Kill Files
 

On Wed, 26 Aug 2015 11:45:33 -0700 (PDT), SteamboatEd Haas
wrote:

Hi gang. Well it's fun to be using usenet again but it's no longer available from my ISP and no longer accessible via tin. Does anyone know how one goes about writing a kill file that will work on Google Groups? Thanks,

You can use NNTP Usenet sites Eternal September
(http://www.eternal-september.org/) or Albasani
(http://news.albasani.net/index.html.en) for free Usenet access.

I assume that you are using Unix or Linux - you mention "tin" - which
is still available in Linux-Mint repositories and I assume on other
Debian systems. There are also a number of other NNTP readers for
Linux available or one could run "Forte Agent", a normally Windows
application, in Linux via Wine
--
cheers,

John B.

Kill Files
 

"John B." wrote in message
...
On Wed, 26 Aug 2015 11:45:33 -0700 (PDT), SteamboatEd Haas
wrote:

Hi gang. Well it's fun to be using usenet again but it's no longer
available from my ISP and no longer accessible via tin. Does anyone
know how one goes about writing a kill file that will work on Google
Groups? Thanks,

You can use NNTP Usenet sites Eternal September
(http://www.eternal-september.org/) or Albasani
(http://news.albasani.net/index.html.en) for free Usenet access.

I assume that you are using Unix or Linux - you mention "tin" -
which
is still available in Linux-Mint repositories and I assume on other
Debian systems. There are also a number of other NNTP readers for
Linux available or one could run "Forte Agent", a normally Windows
application, in Linux via Wine
--
cheers,

John B.

Eternal September has been quite reliable for the last year. I just
ignore the whining idiots.

-jsw

Kill Files
 

On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 08:47:12 +0700
John B. wrote:

snip
I assume that you are using Unix or Linux - you mention "tin" - which
is still available in Linux-Mint repositories and I assume on other
Debian systems. There are also a number of other NNTP readers for
Linux available or one could run "Forte Agent", a normally Windows
application, in Linux via Wine

I've been using Claws Mail for a number of years now on Linux for both
email and usenet. It is somewhat similar to Forte Agent in appearance.
See:

http://www.claws-mail.org/

When I first started using Claws its filtering was much more useful
than Agent. Provided you could work with regular expressions and didn't
mind tinkering with them. I have no idea how Agent has progressed since
then...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

Kill Files
 

On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 07:53:17 -0400, Leon Fisk
wrote:

On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 08:47:12 +0700
John B. wrote:

snip
I assume that you are using Unix or Linux - you mention "tin" - which
is still available in Linux-Mint repositories and I assume on other
Debian systems. There are also a number of other NNTP readers for
Linux available or one could run "Forte Agent", a normally Windows
application, in Linux via Wine

I've been using Claws Mail for a number of years now on Linux for both
email and usenet. It is somewhat similar to Forte Agent in appearance.
See:

http://www.claws-mail.org/

When I first started using Claws its filtering was much more useful
than Agent. Provided you could work with regular expressions and didn't
mind tinkering with them. I have no idea how Agent has progressed since
then...

I've been using Claws-Mail for a while as an e-mail program and I find
that although it is remarkably powerful and versatile it is a real
pain in the butt to get working the way that you want it to. Primarily
because of its versatility and the many plug-ins that it has.

And... the lack, or at least I can't find one, of a comprehensive help
manual covering all its possible functions.

The Spamassassin plugin is a perfect example. First you need to
download the plugin, then you need to add it to Claws in the
Configuration-Preferences section. Then you need to select plugins and
click on the block that says "Enable Spamassassin Plugin", and than go
to "/etc and locate the configuration file for Spamassassin, which
isn't in the /etc/spamassassin directory but in the /etc/default
directory and enable spamassassin.

Which all makes prefect sense if you know how to do it but is rather
confusing if you don't :-)

But I will say that once you get it figured out it is a very powerful
addition to Claws-Mail :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

Kill Files
 

On 2015-08-27, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"John B." wrote in message
...
On Wed, 26 Aug 2015 11:45:33 -0700 (PDT), SteamboatEd Haas
wrote:

Hi gang. Well it's fun to be using usenet again but it's no longer
available from my ISP and no longer accessible via tin. Does anyone
know how one goes about writing a kill file that will work on Google
Groups? Thanks,

You can use NNTP Usenet sites Eternal September
(http://www.eternal-september.org/) or Albasani
(http://news.albasani.net/index.html.en) for free Usenet access.

[ ... ]

Eternal September has been quite reliable for the last year. I just
ignore the whining idiots.

The problem with Eternal September *is* the idiots -- and the
fact that Eternal September will not kick off someone who abuses the
system, so a certain percentage of the news servers block *anything*
from Eternal September.

The name comes from the problems when every September, a new
batch of students in college gained access to usenet for the first time,
and did not bother to learn the netequette associated with that, so it
took a while to train them. Then, AOL startd offering usenet (gone now)
and this meant that there were always newbies who needed to be trained
joining AOL -- an eternal September -- to the point where they
outnumbered those who knew and observed Netequette.

Just be warned that you will limit the number of readers if you
use that news server.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Kill Files
 

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 07:28:21 +0700
John B. wrote:

I've been using Claws-Mail for a while as an e-mail program and I find
that although it is remarkably powerful and versatile it is a real
pain in the butt to get working the way that you want it to. Primarily
because of its versatility and the many plug-ins that it has.

And... the lack, or at least I can't find one, of a comprehensive help
manual covering all its possible functions.

The Spamassassin plugin is a perfect example. First you need to
download the plugin, then you need to add it to Claws in the
Configuration-Preferences section. Then you need to select plugins and
click on the block that says "Enable Spamassassin Plugin", and than go
to "/etc and locate the configuration file for Spamassassin, which
isn't in the /etc/spamassassin directory but in the /etc/default
directory and enable spamassassin.

Which all makes prefect sense if you know how to do it but is rather
confusing if you don't :-)

But I will say that once you get it figured out it is a very powerful
addition to Claws-Mail :-)

Yes, I have to agree with all that. It isn't for the faint of heart,
rather the nerdy tinkering type :)

I do my own filtering via keywords, addresses... using regular
expressions. Pretty much went to a positive list now. If you aren't on
it, you get moved to the spam folder...

I'm on the mailing-list, so I see a lot of that kind of stuff asked
about. Being patient and following the mail-list is about the only way
to figure out things like that. See:

http://lists.claws-mail.org/cgi-bin/...listinfo/users

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

Kill Files
 

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 14:29:08 -0400, Leon Fisk
wrote:

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 07:28:21 +0700
John B. wrote:

I've been using Claws-Mail for a while as an e-mail program and I find
that although it is remarkably powerful and versatile it is a real
pain in the butt to get working the way that you want it to. Primarily
because of its versatility and the many plug-ins that it has.

And... the lack, or at least I can't find one, of a comprehensive help
manual covering all its possible functions.

The Spamassassin plugin is a perfect example. First you need to
download the plugin, then you need to add it to Claws in the
Configuration-Preferences section. Then you need to select plugins and
click on the block that says "Enable Spamassassin Plugin", and than go
to "/etc and locate the configuration file for Spamassassin, which
isn't in the /etc/spamassassin directory but in the /etc/default
directory and enable spamassassin.

Which all makes prefect sense if you know how to do it but is rather
confusing if you don't :-)

But I will say that once you get it figured out it is a very powerful
addition to Claws-Mail :-)

Yes, I have to agree with all that. It isn't for the faint of heart,
rather the nerdy tinkering type :)

I do my own filtering via keywords, addresses... using regular
expressions. Pretty much went to a positive list now. If you aren't on
it, you get moved to the spam folder...

I'm on the mailing-list, so I see a lot of that kind of stuff asked
about. Being patient and following the mail-list is about the only way
to figure out things like that. See:

http://lists.claws-mail.org/cgi-bin/...listinfo/users

Thanks for the address. I like the versatility of Claws-Mail (If I can
only get it working :-)

And, as you say, I pretty much use a filter which deletes messages
from "X, Y and Z" and then spamassassin has a shot at what is left.
Sort of blunt instrument effect but does do a good job of getting rid
of the "Mrs. Jones would like to meet you" and "I am your very own
banker and you have just inherited $100,000,000 please send your bank
account specifics..." messages. :-)

--
cheers,

John B.

Kill Files
 

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 08:44:44 +0700, John B.
wrote:


Thanks for the address. I like the versatility of Claws-Mail (If I can
only get it working :-)

And, as you say, I pretty much use a filter which deletes messages
from "X, Y and Z" and then spamassassin has a shot at what is left.
Sort of blunt instrument effect but does do a good job of getting rid
of the "Mrs. Jones would like to meet you" and "I am your very own
banker and you have just inherited $100,000,000 please send your bank
account specifics..." messages. :-)

Might I suggest Astraweb as your newsfeed and Forte' Agent as your
newsreader?

Astraweb isn't free but it's so close that it doesn't matter. You can
either pay by the month or you can buy a chunk of bytes. In my case,
the smallest amount, $10 for 20gb. In return you get excellent
service, long retention and almost perfect spam filtering. About the
only spam that gets through is that idiot peddling solution books.

I occasionally partake in a few binaries groups. Even so, I've had to
refill only once in the 10 years I've been with them.

On the reader side, I've used just about everything out there, both
for windoze and Linux. Agent is simply the best. It's a windoze
program but they make sure it continues to run under WINE for us Linux
types.

It's kill-file feature is probably its best. It employs a basic
proprietary system for making simple filters and conventional regular
expressions for more complex filters. The only thing missing is being
able to filter on content. I hope that comes on the next upgrade.

Again, not free but not expensive either. This is about the only
program I use that isn't open-source. It's good enough to make the
exception. In return I get nearly instantaneous responses to support
questions. Opening a support ticket built-in, under "help".

And the program is mature enough that it never crashes or misbehaves -
about the only software on my machine that I can say that about,
including Linux itself.

http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.fluxeon.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

Kill Files
 

On 2015-08-29, Neon John wrote:

[ ... ]

On the reader side, I've used just about everything out there, both
for windoze and Linux. Agent is simply the best. It's a windoze
program but they make sure it continues to run under WINE for us Linux
types.

It's kill-file feature is probably its best. It employs a basic
proprietary system for making simple filters and conventional regular
expressions for more complex filters. The only thing missing is being
able to filter on content. I hope that comes on the next upgrade.

My newsreader, slrn, can do some of that -- but it does a
tremendous job of slowing down starting in a given newsgroup. This is
because the nntp servers offer a selected group of headers which can be
used in filters (as well as showing the list of articles, posters, and
subject lines for selection of *what* to read), and those go quite fast.

To filter on anything else (especially content) requires
downloading *all* of each article for filtering -- and then later
downloading *all* of each article which you select to read yet again.
The delay from the latter is not noticeable, as anything other than a
binary is unlikely to be large enough to take a significant time to
download -- but the first scan (all unread articles) if it is required
to download everything for all of the articles just to filter them, can
take quite a while.

In particular, I had to drop filtering on the "Newsgroups: "
header, because that forced it to download everything. That particular
header is not included in the summary of headers offered by the news
server.

For fairly quite nesgroups, there were not enough to be a
problem, and back when I ran my own news server, everything was already
on a local system, so the downloading of full articles for filtering was
a lot quicker. (T1 feed vs even 10BaseT, let alone 100BaseT local
ethernet.)

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Kill Files
 

I find the old suggestion of killing anything crossposted to three
or more groups the most effective spam killer. In slrn's killfile
that's:

Sco =-9999 % crosspost = 3 equals SPAM
Xref: .+:.+ .+:.+ .+:.+

I first started using this after AOL got access to the intrawebs
and have used it ever since. After that came killing certain
keywords or posters, but this one is still the most effective by
far.

fred

Kill Files
 

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 10:37:13 -0400, Neon John wrote:

On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 08:44:44 +0700, John B.
wrote:


Thanks for the address. I like the versatility of Claws-Mail (If I can
only get it working :-)

And, as you say, I pretty much use a filter which deletes messages
from "X, Y and Z" and then spamassassin has a shot at what is left.
Sort of blunt instrument effect but does do a good job of getting rid
of the "Mrs. Jones would like to meet you" and "I am your very own
banker and you have just inherited $100,000,000 please send your bank
account specifics..." messages. :-)

Might I suggest Astraweb as your newsfeed and Forte' Agent as your
newsreader?

Astraweb isn't free but it's so close that it doesn't matter. You can
either pay by the month or you can buy a chunk of bytes. In my case,
the smallest amount, $10 for 20gb. In return you get excellent
service, long retention and almost perfect spam filtering. About the
only spam that gets through is that idiot peddling solution books.

I occasionally partake in a few binaries groups. Even so, I've had to
refill only once in the 10 years I've been with them.

On the reader side, I've used just about everything out there, both
for windoze and Linux. Agent is simply the best. It's a windoze
program but they make sure it continues to run under WINE for us Linux
types.

It's kill-file feature is probably its best. It employs a basic
proprietary system for making simple filters and conventional regular
expressions for more complex filters. The only thing missing is being
able to filter on content. I hope that comes on the next upgrade.

Again, not free but not expensive either. This is about the only
program I use that isn't open-source. It's good enough to make the
exception. In return I get nearly instantaneous responses to support
questions. Opening a support ticket built-in, under "help".

And the program is mature enough that it never crashes or misbehaves -
about the only software on my machine that I can say that about,
including Linux itself.

http://www.forteinc.com/main/homepage.php

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.fluxeon.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

providers, I've used both eternal-september and albasani and never
had any problem with them, and I've used Forte-Agent since version
1.something. The one thing, as you say, I find missing with Agent
filtering is the inability to filter on words contained in the message
body which is useful if you have filtered, say "joe-dokes" and no
longer see his posts, but you do still see any responses that are made
to his posts.

Hardly essential but it would be a nice addition.
--
cheers,

John B.