Contact Information for Mark Whitis (whitis@freelabs.com)

Mark Whitis
   WWW: http://www.dbd.com/~whitis
   Email: whitis@freelabs.com
   Finger: whitis@freelabs.com




   Phone: WITHHELD

   Address: (FEL)
      Free Electron Labs
      107-A Piedmont Ave SOUTH
      Charlottesville, VA 22903
   Phone: withheld

Use email rather than the telephone.

When calling my cell phone, it may take twenty seconds (click, click, click) before the first ring. After five rings on my cell phone, it will ring down to my home number. After another five rings, my answering machine will pick up.

Do not send files in proprietary application formats (Microsoft.*, Apple.*, Word Perfect, etc.) unless you have previosly cleared it with me. Unless the information contained therein is of considerable value to me and is being sent to me primarily for my benifit (and not to fulfill some obligation on the part of the sender), I am very unlikely to take the effort to convert these documents. The internet is based on open standards.

Any email which could be construed as being commercial, marketing, or fundraising which is sent to me must pass a "turing test". Alan Turing, the famous computer pioneer, proposed a simple test to determine if a machine was intelligent. If a person sitting at a teletypewriter (which obscures humon/electronic identity thereby eliminating the judge's predjudices) can carry on a typed conversation with one or more individual which may be human or a machine and not be able to tell which is which, then the machines are intelligent. Email would be a suitable (actually better) substitute for the teletypewriter link. If you send me email, I must be able to distinquish you from an unintelligent machine (or the machine must be so intelligent that I do not care about the distinction). I should be able to tell that the message was written to me, specifically. If you want me to spend my time read your web page or considering your business proposition, whatever it may be, you had better spend some time reading mine and writing your message. Mail which flunks the turing test may be treated as spam.

All email sent to me must have a valid email return address which is delivered to an actual human being.

No telemarketing calls! Under no circumstances will I tolerate anyone telephoning me to advertise a product or service or to solictit donations or votes. If you wish to communicate with me for these purposes, send me postal mail. You can even send email if you conform to all of the restrictions outlined on this page and the message will pass the turing test.

You may send me commmercial email or solicitations if, all of the following are true:

• It is not bulk email.
• The return address is valid.
• You have spent no less than ten minutes reading my web pages and composing your message (not including any included text).
• You indicate clearly that you have read and are making an effort to comply with the restrictions on this page.
• Your message does not contain a lot of hype.
• The bulk of your message is not boilerplate.
• No fake personalization.
• Absolutely no untargetted advertising. if you send mail to a large group of people simply because they are a large group of people whose contact information you have somehow obtained, it is definitely untargetted. Ditto if the "target group" is so large as to include all or most people who own computers, have email, have web pages, etc.

People trying to contact me about my family genealogy must use email, not the telephone.