X-Message-Number: 31238
From: Dan Hitt <>
Subject: we don't want to look like spammers
Date: Sat,  6 Dec 2008 17:46:30 -0500 (EST)

Hi All,

Let me preface this by saying that i like to read what David Pascal
writes.  And second, not only do i like Rudi, he is my insurance
agent, and i think he's doing a real service for cryonics.  And i have
a lot of respect for John for his service to CI, and even when i don't
completely agree with him (e.g., about just how to invest in tech), i
think he has an insightful perspective and his points should be
seriously considered.

Further, i can understand why, when we look at what we think is a
thoughtful promotion of cryonics we'd like people to see it.  And i
think we can indeed reasonably send such a promotion to people we
know.

But i do think Keith L has a quite valid point about receiving
unsolicited mass mailings.

It is called spam, and people really, really don't like it.

For technical mailing lists you generally cannot even subscribe
without a mail-back confirmation.  I.e., the subscriber has take a
specific action to assure the mailer that he or she really does want
to be on the list.  This is just as Keith said in his post.

For political mailing lists, the more savvy ones caution their
subscribers to not forward their mail indiscriminately.  They add
words like "sending spam hurts our movement" to their mailings.

So if there's even a hint that something looks like spam, we shouldn't
send it to gobs of people we don't know.

dan

PS: My own email experience is something like Keith's: because of spam
i delete everything that comes to my panix account.  So if anybody
needs to send me mail, send it to dan.hitt at google's gmail.com.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=31238