Both practices arguably ingenious or idiotic...
I'll happily send your question to my IT and legal folks. 
-ron
: Randy's MUA automatically deletes email sent directly to him...
Probably because you have a 12+ line .sig full of lawyer-speak.
Both practices arguably ingenious or idiotic...
-----------------------------------------------------Doesn't matter. He doesn't want to see the .sig and it's his email system. Others do the same.
I gotta admit it's a really big .sig that's utterly useless. It *IS* being disseminated, distributed and copied and on a global basis. It's "unlawful" in what country? No one's going to delete all copies. Blah, blah, blah...
Yup, these really long .sigs used to annoy me no end, especially when trying to read email over dial-up or satellite or some other slow access method. I used to complain to the sender that it was a stupid, unenforceable practice....
And then I worked for a place that automagically inserted something similar....
After countless (ok, it was probably only 9 or so, but it sure felt countless at the time) meetings with different groups all pointing fingers at each other ("Its legal's doing!", "SOX! We have to do it for SOX reasons", "The mail server automatically does it and we don't know where to turn it off"(!), "Think of the children!") I eventually just gave in and lived with it...
That fact that my (work) emails had some random gobbledygook inserted that I had no control over didn't in any way change the importance [0] or validity[1] of what I had typed above it (and giving up the fight allowed me to work on other, more important stuff -- like keeping the network running).
I don't think that Ron is choosing to put this .sig in his mail, some ugly corporate mail gateway is probably appending it for him. While he could spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to someone at Time Warner that it is a stupid thing to do, I sure he has better things to do...
Warren
[0] about zero
[1] also about zero.
Warren Kumari wrote:
Randy's MUA automatically deletes email sent directly to him...
Probably because you have a 12+ line .sig full of lawyer-speak.
Both practices arguably ingenious or idiotic...
-----------------------------------------------------Doesn't matter. He doesn't want to see the .sig and it's his email
system. Others do the same.I gotta admit it's a really big .sig that's utterly useless. It
*IS* being disseminated, distributed and copied and on a global
basis. It's "unlawful" in what country? No one's going to delete
all copies. Blah, blah, blah...I don't think that Ron is choosing to put this .sig in his mail, some
ugly corporate mail gateway is probably appending it for him. While
he could spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to someone at
Time Warner that it is a stupid thing to do, I sure he has better
things to do...
I don't see anywhere in the NANOG charter that says we have to use our
corporate email addresses in correspondence with list. From what I've seen,
most of us don't. I agree 100% that trying to get $corporation to remove
the useless and annoying .sig's is like tilting at windmills. But for the
sanity and comfort of other list users, would it be too much to ask that
people with annoying tacked-on .sig's use a personal mail account when
posting to the list? I hear Google offers nice email accounts for a
reasonable price.
Andrew
Ron da Silva wrote:
I'll happily send your question to my IT and legal folks.
-ron
Point out that you're sending the language to widely disseminated and archived mailing lists, and send them this as well....
NOTICE: This communication may contain confidential and/or privileged
information. If you are not the intended recipient, or believe that you
have received this communication in error you are obligated to kill
yourself and anyone else who may have read it, not necessarily in that
order. So there. My disclaimer is scarier than yours. Nyaah. You
started this silly nonsense. Knock it off and I will too, ok? It's
worthless from a legal standpoint and is responsible for the needless
suffering of billions of innocent electrons. Nobody reads it anyway.
You're not actually reading this, are you? I didn't think so.
Warren Kumari wrote:
Randy's MUA automatically deletes email sent directly to him...
Probably because you have a 12+ line .sig full of lawyer-speak.
Both practices arguably ingenious or idiotic...
-----------------------------------------------------Doesn't matter. He doesn't want to see the .sig and it's his email
system. Others do the same.I gotta admit it's a really big .sig that's utterly useless. It
*IS* being disseminated, distributed and copied and on a global
basis. It's "unlawful" in what country? No one's going to delete
all copies. Blah, blah, blah...I don't think that Ron is choosing to put this .sig in his mail, some
ugly corporate mail gateway is probably appending it for him. While
he could spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to someone at
Time Warner that it is a stupid thing to do, I sure he has better
things to do...I don't see anywhere in the NANOG charter that says we have to use our
corporate email addresses in correspondence with list. From what I've seen,
most of us don't. I agree 100% that trying to get $corporation to remove
the useless and annoying .sig's is like tilting at windmills. But for the
sanity and comfort of other list users, would it be too much to ask that
people with annoying tacked-on .sig's use a personal mail account when
posting to the list? I hear Google offers nice email accounts for a
reasonable price.
Yup, you are 100% correct -- I meant (but forgot) to mention that, other than when officially representing a company on a list, I always post from a personal address, regardless of whether or not $current_employer is doing silly .sigs or not.
I have already gotten a bunch of private mails pointing this fact out (and one (spam) reply trying to sell me some sort of Chinese pharmaceuticals 
) which is why I am replying publicly...
W
What follows is an off-topic meta-comment, so if you weren't following earlier stuff in this thread, you might as well stop reading. My apologies for furthering this.
Warren Kumari wrote:
I don't think that Ron is choosing to put this .sig in his mail, some
ugly corporate mail gateway is probably appending it for him. While
he could spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to someone at
Time Warner that it is a stupid thing to do, I sure he has better
things to do...I don't see anywhere in the NANOG charter that says we have to use our
corporate email addresses in correspondence with list. From what I've seen,
most of us don't. I agree 100% that trying to get $corporation to remove
the useless and annoying .sig's is like tilting at windmills. But for the
sanity and comfort of other list users, would it be too much to ask that
people with annoying tacked-on .sig's use a personal mail account when
posting to the list? I hear Google offers nice email accounts for a
reasonable price.
At the risk of hypocracy as well as off-topicness, I'm rather hoping people don't follow this advice.
There are a few well-known people on this list whose employment situations and other affiliations don't need much explanation for anybody who has been following the industry closely. There are many more NANOG posters who aren't so well known. Some of these people post to the list a lot, often making assertions without evidence to back them up, and without enough information about who the poster is to figure out whether they're speaking from inside knowledge or relevant experience, whether they work for somebody with a strong stake in the issue under discussion, or or whether they are most likely just making stuff up.
I'd much rather see messages with .signatures full of legalese at the end (generally after I've stopped reading anyway), than messages sent with less information about the poster's identity.
I realize I'm following my own advice here, largely due not having changed my mailing list configurations after a period of unstable employment a few years ago.
-Steve Gibbard
Network Architect
Packet Clearing House
www.pch.net
Speaking for myself, not for my employer, and not for any NANOG-related committees I've been on in the past.