Paperware Archive

"Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful
... as seen in the Majordomo FAQ

This essay is directed to mailing list administrators and email header pendants. It discusses (in excruciating detail) why I think it is a bad idea to mess with Reply-To: headers.

Presentations

Community Building with Open Source Software: Sixth Annual National Community Networking Conference. December 9, 2003.
Add-On Technology for Blogs and Journals: JournalCon 2003. October 18, 2003.
Open Yourself to the Idea of Open Source: Fifth Annual National Community Networking Conference. December 10, 2002.
Survey of Current Internet Search Facilities: Dr. Glynn Harmon's Artificial Intelligence class (GSLIS 385T.15). April 9, 2002.
Information Security and Authenticity on Public Networks: Dr. Glynn Harmon's Information Networks class (GSLIS 384K.10). March 28, 2001.

Miscellaneous Documents

This is not Spam!: A parody of all the worst lies and excuses spammers use.
How I Invented Cyberspam: The "cyberspam" convention is an important tool for fighting spam on Usenet. This 1994 posting shows the origins of that convention.

kuro5hin Articles

I've posted a few articles to the kuro5hin.org (pronounced corrosion) community weblog.

Texas Spam Bill: Who We Trying To Help Here?: In 2003, the Texas Legislature passed a bad spam law. It started out a lot worse. This article explains some of the reasons why it was so bad.
AbiWord - Word Processing For Everyone (Almost): I take a pre-release version of the AbiWord word processor for a spin. And I like it.
Spin Internet Black Beans: This is what I did one evening while waiting for tech support at my lame Internet provider to answer the phone. They never did. I sent them email. They ignored that too.

Internet Training ... at the Riverside Library

I work with a group of volunteers in the Internet Training Center at the Riverside Drive Branch Library. We provide free Internet training to the community. Here are the materials I use for my classes.

Introduction to the Internet and the World Wide Web: This is a great class! We've had people ranging from "never touched a computer before" to "used the Web, but want to learn more" attend and find it useful. This class (or equivalent experience) is the prerequisite for all our other classes.
Internet Email for Beginners: This class is a follow-on to the intro. It too is pretty popular. This class focuses just on email. We teach students how to read and send email, and how to work with features like folders and the address book. We try to teach them not to spam MMF chain letters. :-) We do hands-on work with one of the free web-based email services.
Music and the Net: A special topic that discusses how to play music on your computers. It focuses on three forms: CDs, audio files, and streaming media. It discusses the hardware and software required for each, plus related resources on the Internet. Includes a brief mention of fair use rights.

Older FAQs

Here are some FAQs that I once wrote or edited, and no longer maintain.

Here are some FAQs that I once edited, but have since passed on to somebody else.

List of austin.* Newsgroups and Related Information
The austin.announce Newsgroup Guidelines
Also the comp.newprod guidelines, but those aren't posted to the web.

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