turing@ctcs.leeds.ac.UK (Turing Conference) (04/13/90)
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. Craig Shergold has a tumour on the brain and one on the spine and has very little time to live. It is his ambition to have an entry in the Guiness Book of Records for the largest number of "Get Well" cards ever received by an individual. Please send a card to: Craig Shergold 56 Selby Road CARSHALTON Surrey SN6 1LD United Kingdom I would be grateful if you could send a copy of this letter to at least another 10 companies or individuals. Yours sincerely, Ian Mitchell Lambert Department of Theology University of Kent at Canterbury
bmb@THINK.COM (04/13/90)
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