Dear netters,
quite a lot of mail this morning about the rather weird anonymous
posting that came under the title 'A Modest Prposal'; permit me to
add my two penny worth.
It seems that there are two possibilities:
(a) He is winding us up (and succeeding in some cases), hence the
title borrowed from Swift's great satirical pamphlet. He has gone to a
lot of trouble to use (or fake?) encrypted addresses, but hey, no
good practical joke ever came easy. However, it's an old joke, and was
done rather nicely by Kurt Vonnegut in "Galapagos", where the
consequences of such a virus (to which NO-ONE was immune) were
described.
(b) He is serious (BTW, the verbal clues were there in his first
posting to indicate a he, not a she). This is very *sad*, and I feel
sorry for him. The fact that he wants to remain anonymous indicates
that he knows that this idea is repugnant to
99.99999999999999999999999999999% of humanity, and there is a word to
describe people who are convinced that they know better than the rest
of the world what is needed to make us all happy. I'd better not say
any more on this subject since the crass arrogance and ignorance
displayed (if it *was* serious) are quite match-ic (=> flame-inducing)
He also seems to lack virological knowledge, so why feed it to him?
I feel there is a more important point here, to wit that BIONET
messages can be sent anonymously. Should we try and stop this? Should
the distribution nodes reject any message that does not have a correct
sender's address (and not just a gateway to a commercial feed)? Is
this possible? Will we have to moderate all the newsgroups (heaven
protect us from this!)?
Regards,
Michael D. Baron
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
BARON at BBSRC.AC.UK Institute for Animal Health
Fax: INT+(0)483 232448 Ash Road, Pirbright
Tel: INT+(0)483 232441 Surrey GU24 0NF, U.K.
