[Vision2020] The future of this list

[Bill Strand]

Hi Folks,

I don't post often as many of the discussions at Vision2020 are over the
head of this simple engineer. But I have a couple of comments:

1. Without a radical change in the format of the list server (i.e. that
someone must "apply" for permission to join) it is most likely difficult to
ban a person rather than just an email address. And Hotmail accounts are a
dime a dozen.
2. I doubt that the "future" of this discussion is based on whether this
person is banned. It will continue whether he is banned or not. On the other
hand, it may fail for other reasons.

Having said this, if it were technically feasible, I would kick this
individual out. I find it fascinating that so many people are willing to
tolerate this type of behavior. Here we have a person whose goal is to
disrupt this board and yet people are willing to put this down to "free
speech". If this were a classroom, would you tolerate this behavior from a
student? Would tolerate this from your kids at dinner? How about the guy
behind you at the movies? Free speech is about dialog - not about yelling at
the top of your lungs so that others can't be heard. And sometimes
"tolerance" is just a guise for not standing up to unacceptable behavior and
calling it what it is.

On a purely practical note, many of the people at PacSim are members of this
list server. When they are out on the road, these seemingly "innocuous"
emails tend to clog their email accounts (when in Newfoundland, our
connection speeds tend to be quite low), making it difficult to receive
valid emails. If this continues, we will block this type of message from our
mail server as "spam". I realize this is a form of censorship, but all spam
filtering is exactly that. And the reality is, I'm not certain that the
present barrage of emails have any more value than the constant emails
offering Viagara and enlargements. Consider it my equivalent of hitting the
"Delete" key.

Bill Strand