On 2008-01-08, NoOne N Particular wrote:
Sorry to be posting this in a metalworking newsgroup, but y'all seem to
know a lot about this stuff.
I am looking for a newsreader. I am currently using Thunderbird but am
looking for alternatives. I have tried xnews and of course, OE and none
of them seem to do what I would like them to do. Specifically, that
would be the ability to filter message content and language. Every
newsreader that I have looked at only seems to allow filtration on
headers (to, from, subject, etc.) I'm just tired of seeing all those
posts in arabic or whatever scribbling they are (there are others too),
and if we could filter on content we do do a better job of filtering
spam. Is this a pipe dream.
Hmm ... look at the *full* headers of the offending articles,
and see what "Characterset" they select (if any). You can probably add
blocking on the characterset.
Note that some newsreaders (such as unix's trn) allow blocking
on the body contents -- but this means that each *good* article has to
be downloaded in its entirity at least twice -- once for scanning of the
body and once for reading. (Obviously, if it is rejected by the scan,
it will not need to be downloaded a second time. :-)
And if you have a *lot* of body items being scanned for, it *may*
download once for each item.
And because of the growing practice of top-posting without
trimming properly, there is probably a lot of stale information which
will have to be downloaded for each scan -- even if you would never read
that far down. (An argument against top-posting which I have not seen
before. :-)
Also -- look at the "NNTP-Posting-Host: " header, and then use a
whois server to look up the range that it covers. A recent spam just
caused me to put the following line into the filtering for slrn (my
newsreader:
NNTP-Posting-Host: 88\.227\,[190][0-9]*\,[190][0-9]*
which allows any value for the final two octets.
This example is unix based, not Windows -- unless someone has ported it
to Windows. Note that when you ask for a good newsreader (or other
program), it is worth while stating what OS you wish to use it with. In
this case, since you mentioned OE, it would seem to be Windows, but
without that, we would have to guess -- or perhaps to look at the
headers of your article which often carry clues as to which OS it is
from. (Of course, if someone does not bother to mention the OS, it is
usually a safe bet that they are using some form of Windows, because
that is the only OS whose users seem to assume that it is the *only* OS
in use. :-)
OK. For some possible metal content, can someone tell me where the
expression "pipe dream" comes from? I'll have to see if I can DAGS.
I suspect that it comes from the use of opium, which back in the
days of the Sherlock Holmes stories (at least) was smoked in a special
pipe. And I understand that it *did* lead to rather strange dreams. :-)
Good Luck,
DoN.
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