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Contents |
This is a rather lengthy and boring description of Sat-ND and especially some rather odd peculiarities of it. However, I feel this has become necessary as there has been some misconception out there about what this so-called newsletter is all about.
Please take a few minutes to read it, though; I hope it explains a lot you might find strange especially if you're a new subscriber. Even long-time readers and regulars may discover something they didn't know yet ;-) To keep the legal blurb in Sat-ND from becoming longer and longer, I will in future post something like this from time to time.
If you decide not to read any of this, please at least have a look at the explanation of Useless Facts.
Sat-ND is a free service, generously sponsored by TELE-satellite International, that contains news and views from the satellite and media businesses as well as some extra bits.
However, it is neither professional nor a newsletter. Sat-ND reader Geoff Clifton captured the very essence of this ongoing experiment when he called it a "collation of press releases and smart-arsed comments." Others have called it an e-zine, which I guess comes pretty close to the truth.
A bit more precisely: it contains material that is publicly available, which I collect [so you can spend your online time for other purposes] but usually do no check or research in any way simply because I don't have the time. [To set up a professional newsletter, I wouldn't only have to spend at least eight hours a day but also to employ one or two researchers. If you're willing to pay for that, including huge phone bills and gigantic online fees, just contact me and maybe I'll consider your proposal ;-]
So, this is not a general public service like those, for instance, offered by the BBC. This has a few consequences:
Sat-ND mainly consists of what has attracted my attention. It is by no means intended to be a complete round-up of developments in the satellite and media industries. I would love to include more contributions by readers, but experience has proven that 99.5 percent prefer not to contribute anything. [Very special thanks are due for the other .5 percent.]
Sat-ND also contains personal comments which you may agree with or not. These comments may or may not be strictly related to the satellite or media business, but the are guaranteed to be related to the story in which they appear. [You can recognise my comments easily by the square brackets that surround it, just like this one.]
There are two ways a reader can handle Sat-ND in case of dissatisfaction:
The easy way is to think of it as something like a radio station or TV channel. If you don't like it, turn it off; i.e. unsubscribe. Every issue, including this one, contains several hints on how to accomplish that at the top and at the bottom.
The hard way is to contribute something to pck@lynet.de, actually. Please don't hesitate to do so.
What you can't do, however, is to suggest me to change my style. I'm not here to please everybody. If you don't like that go back to point 1.
There are "Useless Fact" bits that appear at the end of each story. Many readers like them but they seem to have confused others. Please note that the Useless Facts are included only and exclusively for entertainment purposes.
They are collected from a wide range of sources on the Internet and randomly selected. From time to time, I also do a simple keyword search so that, for instance, an article about French digital TV is concluded by a Useless Fact about the consumption of frogs in France.
These Useless Facts are not checked in any way. They may or may not be true. They may be actual facts or just urban myths. Any views directly or indirectly expressed in a Useless Fact are not necessarily my views.
To stay with the example, if you read that the French eat some 200 million frogs a year this is by no means a comment about people eating frogs in general, nor do I try to say anything about the French in particular.
Useless Facts: Read 'em, smile, and then just forget 'em.
It's child's play, really, as long as you send your request to the correct address.
If you receive Sat-ND in HTML format, there's a hyperlink at the top of every issue of Sat-ND that reads "unsubscribe right now!" Just click it and in most cases your email client will pop up and display a message that you just have to send. If that does not work, or if you receive Sat-ND in plain text format, please follow the instructions you'll find at the bottom of every issue.
What if that doesn't work? Send me an email describing your
problem, and I will try go get you off the list within 24 hours. If
you receive error messages during the unsubscription procedure,
please include them so I can troubleshoot the problem. but please
make sure that you have indeed sent your request to the only valid
address, Majordomo@tags1.dn.net.
Sat-ND is sent in HTML 3.2 [no frames, no inline images, no blinking text... in brief: no nonsense] as well as in plain text.
Known outstanding issues:
Eudora Pro 4.0 reportedly has some problems with the "Back to top" links and/or the background colour.
Plaint text is formatted in a rather ugly way, and the table of contents as well as all other hyperlinks are rather useless ;-)
There are two kinds of questions readers keep asking me: those related to a particular story in Sat-ND... and those which aren't.
Of course I will try to answer every question, but please note that I am not an expert in any way. That's why there are some links at the top of every Sat-ND -- not to please anybody but to direct you to the Web sites where you'll find what your looking for, and to the guys who can answer your general questions better than me.
Is there anything you'd like to know but haven't found answered in this message?
Just drop me a line, and I'll include it in future issues of these housekeeping notes.
If you've really got this far, let me thank you for your patience.
I hope that reading all that has made it a bit clearer to you whether Sat-ND is what you really want to read anyway. If it isn't, do not hesitate to unsubscribe at any time. Details follow after the next period.
Majordomo@tags1.dn.net
(not to me, please, and not to any other address) and include the
line
unsubscribe sat-ndunsubscribe sat-nd my.address@provider.com