I can't believe it any more. On Fri, 30 Aug 96 02:47:21 EDT, Dr. (of what, pray tell?) Vulis blathers first:

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If you don't have the brains to forge the From:, then you have no business being subscribed to any mailing list.

and then again:

Whoever uses the term "spam" in derogatory manner, opposes free speech and deserves to be caned.

First, accusing someone of stupidity for not having learned how to telnet to an SMTP server is a bit harsh, especially since the guy might be stuck behind a firewall that mungs his addresses AFTER his messages goes out -- not that Dr. V bothered to find out before the accusation. Second, suggesting anyone be caned for their political beliefs (and resultant speech) is quite obviously NOT the action taken by someone who defends free speech. Again, Dr. V. put those beliefs in his words through his flawed logic. It's like watching a KKKlucker yelling, "you have no right to say that we don't support free speech," and not getting it. And for what -- the thoughtcrime of calling Dr. V a spammer? Hmm. About the closest I can come to finding a "crime" here is trademark infringement. I'm sure Hormel is following this closely. All of this is merely annoying. But slamming Tim May because of his heritage? "criminal Arm*nian grandparents"? Now it's a crime not only to call Dr. V a spammer, but to have ancestors born someplace his ancestors taught him to not approve of. (Can you say "racism", kids? Sure. I knew you could.) When I first started reading this list, it was about the time Jim Bell was espousing the A.P. theories, and I thought him a fool for it. I put his name in my filter, sending his posts to the trash. More and more, I found myself heading to the trash bin to follow a thread that Jim was contributing to. Valuable contributions, mind you, not just more of his A.P. stuff. Of course, I ended up removing him from my filter. (For missing that month of your posts, Jim, I owe you an apology.) At that time, I realized a few things: Filters certainly aren't the answer; and everybody can come up with valuable contributions. Anyway, my current status is to have the filters set to remove posts with the words [NOISE] or [OFF-TOPIC] somewhere in the headers. It helps weed out stuff that really isn't why I'm here reading this list. Given that I feel that even Dr. Vulis might possibly contribute something of value to this list at some unspecified time in the future, I have come to the conclusion that the only solution is to ask him to change his e-mail name field to: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM [NOISE] ) until such time as he can actually come up with something useful to say to the rest of us. Maybe he could even throw in an [-L18] tag, if he's going to continue to [spit | fuck | fart] every posting that leaps through his screen. [ Note to everyone else: that's SARCASM there, hope you got it! ] So, my original question is: is there really a Dr. Dmitri Vulis (KOTM) somewhere? Or is he just some made-up straw man, created by Tim May, John Gilmore and Eric Hughes for their personal amusement, and to add a spot of controversy so we can feel like we're not preaching to the choir with every pro-cypher posting? I often thought that was the case with David Sternlight as well. Or is Dr. Vulis really best-buddies with Tim May, and his way of showing affection is to "fart in his general direction" with every post? If he exists, I pity the unsuspecting students who wander into his class who might not have the genetic makeup he approves of. And now I *completely* understand tenure. John (soon-to-be-spit-upon,no-doubt) Deters. -- J. Deters "Captain's log, stardate 25970-point-5. I am nailed to the hull." +-------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad@dsddhc.com (work) jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +-------------------------------------------------------+