The Internet

Contents

Fight Spam!

Spam * UBE * UCE

Spam (N). 1. A disgusting, pinkish gelatinous substance made of various portions of the pig rejected for use in sausage. 2. Unsolicited, mass-mailed email. 3. Massively posted or crossposted Usenet posts, generally off-topic.

Spam is the scourge of the Internet. The causes are complex, but boil down to a few things:

As you Internet users know, most e-mail comes from "spammers," who are the mutant spawn of a bizarre reproductive act involving a telemarketer, Larry Flynt, a tapeworm, and an executive of the Third Class mail industry.
           -- Dave Barry, Sunday, July 14, 2002

I've joined the vigilantes on the issue of spam. :) Over the past few years I've learned a lot about Procmail, an extremely powerful unix-based mail sorting program. It is a wonderful tool to fight email spam -- unsolicited junk mail email. I've posted my filters, called The SpamBouncer, for the use of anyone who has the proper kind of email account and the know-how to set them up. Use at your own risk, but they work well for me.

If you do use them, please email missed spam to spamtrap@spambouncer.org and bug reports to bugs@spambouncer.org, and download updates from the SpamBouncer web site frequently. I also have some standalone Procmail recipes posted, for those who prefer to write their own spam filters.

For more information about spam, here are some more good sites:

For those who want a look at the funny aspects of spam and spammers, I've listed a few other funny sites.


Privacy -- On and Off the Internet

Some useful links if you want to maintain at least a portion of your privacy on the 'Net.


Victory!

Freedom of Speech on the Internet

On June 26, 1997 the United States Supreme Court declared the Communications Decency Act (CDA) unconstitutional, ending a protracted battle over whether the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution applied to the Internet. At least in theory, freedom of speech is now guaranteed on the 'Net. That leaves a huge number of other issues to be resolved, though. Among them are privacy, cryptography, and how to pay for all the neat services the Internet provides.

Here are some links to various 'Net organizations working on taking the Internet from the Wild West to an at least minimally more civilized level. <grin>


Best Viewed with ANY Browser

The Campaign for A Standard WWW

I've grown increasingly annoyed with those little logos that say "Best Viewed in Netscape", or "Best Viewed in Internet Explorer". People use all kinds of computers and connections to get to the Internet, and this will continue to be the case for at least the forseeable future. In most cases, writing HTML for only one browser or type of computer is discriminatory and stupid. If the information you are posting is worth reading in the first place, in most cases users with 2400 bd connections, a text-based terminal program, and Lynx will benefit from it as much as someone with a DSL connection and Silicon Graphics workstation.

Please don't contribute to the balkanization of the WWW! Let's work to keep the WWW standard and available to all users. Here are some good links on this and related subjects:

'Net Culture

Yes, Virginia, the Internet has developed a culture of its own, much of it centered around the venerable Usenet, the original Internet bulletin board system. (That is actually inaccurate, since the Usenet has been around much longer than the Internet -- it existed in the days of the ARPANet, the predecessor to the Internet that hooked up U.S. Defense Department offices, and a few colleges, universities, and research institutions.) Here are links to some sources of information about it. :)