Newsgroup: alt.hackers

>From article <C2LCu0.Ays@dcs.ed.ac.uk>, by pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley):
> Given that newsgroup moderation is trivial to overcome, is it the
> biggest success of Security Through Obscurity known to man?  Has anyone
> ever posted an article to a *real* moderated newsgroup this way?
> 
> Would it be a good thing if it were tightened up?  Is it possible?
People generally tend to obey rules if they are somehow reminded of the rule.
In our library there are doors and corridors marked "Staff Only", or
closed with a band of plastic tape.  It is very easy to go under the
tape or cut it, but people just do not do it.

Posting articles to moderated newsgroups by breaking the security
mechanism is a definite and severe breach of USENET etiquette.  It
has happened in the past (articles to comp.sources.unix when Rich $alz
was moderating it come to mind) and has always been followed by flame
wars and (probably) a lot of flame mail to the original sender.

ObHack: A 78 line Perl script to read FORTRAN common block binary map data
and convert it to Postscript.

Diomidis
-- 
Diomidis Spinellis    Internet: <dds@doc.ic.ac.uk>  UUCP: ...!uknet!icdoc!dds
Department of Computing, Imperial College, London SW7     #include "/dev/tty"

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