Monday 26 May 2003

Pic of the day: Suddenly it is late again!

Mail

I have been thinking about e-mail. Since I started this journal, I have had my mail address on each entry a well as the front page. I also include my real mail address on Usenet posts, in mailing lists, even on message boards. I wanted everyone to be able to mail me easily, without having to solve riddles first. This worked well for years; but lately it has backfired.

Spam has taken a new turn with using subject headers that are casual and have nothing to to with the products they sell. (The others are easy to filter away.) Many humans are so stupid, they still jump on the scams, so this trend has really soared recently.

So if you want to write to me, please don't use a headline like "Hi", "It's me" or some such, unless you are definitely on my regular pen-pal list. "Moo" should be fine though, and of course anything about "journal", "diary" or "Chaos Node".

If you don't use an obvious header, I may still see you if I get to the content. If you use plain text, I can read it. However, my mail program does not display fancy text, because those programs are vulnerable to virus. If all I see is code, I have no way of guessing it is not a spam like the 30 others. (Again, unless you choose a good header.)

Sorry about this, but it's not like I get a lot of real mail, and it would be such a loss to mistake it for a spam!

***

Another thing. In the past, I have scorned the notion of an announcement mailing list, as I update every day. The thing is, I still kinda update every day, but I don't necessarily finish every day, and the time of day is anybody's guess. So if you are interested, I might do such a thing now. I would not use it for special secret information or anything. Not to send the entire entry, either. It should still be here. Just the link and the color of the page, possibly the title so you could make an educated guess as to whether it was worth looking up. (For instance, today would have the text
http://home.online.no/~itlandm/di030526.html "Mail" (green)
I haven't set up a list server (and I may never do ... it seems utterly unlikely that you would use a mailing list to discuss my journal with other Chaos Node "fans"!) If you want to be on such an announce list, send me a mail at itlandm@online.no with the header "subscribe chaos node", and I will send announcements to the mail address you use as sender. I am not happy about this, but I think you deserve the option when I am so irregular.