DCHindley

I really can't get over how stuck in the past Jim and some of his members are.

Recently, Jim starts to accuse Niels-Peter Lemche and another notable of having virus infected computers because the list received spam e-mails with their names in the "from" line.

Three members were particularly upset, and telling one another to immediately change their passwords and to uninstall their e-mail programs and then re-install them.

Well, spammers haven't done that since the 1990s when everyone was using some freeware virus protection. I sent a post to the list suggesting that perhaps it was another notable's computer that had been infected, and the names in that notable's e-mail address book had been uploaded to a spammer's e-mail address, and only then were spam e-mails sent as if from the other notables. This is how it is done today.

Jim, of course, didn't approve the post. He tends not to approve posts that question his judgement (I chided him just a little for being uninformed about how spammers get addresses of real people to spoof, and too quickly jumping to conclusions). I forwarded the unposted post to the four who seemed most anxious (including N-P Lemche, J Gibson & Joe Zias) and not one of them would honor me with an acknowledgement.

I swear, those fuddy-duddies are pathetically out of touch with the world outside of Ivory Towers.

DCH

Minimalist

Unlike "god" Spam is real. Perhaps it is reality with which they have difficulty?

DCHindley

I rejoined that group about a year ago and until recently only lurked. I had previously quit many years ago after West had not approved a post, and here it happens again. Not so much as an "I took your post as addressed to the Mods" or "What you had proposed is off-topic."

In that year since I rejoined it seems every single post has been about the veracity of the Old Testament as a historical source (minimalist-Lemsche vs maximalists-West & others). I think the membership pretty much mirrors that of ANE2 (if it still exists). It's all about how one could add vowel points to any given word in an inscription, or in the MT, or in the vorlage of the LXX, etc etc.

Do these guys rely 100% on their institution's servers for virus and malware screening, with nothing on their own computers but some sort of free program? "I find it hard to believe that my institution could allow an infected e-mail attachment through to me. You certainly cannot know what you are talking about."

Ego driven arrogance. I think it is time to quit again.

DCH

Toto

There is some very cleaver malware going around. It's one step ahead of the virus protection services.

Minimalist

I like what Richard Dawkins had to say about theologians.