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From: bmb@THINK.COM
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: Easter request
Message-ID: <9004131322.AA07712@aldebaran.think.com>
Date: 13 Apr 90 13:22:07 GMT
References: <11852.9004122237@ctcs.leeds.ac.uk>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
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   From: Turing Conference <turing%ctcs.leeds.ac.uk@NSFnet-Relay.AC.UK>
   Date: Thu, 12 Apr 90 23:37:32 BST


   I have been asked by a colleague at Leeds to send on this message:

   I would be grateful if, like myself, you were able to respond to a letter
   received recently, in order to help Craig. He is a 7 year old boy who
   is in the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

   <...>

Two points about this:

1) Please do *not* use the CA mailing list for chain letters.  Chain
letters are an abuse of the Internet.  Since the CA mailing list is
generously maintained by TMC, the posting of chain letters to it is also
an abuse of TMC's resources.  It was intended to be a means of
information exchange for people involved in CA research, and it should
be restricted to scientific topics.  Those of us who justify its
existence to TMC management do not need to have this sort of thing
happen.

2) This particular chain letter has been the topic of some controversy.
When it was posted to the "connectionists" mailing list, a recipient
noted that the young boy in question recently made the news because he
has been receiving *too* many cards, and he does not want them any more.
Apparently this chain letter has been propagated to quite a few
electronic mailing lists and FAX machines; the boy was receiving order
10^4 cards per day, and had accumulated a mountain of order 10^6 cards.
Thus, it is not a good idea to comply with the request of this chain
letter, or to propagate it any further.

Thanks,
Bruce M. Boghosian
Thinking Machines Corporation
bmb@think.com