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

[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.