach your name andaddress and mail it to several thousand strangers?"
[Evidence has since turned up that the Dave Rhodes letter has been circulating, in snail-mail form, long before that fateful day in 1987 or 1988... ah well...]
INN apparently now has a "kill-the-chefs" option which sends newsgroups of the form alt.foo.bar.baz.baz.baz to the bitbucket... Also infamous: .cabal, from approximately mid-'93, which broke news software far and wide (due to no-one having imagined anyone would create a newsgroup starting with "."...), and is *still* causing problems among some xrn users... The moral of the story? First: read *all* the newsgroup description lines. Then: read the alt.config FAQ. Only after *that* should you even *think* of discussing a new alt.* group (on alt.config, of course).
Anyway, "Imminent Death of the Net predicted,
A particularly strange turn was taken on a.f.u in late 1993, when Vicki
Robinson, relative newbie, innocently proclaimed "But I'm not in anyone's
.sig". A.f.u being what it is, this appeared in someone else's .sig almost
immediately, (Jason R. Heimbaugh claims this distinction, and is keeping
both the .sig collection and the FAQ) and quickly spread to cover nearly
the entire a.f.u community of posters; it has been sighted as far away as
news.* . There is a Vicki Robinson sig-virus FAQ; refer to it for more
details on chronology, varieties (this .sig virus mutates MUCH faster than
normal), etc. Vicki's own .sig now contains mentions of her .sig virus in
other people's .sigs (a meta-virus)... "welcome to afu. Here's your
accordion" sums it up best, I guess. A Vicki virus in your .sig is not
*required* for a.f.u posters (indeed, Joel Furr (q.v.) has denounced the
practice, saying essentially "get a life"... and has ended up in Vicki's .sig,
and others, as a result)... but viruses *are* contagious. Has somewhat revived,
in multiple varieties, not all of which are Vicki anymore, in late summer '94.
"Cross-posted to 2000 different newsgroups" has also been thought of;
this will quite probably break people's newsreaders all over the place
due to line length considerations. Either of these is about the only
thing that's not actually illegal that you can easily do which will
piss off your admins *and* the net worse than posting Make.Money.Fast (q.v.);
don't even think about going down in net.history like this, kids. Can you
say "25,000 pieces of email in your mailbx"? Can you say "Kicked off your
account faster than you can spell an12070@anon.penet.fi"? I knew you could...
This has mutated, in true UseNet fashion, to encompass *any* continuing
thread; if you mention Hitler or Nazis out of the blue, the thread is sure to
die irrelevantly soon (and, incidentally, you've lost the argument, whatever
it was)... and every continuing thread on UseNet *must* contain such a
reference sooner or later. Invoking Rule #4 deliberately in hopes of ending
a thread, however, is doomed to failure (Quirk's Exception)...
Rule #nonumber: There are no hard-and-fast Rules on UseNet, only Guidelines,
which are more or less strictly enforced (and differ) from group to group;
this is why it's generally wise to read any group for a bit before ever
posting to it.
Rule #0: *There* *is* *no* *C*b*l*. There *is*, however, a net-wide
conspiracy designed solely to lead Dave Hayes (q.v.) to believe that there
is a C*b*l.
Corollary: *There* *are* *no* *pods*.
Rule #9: It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the Net.
Dave Fischer's Extension: 1993 was The Year September Never Ended [so far,
there doesn't seem to be much evidence he's wrong...]
Rule #17: Go not to UseNet for counsel, for they will say both `No' and
`Yes' and `Try another newsgroup'.
Rule #2 (John Gilmore): "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes
around it."
Rule #108 (from the soc.motss FAQ): "What will happen to me if I read
soc.motss?" "In general, nothing. (You may be informed or infuriated, of
course; but that's a standard Usenet hazard.)"
Rule #666: Old alt groups never die. They don't fade away nicely, either.
Rule #7-B: There is no topic so thoroughly covered that noone will ever
bring it up again.
Rule #90120: Applying your standards to someone else's post *will* result
in a flamewar.
Rule #1: Spellling and grammer counts. So do grace, wit, and a sense of
humor (the latter two are different), as well as a willingness to meet
odd people, but these are lesser considerations.
Rule #x^2: FAQs are asked frequently. Get used to them.
Rule #29: no rational discourse can happen in a thread cross-posted to
more than two newsgroups.
rule #6 (Eddie Saxe): don't post to misc.test unless you understand the
consequences.
Rule #547 (Arne Adolfsen): When people know they're wrong they resort to ad
hominems.
Rule #37 (Faisal Nameer Jawdat): Read the thread from the beginning, or else.
Rule #5 (Reimer's Reason): Nobody ever ignores what they should ignore on
Usenet.
Rule $19.99 (Brad `Squid' Shapcott): The Internet *isn't* *free*. It just has
an economy that makes no sense to capitalism.
Rule #3 ("Why 3?" "Because we felt like it"): For every opinion there is at
least one equally loud and opposing opinion; sometimes stated as:
Note that almost every newsgroup will have a Flamewar that Will Not Die (or
two, or six) lurking somewhere in the background - but that these flamewars
are usually pretty well confined to the one newsgroup simply through
specialization, so I'm not gonna even try to include most of them here...
however, there are several that pop up almost at will *anywhere* in UseNet,
among which are the abortion flamewars, the homosexuality flamewars, the
"My computer's better than yours" flamewars, the freedom-of-speech/UseNet-
is-international flamewar, the Permanent Floating Flamewar that followed
Serdar Argic wherever he oozed, the drug wars (for various drugs), the male/
female circumcision wars, and the Christianity-spreading-people vs.
"enlightened intellectuals" flamewar(s)... there's something about many of thes
e
subjects that seems to attract the worst in people (that's partly why this FAQ
seems to concentrate somewhat on anti-gay posters, for instance - there's so
*many* of them that have this little "hot button" that there's more kooks
amongst them...). Scan down the subjects in talk.* for a more complete listing,
and note that Emily Postnews has a FAQ on the predictable "I want my groooop!"
script for alt.config ...
This may be slowly changing however... more companies/organizations are
discovering that the net's a good place to get feedback or opinions, or
to get volunteers (or even employees), and some (like Wizards of the Coast
on rec.games.deckmaster) have a quite extensive net.presence, looking for
reactions and/or helping people. But in general, creative-type famous people
must spend much of their time creating, not wasting time on UseNet...
.sig viruses:
First there were .sigs; next, the Warlord (q.v.); then came .sig viruses.
The simplest (and probably first) was "Hi, I'm a .sig virus; copy me into
yours and join the fun!". This, rather predictably, mutated into dozens of
non-compatible versions; most .sigs can only hold one or so (Kibo's is, as
usual, an exception; a 1000-plus-line .sig has room for *everything*!).Alt.religion.kibology:
Possibly one of the strangest places on Usenet. Home to the worship of and/or
scorn for Kibo (q.v.); impossible to crosspost inappropriately to, much like
misc.misc . Home also to a constantly-changing cast of "regular" Kibologists,
currently including several people already mentioned in this FAQ (Kibo, by
definition, plus John_-_Winston, Ludwig Plutonium, and Andrew Bulhak, and
everyone mentioned in the xibo entry), as well as such luminaries as Craig
Dickson, Lewis (YDNCTFL YWSRCFAOTW) McCarthy (not to be confused with Lewis
Stiller), Rose Marie Holt, brent jackson, and Jay Paul Chawla, plus a couple
anti-kibologists (Jason V Robertson is filling this role at the moment, with
R Bryner being an anti-k 'bot). Filled with trolls, beabling, "You misspelled
Ann Rand", odd followup-to lines, posts from Kibo, and a proselytary attitude;
inadvertent arch-enemy newsgroup of rec.org.mensa . If you see it in the
headers while reading another newsgroup, you may want to take a deep breath
before pushing 'f'. Stick around long enough here and you'll be crossposted
almost everywhere else on UseNet... which leads us neatly into
Crossposted to *.test:
A variation on "crossposted to alt.hell and back"; see Gannon, Argic,
etc. A news.admin.misc post suggested that this practice (which gives
unsuspecting followers-up a deluge of autoreplies from the daemons scanning
the *.test groups worldwide) originated with Carasso (q.v.) in the late 80s;
further data I've gathered indicates, however, that it well predates him, and
that he simply widely popularized and practiced it... Moral: *Always* check
your Newsgroups: and Followup-to: lines...
And the sequel, "Posted separately to every newsgroup you can find":
No, you're not the first person to think of it. Unfortunately, you
won't be the last, either. As the net grows, and the number of new users
grows, however, each incidence of this is a little worse than the last;
at the moment we have in net.memory Skinny Dip Thigh Cream (posted by someone
who set his email-forward to the [widely known] address of one of the developer
s
of Mosaic, but got kicked off his account *very* fast anyway because he didn't
have the access to set his site's postmaster@ address' forwarding too),
Laurence Canter and his law firm^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hwife Siegel [Green Cards and
Spam! I do not like it, Sam I Am!] (who have been kicked off *four* separate
services for mass postings of a misleading "Green Card" ad) and Clarence Thomas
IV, who mass-posted a two-page note about the end of the world ("JESUS IS
COMING SOON") soon after the California quake from a Seventh-Day Adventist
college somewhere. Joel Furr (q.v.), incidentally, has released a Canter &
Siegel T-shirt, and in return has been threatened with various lawsuits by
the distaff portion of that lovely pair...Hitler, Nazis, nazis, and net.cops:
Warning: now that this FAQ has mentioned Hitler and Nazis, UseNet Rule #4
(also known as Godwin's Rule, after Mike Godwin of the EFF, sci.crypt, and
comp.org.eff.talk, a sometime foe of David Sternlight (q.v.) [even though it
was apparently in use, by Richard Sexton {q.v.} among others, before Mike's
1988 (?) net.advent; the "Godwin's" part seems to stem from "Rich Rosen's
Rules of Net.Debate, which I don't have a copy of]) says it will be coming to
an irrelevant and off-topic end soon. Just as there will always be newbies
("It's *always* September, *somewhere* on the net" - response to a 1993 wave
of delphi.com postings on a.f.u), there will always be people who see the net
and are repulsed because there's stuff there they don't want to see - so they
set out to make sure noone else can, either. They invariably fail, because
there are no net.cops to enforce any such rules on UseNet; in the course of
the heated flamewar that usually follows, things escalate until either Hitler
or Nazis (or both) put in an appearance, at which point the thread has
officially lost all relevance. People scream at each other a bit more, then
give up and go home. Bleah. "Keep your brains up top; don't be a net.cop."UseNet Rules #n:
No firm info at the present time is available on just what the other UseNet
Rules #n are. However, at a guess, they include:
Rule #27 (Gary Lewandowski): "In cyberspace, *everyone* can hear you scream."
And for completeness' sake:
Rule #4: (Godwin's Rule) Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause
the thread it is mentioned in to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon;
every thread on UseNet has a constantly-increasing probability to contain
such a mention.
Quirk's Exception: Intentional invocation of this so-called "Nazi Clause" is
ineffectual.
Case's Corollary: If the subject is Heinlein or homosexuality, the
probability of a Hitler/Nazi comparison being made becomes equal to one.
`Rap is not music' (and other Permanent Floating Flamewars):
Contrib. post:
In the list of non-human net.legends, I think the `Rap is not music'
meta-thread deserves a mention. This turns up every month or two in
some music group, and is distinguished by being even more predictable
than the average recurring net.thread. It's become a crowd
participation event to chant along with the newbie following the
script until he gets to the point where he (never seen a woman do it)
volunteers to write a rap 'cos its so easy and disapears in a puff of
embarassment.
>Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
>There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
>( at least a year so far..)
>The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
>humble newgroup [alt.folklore.computers] ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking!
>Hi, Mike [Dahmus]!).
>The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
>firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
>And let's not forget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
>at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)
Those are all recurring, not long-running.
>Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?
It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.
--
Foob's Law states that the quickest way to completely derail any netnews
discussion is to bring up gun control, and so I guess we're on our way to
Outer Space now.
"Oooo, *he's* Famous! What's his email address???":
There are many people on the net who are Famous in Real Life tm; however,
usually the requirements of being Famous preclude their spending all their
time on the net corresponding by email with Fans. Some have newsgroups where
they hang out (Douglas Adams and Mike Jittlov have their own alt.fan groups,
for instance, as do Dave Barry and Terry Pratchett, and they show up there or
lurk with varying degrees of consistency); others are on an online service or
just lurk in certain places. Generally, though, you'll do better writing to
their editor or publisher or agent if you really really want an autograph or a
piece of their clothing... William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) is *not* on the
net (he still reportedly uses a manual typewriter), so don't ask. Asking "Gee,
how can I get [famous author]'s email address? Pretty pleeeeeze?" on
rec.arts.sf.* is likely to get you semi-toastily flamed as well.