|
Sat-ND Info
|
|
Contents |
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 get error messages during the unsubscription procedure, please include them so I can troubleshoot the problem.
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; 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 legalese in Sat-ND from becoming longer and longer, I will post something like this from time to time.
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 -- currently it's a "Joke du jour" section.
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: Sat-ND 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, 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 :-)
I try to publish Sat-ND five or six times a week. If there are not enough interesting news, the rate may drop to two or three issues a week. There are longer outages, however, which usually will be announced.
If you have the impression that this so-called newsletter has finally be consigned to where it belongs, i.e. the proverbial dustbin of history, please check the following URL:
This is an on-line archive. If there are any issues listed you haven't received, chances are that your were automatically kicked off the mailing list. Not for fun, of course; this happens when Majordomo (the computer programme that sends out Sat-ND as well as all the other fine newsletters offered for free at Sat-Net) has frequently trouble sending you mail. I'm afraid that in this case the problem is most likely at your (or rather your Internet access provider's) side. You can of course re-subscribe at any time. If problems continue, please check with your postmaster.
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. To receive either version, your email client has to be MIME-compliant.
Known issues:
Eudora Pro 4.0 reportedly has some problems with the "Back to top" links and/or the background colour.
Plaint text is not 7-bit U.S. ASCII but "text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1." Besides it's 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 field. That's why there are some links at the top of every Sat-ND -- not to please somebody but to direct you to the Web sites where you'll find what your looking for, and to the guys who can answer your questions much 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 Sat-ND Info.
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; I won't be offended as I'm not interested in uninterested readers. Details follow after the next "Back to top."
|