COOOLLL!!!!!  Any way of tracking these guys down?  Any way to put a court
oder on them.  Anyone happen to know their home address +  Anyone know how
to make a mail bomb?  ;-)

OK OK OK, enough garbage, let's get serious.

Any way of tracking down server records?  Domain registration?

I'll add 2 yen to the 4 that's already there :-)

--
Lance.


---
For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg (povray.org admin team) writes:

> >Unless - we can get specific info on who is messing around and then
> >apply appropriate pressure ... if you do get reliable id data then please
> >let me know - there are people who could apply that pressure - if we know
> >exactly who is doing this.
> 
> The best thing to do is attempt to work out who's in charge out there at the
> university of agriculture and write to them. Writing to the server ops probably
> won't help because if I understand things correctly, they have become known for
> doing this sort of thing. I doubt they'd be responsive (especially given the
> fact that I've already written once to the given contact address and have had
> no reply).
> 
> IMO applying pressure on the university is probably the only way to stop this.

Well, here's a really, really anti-social proposal, but they are being
anti-social. Write a little script that does dejanews queries for
povray.* stuff, checks the header, and then auto-mails the post *IN
FULL* to the two contact addresses listed for vszbr.cz. This includes
binaries.
This should get them to shut it off in self-defense.
Normally, I'd oppose something like this, but if they are deliberately
doing this, well......live by the sword, die by the sword.

Shalon Wood

-- 
People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die.
--Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban

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Before we do that (which I think is a super idea by the way!!!), here's some
info I've gathered:

Webiste for Czech University of Agriculture in Prague (is this it, or is
this another Univ??? I can't be sure!):
http://omega.pef.czu.cz/

They seem to have a newsserver called the Hypernews Server.  I'm not sure
whether this is the same one redirecting the messages or not (I don't have
the resources to find out), and also it seems they DON'T have a gateway open
to USENET.  However, there is a lot of talk about it on the website.  It
seems they want to add a USENET gateway in the near future, so maybe they
have one at the moment but it's only limited???

There is also an email address for the person who maintains the server, but
I'd suspect that only the POV-Team should be the ones writing to them (ie,
us POV-Users shouldn't go emailing them, since we don't own the News-server
and we don't know if it IS these people that are slurping off
news.povray.ord!!!).  For the POV-Team's interest, I've mailed the address
to them, I think (along with this message).

So what do you say POV-Admins?  I suppose you could always ask them if they
had a gateway to USENET (at least that way no one is coming out and
accussing them of something that they might not doing or not aware of!!!).

--
Lance.


---
For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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mas### [at] acratrcojp (Roland Mas) wrote:

>new### [at] DESPAMpovrayorg (povray.org admin team) writes:
>
>> Nope. If it's gone it's gone. The web functions aren't up to what we want
>> (there's no way to post with attachments for example, which is very important
>> for this server).
>
>  I know I already suggested it, but I got no answer.  How about a
>mail-to-news gateway ?  You can post attachments in your mail, and they are
>kept as attachments on your news server (which continues to exist, so no
>new thing to install).  The web interface is then used to read the
>articles, with their attachments.

That's a possibility.

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I've located the name of the person who is in charge of the computer dept. at
vszbr.cz and emailed him asking for his assistance. We'll wait and see.

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Then you probably didn't need the info I gave you :-)  (disregard it, it's
probably not that accurate)

--
Lance.


---
For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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It ain't me, as I'm not a programmer, nor in the Czech Republic.  But to teach me
more about the internet, and perhaps increase the remorse of the offending party,
could you please tell me why this increases your support hassles.

Is it legal liability, loss of copyright, or people asking you for help, or what?

povray.org admin team wrote:

> [Put simply, the USENET connection has >>>ALREADY<<< caused me problems, and
> will continue to cause us extra support hassles and problems which we simply
> don't want. If it's a choice between me wasting my time handling support
> problems

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"Greg M. Johnson" <"gregj56590:-)"@aol.com> wrote:

>It ain't me, as I'm not a programmer, nor in the Czech Republic.  But to teach me
>more about the internet, and perhaps increase the remorse of the offending party,
>could you please tell me why this increases your support hassles.
>
>Is it legal liability, loss of copyright, or people asking you for help, or what?

Please read the URL given in the original posting. It explains it in a brief
manner.

In detail, the reasons are:

People write to us and complain that we're not seeing their postings, or that
we're 'censoring' them (as one user claimed) because they have seen postings
from news.povray.org on USENET, then tried to reply to them on USENET. Since we
don't take a feed from USENET, we never even saw them, but they naturally
expected them to turn up here. This is the main reason.

[We will never take a feed from USENET as it would then mean accepting all the
crap that goes with it, MMF, SPAM, porno ads, the works.]

Plus, the fact that these messages are being fed out means that I, amongst
others, have to de-spamify my email address when posting here. Originally I
didn't. That's a minor thing but I shouldn't need to.

Finally, some users may chose not to post things here that they would otherwise
have posted (such as some of their scene source, images, etc) if they suspect
that it will be fed out to the world, due to copyright and so forth.

So, all in all, having this server connected to USENET against our wishes is a
right royal pain in the ass, plus it potentially degrades the usefulness of it
due to the above copyright issues.

Clear enough ?

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