Dinosaur list Alert!

[rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu (Mickey Rowe)]

The activity on this list is *severely* straining the resources of
this computer.  A big part of the problem appears to be that AOL's
user base is outgrowing its hardware (much as this list is outgrowing
this machine!) so mail is piling up here as a result of AOL refusing
to receive it.  Please, no AOL bashing, though, because AOL is NOT the
only offender.  In any case, due to some vagaries I don't fully
understand, the mail chews up a *lot* of memory when this machine is
constantly reattempting delivery, so when the list gets busy this
machine spends all of its time swapping processes in and out of paging
space.  The result is that it's virtually impossible to use the
machine for anything else...

The bottom lines for all of you are a) if you can, I'd like you to try
to hold back -- I'm sure we all appreciate a little silliness now and
again, but did we really need to go on about hydrogen filled
sauropods?  (that's just one recent example -- sorry to single out
those that participated in the thread; I'd just like everybody to be a
little more cautious before sending messages to the list).  b) As I'm
writing this message, the list is shut down.  I may need to start
shutting the list down quasi-periodically because I can't justify the
resources it's chewing up.  This machine was purchased to perform
research in this lab; the list isn't a part of that, so I can't
justify letting it hog all of the machine's time.  c) As a result of
my shutting down the list, and as a result of problems caused by other
machines refusing mail, please expect the list to be somewhat erratic
-- you may not get all messages, and those that you do may come to you
wildly out of the order in which this machine receives them.  I'll do
what I can to maintain regularity, but it's a big net and my powers
are limited.  d) If any of you happen to be sendmail gurus and have
any ideas about how I might reconfigure sendmail in order to reduce
problems caused by other machines not receiving mail, please contact
me.  and finally e) I'm already looking into moving this list to
another site.  Expect that change.  Hopefully moving the list to a new
site will obviate some of the difficulties I'm experiencing now.

Thanks for your patience,

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@lepomis.psych.upenn.edu)