I will reluctantly join with Marion Coady, ironically adding to the junk mail, to request that people do not complain here on this list about the spams. For one thing, it does absolutely no good. The spammer does not even know that we exist. Our complaints will not reach him. He is long gone to another provider. It is a little bit like the 'good times' virus. There was no such virus! But the warnings about it, and the contradictory advice that it was just a hoax, generated so much traffic that the internet and some other networks were nearly swamped. That, in itself, turned out to be the 'virus'. I, for one, would rather skip over one message and forget it, and not have to look at another 10-20 complaints also. There are also some practical considerations. I use a BBS to send and receive internet messages to and from the PARKINSN list. The BBS SYSOPS are wary of lists. Lists can generate a lot of traffic. My BBS SYSOP pays for the time he is connected to his internet provider. So a SYSOP will generally discourage subscriptions to lists that generate more than about 20 messages a day. Originally I used the fidonet to subscribe to this list. When the SYSOP of the fidonet/internet gateway detected that I was doing this, he notified my local BBS SYSOP, and me, that I must stop it. He said that he could not handle the traffic that lists generated. He also blocked any messages addressed to list servers so that no one else could subscribe to any list server. This also made it impossible for me to unsubscribe. My local BBS SYSOP and the fidonet/internet gateway SYSOP had to work out between themselves some way to unsubscribe me. Fortunately, at about that same time, my BBS began to provide direct internet message service. Along the same lines, I would like to advise people to cut their quotes in any message back to what is really necessary just to maintain the thread of the subject. Somebody, somewhere, has to pay for the transmission and storage of wasteful overquoting. The relaynet has strict rules on the extent of quotes that are allowed in messages for this reason. It would be good here to follow their rule that the quotes be no more than 10% of a message. And while I am on this kick of criticizing everybody else, let me pass out some other advice. Please try to break up your messages into blocks of about 100 lines. Apparently some mail readers, or BBS systems, or something, sometimes does this automatically. (I wish that I knew what does it and where.) Some messages carry a statement that the message is over 100 lines, and that it is continued in the next message, and then the next message carries a statement that it is a continuation. The problem here is that my mail reader chops off incoming messages at 150 lines. They just stop in the middle of a phrase, a paragraph, or whatever. That is about 8 1/2 screens. Then, if it is interesting enough (it seldom is), I have to call my BBS again to look there at all of the message. But now, my BBS chops off incoming messages at 200 lines. So then I have to go (very, very seldom) to the PARKINSN archives if I really want desparately to read all of a very long message. Well, I do hope that this long message has not gone over 100 lines, and that it has not bored, or antagonized, all of you. Cheers! Keep smiling, no matter what! PS --- If anyone really wants to praise me or flame me for these ideas, let's do it on our internet addresses. Let's not discuss it any further on the PARKINSN list. From: [log in to unmask] * SLMR 2.1a * McLean Virginia USA Tue 08-29-95 9:59 pm --- * KMail 3.00y