From: erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp)
Subject: Re: say what?
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Organization: Unisys Corporation SLC
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 23:02:05 GMT

anonasar@khijol.UUCP wrote:

: I am glad that you feel better expressing your anger ... but as for the content
: of the posts from Bill and Ed, I need to know the history of why there are two
: posting services now.  I also suspect that there are others who are reading
: this newsgroup who are as confused as I about the things that both Ed and Bill
: are referring to ... From what I have seen in the last day or two from them my
: question now is (ooops I mean two anon posting services... I do not know how
: to use the editor yet!) ...

All I can do is give my take on the whole thing.  Again.  <sigh>

It was theorized that the APS at twwells.com had been compromised when it
was revealed that a posted called "Prisoner" was really Bill Wells, the APS
admin at twwells.com.  Needless to say, some people felt there was a conflicct
of interest here - especially when Bill admitted to abusing his trust as APS
administrator by contacting another poster directly using information gleaned
from the APS.  I think that's right so far.  Corrections welcome.  I apologize
in advance for any errors.

I was one of the ones that felt the APS had been compromised.  What I do for
a living is do system administration programming (tools) and security audits
for various clients (among other things) to put food on the table, so I have
a rather suspicious view of things like claimed "anonymous" posting services.
At any rate, I thought it would be a great idea if someone else started up
another APS.  Not to compete with twwells.com, but to give people who felt
uncomfortable with that APS an alternative.  No one came forward witheither
software or a site, so I decided (over a weekend) to write one.  The goals
of the APS I wrote are to give maximum security to posters and to be
easily modified to run on almost any system (something that the current APS
cannot do - that's not Bill's fault - he didn't write the software).

It is my hope that there will be many APS servers up and running eventually.
To that end, I have posted the complete source code to my APS (written
entirely in C) to alt.sources, for people to inspect, comment on security
features and bugs, and suggest features (PATCHES ARE ALWAYS WELCOME!!!).

The APS as it stands is pretty simple-minded.  Besides working 8 hours a
day for a living, I also am deeply involved with the comp.os.linux
crowd [:)], and taylor-uucp, so that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for
much else.  The APS (once written) had been put on the back burner for a
while until Cloister Bell emailed me some suggestions.  I've been working
on them, but it's slow going - like I said, there are only so many hours
in a day.  There are still a couple of minor bugs - for example, the user
id of the poster is root@khijol.UUCP - it should be anonasar@khijol.UUCP.
A minor fix, to be sure, but I haven't had time to implement it and test
it.
-- 
Ed Carp, N7EKG     erc@apple.com                801/538-0177
"This is the final task I will ever give you, and it  goes  on  forever.   Act
happy, feel happy, be happy, without a reason in the world. Then you can love,
and do what you will."           -- Dan Millman, "Way Of The Peaceful Warrior"
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery