On Dec 15, 21:44, Daniel Otten wrote:
>This post may be off-topic but I'll take the chance because the holidays are
>near.
>
>The Houghton-Mifflin publishing co. is giving books to children's
>hospitals [etc]
 
As HOCKEY-L administrator, I would ask that people not post messages like this
to the list, regardless of how noble the cause might be (and I admit, this one
is far more noble than many of the others I've seen).  Such messages are not
appropriate for a list dealing with college hockey.
 
I have attached further information on this particular promotion.  It was
genuine, but it was badly conceived and has been shut down due to the volume of
Email that has been sent.  So please DON'T send them Email.
 
Bill Fenwick
HOCKEY-L Administrator
[log in to unmask]
 
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 1996 15:54:17 -0500
From: "Kelly J. Cooper" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: BEWARE the Houghton-Mifflin promotion
 
  I am sending this to attempt to help the site stem the flow and ALSO
because people periodically mail these types of "help a cause" things
to lists and I'm still seeing the original message float around.
(I don't particularly approve of helping causes with empty, online
actions because they backfire way too often as this one did).
 
  For those of you who have not yet heard, Houghton-Mifflin
ill-advisedly launched a promotion where they would donate a book to a
sick child in the hospital for every 25 pieces of e-mail sent to a
special address.  They had an (unannounced or at least, not
propagated) upper limit which they HAVE reached but unfortunately,
there was no end point or stop date on the message.
 
  Do NOT send them any more email on this.  If you know of someone
who's set up a robot to repeatedly send them mail, ask them to please
KILL it.  Do NOT mailbomb the address to show them what idiots they
are.  Flames/responses to ME.
 
  I have personally confirmed the above information.  The note below
came to me via a friend, but follows what I know.
 
                        - Kelly J. Cooper
                          12/13/96
 
 
------- Forwarded Message
 
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 12:37:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Erik Trimble <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Easy Way to Help Sick Kids
 
OK. I used to work in the MIS department of Houghton Mifflin, and still am
good friends with the upper MIS people. In fact I had dinner with them
last night.
 
Although the promotion is/was real, PLEASE DON'T SEND THEM ANY MORE
EMAIL. The mail gateway is throttling with the incoming mail - we had
a long talk last night over how to aleviate this problem. They've gotten
alittle over 100k messages in 1 week. The mail server is currently a SPARC 5
w/ 64MB RAM and a gigabyte of swap, and is so hosed that they're switching in
an Ultra2 tonight to try to handle the load.
 
The lesson here is: don't do a marketing ploy without first consulting
your Tech people. Apparently, the whole thing was cooked up by one of the
departments, who neglected to tell MIS.
 
Also, for those of you who might possibly work in industry in the
future and are looking for a way to gather email addresses or do some kind of
promotion like this, USE WEB HITS. The average email coming in to HMCo is
about 4kb, requires disk space, and requires a vfork() of sendmail to deliver. A
typical Http hit runs less than 100bytes, is served by a threaded httpd
server, and requires very little disk access.
 
Anyway, this is just a note to please spare my friends at HMCo. The kids are
going to get all the donations promised, and my friends have enough headaches.
 
Thanks!
 
--Erik
 
----- End Included Message -----
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.