Bernstein is a whiner who deserves no sympathy from anyone. In order to avoid cluttering up his inbox with SPAM he has one of those annoying callback systems. Only thing is that the self-centered clod can't be bothered to put people who reply into a whitelist. What this means is that as a result of Mr* Bernsteins attempt to minimize the amount of spam HE receives, he is generating spam for EVERYONE ELSE. I have answered the call back twice, Bernstein continues to SPAM me. What is worse, the main purpose of the callback message appears to be to remind the recipient of the size of Bernstein's ego. If bernstein is having difficulty posting to the list I suspect that it is not at all unlikely that the cause will turn out to be some interaction between his eccentric mailing code and the mailing list software that he has not bothered to consider or investigate. Phill [*] Its only an assistant professorship that by European lights only ranks him as a mere lecturer. The fact that he has to refer to himself by title TEN times in his pompous note suggests that his sense of self importance is dangerously exagerated. -----Original Message----- From: The qsecretary program [mailto:djb-notbulkmail-eeac5f7ce0588c3ec6303c66f5f2ef59@cr.yp.to] Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 5:23 PM To: pbaker@verisign.com Subject: qsecretary notice Hi. This is D. J. Bernstein's automated mail-handling program. I've received a message from you. The top of your message is shown below. Professor Bernstein receives many interesting messages. Unfortunately, he also receives a torrent of unsolicited commercial mail, unsolicited job applications, unsolicited mailing-list subscriptions, forged mailing-list subscriptions, etc. Professor Bernstein has asked me to reject all bulk mail messages. But I'm a rather primitive computer program, and I'm not sure whether your message is bulk mail. If you reply to this notice, you are (1) acknowledging that Professor Bernstein does not want to receive bulk mail; (2) confirming that your message is not part of a bulk mailing; and (3) agreeing to pay Professor Bernstein $250 if your message is part of a bulk mailing. I won't look at the contents of your reply. A simple OK is fine, as long as it's sent to the address shown above. You don't have to include a second copy of your message. If you do not reply to this notice, your message will eventually be returned to you, and Professor Bernstein will not see it. I realize that this confirmation process is inconvenient. I'm sorry for the hassle. I hope that IM2000, Professor Bernstein's new Internet mail architecture, succeeds in eliminating these problems. In the meantime, we're all suffering because of a few inconsiderate people. Sincerely, The qsecretary program P.S. Professor Bernstein has asked me to convey his own apologies to you if you're someone he knows. I'm sure he'll tell me to accept subsequent messages from you without confirmation. If you're replying to a message that Professor Bernstein sent you, the problem is probably that the return address in your message isn't the same as the address that Professor Bernstein has on file. I'll let Professor Bernstein know that he should add your new address. P.P.S. If you're a legitimate mailing-list manager, and you've received what appears to be a subscription request from djb@cr.yp.to: That request is a forgery. Professor Bernstein uses different addresses for his mailing-list subscriptions. Please remove djb@cr.yp.to from your mailing list. Do not reply to this message. Note that high-quality mailing-list software confirms each subscription request with a secure cryptographic authenticator; supports tracing by returning a complete copy of each request, including Received fields; and supports filtering by adding a Mailing-List field to every outgoing message, including confirmation notices. If your software does not have these features, upgrade!
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