Subject: Waiting for Godot, the Web, and other things.... From: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 11:23:03 -0400

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[ Skipping over sundry points many of which I agree with ]

xerxes  said:

> People's dislike of spam is inversely proportional to their interest in the
> topic presented.  Not all users dislike all spam equally.  That assumption
> does not stand scrutiny.....
Sure it does.  Those of us who are categorically opposed to spam will
not consider a given spam acceptable just because it's something we're
interested in.

> >I've worked against spam for many years. Neither filtering
> >schemes nor industry 'self-policing' will reduce or stop it.
>
> People are completely entitled to this opinion.  But so far it is
> unsupported by genuine analysis.
> (Serious individuals make a distinction between genuine analysis and hokum
> baloney, a point that  clearly Vin understands and respects, but one that
> Ddern and zd-whatever need to ponder.

Great scott, I think I've been 'ad hominem per anonynimed' ... :-)

Perhaps there's a message I haven't seen still piled up in my backlog,
but where did I balonize?  If you're referring to my 'cost of spam to
ISPs' article, kindle counter my hokum with geniune analysis.

> Filtering and self-policing can reduce spam, and in places are said to have
> done so.

They won't reduce the cost to ISPs and companies.

Getting back to the real issue, ignoring for a moment whether a) the Gartner
Group was quoted out of context or b) by virtue of trying to reduce lots
of research into simple numbers has managed to mislead/mis-state through
statistics, the reality is that 'web wait' time 'wasting' is hardly the
lead culprit.  Consider how much time is wasting by the (new term being
coined here) "World Wide Wade" -- that is, sloshing through web sites looking
for information, like a company's phone number and location, which is
more often than not incredibly hard to find for vendors that don't also
have retail stores.  When I'm checking that stuff for articles, I can
easily waste more than 9 minutes wading through web sites. For one or
two on an article I just did I ended up picking up the phone and
calling to ask "Where are you located?"  

And there's also time wasted on tech support calls, upgrades, bug fixes,
etc.  I daresay that overall, the web saves us more time than it wastes,
in terms of the info we do look for; equally, it's a good call whether
computers overall save or waste more time :-(

Ah well, back to analyzing the baloney.  Of course, it's real good
baloney. (See www.baloney.com, which does, I've just determined,
exist.)

DPD
"Baloney analyzed while you wait."





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