Thanks for that!

I rent a server at cyberbunker and I have had long email discussions with spamhaus as well, with them going so far as suggesting that I go an find a new ISP.

Especially since the IP space I got from them is just a regular PA, and the ranges whois informations has a record with my personal name, address and telephone number in it. Spamhaus doesn't understand how the Internet works and is trying to basically nuke the cyberbunker from orbit by going one provider up the chain until they can find someone that will turn off every route...

Whereas the original spam report for the range was just ONE /29 that has the correct whois information...

"Just pure spam and crime" that is rather offensive considering that I just run my personal email, xmpp and some other services there. You're just as bad as spamhaus.

At the time I made a /. submission about it, I'll reproduce it below since the submission was rejected at the time:
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"I run a small server for some minor projects of mine, a mailserver for my family and several friends at a hosting provider. A couple of weeks ago my father started to complain that some of his mails were no longer being received. Upon further inspection it turned out that my entire ISP's IP range (the entire /19) was put in the Spamhaus Blocklist (SBL). After sending a request to de-list the IP range I control (a /29 in their /19), I got the following response: "Due to the hosting policies of the owner of this IP address block, our users do not wish to accept traffic from these IPs. We suggest you look for other arrangements as to your hosting."

The "Hosting policies" of my ISP do not appear to differ greatly from other ISPs, they name spamming as a breach of their TOS and do disconnect spammers. The only major difference I can see is that they do not give out personal information or kick (non spamming) clients off of the web without being legally forced to, which is a requirement in the EU country they are based in to qualify as a telco (and be not responsible for the content of their customers' websites) This stance towards net neutrality is why I chose them in the first place. Vote with your wallet, right?

According to the Spamhaus website The SBL's primary objective is to avoid 'false positives' while blocking as much spam as possible. To me blocking an entire ISP's netblock for, according to the listing, a grand total of three consecutive /29's that were originally reported (and likely from the same customer) and an entire /24 that's labeled entirely as "trademark fraud replicas" does not seem to me to be "avoiding false positives".

The end result is that without sending a single spam or hosting any malicious content, Spamhaus labels me a spammer and even 'cybercriminal' according to the SBL listing all because they apparently don't like my ISP . My questions being: Did any one of you ever find yourself between this particular rock and hard place? Did you manage to get the issue resolved without switching ISPs? And perhaps: Is it really Spamhaus' place to decide what ISP I use considering I'm a good netizen?"
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May you be remembered and celebrated for all that you brought to computing. I hope your name will not be forgotten from history. The fact that your death is announced as 'another great one' in the same breath as... someone else makes me scared for your rightful place in it.

I am truly sad that you are gone.

Also "I did not want to waste years trying to convince others of my ideas" seems to suggest "I know I am right, this pesky peer-review is for sissies"

truly horrendous

"Wanna be" indeed. From his own bio:

"I know that there are some readers that would ask, why does Kemp not have a PhD? The truth is reader, I did not want to waste years trying to convince others of my ideas, or doing research for someone else, when my own personal research required that same enormous time."

Not that one has to have a PhD to have insights, but his first book has a subtitle "A Universal Kinetic Aether Theory" which should really tell you enough about this guy's 'credentials'. If you look through the other concepts he mentions are in his book I would imagine that it is all a very elaborate 'first cause' argument for the existence of a creator deity.

This 'review' is a disgrace to the slashdot frontpage...

correction:

IBM -> Microsoft -> Apple -> RIM

You heard it here first folks :)

No, they might not want to show people just how technically bad their products are though. There is no 'intellectual property' in drivers, you cannot copy a chip's design by looking at it's drivers. MANY people in the chip design field have stated this already, in fact it has been mentioned so often by now that I'm surprised you didn't know this.

And even then, you should demand freedom from the companies you buy products of, you need this freedom to protect your rights as a consumer. Finding apologies for and sympathizing with the company that is trying to take away your freedom is much like saying "Yes Bob beat all the teeth out of my mouth, but I understand he had a bad day at work."

And if you feel that the freedom to do as you please with the devices you own is not important to you, then why did you post this? You talk about "Idealogical" and yes it is, partially. But the ideology is not that all software should be free because all software should be free. All software should be free so that writers of software do not have the power to abuse users of the software. Or in this case sell buggy hardware without any way for the consumer to find this out until it is too late.

OR being able to apply security updates
OR being sure that your router doesn't inject advertisements into your webpages
etc. etc. etc.

Yes it is, it says so in the license of the software we're talking about (Linux) This is not open for interpretation.

Indeed if Netgear doesn't want to play by the rules of the GPL, then they don't have to use GPL code. But they do want to use GPLd code because it saves them an asston of licensing on VXWorks or other router operating systems. They want to use Linux, so they have to play by the rules of Linux which are : If you link code to Linux code code, your code needs to be free.

The broadcom drivers link against Linux code and thus it needs to be free. If they don't want to do that, they can NOT USE LINUX, it's their choice. They can't have it both, they chose to use Linux themselves because they apparently found it beneficial to them, now they need to play by the rules. Or do you think that the authors of VMWorks wouldn't mind if Linksys decides to not play by their rules and just not pay?