This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in
1995; any technical information is probably outdated.
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Re: Newsgroup mimicry
Article: 8766 of alt.hackers From: gregc@msn.fullfeed.com (Greg Corey) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Re: Newsgroup mimicry Date: Wed, 04 Oct 1995 22:53:54 GMT Organization: CPU Wizards Lines: 76 Approved: gregc@msn.fullfeed.com Message-ID: 44uvsp$3jt@fullfeed.msn.fullfeed.com NNTP-Posting-Host: cpuw.msn.fullfeed.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 Status: RO
markr@taipan (Mark Richer) wrote: >Tyrone L Cartwright (tyrone@whimsy.demon.co.uk) wrote: >: What worries me is that if self-moderation becomes more popular, >: some news software writer somewhere may decide to add the 'trick' as >: a feature of his program. Thankfully the sort of person who programs >: newsreaders probably wouldn't do a silly thing like that. >hhmmmm... >I hadn't considered that. What a terrifying idea: >OPTIONS: [...] Ctrl-F - Forge header >Yikes! I wonder if someone could legally sell a newsreader software that >provided this feature. I tried to call myself a newbie yesterday and a >friend stopped me...said I had to at least be a novice. I suppose a day >will soon come when even I start to refer to "the golden age of the >net"...back before there were 1-900 number ads on alt.hackers There are two newsreaders that provide a feature like that. They're called Agent and Free Agent. I will NOT, however, tell you how to "activate" that feature, as the author has very carefully set up the default configuration to NOT allow two header types (con & app) to appear to most newbies. However, one little configuration change and those headers become one of the "all fields" that you can modify. >Obfunnyhack: >A couple of months ago I got a statement from a credit card company saying >that I still owed $1.22...this was strange since I had already paid the >balance in full. I called and asked for an explanation, and got some >nonsense I suppose someone somewhere understood...something like a recursive >finance charge. So I sent in a check for $2.00. Now, the credit card co. >sends a statment so long as you have a non-zero balance. So they are now >spending 32 cents a month to tell me I have a balance of 78 cents. >Fuckin' touchee. OBsomeoneelsescreditcardpaymentHack: You know, that reminds me of the article about 5 years back from a guy who got a credit card bill stating that he owed $0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. Next month he got another, did the same thing. The next month they sent him a very nasty note stating they were going to cancel his credit card if he didn't send them $0.00. He called them, talked to them, they said it was "a glitch" and told him they'd take care of it. The following month he tried to charge something and couldn't. He called the credit card company who again said they'd take care of it. The next day he got his bill for $0.00 stating that he was very delinquent. The man figured the credit card company would take care of it, so he didn't worry. The next month he got a bill for $0.00 stating that he had 10 days to pay or his account was going to collection. He mailed the credit card company a check for $0.00, and the credit card company's computer processed it, noting that his account was now paid in full. A week later, the man's bank called him asking him what he was doing writing a check for $0.00. He explained and they said, "well, your $0.00 check has caused our check processing software to fail. We now can't process ANY of our checks from that day electronically because that $0.00 check is causing the program to abort." The man, who had been considering buying his wife a computer for her birthday, bought her a typewriter instead. -- Greg Corey | All opinions are my own, no warranty made or gregc@msn.fullfeed.com | implied. Send complaints to god@heaven.org
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