There are a couple matters that I need to clarify.
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Attachments:
Because of the proliferation of the Microsoft Word 6 macrovirus that is
very common in Word 6 documents, I have not been forwarding any attached
documents, but have, instead, been opening them and converting them to
plain text. This is a simple procedure and prevents the spead of the
ubiquitous macrovirus.
Recently, a new wrinkle regarding attachments has developed. Person using
the prerelease version of Netscape Communicator 4.0 have the ability to
prepare wonderful email documents that follow the HTML conventions of web
sites. When you open such emailed documents in Netscape, you see
web-pagelike email messages. The problem is that, at this time, only
Netscape Communicator 4.0 can view these email messages as they were
intended. Persons using regular email programs such as Pine, Eudora, etc.,
receive the message as an attachement. When I open the attachment and
convert it to plain text, all the HTML tags are still present. I will
continue to convert these attachments, but do not have the time to go
through the documents and remove the tags. If you see tags such as <I>
</I> or <a href=blahblahblah) you will know that the original item was sent
as an HTML email encoded document and you should just ignore the tags.
There is an incredible revolution taking place in the way email and all
internet-based communications are handled. Until things stabilize, I will
continue to handle the attachments, regardless of their source, as I have
been.
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Advertisements vs. Announcements:
According to the charter of this group, no advertisements are allowed. I
do, however, allow announcements to be posted. There is sometimes no clear
cut line between the two, so I have been using my judgement. Basically, an
advertisement would be an attempt to sell something directly and contain
pricing and ordering information. An announcement would be a brief
statement that something was availble and refer to a contact number or web
page.
This has worked well for announcements about new books. Recently, though,
persons selling equipment or supplies have begun to send numerous messages
"announcing" the availibility of their new products. I used to allow these
to be posted, but the number has increased to the point where I now receive
several of these a week, often from the same sources.
I will continue to allow announcements about books to go through, and will
allow commercial firms to announce the existence of any websites they
develop. I will not, however, allow them to make weekly or daily
"announcements" of new products or instruments that they have developed. I
think this an abuse of our newsgroup. I recommend that companies set up
websites for their products and then announce the websites. I will be more
than happy to list vendor websites on two of the webpages I handle:
http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn/links.html which is a webpage of
links to photosynthesis related "things", and also on the Nicelist, the
list of email/web addresses of photosynthesis researchers
(http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn/nicelist.html ).
I hope you all understand the need for these clarifications.
Larry
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Larry Orr Larry.Orr at ASU.edu
Photosynthesis Center tel: (602) 965-1963
Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry fax: (602) 965-2747
Arizona State University
Box 871604
Tempe, AZ 85287-1604 USA http://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn
