At 7:35 AM 7/17/95, Martin Hamilton wrote:
MONTY HARDER writes:
| Anyone who has read MAD Magazine could put such together. As an added | bonus, use variable margin settings, and none of the letters would be | exactly the same. Appropriate Imail => FAX software on a puter in DC | (local call that way) with the phone number of the sender filled in on | the top line for ID (izzat legal?) so it doesn't look like a form letter | at all.
Plus - choose the fonts & point sizes at random too ? :-)
Yes, make your letters to Congressmen look like ransom notes...it really gets their attention! Seriously, I have no doubt that the next generation of "direct mail" will be geared toward automatic generation of personalized letters, using various natural language parser generators (a la the "rant generator" many of us have used), variable fonts and margins, and so on. This will further "flood the channel" and will ultimately make letter writing mostly meaningless. IN my case, I skip most letters to the editor--at least for local newspapers and weeklies--as they look to be automatically written ("I am outraged at your article about converting Lighthouse Point into a nuclear-powered whale-packing plant..."). Cypherpunks could probably have an effect on hastening this "denial of service" attack on the efficacy of letter-writing by releasing an easy-to-use package that does all this letter writing at the click of a button....just type in some key words, for the topics, and it does the rest. An interesting project, actually. --Tim May .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@sensemedia.net | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."