An event to miss...

[herveus]

I checked my radix.net email account this weekend and found, to my surprise and annoyance, that I had hit my disk space limit. That meant that email messages would be bounced.

I found the principal culprit: an unsolicited message with a 2.4 megabyte attachment.

That message was sent to White Wolf and the Phoenix, plugging an event at the Baltimore Zoo -- their Reggae and Brew Festival -- with the idea that we might be interested in vending there.

I sent a strongly worded email to the contact person explaining how that huge attachment was out of line and how that caused me particular trouble. Her response:

I was trying to get people excited about our event, not trying to make anyone angry, Its funny because I got nothing but good responses back except from you.

Thanks anyway! Have a great day!

Can you say "unclear on the concept"? Can you say "denial of service"?
I'm composing a followup message to her that uses the latter phrase.

If you might have been considering going to that event, I ask you to at least give it a second thought. I'm going to try to discern someone further up the food chain to complain to.

We Are Not Amused.

Comments

[herveus.livejournal.com]

I have a gmail account, but it is not as accessible to me as the radix account. In addition, I *like* reading my email with a character-based user agent that threads my emails, as I can on radix, and that doesn't bother showing me non-text content.

I think nothing of sending multi-megabyte attachments to coworkers, but then I know the environment I'm sending stuff to and I know that doing such won't cause problems. I won't send such large attachments in unsolicited emails (as in the instant case), nor will I send that sort of attachment to someone without first making sure it won't cause them a problem. I'm socialized to presume that an email message has several characteristics:

* it's plain text. (that means no markup, especially HTML)
* it's modestly sized, by default

Yes, I have received emails with large attachments on my radix account without problem, but then those were emails I was expecting and made sure to not have problems with.

I didn't have any technical problem with getting to the Storvik newsletter; I do know people who Will Not Log In To Yahoo for well considered reasons. I'm of the opinion that the newsletter ought not be behind that wall, even if it is not necessarily a difficult wall to get past. I do use mutt to read my email by choice.

The biggest objection to the email that I got was that it was utterly unsolicited -- junk email, even -- and it amounted to a mail bomb. That's at the very least ill-mannered behavior, and can carry legal implications. Unfortunately, far too many people these days are utterly ignorant and/or oblivious to these considerations, and they ASSume that everyone has broadband with unlimited storage (or certainly seem to). Worse, when this is pointed out, they often simply don't get it. The offendor in this case responded with a breezy "well, I got 35 inquiries and you were the only person who was upset" (or words to that effect). There wasn't the slightest hint that she understood how there was anything out of line in her mail-bomb -- that she was consuming resources *I* pay for. Had she put the information in an envelope and mailed it to me, she would have borne the costs. Instead, she imposed them on me, and she didn't bother seeking permission first.

If you have a large document to share out, and it's not confidential, put it on a web page and tell people where to get it. Then, they can fetch it if, when, and how they choose, instead of having to deal with it showing up in their inbox. People frequently have quotas on their mailboxes, and it's not nice to dump stuff on them without asking first.

I use email for (in the main) low-bandwidth communications. Much of that is mailing lists, which I still find useful. Web interfaces to "mailing lists" tend to suck rocks through a straw. It's a case of using the wrong tool for the job. On consideration, it fits well with the Quaker concept of living simply. It is sufficient; I don't really need (nor do I have a particular desire for) a fancy bells-and-whistles mail "interface". Gmail pushes the envelope, and they don't seem to offer a way for me to force messages to be displayed as plain text in a monospaced font. I suspect that there's some hackery that could get there, and I am aware that I could configure it so I could get to it via POP, but I haven't had the incentive to do that. Another limitation of gmail is that it does a lousy job of keeping message threads together. Its concept of "conversations" seems to use only the subject to link messages, and there is no tree-structured way to view a thread. Google's usenet interface is capable of showing threads; why can't gmail do it? Mutt has done it for years.

There is much of the "old" technology that remains valuable and should not be discarded simply because it is "old". Unfortunately, I often see people sneering at people like me simply because I insist on using things like email the way they were designed, and because I take exception to being told that I just have to deal with it and "get the newest technology".

I'm not dead yet!

[technomage.livejournal.com]

Your perspective is interesting. I agree, good tools should never be replaced just for something newer. I am also a broadband user at all times expect when using my personal laptop to conduct corporate business at a government facility, when I use dial up. I'm frustrated enough with dial up that when our building reopens in December and I can no longer work from home that I will likely blow the bucks required for a broadband wifi card.

I can see your point where an unsolicited e-mail of this type could be considered spam-like.

For amusement only (I am not fooled that anyone will change your mind on this subject) I present... http://people.smu.edu/acambre/html_email_is_good.asp

[herveus.livejournal.com]

It's an amusing screed, full of straw men. I note that it ignores the fundamental issue.

Email is, fundamentally, a plain text application. Any email message without plain text is an empty message. It may have attachments, such as a text/html part, but it displays to me as an empty message. "HTML email" is oxymoronic, much as "fat free sour cream" is. The adjective just doesn't bind to the noun to yield a phrase that makes sense. That concern has never stopped people from misusing the language to peddle stuff of dubious value. :)

[herveus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I realized another thing...

I don't expect a "technical" solution that would prevent offenses such as that which prompted these rants.

After all, generally speaking, people don't go into stranger's houses unbidden, not because someone is sitting inside with a shotgun, but because it just isn't the way you do things.