John Hosking wrote:
>In addition, there are some de-facto standards; domains that
could possibly become valid some day but are in wide use as
invalid domain names. They include:
*.tld
*.nospam
x.x
example.us (and example.info, example.tv. etc.
for all of the other TLDs)
Yeah, but I wouldn't ever use these, and I hope you're not recommending
their use. I've spent too much of my life relying on undocumented
behavior (*cough* Microsoft *cough*) to accept these "de-facto
standards". Although the example.us goobers look inviting.
I agree. Why use a de-facto standard when there is a real
RFC-compiant standard that does the exact same job?
>Next there are domains that are registered and resolve to
IP adresses, but again are are in wide use as supposedly invalid
domain names. One can only assume that they like the traffic.
They include:
domain.com
nospam.com
No, not to be used. Why would we assume they like the traffic? (I
haven't gone there; do they have a bunch of ads on their pages?)
nospam.com is your typical fake search engine clickthrough scheme.
domain.com is an ad for domain registration.
I think that there is a good argument for not using them.
>Finally there is privacy.net. At one time the owner advertised
the following as email addresses for use when a form insists that
you provide an email address, and which at that time had an
autoresponder saying same. The domain seems to have switched
owners and the autoresponder is gone, but the new owners have
never complained about this use of their domain name.
Where are they supposed to complain? I don't have an answering machine,
so if they called while I was out, I missed it.
Where are they supposed to complain?
http://privacy.net/,
which was where the original offer saying that it's OK to use
me@privacy.net was made. When permission is granted to use a
domain in a certain way, it is not reasonable to expect every
user to write down the WHOIS info and to keep checking to make
sure the owner didn't change.
I would argue that that the fact that the previous owners gave
explicit permission to use
me@privacy.net and the fact that the
new owners have never revoked that permission means that the
permission still stands.
>totally unnecessary and irrelevant
....
>make me think the new thread might just be an opportunity to spam us.
I believe that the post contained enough good information to
make it worthwile for you despite your preferences concerning
subject lines, and I don't believe that it meets any reasonable
definition of "spam", but of course that's a matter of opinion.
If you think that the post is worthless or spam, the Standard
Advice would seem to apply.
THE STANDARD ADVICE:
There is a way to influence what gets discussed in a newsgroup that
works well, and another way that has never worked no matter how many
people have tried it.
What works: Post articles on the topic you wish to see discussed
and participate in the resulting discussion. Use killfiles and
filters so that you don't see the articles that you dislike.
If you don't know how to use a killfile, use good old fashioned
discipline and don't read posts by people who post articles that
you dislike. Never, ever respond to articles that you dislike.
What doesn't work: Respond to articles that you dislike, complain
about articles that you dislike, complain about posters that you
dislike, complain about how terrible everyone else is for not posting
what you want them to post. Talk about how to respond to articles
that you dislike. Make the articles that you dislike the center of
attention, the main topic of discussion, and a personal crusade.
-Guy Macon
--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>
