[Namron] Fwd: Fw: sleep well America

[mikea]

On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 02:38:29PM -0600, bobby harlow wrote:

> thought you guys might find this interesting...love your freedom and all 
> that it brings? thank a veteran..
>                                                                           
> Bobby

> >Sleep well, America... HONOR

[snip poem]

> >This poem was written by a Marine stationed in Okinawa, Japan. The
> >following is his request. I think it is reasonable..... PLEASE,
> >Would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as
> >you can?

> >Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S.
> >service men and women for our being able to celebrate these
> >festivities.

As a war veteran, thanks. 

As a professional mailsystem administrator, I have to ask, however,
that you *NOT* send it on to as many people as possible.

There is a reason for my request: there's enough of these "pass this
on to everyone you know" stuff on the Internet that it makes up about
20% of the traffic, by byte-count. On the entire Internet. They're
chain letters -- in a milder form, perhaps, than the "If you don't
send this to at least fifteen people in the next twelve minutes, your
genitals will rot off and God will smite your relatives; if you do,
you can expect to receive everything you wish for" sort, but _still_
chain letters.

At work, I see maybe 1200 to 1500 of these "pass this on to all your
friends" things _per_ _day_, out of about 6500 to 7000 inbound Emails
per day.

Various well-meaning friends send them to me, and I have to go through
the tedious exercise of identifying and deleting them. Until I do, 
they take up space on my disks. They waste my bandwidth, which _I_,
not the sender, pay for. They waste my time, which is damn scarce of 
late. 

They're _bad_, folks. 

One of my colleagues expressed it best: 

"If you get something that says to pass it on to all your friends, 
 then please don't consider me a friend."

-- 
Mike Andrews	/	Michael Fenwick 	Barony of Namron, Ansteorra
mikea at mikea.ath.cx
Tired old music Laurel