Path:
amiserv!obdient!laidbak!newsserver.pixel.kodak.com!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.
du!wupost!uunet!mcsun!fuug!penet!julf
From: julf@penet.fi (Ze Julf)
Newsgroups:
alt.sex,alt.sex.bondage,alt.transgendered,alt.sexual.abuse.recovery,alt.sex.b
stiality,alt.sex.stories
Subject: The anon.penet.fi Anonymous Server (Long)
Keywords: Anonymous post and mail service
Date: 1 Dec 92 13:55:22 GMT
Followup-To: sender
Organization: Penetic, Espoo, Finland


*THIS MESSAGE CONTAINS IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR USERS OF THE ANON SERVER*,

but let me start by apologizing for the length and style of this message.
but as I have taken a religious vow not to post any purely factual articles
on the net (no, don't ask...), the form it takes is a bit lengthy. And
English is my third language, so...

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The thin mountain air rings quietly in the wind chimes. The spartan,
candlelit room is filled with the smell of sweet incense. Slightly to one
side of the room a man dressed in a grayish brown cowl sits cross-legged,
eyes slightly ajar. Against the far wall, along with scrolls of Japanese
calligraphies, a pair of enormous, black Marshall stacks pour out manicly
distorted and processed samples of a sakuhachi flute. At the other end of the
room sits another man, taller, and dressed in black. His bearded face shines
in the bluish glow of a Sun workstation.

His meditation interrupted by the bleep from the workstation, the man in the
cowl turns to the man in black.

"Oh Great Master Julf, Who Always Procrastinates When Faced With Unpleasant
 Tasks, I do not understand. Instead of meditating and training, as usual,
 you have spent an inordinate time by that computer screen. I have also
 noticed wrinkles across your brow, and a rather worried expression on your
 Most Honorable, But Not Very Pretty face. Could you enlighten me as to the
 cause of all these strange phenomena?"

"My dear Godanazo, I fear I have created a monster."

"A monster, my highly acclaimed Master? Pray tell more"

"You remember how I, in my most unbecoming irritation over the attempt of
 the net.demigods of the Finnish Academic Network, FUNET, to impose their
 stupid rules over the Finnish internet, set up an anonymous server."

"Yes, my Master. I could not avoid the most direct way you used to demonstrate
 mastery of the noble principle of Moving With The Universe Instead Of
 Bickering With Anally Retentive Bureaucrats."

"Well, yeah. Anyway... Everything was goggley-boggley until some
 Unsuspecting Clueless Mark Acting As Pawn For The Great Void did commit the
 act of posting anonymously to alt.something.or.other.controversial. As the
 server includes a couple of lines of usage instructions as a signature, I
 soon found usage of the server cascading. Well, that did not cause any lack
 of sleep, as the spare 386 box handling the service could well have found
 it's Alignment With The Cosmic Stream in spinning it's Most Digital clock
 cycles in this rather trivial pursuit. But then came two separate incidents
 that caused me to get worried."

"Ah, Master Julf, Who Seems To Forget To Do The Dishes Most Of The Time,
 what could these incidents have been?"

"One was that I got a couple of messages, showing that the people using the
 server did not just spend their time making Telephone Companies rich by
 posting GIFs of Playmates Of The Previous Year, but for posting to groups
 such as alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. I suddenly realized people risked more
 than their co-workers ridicule on this system. That somebody really
 _needed_ this service. And, of course, the other thing was that I started
 getting reports about the server misfunctioning."

"That must have been a grave moment for you, Master Julf. I suppose you
 looked at the source, and with your fabled intuition sensed the wrongness in
 the code, and put it right?"

"Well, that is naturally what I tried to do. But I could not find any fault
 in the original code, nor in the most un-noble hacks I had to add to
 support the Utterly Braindamaged Wombat Do From SCO the box was running. In
 my desperation I rewrote all the code in a ridiculously modular fashion,
 testing every single piece in a special test harness that would have done
 me proud in alt.sex.bondage. But still reports of problems kept coming in.
 Finally I managed to isolate the problems. The only time the server
 misbehaved was when somebody mailed to a known address, and had to use the
 "%" address hack. Evidently some mail routing site was screwing up addresses
 containing "%" signs, perhaps shortcutting them directly to the final
 recipient, without giving the server a chance to anonymize the message.
 To fix that problem, I resorted to a special header field, X-Anon-To:,
 supposedly safe from abuse from the likes of sendmail and MMDF."

"That, Master Julf, Who Never Touches A Manual When Sober, is a solution
 that seems workable, even though it doesn't exactly radiate with Zen. And
 anyway, the problem should only have affected a small number of users,
 going through the cursed, non-RFC-822-complying host. May This Host's
 Miserable System Administrators Forever Be Chained To A Teletype KSR 33
 Printing Out The Contents Of Rec.Humor.Funny!"

"Well, yes. So you can imagine my dismay and shock when I finally found out
 that the host in question actually was my upstream feed site, The Name Of
 Which I Shall Not Utter In A Feeble Attempt To Protect The Names Of The
 Guilty. And you simply would not believe the Utter Garbage Addresses From Hell
 my poor mail system was given! A veritable Irish Stew of percent signs and
 bangs, with not a single at-sign in sight. Yes, I know very well I have
 preached Accepting The Great Surrealism Of Life With A Smile, but there are
 limits to everything. And to add insult to indignation, the system
 administrator was away for a week, and has been rather busy since, it
 seems..."

"But is there nothing you could do, Oh Great Flamethrower Of The Northern
 Networks?"

"Well, I could equip my mail system with some kind of AI front-end, but
 there would never be any guarantees. That's why I'm trying to get users to
 switch to using the 'X-Anon-To:' header."

"Yes, I see the wisdom in your actions. But how about different mail
 systems? Will the users be able to add arbitrary header fields?"

"Well, to speak plainly and truthfully, I have to admit I do not have a
 clue. As I am using MH myself, I don't have any problems. I have also been
 told programs such as ELM also support arbitrary headers. But users have to
 ask their local mail gurus. I really hope they would send me info about how
 to do it in different mail systems, as people keep asking me. Ah. No. What
 I will do is to make the server recognize the X-Anon-To: keyword if it is
 the first line of the message proper, as well."

"And if I use the 'X-Anon-To:' header, can I be confident that my identity
 remains secret?"

"Weeeeellll... The software has been pretty well tested, and I have
 great confidence in the system and our Mission. But there are many ways for
 somebody to discover your True Self. Mail bounces due to bad addresses are
 a common cause for problems, and too often people forget that their mail
 software might add .signature files automatically."
 
"But Great Julf, Who Walks On Other Peoples Wall-To-Wall Carpets With Muddy
 Mountaineering Boots, doesn't the server remove signatures?"

"Oh yes, Godanazo, but only if the signature begins with a line starting
 with two dashes. And then there's the problem of messages having to go via
 mail routing machines to reach my site. If somebody has access to sendmail
 logs they can peruse the messages before they are anonymized, or by looking
 at mail logs deduce the identity of a poster. Fortunately the machine
 running the service is in the back room of our temple, with no direct
 access from the net. And the only person with access to that back room is
 me."

"You sound as if you have experience with system administrators that would
 commit such foul and immoral deeds. Perhap this is something you have come
 across during your previous incarnation as systems expert?"

"Well, Godanazo, it takes one to know one. To my shame I have to admit I
 have, in my misspent and miserable past, committed exactly the deeds I
 warned about. I was young and foolish, deeply in love, and very jealous.
 But the bad karma I thusly accumulated caused me endless grief and caused
 me to loose the love and respect of somebody very dear to me. I have since
 repented my actions a million times, and the grief and guilt are at least
 to some extent responsible for my withdrawal from wordly activities, and
 my dedication to studying the Great Flow Of Chaos."

"And how will people know how to use this Rather Complicated For Being This
Simple server?"

"Ah. They only have to send a message to help@anon.penet.fi, and they will
automagically be provided with some additional usage instructions."

"And how about the delays people have been complaining about?"

"Well, most of the delay is because the mail connection to my site is a
 polled ISDN connection. This can cause delays of several hours. But I do
 intend to upgrade the connection to full SMTP connection, Real Soon Now.
 But what difference does a delay of a couple of hours make, when the whole
 lifetime of a human being is but a passing butterfly in the vast
 thunderstorm of the Eternal Void. But enough of this idle talk about
 matters that do not further the development of our consciousness any more
 than steaming cups of the loveliest, blackest espresso do provide relief
 from the famine in Somalia. How have you been doing with the koan I
 assigned you? Are you ready to present your answer?"

"Ah yes, Master. The koan you gave me was The Koan Of Alt.Fan.Madonna, and
 goes like this: 'The Writings claim that every Man sees the Truth in all
 his actions, and in the actions of others, if only he Looks deep enough
 into his heart. But considering this, how is it possible that there can be
 a newsgroup with 100 messages per day saying "who can be stupid enough to
 actually _like_ that blond airhead slut?" Why can't people simply accept
 that some people find comfort and enjoyment in things that, for other
 people, appear tasteless or even boring?'

 It is a very good koan, and I have spent many an hour pondering this grave
 question. My answer is this: 'Americans, in their great and admirable
 respect for the rights of every single individual to express any view or
 opinion whatsoever, have perhaps gone overboard in trying to demonstrate to
 their European and Asian sisters and brothers their liberal attitudes by
 permitting even the gravest of all sins, that of stupidness and
 intellectual laziness, go unpunished and be expressed freely. Thus there is
 great truth even in the lack of Life."

With a deep "Ooooaaahhhh....." the man in black clothes strikes the shorter
man on the head with the computer keyboard, demonstrating a perfectly executed
Kendo strike technique.

"You stupid fool. Has all the time I have spent with you, demonstrating the
 wondrous workings of the Universe been all in vain? Have I not repeatedly
 told you that nothing is exactly as simple as it seems, not even Americans?
 I feel you have to spend a lot more time in meditation, studying this
 problem more deeply. Please let me know when you think you have _truly_
 penetrated into the true nature of this question."

"Yes Master. I will. Care for a cup of espresso?"

"Yes please, but make it strong!"

The music fades slowly, and the empty room is silent and dark,
only dimly illuminated by the screen-saver pattern on the workstation
screen....

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

an0@anon.penet.fi

Johan Helsingius     Kuusikallionkuja 3 B 25   02210 Espoo    Finland    Yourp
net: julf@penet.fi   bellophone: int. +358 0400 2605  fax: int. +358 013900166
-- 
Johan Helsingius     Kuusikallionkuja 3 B 25   02210 Espoo    Finland    Yourp
net: julf@penet.fi   bellophone: int. +358 0400 2605  fax: int. +358 013900166

<><><><><><>
Krikket                      ---  krikket@meltdown.chi.il.us
anon-1214@twwells.com        ---  an294@anon.penet.fi
#include<std.disclaimers>    ---  #include<sig.virus>

Just another commentary on the sad state of affairs in our world today.
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery