The Ultimate Status Symbol

"The author once ran into an extreme form of delivery processing when he sent an e-mail message to a person who claims to get 600 messages a day. His identity will not be discolsed here, lest half the readers of this book also send him e-mail. Let us call him John.

John has installed an email robot that checks every incoming message to see if it is from a new correspondent. If so, it sends him back a canned reply explaining that John can no longer personally read all his e-mail. Instead, he has produced a personal FAQ document that answers many questions he is commonly asked. Normally newsgroups have FAQs, not people.

John's FAQ gives his address, fax and telephone numbers and tells how to contact his company. It explains how to get him as a speaker and get his papers and other documents. It also provides pointers to software he has written, a conference he is running, a standard he is an author of, and so on. Perhaps this approach is necessary, but maybe a personal FAQ is the ultimate status symbol."

Andrew.S.Tanenbaum
Computer Networks
Chapter : The World Wide Web.

(PS: No link, i had to type this out. And no, unfortunately but not unpredictably our Computer Networks syllabus does not cover this chapter.)

(PS2: I need to get and document some more gems from that book here.)