Question for someone who's already signed up: What's the process to unsubscribe?
It's MailChimp, so super easy.
A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
41–50 of 89 posts
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#42A million people are signed up? How long do you have to wait on average to win a one in a million daily lottery.
Depends on how many times you register.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the lawyers are merely agents of the people actually doing the ruining. And without lawyers, trademark laws would likely not be of the scale or complexity that they are now. But that's another rant :) >Also, trademarks are not bad things. In this case, I tend to disagree. Especially as "listserv" should be genericized by this point.
> Especially as "listserv" should be genericized by this point. Have you read the history? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV It appears as though the author of the software decided to commercialize it and now you fault him for trademarking it? I think you're kind of baseless in your argument here. Update: I don't fault the guy for taking some software, re-writing it and then commercializing it. If the original au…
Sorry, but have you?
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The original LISTSERV software, the BITNIC LISTSERV (1984-1986), allowed mailing lists to be implemented on IBM VM mainframes and was developed by Ira Fuchs, Daniel Oberst, and Ricky Hernandez in 1984.
In 1986, Eric Thomas developed an independent application, originally named "Revised LISTSERV"
LISTSERV was freeware from 1986 through 1993 and is now a commercial product developed by L-Soft, a company founded by LISTSERV author Eric Thomas in 1994.
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Eric Thomas started a competing product years after the original LISTSERV, and trademarked the name. He didn't trademark Revised LISTSERV - just LISTSERV. He wasn't the first to use it, but will now be the last. I absolutely do fault him for that (I don't know where that stands legally, but I do know I wouldnt want to get sued to find out).
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#44We did an interview with the Listserve guys at Betabeat: http://www.betabeat.com/2012/04/10/the-listserve-nyu-itp-pro... Seems like a super cool project.
It is shocking to me that as a reporter, you wouldn't even bother asking why they're using a heavily protected and trademarked word for their name.
What? You find this shocking? While you may be biased towards looking at things from a trademark/copyright perspective, you must at least assume some people look at things from other perspectives. It is more interesting to look at this from a social impact/psychology perspective, rather than to undermine the idea based on a word trademark.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is shocking to me that as a reporter, you wouldn't even bother asking why they're using a heavily protected and trademarked word for their name.
What? You find this shocking? While you may be biased towards looking at things from a trademark/copyright perspective, you must at least assume some people look at things from other perspectives. It is more interesting to look at this from a social impact/psychology perspective, rather than to undermine the idea based on a word trademark.
Sorry, but I don't see how getting people to sign up to a mailing list so that they can receive a random email from a stranger once a day is such an amazing idea. It sounds rife for abuse and the fact that the authors didn't bother to check to see if the name they choose was trademarked first shows to me that they don't seem to care what anyone thinks. My guess is that this doesn't end well and your email address gets sold to the highest bidder.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#46This is a great social experiment. What happens when you give a normal person a voice magnified far beyond what they are used to. Will the self-promote? Share a social message? Spam like crazy? I for one am interested in finding out.
Or give advertisers a huge audience and tell them 'just write it like you are an average joe'.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#47Very clever idea. However, it sounds much more beneficial to the person sending the email than to those who are receiving it.
It will be interesting to see if it will collapse for this reason, or if some unexpected mechanic of humanity will keep it afloat.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#48This is not going to end well. Mark my words. Temptation to game an access to a 1 mil opt-in mail list is very real. From auctioning a chance to write, to product placements, to ads, to god knows what else. That's not to get into messages on highly controversial subjects.
Good points. I read upthread that it's class project.
Let's see what happens. It will be fascinating. I, for one, expect good things from this.
(I signed up).
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#49Seems like one of the people behind this, joshbegley, is hellbanned on HN. His comments on this page so far are just showing up dead. Any ideas as to why this is? It makes me wonder about entering my email address on his site. Edit: If you don't have showdead on, he says that plus signs are now accepted in email addresses[0], and that they won't be serving ads, and are looking for an inexpensive way to send mail[1].…
apologies if this is a dumb question, but what does 'hellbanned' mean? i understand folks' concern about dubious intentions, but if it's any consolation, this is merely a class project from Clay Shirky's Designing Conversational Spaces class at NYU.
That's called "shadowban" in my neck of the woods.
Re: A huge listserv. Each day, only one random person can write to it.
#50A million people are signed up? How long do you have to wait on average to win a one in a million daily lottery.
Assuming people can "win" more than once and no one else signs up, the expected wait would be 1 million days. Edit: Guess I need to explain the math since I've been downvoted. Let X be the random variable representing the number of draws until you are the winner. The probability that X = k is (999999/1000000)^( k -1) * (1/1000000) From the definition of expected value: E = Sum(n*P(X=n), n, 1, Infinity) From here it's…
True, but the median wait time would be merely 693147 days, or around 1900 years.
1-(999999/1000000)(693147) = 0.5