Humor in a Fido Vein

• NoBlackfly - Is this debugging tool screening your mail
• A satire of a message in the Z1_ROUTING echo

NoBlackfly - Is this debugging tool screening your mail?
By Carl Austin Bennett 1:249/116

As if the whole saga of forged SEEN-BY's, bogus claims that one or another distribution system doesn't (or shouldn't) exist and mishandling of restricted regional echos isn't enough, there's a new conspiracy afoot.

Many critters in MOOSECHAT have been wondering why their mail from the North Alberta Backbone has all too often uncerimoniously ended its migration by arriving squished, squashed or even compressed.

Well, now we know!

NOBLACKFLY v. 2.0 - search PKT files for undesirable blackflies & bugs Copyright (c) D.J. Moose (1993,1994) & North Alberta Bugscreens (NAB) Inc.

Summary:

Version 2.0 is a complete rewrite of Noblackfly. The version 1.x design was becoming unwieldy; it was hard to add new flypaper and impossible for the user to put his/her own flyswatter together.

With version 2.0, the bugscreens and rolled-up newspapers are much more sophisticated. You can patch together bug zappers using logical "and", "or" and "not" (as well as "off" and "raid"[tm]) or even kill a fly with a cannon. Noblackfly gets rid of pests efficiently.

Config flies:

The flypaper is mostly of the same format. You specify the part of each moosage to look in and what bugs to look for, and NOBLACKFLY will check every moosage in the packets for a match. Case doesn't matter; BUG=bug=Bug. Every time any of the specified searches finds a bug in a moosage, it counts as a hit. Only one hit is counted per moosage for each roll of flypaper. If you get enough hits in a packet (see Percent and Count below to define "enough"), the bad moosages (and possibly the whole packet) will be swatted with a rolled-up newspaper before bugs spread to other parts of your swamp.

Tests:

NOBLACKFLY can do bug searches of the following fields:
From,To: Subject: Text: Area: Kludge: Tearline: Origin: SeenBy: Path: Any:

It can also detect and swat the infamous blood-sucking Y2K bugs. An industrial strength version is being developed for VW bugs.

Cleantext:

This is like a text search, but NOBLACKFLY first cleans up the text. This way simple misspellings like "bu7gs" will still be recognized as "bugs".

If you want to search several fields for the same pests, you can put them together using "|", e.g.

From|To=Blackfly Seaborn

KnownMoose:

This is another option designed to detect dupes. If you know of a critter with an uncommon name (e.g. "Dj Moose") who always posts from the same swamp, then you can detect dupes (or blackfly-infested moosages) when moosages from that user come from somewhere else.

The syntax of this option is
KnownMoose = Blackfly Seaborn from 140/1

which says that moosages from out-of-region always come to you via Blackfly Seaborn's swamp 140/1, and if one arrives from somewhere else, it's probably a dupe or a blackfly-infested moosage.

Moosemail:

The single keyword Moosemail gives a test that matches any moosemail moosage, but not echo gronks.

For example,
ignore moosemail (or not...)

tells Noblackfly to ignore all moosemail for the current batch of flypaper.

Oneorigin:

Just use the word "OneOrigin" on a line by itself to get NOBLACKFLY to verify that every echomail moosage has exactly one Origin line. Use with caution; critters can quote the origin line, and end up with two.

Pkt_From:

The node's antlers as exposed in the packet header.

You'll normally use this test in combination with other bugscreens. For example,

(Pkt_From = 140/1) and (Origin = http://www.nwstar.com)

will be triggered on any moosage arriving from node 140/1 with an origin line indicating an internet address.

WrongMOOSEID:

This is another syntax exception. Just use "WrongMOOSEID" by itself, and NOBLACKFLY will check that the origin swamp listed in the MOOSEID kludge line matches the origin swamp listed in the Origin line. Only the zone, swamp and bog are checked; the point and network will be ignored if present.

Boolean combinations:

You can construct your own bugscreens using Boolean combinations of leftover flypaper, for example:

(Blackfly Seaborn) or (BUG17)

There is no limit to the complexity and size of the bug zappers you can construct this way using multiple operators and duct tape, as long as you have enough acerage handy out yonder in red neck country.

Control lines:

Count:

The number of bugs within the current batch of flypaper which must be collected to mark a packet as bad.

If either Count or Percent is exceeded, then the bad moosages or the whole packet will be swatted.

Ignore_Pkt_From:

Specify swamps which you know are completely trustworthy. Packets from these swamps will not be checked. Use this with extreme care! If it is even remotely conceivable that some bug could masquerade in one of these swamps or somehow sneak past their bug zappers, then don't list them here. Consider carefully whether the 2 or 3 minutes stinging this can give you is worth the risk.

LogOnly:

Any buzzing sounds matching this directive will result in loud gronks in the log, but won't affect moosages.

Percent:

The percent of bugs on the current batch of flypaper to mark packet as bad. If either Count or Percent is exceeded, then the swat/shoo-away actions will be taken.

StopMoosage:

Any bug screens following this directive will cause individual moosages to be moved out of the packet.

StopPacket:

Any bug screens following this directive will cause the whole packet to be swatted if any moosage gets flypapered.

See "How NOBLACKFLY decides what to swat" for more details.

With the increasing tendancy of critters to leave Windows [tm] open and admit ever-expanding numbers of pesky bugs into the swamp, as well as sending termite-infested e-mail to unsuspecting PINE and ELM sites, no Moosenet node can afford to be without NoBlackfly.

Don't leave the out-of-region admin echos without it!

A satire of a message in the Z1_ROUTING echo
By Lesley-Dee Dylan

Date: Apr-23-01 13:32:12
From: Janis Kracht
To: Foxy Ferguson
Subject: Routelist Keeper (The Pyschic Hot-Line Intercepted Version)

Foxy, I received your netmail message this morning regarding your gross error in the hatching of routelst.112. Your excuse to me for doing so was that you had changed your configuration as soon as I told you to, and, while admitting that you had received my instructions to change it back before the release of routelst.112, you mistakenly had not done so; hence a number of people appeared in the seen-bys that should not have appeared in your tic. I TOLD you we needed to wait until we discovered a way to get them into the tic file and yet keep them invisible.

Regardless of what you were thinking in your initial decision to follow my instructions to the letter, to change your configuration to include those nodes in your seenbys (perhaps you were thinking those in the seenbys have their own list being built now), this is NOT how to create problems in distribution of any file. There are much more eloquent ways of achieving this aim. We've got a team working on developing them now.

Your job as Z1EC as regards the routelist is to publish the information provided to you by those authorized to do so (whether accurate or not), NOT to get caught making descions as to who should or should not receive the list, which is what I realized somewhere along the way, but didn't tell you in time.

You say to me that you had all intentions of restoring your configuration to it's previous state (we've all written netmail messages to people and trashed them before sending them) but... in your position of Z1EC and with the responsibility of maintaining the routing chart, there is little room for errors in judgement of this nature. We have to hold off on screwing up the routing until we are fully in position to grab complete control of all mail distribution. Premature detonation of a weapon gives away our position. It saddens me that you even had this thought to begin with so that you changed your configuration ... This seen-by stuffing weapon in the file distribution network was supposed to be detonated by Bob Seaborn at a more opportune time, and in a larger number of echoes.

This is NOT where we want to go - certainly it will not help to bring fidonet out of the slow downward spiral that it is now in. That spiral is slowing things down - we want it in a death dive.

My warning to you is that if at any moment I even think that you are going to get caught manipulating the situation regarding the Zone 1 routing chart by excluding nodes like this again, I will jump in to protect your ass.

To the others reading this who may still clamor for Foxy's immediate removal:

It's not the way I work. Foxy is in on all my conspiracies and plots. If I remove her from office, she might get mad at me and tell you all about what I am really up to. I'll protect her come hell or high water, until it is useful to me to drop her like a hot potato.