From: Ronan Waide (waider at domain waider.ie)
Date: Mon 06 Aug 2001 - 23:10:57 IST
Ach. That's what I get for not proofreading, and perhaps not being
clear enough.
On August 6, decdelmur at domain iol.ie said:
> I can intially see your point but the expense you suffer is I am sure you
> will agree mitigated by the fact that you would have been online anyway,
> when was the last time you went on line, checked your mail and disconnected
> IMMIEDIATELY (I don't wish to be rude by using capitals, but immiediately is
> the key word).
Like I said, I pay for my downloads. I'm not generally on-line all the
time because this allegedly high-tech country still charges exorbitant
rates for private internet access. Plus the cumulative effect also
hurts. Discounting it because it doesn't happen often isn't exactly
the point either; how would you feel if some arbitrary company that
you have no connections or dealings with stole a few pence out of your
bank account every so often? It's not happening often, so it's okay,
right?
> Actually they are only calling you at your expense (see response 1) and they
> are not adding to you cost by doing this.
Well, that's where my typo came in; I'd initially written that as
"calling my neighbourhood with reversed charges". You're looking at
point cost, I'm looking at cumulative cost. I'm surprised I had to
clarify this point, though.
> But consider this - how many Irish people have .com addresses you can't
> assume the location of a person based on the tld their mail domain is in.
Er, no. You're WAY missing the point here. For one thing, my point is
that them assuming I'm even able to avail of an american offer despite
having a pretty localised address is lousy business practice. Using it
as an excuse to justify sending mail to hundreds of thousands of
people is even worse business practice. And if you have even the
slightest shred of ethics in regard to who you deal with, you don't
justify this sort of antisocial behaviour by lending it support.
> > 4. Pyramid schemes.
>
> Not sure what you mean by pyramid schemes, but they are illegal anyway so
> that's hardly an issue here.
If you're trying to justify spam, you should probably be aware that a
good percentage of them are for pyramid schemes. It helps to know what
it is exactly you're defending.
I do not buy the argument that it helps small companies compete with
big ones. I do not buy the argument that it is in any way justified
that I have to clear from my mailbox on a daily basis offers for porn,
credit cards, lists of email addresses that I can spam, sources of
inkjet cartridges, or anything else. I personally will continue to
complain to ISPs about this, which has a pretty high success rate of
getting accounts shut down. If you feel spam is justified, that's
fine, but don't try to push that opinion on me.
Waider. Unless, perhaps, you'd like to pay my phone bill for me.
-- waider at domain waider.ie / Yes, it /is/ very personal of me. "[company]'s basic pricing strategy is to hang the user up by his heels, see how much money falls out, take it all and then ask for another $50,000 for "support"." - Phil Greenspun
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