Using Email Effectively

greenspun.com : LUSENET : computer radio : One Thread

Is there a method of capturing the Email address of those people who visit a site. I've experienced instances where my browser and ISP location are displayed back to me when I browse some sites without actually furnishing the information. I am trying make contact with those visitors who don't genreally leave any contact information in order to capitalize on their interest.

-- Brett McInerney (nnookinc@alaska.net), November 18, 1997

Answers

HTTP is a peer-to-peer protocol. So the server knows your computer's IP address (or that of your ISP's proxy server) but never your email address unless you type it in or unless you always keep the same IP address and the publisher is sharing information with other publishers to whom you've given your email address. Sometimes the hostname is suggestive, e.g., "philg-home.lcs.mit.edu" probably means that sending email to "philg@lcs.mit.edu" will work.

Read Chapter 7 of http://photo.net/wtr/dead-trees/ for more on this subject.

-- Philip Greenspun (philg@mit.edu), December 13, 1997.


I have seen some pages that have a script on them that will cause the browser to send an e-mail message with something like an onload() statement. It generally asks the user if they want to send the message. That is all I know about it truthfully.

-- Dan Diedrich (jcdld@csinet.net), April 27, 1998.

Decker:

So, are you telling me you know something the rest of the world doesn't?

There are plenty of honest IT folks that feel the same way. Just not many in high places with weighty stock plans to protect.

Are you, Hamasaki and Yourdon the "brain trust" of the IT world? Are you guys more "wired in" than Fortune 500 CIOs, or IT CEOs, or the columnists and prognosticators of the IT press (to name a few)?

CIOs are management Decker. They don't tend to be realistic when confronted with bad news. And the IT press is not fond of calling the IT industry "bumbling fools"

Oh, and are you more qualified than Yardeni and other economists to discuss the economic impacts of Y2K? We are not talking about delusions of grandeur, "a." These are delusions of omniscience.

Where do I claim to be omniscient? I am throwing out valid arguments and you are accusing me of being inferior to my counterparts. Why not try addressing my points?

If CIOs are wetting their pants over Y2K, why hasn't anyone picked up on it? Why aren't the high-powered Y2K remediation firms having their phone ring off the hook? Why are they laying off workers and seeing stock prices ebb?

Because the work is not getting done!

Do Fortune 500 executives want to go belly up in 2000? Are they just tired of great jobs with perks and stock options? Do they long for a return to the "kinder, gentler" 12th century?

Irrelevant.

I know a fair number of IT pros, some who work for major financial institutions. A few are personal friends. Most have never heard of Hamasaki... and their opinion of Yourdon is not exactly glowing.

Gee, who are these masters Decker? Have they written any books on IT? Articles on y2k? Appeared before Congress? Paid as lecturers? Are their names synonymous with any programming methodologies?

They are far less gentle than I have been on this forum. Y2K is a pain, but they are not ready to find a cave... not by any stretch of the imagination.

It has been reported in the media that programmers form a larger percentage of "doomers" than the general public. Does this reveal anything to you?

Oh, if you post your real name... I can ask and see if anyone has heard of you?

Did I say I was great? No. I said I was experienced. And I said that you are incorrectly assuming that the "IT Pros" are great. They're not. They're human. Humans tend to screw up. As your buddy Yardeni said, "Never in history have so many humans trusted that so few wouldn't screw up." You are naive to trust the IT industry and IT press. Would you trust Bill Gates in a business deal, without a good lawyer on your side?

And the reason I can speak as candidly as I do is precisely because I do not post my real name. Sorry bout that.

Now, your turn:

- How is it that the same industry that brought us y2k, then made it a major crisis by procrastinating, is now "on top of things"?

- How have CIO's managed to beat the conventional IT metrics?

- Why are Koskinen, FAA, etc, etc claiming that they are 99% done when it is OBVIOUS that they are not?

- Why are reports still coming in at this late date that show companies and governments are refusing to spend money on y2k repairs?

I agree with Robert. And I think you are ignorant about IT.

-- a (a@a.a), August 05, 1999.


As posted here, Dick Mills spoke this past week. From what I read, Dick still has the MEME in places, to put it lightly.

Biggest problem is Mills makes a grave error when he infers that a common_CAUSE_failure, is similar to a common_MODE_failure. There is a HUGE difference. I have been saying for almost a year now, that Y2k as sold by the doomers, is INCAPABLE of delivering the goods. The SKIDS are not greased anywhere close to produce massive "systematic" collapse. Y2k is like trying to run-up a massive sand dune.

Y2k has always been married to human fears of the Millennium. Computers do not care about all this. The vast majority of systems do not even care about ANY DATING scheme. But ALL computers care about doing what they do, crunching numbers. If Y2k was capable of fusing pathways inside processors, a case could be built that Y2k is a common_cause_failure. We have no evidence this will happen(cause it is impossible for starters). More importantly we have decades of evidence any major difficulty by computers to CRUNCH-THE-NUMBERS is rather limited, forseen, and dealt with as a normal business issue. From zip code expansions, new area codes, e-com, deregulation, and the constant rewrite of the tax-code, it is handled thank you. Y2k is different only by the NOISE factor in my humble opinion. A case could be made to scale, however here the evidence is clear we have had a major OVER-REACTION and a ton of money has been flushed for no real reason. And even though one would think the money spent an idication of a massive problem, simple investigation shows an issue of the "petty cash" variey in most cases, real, but terriblly overblown across the board.

Y2k simply "could be" a common cause. There is little evidence it is a common_mode_failure. If all computers were running an old version of Excel(obligatory MS slap) which was the only app holding the critical infrastructure of the world afloat, and nothing was done pre/or after failure, yes we could be looking at major problems. This IS the basic argument by the DOOMERS extrapolated to everything connected to copper. Simply pile more unrelated-meaningless but similar evidence onto the publics' Techno ignorance, and y2k is a rather easy sell. Many already believe IT is controlled by a few guys from Skull and Bones, so Y2k FITS, makes sense, to simpletons, but of course in Silicon Valley this issue is rather the water-cooler joke.

All good doomers believe at the core that computers are evil, the tools of the controlling elite. They think massive mainframes lie in backrooms simply waiting to die come 01/01/00. The fact they fixate around the issue of Compliancy disproves their ENTIRE CASE but you see these people are pretty ignorant, not stupid, ignorant, many are mentally myopic like Mills and extrapolate to the whole at the drop of the hat.

One is expected to believe since little is compliant, this condition will lead to massive failure. The belief is we have a COMPLIANT, NON-compliant world. We have built a system so pefectly BROKE, it is about to explode. Never could a doomer realize most is non-compliant simply because THIS IS compliancy. If everything is connected, compliant, and comes out of Redmond Washington, God help us. Doomers actually are attracting the very condition they publically aborre. They want it all to work(flawlessly) and have bought the very sales BS from the very folks they say they hate. Our strength lies in our diversity, the sheer fact most IS NOT connected, running the same apps, and even similarly configurated PC's do not run the same is NOT a problem, it is what is. Centralized anything without forsight to diverse back-ups, is suicide as Ebay is learning the hard way. And here, the PROBLEM is not even technical, it is managerial failure based on buying into one system no doubt driven by massive uncontrollable growth. Computers fail as NORMAL, this IS what is misunderstood. Hardly any of it is even FINISHED is also another item overlooked. IT is a growing, changing phenom, ignore it at cost to your survival.

The older systems have had decades of education. Doomers think mainframes are still around since some yahoo has been asleep. Course OLD means BROKE, never robust, tested, reliable, no never which is the truth. Are there date-issues? certainly. For most the solution is similar---make-it work like has been done for eons. Making it work=compliant in the real world. It is July 1999 and this MIW version is winning hands-down. Easy call if ya understand the issue.

Course little of this matters as one can conclude as NONE of the doomer websites provide a scrap of technical information basically. We have consumer battery embedded chip questions, a HINT as ever there was about the level of understanding. Many of the gurus extrapolate isolate areas of knowledge into a rather scary scenarios easilly bought by those still wondering what an IP is, or how do they empty their Recycling Bins, assuming they have actually reached a point where they are able to delete something, most are not even at this point. Kind of the reason for them Bins in the first place.

Y2k is NOT a common_MODE_failure as IT simply does not apply due to the fact IT is no where's near as common-connected-or as critical as is believed. Just because a PC is on every desk in the world, does not then mean we are about to go back to the dark ages. This IS the belief in large measue, and stop laughing.

For Y2k to be a common_CAUSE_failure one would have to show similar, we have none. In isolated cases, similar miscalculations, date-based or otherwise could have happened which maybe traced to a common_cause, I know of none which went beyond the trade-journals. We have virus issues far more visible and widespread and it didn't all implode, in fact little happened as a result which came close to a meltdown. Y2k is a mental issue of techno-ignorance, millennium religious hysteria, techno backlash, NWO mania, and a general feeling by most that the world is changing just a tad too fast and we ALL need a break(information overload).

If one wants systems with suspect diversity to worry about, one has only to look at the power-industry and the monetary system. One where a squirrel and another where a man named Greenspan can wreck more havoc than any Y2k bug could ever hope to. Of course if this was the real issue, we would have more than a single Y2k website dealing with the power-industry(euy2k.com) and the monetary issue(yardeni.com)now wouldn't we? Y2k is not about what it preports to be about.

Y2k has become the COMMON_CATCH-ALL_FAILURE for many hoping we can return to the good-old days. Course without Polio, Hitler, Nukes, and most everyone not white-male having second-class citizenship. Ironic the very thing which is killing the Y2k MYTH is exactly what most red-blooded Americans say they want, but only can muster lip-service, or worse, ignorantly rush headlong into the very thing they say they hate. They become what they hate, LAW, and guess what? you do not even have the option of ignoring the law, another MYTH you have bought!

Y2k will go down in history as yet another example of what it took to transition from one paradigm into another. More damage has been done due to ignorance and the NOISE than will ever come from some date-overflow in the future. We have had a massive communications failure, human kind.

Doc Paulie

-- a (a@a.a), August 09, 1999.


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