[CrackMonkey] (forw) Re: Another outage! Wheee!

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick> -----

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 08:53:03 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick>
To: Larry Sherman <larrysh at best.net>
Subject: Re: Another outage! Wheee!
X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i

Quoting Larry Sherman (larrysh at best.net):

> I replied to Nick yesterday. Here's a copy of that message...

I (and others) had already seen a copy of your message, Mr. Sherman.
It was, actually, what occasioned my comments.

Although I personally do not, as does Moffitt, taunt MS Windows users
who elect to use incredibly incompetent JavaScript implementations, it
should be blindingly obvious that Mr. Moffitt's annoying little trick
launches _no attack_ on any machine, and in fact in itself does nothing
at all.  It requests the viewing software to do something unbelievably
stupid; the software ought to say "no".

By your logic, I should be able classify many MS Front Page-generated
site as a DoS because their incompetent HTML routinely segfaults my
browser.  By your logic, walking down the street saying "Would you
please drive your car into that lightpole?" should be a criminal
offence.

I'm sorry, but that is balderdash.  As I just said last night, TLG 
would never have been that clueless and officious.  I doubt that 
even Best would have been that clueless and officious.  It took Verio
for that.

Your having, in your words "had no choice but to take [Moffitt's host]
off the Net" was probably beyond merely pathetic:  It is possibly a 
violation of the rights reserved to TLG customers.

Most important of all, your having taken this action without any attempt
to contact your customer is a stunning breach of professional ethics,
which alone removes any doubts I might otherwise have had.

I am encouraging those I know to use more-competent and ethical
bandwidth providers.  You guys have just exited from my recommendation
list for the duration.
 
-- 
Cheers,     Founding member of the Hyphenation Society, a grassroots-based, 
Rick Moen   not-for-profit, locally-owned-and-operated, cooperatively-managed,
rick (at) linuxmafia.com  modern-American-English-usage-improvement association

----- End forwarded message -----