dealing with spam

[Bruce Ravel <ravel@phys.washington.edu>]

Howdy feff users,

Yesterday, the feffusers email list received unsolicited, off-topic
email from someone claiming to be a Chinese businessman.

I would guess that everyone on this list would much rather see this
list stay tightly on-topic.  In that way, feffusers will remain a
useful resource for our community.

Off-topic garbage such as yesterday's posting is, sadly, a reality of
the today's internet.  John Rehr is doing a good job managing these
lists and trying to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high.  (Good work,
John!)  Even so, we are going to see some garbage slipping through
from time to time.

It is very important that no one respond to stuff like yesterday's
posting.  It is a common practice on the shady side of the internet to
send out mail for the purpose of seeing if anyone is listening.  If
people from our list respond -- even if to tell the other person to
leave us alone -- that tells the other person that someone is indeed
listening.  You and the list will likely receive lots more mail from
that person.

Thus, by far the best course of action is simply to ignore garbage
postings to feffusers and trust that John will continue to do an
excellent job managing the list.

Happy new year to everyone,
Bruce


-- 
 Bruce Ravel  ----------------------------------- ravel@phys.washington.edu
 U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Code 6134          phone: (1) 202 767 5947
 Washington DC 20375, USA                             fax: (1) 202 767 1697

 NRL Synchrotron Radiation Consortium (NRL-SRC)
 Beamlines X11a, X11b, X23b, X24c, U4b
 National Synchrotron Light Source
 Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973

 My homepage:    http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel 
 EXAFS software: http://feff.phys.washington.edu/~ravel/software/exafs.html