blocking

[Paul Derbyshire]

I originally sent this response off-list. I got back an autoreply 
that seems to indicate that mail from me is being filtered at his end 

into a circular file or something. (I may be mistaken. It may be a 
poorly worded vacation message. It doesn't however say anything about 

being away until some date or anything like a typical vacation 
autoreply. It just says the message has been "filed" and emphasizes 
that it has not been read. It looks like a kind of repetitive plonk 
to me. And if it is, the autoreply is both unnecessary and quite 
rude.)

As a result I must reluctantly post the response to the list to 
ensure it is seen by its intended recipient.

It is not under the original subject because Faylor also blocked that 
and neglected to mention this fact, another example of rudeness on 
his part apparently designed to prevent him having to hear what I 
have to say about it.

To Faylor: Too bad. You will hear about it. Your actions were 
unnecessary, and harmed me (or at least complicated things for me) 
more than they harmed the bad guys. I do think you're trying to wear 
the white hat, but you're making mistakes and these must be brought 
to your attention lest the same things happen again some day.

On 6 Aug 2002 at 23:13, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> I just activated local subject blocking in this mailing list.

> I had intended for this feature to be used as a spam blocking procedure
> but I've pressed it into service to stop the thread that wouldn't die.

> So, for the time being, any message with the subject "Mysterious gdb
> behavior" will be blocked as spam.

Thanks for warning me ahead of time. Also, you could have waited 
until
my current round of defenses were in. Instead, you caused two of my 
replies to bounce, leaving two postings with accusatory tone on the 
list with zero rebuttals from me. Silence implies assent. I don't 
want to look like I'm accepting judgments that I do not in fact 
accept, or like I'm conceding to "facts" that are not true.

I was forced to repost them with altered subject lines, after seeing 
the bounces and figuring that some a**hole not on my side had figured 

to block messages on that subject from me so as to be able to post 
crap about me while paralyzing my ability to respond in my own 
defense.

One consequence of this is to potentially spread the flame war to 
other subject lines. Another is that someone reading the gdb thread 
might see one of the last few attacks and fail to see a defense 
posted under a different subject, and think badly of me not seeing my 

refutation of the enemy's claims. This is an especially heinous 
consequence of your actions.

You realize the flamer side will probably post more crap under 
assorted other subject lines as well. Now I'll have to skim every 
post instead of reading most unread to make sure more lies or 
postings of that g.d. URL don't go by without being countered. My 
workload here has just doubled by my estimate.

Your filter also nailed an innocent posting of mine on the symlink 
question thread, which also had to be reposted (under just "Re: 
Symlink question"). That wasn't very nice of it.

> Woe to some poor sap who runs into this in six months after I've
> forgotten to remove the restriction and wonders why his mail about
> gdb is being considered spam.

Oh, yes, and your bounce message could use some rephrasing to be more 

polite. I don't appreciate being erroneously called a "spammer". Even 

off-list.

This certainly qualifies as one of the most ill-considered acts of 
the year, and this is a year that's seen some pretty moronic and 
dangerous things like that friendly-fire incident in Afghanistan...


--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Bug reporting:         http://cygwin.com/bugs.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/