From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Subject: Re: monthly APS announcement
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 23:46:48 GMT
Organization: None, Mt. Laurel, NJ

I got a flame suggesting that this was inappropriate for the
group. Possibly. However, I think that these technical issues
(and the personal ones, sigh) should be resolved. Those who don't
care about the APS's and their admins can just hit `n' now.

Mr. Carp wrote:
> As in most sites that have a domain of something-other-than-UUCP,
> the assumption can be made that .com sites are on the net.

I am angered that you chose to answer me in this fashion. You
posted something negative about my system, baseed on an
*assumption*. You didn't check the assumption out first even
though you could have. When I called you on it, your answer
should have been "sorry and I retract what I said". Instead, you
have avoided the issue of your responsibility to check things out
before saying nasty things about others.

> As for your personal attacks on the veracity of the service offered,
> it in no way obscures the fact that this is a service that people can
> use independently of yours.

Huh? No attack on your service was intended. Your service is
different from mine. I had no intention to say "better" or
"worse". From my point of view, of course, the lack of features
in your system makes it deficient. But my point of view is
irrelevant just as your is; the people who use the systems are
the ones whose opinions matter. They'll decide which system, if
any, to use. Your and my responsibility is to provide accurate
information so that they might have an informed opinion.

>                              In fact, the fact that khijol (like twwells)
> is being used for anonymous postings is irrelevent - with the posting of
> the software, *anyone* can set themselves up as an anonymous posting
> site.

True. Someday I'll get mine in a form that I consider acceptable
for publishing and post it. I tend to be perfectionist about my
software. :-) Actually, it is almost there now and perhaps later
this month I'll post the code.

> If you had bothered to look in the uucp maps, you would have noticed that
> khijol is also one hop away from the net.

I did in fact look at the maps. Perhaps you should look, too. The
problem is this: your map entry shows two outgoing connections
you mention. But a lot of other sites show your site as an
outgoing connection. The determining factor for e-mail to your
site is not the connections in your map entry but the connections
in other map entries. What that means is that some people who send
e-mail to your site won't have their e-mail go through your two
Internet connections. For example, mail from my site to yours
will go through tcomeng.

>            I can guarantee the safety and security of email routed through
> both sites, since I know both J. R. Westmoreland (the sysadmin of saturn)
> and Eric Fair (the sysadmin of apple) personally.

But can you guarantee the safety of e-mail that goes through
tcomeng? Were I to use your service, my e-mail would go through
there. Yes, I could force the routing through saturn but many
people can't. True, if people use the
khijol!anonasar@saturn.upl.com address and their e-mail is not
routed through a rabid-rerouter, this won't be a problem. But many
sites will not accept such an address or will "optimize" it into
something unwanted.

If you want to provide a secure service, you need to tell people
how to get e-mail to your system without using an address that
contains both a ! and an @ (such addresses are not reliable in
many places) and without being routed through random sites.

> Like I said before, this whole thing smells like a personal attack.  My
> one question is: Why?

No personal attack, just a comment on your message. I made it a
point to separate my personal reaction from my technical comments.
Now, I have a question for you: why did you see it as a personal
attack?

---
Bill                            { uunet | decwrl | telesci }!twwells!bill
bill@twwells.com
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery