Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-10 Thread Joel Maslak
Postel's Law seems relevant to this issue.

Sorry for contributing to the noise.


RE: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-10 Thread Keith Medcalf

> "Email Disclaimers: Legal Effect in American Courts"
> - http://www.rhlaw.com/blog/legal-effect-of-boilerplate-email-disclaimers/

Dark grey text on a black background is unreadable.
Plonk goes the website.






Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-10 Thread William Herrin
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 3:13 PM, Landon Stewart  wrote:
> "Email Disclaimers: Legal Effect in American Courts"
> - http://www.rhlaw.com/blog/legal-effect-of-boilerplate-email-disclaimers/
>
> "Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless"
> - http://www.economist.com/node/18529895

I don't have a handy reference, but as I understand it there's a legal
problem with confidentiality boilerplate showing up on a mailing list:
it demonstrates that the sender "doesn't mean it." A defendant in a
case involving some other email can claim that the words mean nothing
because the company's emails always say that even when they're
obviously broadcast to the public in general. The defendant can claim
a good faith belief that they didn't mean it this time either. And the
court will agree.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems . Web: 


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-10 Thread Landon Stewart
"Email Disclaimers: Legal Effect in American Courts"
- http://www.rhlaw.com/blog/legal-effect-of-boilerplate-email-disclaimers/

"Automatic e-mail footers are not just annoying. They are legally useless"
- http://www.economist.com/node/18529895


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Dovid Bender
I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does it give you 
a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's just text at the bottom 
of your email.

Regards,

Dovid

-Original Message-
From: Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net>
Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-boun...@nanog.org>Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 03:56:30 
To: <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

On 9/8/2015 03:31, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:
>> Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
>> only a seething issue to you because you let it be.
>
> Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
> The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
> satisfactory results.
>
> These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
> *any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
> And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
> threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.

Exactly so.
JHD


-- 
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


RE: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Tony Hain
Dovid Bender wrote:
> I would. Once I see legal stuff I know to stop reading. It does not hurt
> anyone. Not sure why this hurts so much. Some things will remain a
> mystery.
> 

No mystery ... It wastes bits that could otherwise be used to watch cat videos. 
 ;)

Tony




Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread John Levine
In article 
<1515735780-1441805800-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-1712088326-@b13.c3.bise6.blackberry>
 you write:
>I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does it give 
>you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal?
>It's just text at the bottom of your email.

Indeed, but it's text that says something between "I am stupid" and
"my life is controlled by people who are stupid."

Generally speaking, many of us would prefer less stupid.

Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Wed, 09 Sep 2015 13:36:39 -, "Dovid Bender" said:
> I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does it give
> you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's just text at the
> bottom of your email.

Disclaimers like those are like brown M's backstage at a Van Halen concert.

If you see one of those on mail sent to a public mailing list, it's a sure
sign that there's other, much more serious issues.  Because let's face it,
they're an admission that the offending company hasn't gotten a *real*
data confidentiality program in place, and the amount of attempted adhesion
in them indicates that the legal people asking for it may not be all
that competent either


pgpnm631WIEiF.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Dovid Bender
I would. Once I see legal stuff I know to stop reading. It does not hurt 
anyone. Not sure why this hurts so much. Some things will remain a mystery.

Regards,

Dovid

-Original Message-
From: Alan Buxey <a.l.m.bu...@lboro.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2015 16:23:01 
To: <do...@telecurve.com>; Larry Sheldon<larryshel...@cox.net>; 
NANOG<nanog-boun...@nanog.org>; <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

>It's just text at the bottom of your email.

1 often a very large amount of text - in this case the legalese was something 
like 10x longer than the comment! 
2 its pointless. Its not enforceable and doesn't mean anything.  

Shall i put a chapter of war and peace at the end of my emails?  You could just 
ignore it.   ;)

alan


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Alan Buxey
>It's just text at the bottom of your email.

1 often a very large amount of text - in this case the legalese was something 
like 10x longer than the comment! 
2 its pointless. Its not enforceable and doesn't mean anything.  

Shall i put a chapter of war and peace at the end of my emails?  You could just 
ignore it.   ;)

alan


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread John Levine
>If your employer insists on attaching a legalistic signature to your
>email which warns the recipient that the message is for their eyes
>only... it's because you are not authorized to make public statements
>as an employee of the company.

No, that's not it.  A disclaimer "I don't speak for foocorp" is not at
all the same as "you have to keep this super sekrit foocorp message
confidential."

The disclaimers tend to be much shorter and are somewhat reasonable,
stating that this message does *not* constitute a contract.  As
explained at length, the confidentiality stuff purports to be a
contract but is not.  As I said it can be summarized as "I am stupid"
or "I am controlled by stupid."

Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly



Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/9/2015 08:36, Dovid Bender wrote:

I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does
it give you a nervous twitch?


Your disrespectful query is not really worthy of a answer because it is 
obviously not asked in good faith, but I am going to try to answer it it 
because there may be others who actually are interested in my answers.


Remind you why you hate legal?

That sentence does not make any sense to me.  I don't hate much, 
certainly not "legal", what ever that might turn out to mean,


 It's

just text at the bottom of your email.


That has been the answer of rogues and renegades to network messaging 
abuse since before there was an Internet.


Now to try and answer "why does it bother me?"  (There are already clues 
in what I have said above, but I am guessing that th4 OP is not into 
"clues" much.)


I am old school and I still try, in an increasingly hostile world, to 
deal with electronic messages in the order of real time, with the oldest 
material at the top and the newest at the bottom.


I am old school and still believe in not causing read-before-writes, not 
violating blocking-factor protocols, and not forcing people to pay for 
the transmission of bits they don't want, don't need, and did not ask 
for--especially if the bits are hostile and are carrying spam, viruses, 
trojans, or legal traps into which the receiver might innocently blunder.


In the instant case it is this latter aspect that concerns me most as 
recipient--I did not ask for the message carrying it, I have no idea 
what about the message puts me at risk, and on and on through a number 
of arguments that others have covered well.


I am old, unemployed, unemployable, in less than robust health, and I 
don't think I could survive being dragged into court because of 
something I did (or did not do) and I could not survive the expense of 
my defense and of the almost-certain adverse judgement the courts seem 
bound to hand down these days.


And in the instant case (not always the case) the 11 1/2 word query 
struck me as ingenuous that would have been more appropriate in a 
high-school class*; and I looked elsewhere in the message to see if I 
could work out why somebody would ask that kind of a question in this 
kind of forum.


*I am still undecided on that question.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Dovid Bender
So far what I have learned
1) It causes issues reading bottom up (which I never do, I always go top down 
to review the convo) but I can how it bothers others.
2) You don't want lawyers saying "we had a warning, you violated it now we 
sue". Understandable.

Thanks for the explanation.


Regards,

Dovid

-Original Message-
From: Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net>
Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-boun...@nanog.org>Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2015 20:22:14 
To: <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

On 9/9/2015 08:36, Dovid Bender wrote:
> I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does
> it give you a nervous twitch?

Your disrespectful query is not really worthy of a answer because it is 
obviously not asked in good faith, but I am going to try to answer it it 
because there may be others who actually are interested in my answers.

Remind you why you hate legal?

That sentence does not make any sense to me.  I don't hate much, 
certainly not "legal", what ever that might turn out to mean,

  It's
> just text at the bottom of your email.

That has been the answer of rogues and renegades to network messaging 
abuse since before there was an Internet.

Now to try and answer "why does it bother me?"  (There are already clues 
in what I have said above, but I am guessing that th4 OP is not into 
"clues" much.)

I am old school and I still try, in an increasingly hostile world, to 
deal with electronic messages in the order of real time, with the oldest 
material at the top and the newest at the bottom.

I am old school and still believe in not causing read-before-writes, not 
violating blocking-factor protocols, and not forcing people to pay for 
the transmission of bits they don't want, don't need, and did not ask 
for--especially if the bits are hostile and are carrying spam, viruses, 
trojans, or legal traps into which the receiver might innocently blunder.

In the instant case it is this latter aspect that concerns me most as 
recipient--I did not ask for the message carrying it, I have no idea 
what about the message puts me at risk, and on and on through a number 
of arguments that others have covered well.

I am old, unemployed, unemployable, in less than robust health, and I 
don't think I could survive being dragged into court because of 
something I did (or did not do) and I could not survive the expense of 
my defense and of the almost-certain adverse judgement the courts seem 
bound to hand down these days.

And in the instant case (not always the case) the 11 1/2 word query 
struck me as ingenuous that would have been more appropriate in a 
high-school class*; and I looked elsewhere in the message to see if I 
could work out why somebody would ask that kind of a question in this 
kind of forum.

*I am still undecided on that question.




-- 
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/9/2015 20:22, Larry Sheldon wrote:

I can not believe (except as, perhaps, an irrefutable sign of my 
advancing years) that I did not mention the very personal objection to 
the apparently content-free Wile E. Coyote legalese pollution:


The irrefutable fact that in years (and administrations) past I was 
banned from NANOG for offenses that to me today seem more defensible and 
a great deal less egregious than in the instant case.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/9/2015 10:23, Alan Buxey wrote:

It's just text at the bottom of your email.


1 often a very large amount of text - in this case the legalese was
something like 10x longer than the comment! 2 its pointless. Its not
enforceable and doesn't mean anything.

Shall i put a chapter of war and peace at the end of my emails?  You
could just ignore it.   ;)


I have been thinking that Lipsum Ipsum would be more in keeping with the 
spirit of uselessness here.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Stephen Satchell

On 09/09/2015 06:36 AM, Dovid Bender wrote:

I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does
it give you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's
just text at the bottom of your email.


It's all about best practices.

In an e-mail thread, where the thread grows with each response, the 
original e-mail etiquette is that people put their reply at the bottom 
of the message.  The theory behind the practice is that when you are 
going back to read the message later, you can read it top-down and get 
the contributions in chronological order.  (And only save the last one, 
instead of all of them.)


If you have a huge disclaimer in your sig, when the reader goes to the 
bottom of the e-mail to read the latest contribution, they have to back 
up over the over-large signature block.  This is irritating.  For some 
readers using non-graphical e-mail clients or Web clients, that 
irritation can grow to the point that the message gets tossed.


That's why the Best Practices RFC said to have no more than three lines 
in your .sig of at most 71 characters each.


With AOL and "Forever September", some of these things get lost in the 
waves and waves of non-compliance, not because people don't want to be 
good citizens, but because they don't know better.  And, if you aren't 
keeping the entire thread (such as what I'm doing here), you trim quotes 
to the absolute minimum to maintain context, so that people don't have 
to wade through the whole mess.


It also avoids top-posting, which in some circles is Bad Form(tm).

By the way, it's never been about cat videos...


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Octavio Alvarez
On 09/09/15 06:36, Dovid Bender wrote:
> I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does
> it give you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's
> just text at the bottom of your email.

I've seen it in multiple languages (not necessarily on this list).
Furthermore, some mailing lists support HTML and when they send it in
HTML it sends two copies.

Some others even add a corporate image (sometimes mistakenly huge,
sometimes small) to their signature.

People do this a lot. If everybody did the same for all messages it
would be a huge waste of bandwidth.

For servers, because it's 1 byte times N subscriptions.

For readers, because people should be able to read this in their mobile
devices. For some this means access charges by byte.

That's why it's frowned upon in mosts mailing lists and just directly
forbidden in others. This is not new at all.

Just my two cents.

Best regards.


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Owen DeLong
In my case, I resent the idea that some lawyer somewhere thought I could 
somehow be bound to an agreement I never agreed to which does not appear to me 
until I have reached the end of an email on which he/she feels I should be 
bound.

It’s an absurd construct. It’s a waste of bits that could be used for good 
purpose such as discussing why we all dislike lawyers so much. It’s a display 
of arrogance and it’s presumptuous.

In short, it’s an offensive behavior.

The fact that it is a corporate policy only makes it more offensive.

Owen

> On Sep 9, 2015, at 06:36 , Dovid Bender <do...@telecurve.com> wrote:
> 
> I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does it give 
> you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's just text at the 
> bottom of your email.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Dovid
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net>
> Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-boun...@nanog.org>Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 03:56:30 
> To: <nanog@nanog.org>
> Subject: Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.
> 
> On 9/8/2015 03:31, Rich Kulawiec wrote:
>> On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:
>>> Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
>>> only a seething issue to you because you let it be.
>> 
>> Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
>> The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
>> satisfactory results.
>> 
>> These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
>> *any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
>> And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
>> threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.
> 
> Exactly so.
> JHD
> 
> 
> -- 
> sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)



Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Oliver O'Boyle
I love cat videos.

On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 12:13 PM, Tony Hain  wrote:

> Dovid Bender wrote:
> > I would. Once I see legal stuff I know to stop reading. It does not hurt
> > anyone. Not sure why this hurts so much. Some things will remain a
> > mystery.
> >
>
> No mystery ... It wastes bits that could otherwise be used to watch cat
> videos.  ;)
>
> Tony
>
>
>


-- 
:o@>


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-09 Thread Justin M. Streiner

On Wed, 9 Sep 2015, Dovid Bender wrote:

I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does it 
give you a nervous twitch? Remind you why you hate legal? It's just text 
at the bottom of your email.


I can see both sides of this:
1. People who post to this list from a work email address often have no 
control over what their employer appends to the end of their outgoing 
emails.  The footers in question are usually added after the fact because 
someone in a position of authority at $employer says it needs to be there.


2. A half-page of legalese boilerplate following a one-line message on a 
mailing list that goes out to many thousands of people can be a bit 
irritating.


The compromise would seem to be to use a third-party email account for 
subscribing to mailing lists, but there could be environments where that 
doesn't fly with those same people in positions of authority...


jms


-Original Message-
From: Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net>
Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-boun...@nanog.org>Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 03:56:30
To: <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

On 9/8/2015 03:31, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:

Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
only a seething issue to you because you let it be.


Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
satisfactory results.

These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
*any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.


Exactly so.
JHD


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)



Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-08 Thread Rich Kulawiec
On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:
> Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
> only a seething issue to you because you let it be.

Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
satisfactory results.

These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
*any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.

---rsk


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-08 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/8/2015 03:31, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:

Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
only a seething issue to you because you let it be.


Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
satisfactory results.

These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
*any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.


Exactly so.
JHD


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-07 Thread Connor Wilkins

On 2015-09-06 19:18, Scott Weeks wrote:

It could be much easier.  Folks that care about the
mailing list rules, want to be courteous to list
folks and want to use their company email, rather
than one that inserts no disclaimer, could put 15
lines of blank as part of their signature.  This
would force all the crap far enough down the page
that it wouldn't be bothersome.

scott


Everyone:

Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's only a 
seething issue to you because you let it be.


You're suggesting that one use 15 blank lines just so that you don't 
have to see any of these self-inflicted transgressions. It would be much 
simpler and less taxing on all involved to simply not let it bother you 
anymore.


"Impossible!" you may cry.. but I don't believe so. I used to be the 
same. It's easily beatable. You could send twenty paragraphs of 
so-called 'legal text' suffixed to your email and I wouldn't so much as 
bat an eye. It may take some personal effort but you need to learn to 
'let it go'.


This is a non-issue in the scope of things and you've made a mountain 
out of this grain of sand. Brush it aside and move on. It isn't worth 
your time.


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-06 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/6/2015 14:18, Scott Weeks wrote:



--- rdr...@direcpath.com wrote:
From: Robert Drake 

Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official
end-of-signature flag.  Then you could have
procmail strip everything after the flag:
-


It could be much easier.  Folks that care about the
mailing list rules, want to be courteous to list
folks and want to use their company email, rather
than one that inserts no disclaimer, could put 15
lines of blank as part of their signature.  This
would force all the crap far enough down the page
that it wouldn't be bothersome.



Since nobody uses Telebit Trailblazers anymore--that is probably not a 
bad idea.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-06 Thread Scott Weeks


--- larryshel...@cox.net wrote:
From: Larry Sheldon 
On 9/6/2015 14:18, Scott Weeks wrote:

> --- rdr...@direcpath.com wrote:
> From: Robert Drake 
>
> Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official
> end-of-signature flag.  Then you could have
> procmail strip everything after the flag:
> -
>
> It could be much easier.  Folks that care about the
> mailing list rules, want to be courteous to list
> folks and want to use their company email, rather
> than one that inserts no disclaimer, could put 15
> lines of blank as part of their signature.  This
> would force all the crap far enough down the page
> that it wouldn't be bothersome.

Since nobody uses Telebit Trailblazers anymore--that 
is probably not a bad idea.
---


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_They_Are_a-Changin'_%28song%29

:-)

scott


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-06 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/6/2015 11:46, Robert Drake wrote:


Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official end-of-signature flag.
Then you could have procmail strip everything after the flag:
 --
 This is my signature
 My phone number goes here
 I like dogs
 -- end of signature --
 Everything below here and to the right of here was inserted by my
mailserver, which is run by lawyers who don't understand you can't
enforce contracts through emails to public mailing lists. Please delete
if you're not the intended recipient.


Of course, when you route around something like this it usually comes
back 10 fold, but maybe if it became worthless they might do things the
right way and put stuff like this in email headers.

X-Optional-Flags:  Delete-if-not-intended-recipient,
might-contain-secret-company-information-we-didn't-bother-to-encrypt

Then let the email clients try to work out what that means.


Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block

I thought that was in rfc 2822, but I can not find it.






--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-06 Thread Robert Drake



On 9/4/2015 6:31 PM, Stephen Satchell wrote:


I, for one, feel your pain in this matter.  When I was a consultant in 
The Bad Ol' Days, I had so many telephone numbers where I *could* be 
that my .sig would be a run-on one as well.  As a compromise, I had my 
cell number and a hyperlink to a Web site page with the full monte.


That was before I joined NANOG, so I never tested the tolerance of the 
people here with that solution.


When I was employed as a full-timer (including now) my "work" mail has 
the same sort of crap.  One option you might want to consider is to 
use a personal e-mail account for places like NANOG with the 
single-line disclaimer "Views expressed herein may not be my 
employer's view"


Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official end-of-signature flag.  
Then you could have procmail strip everything after the flag:

--
This is my signature
My phone number goes here
I like dogs
-- end of signature --
Everything below here and to the right of here was inserted by my 
mailserver, which is run by lawyers who don't understand you can't 
enforce contracts through emails to public mailing lists. Please delete 
if you're not the intended recipient.



Of course, when you route around something like this it usually comes 
back 10 fold, but maybe if it became worthless they might do things the 
right way and put stuff like this in email headers.


X-Optional-Flags:  Delete-if-not-intended-recipient, 
might-contain-secret-company-information-we-didn't-bother-to-encrypt


Then let the email clients try to work out what that means.


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-06 Thread Scott Weeks


--- rdr...@direcpath.com wrote:
From: Robert Drake 

Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official 
end-of-signature flag.  Then you could have 
procmail strip everything after the flag:
-


It could be much easier.  Folks that care about the 
mailing list rules, want to be courteous to list 
folks and want to use their company email, rather 
than one that inserts no disclaimer, could put 15 
lines of blank as part of their signature.  This 
would force all the crap far enough down the page 
that it wouldn't be bothersome.

scott


Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-04 Thread Larry Sheldon
Y'all can stop thumping on me about it "because it is required by the 
employer".


After contemplating my navel for a while, it dawned on me that my 
sensitivity is due to an old wound.


Years ago, Faculty, Staff, Students, and myriad others more or less 
loosely connected with my employer complained that they could never make 
contact with me.


As a defensive measure (among others) I crafted a .sig that contained 
all of the telephone numbers and email addresses by which I could be 
reached (included a pager number) 7 x 24 x 52 with (guaranteed) no more 
than 20 minute delay.


It ran to 7 lines, including the dash dash space EOL protocol sentinel.

I was banned from NANOG because of the excessive length.  (And yes, I 
got banned for other things at other times as well, mostly having to to 
do with trying to protect the network I administered from abuse.)

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-04 Thread Larry Sheldon

On 9/4/2015 14:40, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:

There's quite a difference between the 'legal babble' and 'contact
info' at the end of a message.


What part of "required by employer" is different?

I'm not seeing it.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-04 Thread Aaron C. de Bruyn
There's quite a difference between the 'legal babble' and 'contact
info' at the end of a message.
Regardless, my comment was meant for fun, not to upset you.

-A

On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 12:32 PM, Larry Sheldon  wrote:
> Y'all can stop thumping on me about it "because it is required by the
> employer".
>
> After contemplating my navel for a while, it dawned on me that my
> sensitivity is due to an old wound.
>
> Years ago, Faculty, Staff, Students, and myriad others more or less loosely
> connected with my employer complained that they could never make contact
> with me.
>
> As a defensive measure (among others) I crafted a .sig that contained all of
> the telephone numbers and email addresses by which I could be reached
> (included a pager number) 7 x 24 x 52 with (guaranteed) no more than 20
> minute delay.
>
> It ran to 7 lines, including the dash dash space EOL protocol sentinel.
>
> I was banned from NANOG because of the excessive length.  (And yes, I got
> banned for other things at other times as well, mostly having to to do with
> trying to protect the network I administered from abuse.)
> --
> sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

2015-09-04 Thread Stephen Satchell

On 09/04/2015 12:32 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote:

As a defensive measure (among others) I crafted a .sig that contained
all of the telephone numbers and email addresses by which I could be
reached (included a pager number) 7 x 24 x 52 with (guaranteed) no more
than 20 minute delay.

It ran to 7 lines, including the dash dash space EOL protocol sentinel.


I, for one, feel your pain in this matter.  When I was a consultant in 
The Bad Ol' Days, I had so many telephone numbers where I *could* be 
that my .sig would be a run-on one as well.  As a compromise, I had my 
cell number and a hyperlink to a Web site page with the full monte.


That was before I joined NANOG, so I never tested the tolerance of the 
people here with that solution.


When I was employed as a full-timer (including now) my "work" mail has 
the same sort of crap.  One option you might want to consider is to use 
a personal e-mail account for places like NANOG with the single-line 
disclaimer "Views expressed herein may not be my employer's view"