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| Author: |
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Doc Searls |
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| Posted: |
5/2/2001; 7:44:25 AM |
| Topic: |
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| Msg #: |
709 (top msg in thread) |
| Prev/Next: |
708/710 |
| Reads: |
3213 |
Kinda needs a Tammy Wynette song
| | Jeff: Part of that agreement is that I won't make disparaging remarks about my former employer, which I won't. But I must say that nothing says love like "Terms of Separation". |
Whew!
| | I was prepared for the usual: no air conditioning, some kind of grinding when I steer left, sudden drops in oil pressure, the familiar suspicious rattles... But I didn't expect the Subaru to overheat, which it did, repeatedly. Still, even with stopping, putting in water (which it didn't seem to need), cooling off and all that, I made it to Santa Barbara in five and a half hours, and on one tank of gas. I completely forgot to fill up again, since I was staring constantly at the thermometer instead of the gas guage. I noticed it was empty near Lake Cachuma, with another 20 miles to go before any sign of gas, and a mountain pass in the middle. Turning around would have been worse. |
| | But the cool thing was... the engine, finally. When I cleared the top of the pass, and the air dropped from 85 to 70, and Santa Barbara spread out below, the water temperature dropped right down to where it ought to be. Guess the old beast knew it was coming home. |
| | Anyway — I'm here, unpacking, answering calls, dealing. Feels good. |
Screaming Media
| | It's 4:41am. I'm ready to head out the door and drive 350 miles. I just checked my email one last time and made the mouse error of opening the wrong email. It's from Streaming Media West 2000, and the subject is "Are you attending?" It was sent to my Linux Journal email address and cc'd to a colleage there who left a year ago. With the exception of me, nobody at Linux Journal uses a mail client that welcomes any embedded graphics or even HTML formatting, much less a message packed with no less than thirteen graphics files: eleven .JPGs, one .CFM and one .SWF, the last weighing in at nearly half a meg. |
| | It took almost two minutes for my laptop, no slouch, to assemble this mess. During that time the only visble raw text sent this message: "Your email:," "Friend's email," "Friend's email:" The first graphics that appeared said "Whitespeed email technology," "The following is a presentation of Streaming Media, Inc.," "Steaming Media West 2001" and "Send this to a friend." |
| | I have nothing against Whitespeed's technology, but they way it's being "targetted" by Streaming Media (whose URL appears nowhere on the email, even in graphical form) is pure spam. The fact that it backs a dump truck filled with demanding files up to every "targetted" email doorway makes it far worse than rude. I'm on a DSL line here, and merely annoyed. If I'd been on a dial-up, I'd be livid. |
| | Joey Manley, Streaming Media's VP Interactive, says, "If you¹ve targeted your niche correctly, and if you live, eat, and breathe your niche, you already know how to reach your audience. Or, to put it another way: If you don't already know how to reach your audience, your concept will never work, anyway." |
| | It's not working, Joey. Your spammer-in-chief may eat, live and breathe whatever your niche is, but they're taking a dump on a shitload of potential friends. This one is urging his friends to boycott your conference. |
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