From: "Bruce Wehr" <bruce AT wehrhere DOT com>
To: <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: RE: No postnews or other Usenet news utilities?
Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 16:48:16 -0400
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Let me begin by saying - WOW - this is the LAST type of response I expected.

Let me continue by addressing each of your points.

>   LIAR.  You cannot claim that every single usenet reader in 
> the entire world is interested in Pokemon.  You are just 
> projecting your own personal selfish interests on to the rest 
> of the world, because you have a financial advantage if you 
> pretend that everyone is like you.

Hmmm ... So I'm a liar, am I?  It's interesting that you could come to that
conclusion after just one posting.

Perhaps I misspoke, perhaps you just misunderstood me.  By "universal
appeal," I did not mean to imply that "every single Usenet reader in the
entire world is interested in Pokemon."  Perhaps I should have said "global
appeal."  The point I was trying to make is that the item I'm selling has
followers in every country of the world; there are no arbitrary political or
worldly boundaries beyond which one could find interested parties.

>   GARBAGE.  You are UNQUESTIONABLY a spammer and there is 
> absolutely nothing to debate.

You're right on one point.  Debate is useless and pointless when one party
has such a closed mind, and sees the world in such black and white terms.
"I've already made up my mind.  Please don't bother me with the facts."

> How can you say "all of the 
> forsale groups" and say that's not indiscriminate?

Hmmm ... Perhaps you can enlighten me:  what is the purpose of the *.forsale
groups?  It's not indiscriminate because there are over 100,000 newsgroups I
*could've* spammed.

> It's not 
> up to YOU to decide whether a given post is "appropriate" or 
> not in a given group:

I disagree: as the poster, I have an *obligation* to decide whether or not a
particular group is appropriate for what I'm planning to post.  That's my
responsibility, and my way of showing respect to the entire Usenet
community.

> the group has existed for a long time 
> before you came around and has pre-existing standards, 
> customs and rules that define what is or is not 
> "appropriate".

Oh, so now you presume to know how long I've been around, eh?  Pretty
clairvoyant of you, no?

Since you brought the subject up, let me tell you how long I've been around
Usenet.  (I usually avoid speeches like this; they sound so trite.  But, hey
... You started it. :)

I was introduced to Usenet on or about 1985.  I had been a regular
participant, a respected member of the community for many years.  I invite
you to visit Google Groups and search for me: "Bruce Wehr."  See how many
posts come up.  Read a few.  See if I haven't always respected the Rules of
Netiquette.  Go ahead ... Find fault with any of my posts.  See how many
times I've been flamed.  (Congratulations: you are a now a member of an
elite, exclusive and (thankfully) sparsely populated group: the group of
those who have flamed me.)

Excuse me while I put on my Gieco Cave Man suit and say, "Perhaps you should
do a little research next time."  It has been said, "It is better to keep
your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all
doubt."  Perhaps that's a lesson you should take to heart.

It's true that it's been many years since I've been active on Usenet.
That's one reason why I was so amazed at the explosion of *.forsale groups.
I bought and sold Pokemon cards when they first came out in 1999.  I found
my eBay auctions did better when I advertised them in *.forsale groups.  Let
me ask one more time: what the hell are *.forsale groups for?

> You clearly intend to ignore all these 
> uncomfortable facts because you believe you are king of the 
> world and that whatever you say automatically becomes true.

<Ah>, <er> ... No!  I won't touch that one ... Too easy! :)

> > Wow - there must be *hundreds* of 
> > *.forsale groups!
> 
>   MOST OF WHICH ARE RELATED TO ONE LOCAL AREA OR SPECIFIC 
> KIND OF GOODS.

Oh, really?  You don't say?  Have you even looked lately?  Let me invite you
to look.  I've grepped all the *.forsale groups from my NNTP server's newsrc
file and placed them conveniently for your viewing pleasure:
http://homepage.mac.com/bwehr/forsale.txt.  Go ahead, take a look.  You'll
find a total of 696 groups.  I will leave the determination of how many of
these are dedicated to a specific kind of good as an exercise for you.  (God
knows, you seem to need some exercise.  Or *something*!)

Regarding groups that are dedicated to a specific kind of good: if you
re-read my original posting, I said I manually filtered these out.
Computers, homes, music, beanie-babies ... Yes, I manually filtered all of
those from my target list.  As for groups that are dedicated to a local
area:  are there particular areas where people interested in Pokemon cards
live?  If so, please enlighten me; I promise to limit my ads to those areas.
Last time I looked, I could find Pokemon collectors in every city, in every
state, in every country (yes, my auction is open worldwide), on every
college campus ...  How would you suggest I make my decision?

>   It's not arbitrary, it's an attempt to stop spammers like 
> yourself from exceeding the BI>20 definition of spam.  (If 
> you don't know what that means, then you don't know what the 
> definition of spam is, so how the hell can you claim to know 
> whether you are spamming or not?)

Wow, you are one hell of a piece of work, you know that?  I pity those
around you.

In the words of Xnews itself: "Sorry, you are not allowed to crosspost to
more than 20 groups.  Says who?  Says I!"  If you don't recognize that as
arbitrary, then you don't know what *that* word means.

>   Either that, or you have been cancelled by the usenet 
> anti-spam bots for your spamming.  Carry on and it will be 
> your ISP disconnecting you next.

Wow.  And, will monkeys start coming out my butt?  (Sorry to everyone else
out there.  I usually don't talk like this, but I'm really starting to lose
my patience with this asshole.)

>   This isn't actually true but the last thing on earth I want 
> to do is offer any assistance to a spammer.

Oh, don't worry about that: offering assistance is the furthest thing that
your reply has done.

>   There are certainly no mail-bombing or spamming utilities 
> for cygwin.

So, postnews is a mail-bombing or spamming utility?  Oh Lord, please help me
...

>   Spamming is a sin; it is selfishness and arrogance to the 
> point of solipsism.  Stop it today.

HEY!  One point we can agree on!  Cool!  Maybe you're not such a bad guy
after all!

> READ the faq:
> http://www.faqs.org/faqs/misc-forsale-faq/posting-ads/

OMG, thank you!  A useful, helpful pointer!  THAT'S the kind of stuff I was
looking for in a reply!  I was starting to think that your post had no
substance at all; that it was full of useless flames and nothing else.  

Honestly, that document didn't exist when I was selling Pokemon cards
several years ago.  (If it was, I wasn't aware of it, and nobody pointed it
out to me.)  I will read that document, in it's entirety, and heed its
advice.  Thank you again for at least that one piece of useful information.

Now that THAT'S settled, does anyone else have any other USEFUL information
for me?

Thanks and apologies to everyone who endulged my rant.

<>< Bruce


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