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[EFM] E-mail reflectors for dummies




I hope that most people who receive this message could delete immediately as the
content is already well understood....

For those of you who do not understand how e-mail reflectors work please read
on. This is important and it may have a significant effect on your future career
and employability.

1. This is an e-mail reflector. You have not received a personal message from
me. I have sent an e-mail to a computer (somewhere in the bowels of the IEEE
mega-control bunker). That computer has a list of people who have indicated that
they are interested in EFM. The computer forwards that message to everyone on
that list. I do not know (or particularly care) whose name is on that list.

2. If you send a "reply-all" responding to this (or any) message, it will be
similarly copied to every person on the list.

3. This is the important part!

If you want to join or leave the list then you must use the proper method.
Sending a message to the list is not the proper method.

To un$ubscribe from the IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile Task Force
reflector please send an email containing the following text in the body of the
message:-

                                              un$ubscribe stds-802-3-efm
                                                        to
                                            majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(please substitute "s" for "$" in the above message)

4. If you send a message to the list, asking for removal then that message
will be copied to every person whose name is on the list. This is more of a
problem for you than for the recipients because:

a) This list contains a very large proportion of the "people who matter" in the
networking industry.
b) You are (in some way) interested in the networking industry.
c) You have just sent a message to everyone in a) demonstrating that you do not
understand the simple concept of e-mail reflectors.
d) You are now virtually unemployable in your chosen field.

5. To help prevent many people from committing this form of career suicide, the
generous folk at the IEEE have implemented incoming e-mail filters on these
reflectors. These filters catch certain words and block the message containing
them. For example the letters "sub" followed by "scribe" trigger the filter and
would prevent this message from being forwarded. Personally, I would rather see
evidence of cluelessness distributed as widely as possible, but most of the IEEE
elite are more gentle than me :-(

If you want to know anything more about the EFM e-mail reflector, try this link:

 http://www.ieee802.org/3/efm/reflector.html

Or for more depth:

 http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

With regards,

Hugh.