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Serdar Argic
Serdar Argic () was the alias used in one of the first automated newsgroup spam incidents on Usenet, with the objective of denying the Armenian genocide. Usenet posts For a period of several months in the first half of 1994, the Internet user under the pseudonym of "Serdar Argic" (with "sera" Usenet ID) posted messages in any Usenet newsgroup thread involving the country of Turkey, arguing that the Armenian genocide had not occurred or that Armenians had committed genocide against Turks. Describing him in '' Net.wars'', Wendy Grossman said: Serdar Argic, who apparently managed to run a daily search on all of Usenet for mentions of Turkey, and followed up all such messages with lengthy and historically inaccurate diatribes about genocide against the Turks. Argic's postings soon numbered in the tens of thousands, and averaged over 100 posts per day, the highest post count of any single Usenet entity at the time. He posted to several newsgroups, especially soc.history, soc.culture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newsgroup Spam
Newsgroup spam is a type of spam where the targets are Usenet newsgroups. Usenet convention defines spamming as excessive multiple posting, i.e. repeated posting of a message or very similar messages to newsgroups. The spam may be commercial advertisements, opinionated messages, malicious files, or nonsensical posts designed to disrupt the newsgroups. A type of newsgroup spam is sporgery which is intended to make the targeted newsgroups unreadable. The prevalence of Usenet spam led to the development of the Breidbart Index as an objective measure of a message's "spamminess", and attempts to purge newsgroups of spam. History Spamming of Usenet newsgroups pre-dates e-mail spam. The first widely recognized Usenet spam (though not the most famous) was posted on 18 January 1994 by Clarence L. Thomas IV, a sysadmin at Andrews University. Entitled "Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon", it was a fundamentalist religious tract claiming that "this world's history is coming to a cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UUNET
UUNET Technologies, Inc., formerly UUNET Communications Services, was an American commercial Internet service provider. Founded in 1987, it was one of the first and largest commercial ISPs and one of the early Tier 1 networks. It was based in Northern Virginia. Today, UUNET is an internal brand of Verizon Business (formerly MCI). History Background Prior to its founding, access to Usenet and e-mail exchange from non-ARPANET sites was accomplished using a cooperative network of systems running the UUCP protocol over POTS lines. During the mid-1980s, growth of this network began to put considerable strain on the resources voluntarily provided by the larger UUCP hubs. This prompted Rick Adams, a system administrator at the Center for Seismic Studies, to explore the possibilities of providing these services commercially as a way to reduce the burden on the existing hubs. Early existence With funding in the form of a loan from Usenix, UUNET Communications Services began ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Usenet Spammers
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.''From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces'', Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), , Users read and post messages (called ''articles'' or ''posts'', and collectively termed ''news'') to one or more topic categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially.The jargon file v4.4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Spammers
This is a list of individuals and organizations noteworthy for engaging in bulk electronic spamming, either on their own behalf or on behalf of others. It is not a list of all spammersonly those whose actions have attracted substantial independent attention. * Nathan Blecharczyk, one of the founders of Airbnb, who paid his way through Harvard by providing spammers hosting services. * Shane Atkinson, who was named in an interview by ''The New Zealand Herald'' as the man behind an operation sending out 100 million emails per day in 2003, who claimed (and appeared) to honor unsubscribe requests, and who claimed to be giving up spamming shortly after the interview. His brother Lance was ordered to pay $2 million to U.S. authorities. * Serdar Argic (a.k.a. Zumabot), who disrupted Usenet by posting up to 100 messages per day on different newsgroups in an attempt to deny the Armenian genocide. * Canter & Siegel, a husband and wife who famously posted one of the first commercial Usen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine '' Computer Shopper'' and was responsible for its monthly Linux column. He stopped writing for the magazine to devote more time to novels. However, he continues to publish freelance articles on the Internet. Early life and education Stross was born in Leeds, England. He showed an early interest in writing and wrote his first science fiction story at age 12. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy in 1986 and qualified as a pharmacist in 1987. In 1989, he enrolled at University of Bradford for a post-graduate degree in computer science. In 1990, he went to work as a technical author and programmer. In 2000, he began working as a writer full-time, as a technical writer at first, but then became successful as a fiction writer. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Accelerando (book)
''Accelerando'' is a 2005 science fiction novel consisting of a series of interconnected short stories written by British author Charles Stross. As well as normal hardback and paperback editions, it was released as a free e-book under the CC BY-NC-ND license. ''Accelerando'' won the Locus Award in 2006, and was nominated for several other awards in 2005 and 2006, including the Hugo, Campbell, Clarke, and British Science Fiction Association Awards. Title In Italian, ''accelerando'' means "speeding up" and is used as a tempo marking in musical notation. In Stross' novel, it refers to the accelerating rate at which humanity in general, and/or the novel's characters, head towards the technological singularity. Plot introduction The book is a collection of nine short stories telling the tale of three generations of a family before, during, and after a technological singularity. It was originally written as a series of novelettes and novellas, all published in ''Asimov's Scie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kill File
A kill file (also killfile, bozo bin or twit list) is a file that stores text matching patterns that are used in some Usenet reading programs to filter out (ignore) articles by subject, author, or other header information. Adding a pattern to a kill file results in matching articles being ignored by the person using the newsreader. By extension, the term may describe a decision to ignore an author or topic. A kill file feature was first implemented in Larry Wall's rn. Variations Some newsreaders allow the user to specify a time period to keep an author in the kill file. An ignore list is a similar yet simpler feature found in some web-based forums, including some web-based Usenet portals, which filters out posts by author only. Scoring is a more advanced feature found in some newsreaders, including Gnus. The newsreader uses fuzzy logic to apply arbitrarily complex overlapping rules, stored in score files, to score articles. An article is ignored when its score is below a us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slang
A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing and speech. It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception, with no single technical usage in linguistics. Etymology of the word ''slang'' In its earliest attested use (1756), the word ''slang'' referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Star Fraction
''The Star Fraction'' is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Ken MacLeod, his first, published in 1995. The major themes are radical political thinking, a functional anarchist microstate, oppression, and revolution. The action takes place in a balkanized UK, about halfway into the 21st century. The novel was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1996. Plot summary The world is controlled by the US/UN, a sort of semi-benign meta-dictatorship which does not rule directly but enforces a series of basic laws on a vast number of microstates, many of which are in a near-constant state of low-intensity warfare. Among the laws enforced on them is a prohibition on certain directions of research, such as intelligence augmentation or artificial intelligence. Precisely what is prohibited is of course secret, and as violation of the prohibitions will result in the swift and efficient death of everyone directly involved, scientific research is a dangerous proposition at best. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken MacLeod
Kenneth Macrae MacLeod (born 2 August 1954) is a Scottish science fiction writer. His novels ''The Sky Road'' and '' The Night Sessions'' won the BSFA Award. MacLeod's novels have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Campbell Memorial awards for best novel on multiple occasions. In 2024 MacLeod was one of the Guests of Honour at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow. A techno-utopianist, MacLeod's work makes frequent use of libertarian socialist themes; he is a three-time winner of the libertarian Prometheus Award. He sits on the advisory board of the Edinburgh Science Festival. Biography MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Scotland in 1954. He graduated from University of Glasgow with a degree in zoology in 1976 and worked as a computer programmer and wrote a masters thesis on biomechanics. He was a Trotskyist activist in the 1970s and early 1980s MacLeod is opposed to Scottish independence. Personal life Married with two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thanksgiving Turkey
The centerpiece of contemporary Thanksgiving Thanksgiving (United States), in the United States and Thanksgiving (Canada), Canada is Thanksgiving dinner, a large meal generally centered on a large roasted turkey as food, turkey. Thanksgiving is the largest eating event in the United States as measured by retail sales of food and beverages and by estimates of individual food intake. Along with attending church services, Thanksgiving dinner remained a central part of celebrations from the holiday's early establishment in North America. In a 2015 The Harris Poll, Harris Poll, Thanksgiving was the second most popular holiday in the United States (after Christmas), and turkey was the most popular holiday food, regardless of region, generation, gender, or race. At Thanksgiving dinner, turkey is served with a variety of side dishes that can vary from traditional, such as mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, to ones that reflect regional or cultural heritage. Given that Days ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis (computing), Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980.''From Usenet to CoWebs: interacting with social information spaces'', Christopher Lueg, Danyel Fisher, Springer (2003), , Users read and post messages (called ''articles'' or ''posts'', and collectively termed ''news'') to one or more topic categories, known as Usenet newsgroup, newsgroups. Usenet resembles a bulletin board system (BBS) in many respects and is the precursor to the Internet forums that have become widely used. Discussions are Threaded discussion, threaded, as with web forums and BBSes, though posts are stored on the server sequentially. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
