If you don't want Email, please just say so!

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Emacs!

In recent days, several emails I've sent to Emacs hackers' personal
mailboxes have been bounced, with messages like:

to=<hacker@domain.foo>, delay=2+02:26:53, xdelay=00:00:22, mailer=esmtp,
relay=xxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx.net. [128.128.128.128], stat=Deferred: 451 4.7.1
Please try one more time in one hour to confirm.

This particular message I'd already tried to send yesterday, at least
once.  I'm tempted to just discard it.

I'm feeling messed around by this at the moment.  It seems that this
hacker's mailbox will bounce my mail unless I resend it within 1 hour +
epsilon, for some unknown (but inadequate) epsilon.

I detest this "greylisting" which seems to be proliferating through the
community.  Am I supposed to get down on my knees and lick somebody's
boots, just to be allowed to send him email?

I know my mail configuration (using sendmail -q over a modem connection)
is anything but up to date.  I keep meaning to get around to getting a
DSL connection in, which I'll manage some day.  I also know how revolting
it is to get deluged by spam (hey, I get it too).  But I have to pay
telephone bills by the minute.  Each time somebody bounces my mail with
"try again later, luser!" it costs me cents, which steadily accumulate
into Euros.

Please be reasonable, friends!  Surely if you're going to say "try again
in an hour!" (or even 5 minutes), you can configure your systems to
accept it, say, up to two days later.  Please?  That way my costs will
only be doubled.

(And if anybody gets the same hassle sending mail to me, please tell me
so that I can complain to my ISP.)

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)