I’m still pretty new at this computer stuff, and just discovered the Usenet groups. While exploring MyDeja.com, I came across some group names that I thought were surely jokes (forgive me for even typing this, but alt.flame.nigger?) When I accessed the forum to see what in the world this was, I found that the posts were nonsensical - the words were all English but seemed to have no relation to one another in the sentences. While checking out alt.skeptics and such I also came across some posts from some other rather unsavory sounding groups (white nationalists? alt.fan.adolfhitler?) that were also nonsense.
I’m assuming that the content of these posts are so inflammatory that they are ‘scrambled’ somehow.
Can anyone give me more info about this?
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke
A WAG, but it could be intentional. Some groups they don’t like the subject of the board may be mass uploaded nonsensical messages onto the group to drown them in spam.
OK, important tip. Don’t have a conversation when you’re proof reading.
Take Two:
A WAG, but it could be intentional. Some groups that don’t like the subject of the board may be mass uploading nonsensical messages onto the group to drown them in spam.
I hadn’t thought of that possiblity. I had assumed it was intentional on the part of the posters, either through a moderator or some function of Deja.
I was rather shocked to find such discussion groups on the internet - or rather, that they would blatantly make themselves known. But I was rather shocked in general - I’ve been spoiled hanging around here and at snopes. Just reading through a few of the discussion groups was scary - there sure are a lot of stupid, bigoted, idiotic, just-plain-mean people out there. I’d managed to forget that for a little while!
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke
Some posts are done in what is called rot-13 encryption. This is where you rotate all letters by thirteen. The cool thing about this encryption in you just rotate them 13 again (in the same direction) and you are back where you started. Obviously this just makes it so that you don’t stumble in by accident and see something that you don’t like. Some news readers have a function to rotate for you. If you have to do it yourself it goes a->n m->z n->a z->m. Also, some usenet posts are really binary files (pictures usually, and dirty ones at that) And use a program called uuencode and uudecode to convert them into ascii characters. I haven’t paid much attention to usenet in years, so there may be more things going on that I don’t know about.
So how do people get to read the posts? I assume that if you join the discussion group, you can read them, but if the material is so inflammatory that non-members aren’t allowed to see it, how do they know that a new member is not a spy who will broadcast the material everywhere once he/she joins? Why form a public discussion group at all? Why not just start a private e-mail list, like those at ONELIST, and not worry about spies or people breaking the encryption? I belong to a private list on ONELIST - nothing particularly inflammatory, unless you breed and show cats! Just sort of a private bitch-and-moan club for people who breed and show cats. Anyway, although I’m sure a computer expert or FBI agent could read the posts (although we haven’t actually threatened to blow up any cat show judges), regular people have to first find the list, then apply for acceptance, etc. (usually sponsored by someone else)and there aren’t any archives or anything for ‘outsiders’ to read.
So why form a public discussion group with an inflammatory title? Just to piss people off? Desperate to attract converts? Or are they just trying to be ‘cool’ and are really talking about peanut farming or something?
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke
Every once in a while, someone sets a bot loose in a newsgroup. Two that I have seen are interesting. Both harvest names of posters in the group; one posts nonsense that almost flows like free verse (it seems to have a basic grammar, although it uses a random word selection) and the other attaches a post from an unrelated group to the poster’s name. It can cause confusion. The causative factor, at least in the groups I read, seems to be criticism of $cientology. You can always spot the bogus posts by checking the headers.
My take on the offensive newsgroup names is simple. Even though they can use computers now, many people are still ignorant, superstitious xenophobes. They feel that they can validate their pathetic little hate-filled lives by finding other cretins who share their fears and delusions.
Hey, I found an article about ‘Sporge’ with links to an article about how the ‘gobbledygook’ posts are made. I guess some are intentionally in ‘code’ and the ‘other members’ have their computers set to ‘decode’ the incoming messages. But a lot of this stuff appears to be ‘sporgery’ done intentionally to clog the usegroup, as with the $cientology kooks. Anyway, here’s the article if anyone is interested: http://technology.news.com.au/frameset.htm?/frameset/promo.htm/features/f90916b.htm
I hope I typed all of that right!
The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. - Henry Van Dyke