On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 14:03:19 GMT, Julia Altshuler
> wrote:

>Gregory Morrow wrote:
>
>> This happened on soc.history.what-if last year, rendering the group vitually
>> unusable for a while. In that case, someone eventually ferreted out that
>> the ISP was in Austria. Every single nonsense post in that case had a
>> different address, so it was hard to filter the posts out...the culprit was
>> the infamous shw-i troll "Matt Giwer".
>
>I'm using Mozilla on a Linux platform. I killfile by sorting my
>messages by sender and marking them all read in one fell swoop. I
>re-sort by thread and do the same to the threads I'm not interested in.
> When I get back to the newsgroup, all the messages I don't care to
>read are gone, and I can sit back and enjoy. I have to do it each time
>I sit down to the computer, but it takes only seconds so I don't mind
>too much. It also means I have to memorize the names of the people I
>choose to killfile (yes, there are some regulars in this category), but
>I don't find that too difficult.
>
>
>I'm not normally this curious about usenet annoyances preferring to find
>a killfile solution and move on, but the name "Matt Giwer" caught my
>attention. It seems he's been around for at least 10 years and has, at
>one time or another, bothered every group including a private mailing
>list I'm on. He (it?) uses an amazing array of bothering techniques
>including porn, anti-Semetic remarks, flooding, automatic doubling.
>Does anyone know who or what it is? Is he a troubled individual, a
>group, a program? It would seem that if he's an individual there ought
>to be some law somewhere that could jail or silence him. (That's not a
>well-thought out comment on law and law enforcement, more of a sigh and
>lament.)

About 6 years ago I was working as a system admin. for a Toronto,
Ontario area ISP and had a run in with Matt Giwer. Mr. Giwer was
furious, wanting us to terminate the account of one our clients, said
client's "crime" was that he was critical of Matt Giwer's anti-semetic
comments. Our view (one that I strongly agreed with then and now) was
that so long as our client stayed within the letter of Canadian law we
didn't care what they said on-line (never mind that I very largely
agreed with our client's criticisms (a view I was too professional at
the time to share with Mr. Giwer)).

Now, I don't know what is up with Matt Giwer now, but at least back 6
years ago he was just one very real (if seemingly very troubled)
person living in Florida, USA... In other words Mr. Giwer is one of
those people that puts the UGLY in Ugly American for those of us from
outside the United States...

Colin McGregor