CmdrTaco's Journal: Email Pet Peeves, Television, Slashdot T-Shirts

1. Random emails from people that have a footer proclaiming some ludicrous licence agreement. "This email is for you, do not forward, and a host of other legal obligations." It's one thing if the email is being sent from a biz person that you have dealings with. But if this is from a random stranger, what in the hell is that all about? I'll do whatever the hell I want with your random email. Including delete it, without acting upon it. If you absolutely MUST include some sort of disclaimer, put it at the TOP of the message so that I can make a decision about reading your message and accepting the terms of your message before I have actually read the message.

2. So I get an email from a random user, and then reply. Only to be alerted that I need to jump through an arbitrary hoop in order to be accepted as a non-spammer. This is utter bullshit. They SENT me the first email. Their software should have already whitelisted me. I NEVER jump through their hoop. If I initiate the discussion, then I certainly will do whatever they need to authenticate me, but if you contact ME, then I damn well better be white listed.

These messages are brought to you by an angry user who has a bloated inbox every day.

Recently I began watching the Band of Brothers DVD boxset that HBO made available. Wow is that some powerful material. I'm through the first 4 episodes and it's really pressed a lot of buttons. It really shows how different the world was back then. War always sucks, but just thinking about these kids volunteering out of patriotism. It's just so different then what we're in the middle of now. Boggles the mind.

On a lighter note, I also got the Alias season 1 box set. I'd started watching a bit into season 2 and enjoyed the show. It's pop fluff, certainly. But it's well produced, solid action. And the first season is all new to me, so it was worth the $35 (I had a coupon :) I paid for it.

On the Slashdot front, we're planning on moving to some new hardware in the not so distant future. New webheads. Hopefully. And lastly, the new Slashdot T-Shirts should be announced in the next day or 2. I can't wait to see them: The TG folks have shipped us a box... so I'll be able to replace my ratty old Slashdot shirts with armpit holes and coffee stains with new shirts to soil! Scott also made icons & wallpapers based on his designs, so my desktop is now all Slashdot Pimped out.

Whitelisting

[pudge]

I love it when someone gets a password mailed from use.perl.org and it bounces to me saying "you need to respond to this in order for the user to receive it so he knows it is not spam." Well, one less use.perl.org user, I guess. :-)

Re: Band of Brothers: I've been watching it again lately too (with the new home theater, makes a huge difference :-), and I still love it. The most distressing thing about the current conflict comapred to that one is that the nature of national security is so different. In WW