BCM4313 Wireless LAN Controller in FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 571, Issue 1, Message: 6
On Mon, 11 May 2015 09:31:17 +0530 Avinash Sonawane <rootkea at gmail.com> wrote:
 > On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:05 PM, Valeri Galtsev
 > <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:

 > > On Thu, May 7, 2015 12:48 am, Avinash Sonawane wrote:
 > >> Ok. So just now I got 3 mails in Chinese (I think) with the subject
 > >> "??????????? ???BCM4313 Wireless LAN Controller in FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE"
 > >>
 > >> 1) From ljj_jun at sina.com
 > >> saying "Oh, your mail Lijing Jun has been received, please be patient
 > >> reply! ~ Thank you! --- --- Automated response system" <translated
 > >> text>
 > >>
 > >> 2) From taogediyi at sina.com
 > >> saying "Hello, your letter has been received by Tao brother team,
 > >> please keep an eye QQ group, Wang Xiao's new incentives such as
 > >> information dissemination, thank you participate!" <translated text>
 > >>
 > >> 3) From jzsf at vip.sina.com
 > >> saying "We have received your letter!
 > >> THX!
 > >> Jingzhou Sheng" <translated text>

Avinash, just to confirm: these were private messages sent directly to 
you, and not to the list, right?

As you're fairly new to this list, I'll point out below some things you 
may not be aware of - though some other responders to this thread should 
know better.

So should I, of course, but in order to try heading off the usual three 
or four times a year this sort of thing comes up, generating vastly more 
traffic than the original spam, I hope to clear up a couple of things.

Valeri wrote:

 > > I have a motion for list admin(s):
 > >
 > > Kick off the list (and ban from subscription in a future) the above three
 > > e-mail addresses. Auto responses to messages received through mail list is
 > > an abuse.

1) This is an unmoderated list, and DOES NOT require subscription to 
post.  It's been that way at least the last 17 years I've been around, 
despite at least one or two attempts per year to change that policy, all 
of which fail for the very good reason that this list is advertised as 
the point of first contact for issues people may be having with FreeBSD, 
and is advised as such on login by /etc/motd by default.

2) The sort of messages referred to here - sent as responses to new 
posts to the list by some people, to some people - are not ABLE to be 
controlled by the list admins, being the team at postmaster at freebsd.org; 
they can only do something about posts directly TO the list(s).

3) Anyone on the planet can subscribe - or just scan the list archives - 
to extract email addresses of posters.  It's clear than many spammers 
and scammers have done so and will continue to do so.  Even most of the 
lists that require subscription to post also provide public archives.

4) If you wish to complain about spam TO/ON the list, there are several 
things you should do to prepare a meaningful message to the only folks 
who can do anything about it, the team at postmaster at freebsd.org :

a) don't bother postmaster@ with complaints about not uncommon one-off 
drive-by spam from - particularly, these days - SEO scammers who've 
"noticed problems with your website .." or people offering great deals 
on blow-up dolls or skyhooks or whatever.  Best just let them go by.

b) if you find more than one persistent spam from a particular address, 
forward postmaster@ copies including COMPLETE MESSAGE HEADERS.  Without 
all of the 'Received: ' and such headers, you're wasting their time.

c) be patient; looking after scores of lists is no easy task.  If your 
message is informative and polite, you can generally expect a response.

d) don't post messages about spam, or in reply to spam, to the list(s).

( Hat: the exception that proves the rule :)

 > > Also: I would suggest to think about stopping from being re-sent by the
 > > list all messages containing anything in foreign (i.e. not English)
 > > alphabet. Sending something in a language that people will not understand
 > > is at the very least not polite.

UTF-8, commonly seen these days, accomodates many language alphabets.

In the '80s-'90s Fidonet community there were generally just two rules: 
Be not excessively annoying and Be not too easily annoyed.  Or to 
paraphrase some IETF RFCs: Be generous and forgiving of your received 
data, and strive to be strictly correct in what you transmit.

FreeBSD is an international community; people make lots of allowances 
for non-native English speakers, including many developers, and indeed 
of atrocious spelling and grammar by not a few natives to the language.

 > I echo that!

Yes you did, but it's not really helpful.  It's your posted thread, and 
fortunately most responses have been helpful regarding your Wifi issue.

 > Avinash Sonawane (RootKea)
 > PICT, Pune
 > http://rootkea.wordpress.com

Interesting.  I hope you'll enjoy your experiences with FreeBSD.

cheers, Ian  [ please do not reply to this message, except privately :-]