telecom, Delete: Bathwater. Undelete: Baby

Monty Solomon < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > posted this first bit of an article:

> As it turned out, she had sent Dr. Kim and Mrs. Crasco an e-mail
> message suggesting that they work together on a grant application.
> The application deadline had since passed, and the acquaintance was
> more than a little miffed that she had gotten no response from them.

Excuse me, but you send an email, receive no response within a
reasonable period of time, and this means so little to you that you
don't follow it up with a phone call?

Guess what, people! Email is unreliable! It doesn't work 100% of the
time! It doesn't work at the speed of light 100% of the time! And,
while it might work most of the time, it doesn't work ALL the time!

There are multiple ways that email can fail.

For example, my ISPs SPAM filter has been set too tight and email from
my father-in-law never made it into my inbox. This has since been
corrrected, of course.

I have been the victim of (what I consider) a DOS (Denial Of Service)
attack which has filled my inbox to the point where my email provider
would accept no more email for my address until I cleared out my inbox.
This has happened to my yahoo.com email account, due to a virus let
loose to infect machines running Microsoft Outlook.

There are the people who take their time and answer email at their
leisure. Of course, some them are so busy, you'll never hear from them!

And then, there are the people I know who receive MUCH more email than I
do (and I'm talking about real email, not SPAM). I don't know how they
keep up with it. Sometimes, they don't. Or can't. So, if I need to
communicate with them, I call them or walk over to their desk and talk
to them! (Imagine, communication via talking! Who'da thunk it! Oh,
wait a second, this is my favorite telephone newsgroup! Telephones!
Talking! Yeah!)

If the message is that important, you may want not want to use email.
You may want to use the telephone instead!

And, for old time's sake, put that 554 beige rotary wall phone back in
service on the kitchen wall, and confuse the younger folk by asking them
if they know how to block Caller ID on a per-call basis from a rotary
phone!


End of messag&$*%#)&%...... NO CARRIER ......

TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to pv+ XXXX@XXXXX.COM
(Paul Vader):


I wasn't talking about you -- I was talking about the digest item, where
some bonehead researcher was mad at an acquaintance because they didn't
return their email and they lost a grant because of it.

Gee, writing it out like that makes it REALLY obvious that this was a
made-up story. *


* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.

Are you aware?

The above link does not work unless you register. Please don't promulgate
reference links that require payment and/or the providing of HOUSEHOLD
income -- or, if you do, warn us in advance.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was, at one time, an account set
up for people to use when they wished to read my competitor, the
New York Times, which did *not* invade their privacy. I think it
had a user name of telecomdigest and a password of telecomdigest. Anyone
was free to use it. That way, telecomdigest got all the spam and
spy cookies the Times gives out as free souveniers to people who
come to visit. Then some bonehead went and changed the password on
it. If someone wishes to once again set up a community reading
account name on NYT please do so and tell the rest of us what it
is. PAT]

I agree, the other people are wrong to be upset.

Phone or conventional mail, and if the project was vitally important,
certified mail.

While I use email often and find it a convenience, I absolutely do not
consider it to be an "official" or highly reliable method. If I send
an important message and I don't receive a response, I will telephone
or write the recipient. If critical, I will use certified mail with
return receipt.

Email gets lost for lots of reasons:

People are constantly changing their email address. My employer
changed my address at least four times for various reasons
since we got email. My postal address has been changed only once
(we moved our location), and even if you sent postal mail to my
old location someone would look me up and forward it to me. While
we had forwarded for a brief time when email changed, now
old-addressed messages are just discarded.

Servers fail and messages are lost. I have had that happen severals
times to both my employer and my private email.

People who get a lot of spam may delete the message by accident.

Due to viruses, some people (including me) don't open and delete
all messages from anyone they don't know.

Some people check their email constantly, others check it only
occassionally.

Some people don't use their email for important stuff, only
to send jokes and the like.

You can mispell a postal address and the letter will still arrive,
but you must get every character of an email address correct.

While sometimes undeliverable or delayed messages are reported back,
not all are (and some messages are still delivered despite a
non-deliverable message).

Email is a useful tool, but it has limitations. When I shot slides, I
mailed them to Kodak. I shot a great many rolls and none were ever
lost. I wish email had their reliability but the reality is it does
not.


I think you're comparing two different things. As a website moderator,
you'll handling a high volume of postings as well as spam. Undoubtedly
you get things not even relevant to telecom sent by honest mistake or
an intentional all-call flood.

Made up or not ... we have had the EXACT same scenerio described happen
here. The non-profit that I work for gets ALL of it's funding from
federal grants. Our spam filter has thrown a monkey wrench into the
works more than once -- other non-profits we deal with tend to use the
cheapest ISP they can find, which means the ISP they choose to use is
likely to be a spamhaus, which means their IP address space is usually
on one or more blocklists.

I was going to suggest http://www.bugmenot.com , a site that supplies
account information that may be borrowed for use by people who prefer
not to register directly. But they've been down for the last day.

Feel free to use
user=operator10
pw=operator10
at least until some moron messes with it.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for doing this. Everyone who
likes to check out the NYT feel free to use operator10 for user name
and password. And http://www.bugmenot.com is another good source if
it is going to stay up. PAT]

T. Sean Weintz < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:


Then use a phone. Email was never intended, even before spam, to be
reliable. That's simply the way it is - if you rely on email as your
sole point of communication on critical issues, you're in trouble. *

* PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something
like corkscrews.

> Feel free to use


In light of the recent thread about using a company's WiFi network
just because it happened to be open, I have to ask: why isn't it the
same thing to use a public username/password combo for a site that
asks for individual registration?

-Joel

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The username 'operator10' and
password 'operator10' when reading the New York Times web site are
available out of self defense when dealing with spam and spy-
cookies. Self defense is always allowed when one faces a real threat
which is the case with spam and spying on the net. If NYT would cease
the practice of spamming their readers with unwanted advertisements
on the net and distributing their user list to anyone with some money
to spend for same, then a group name/password would not be needed. PAT]