[Rain Man]

Everyone, please send this out.



Dear friends,

Two weeks ago, the Research Association for Internet Network Maintenance and Neosystematics released a disturbing study about the system's e-mail capacity.

To summarize that study, the number of e-mails sent each year has grown exponentially since the inception of e-mail systems. In 1971, the year of the first e-mail, the total number of e-mails sent was 8. Current projections show approximately 35 BILLION e-mails sent EVERY DAY.

Of these 35 billion e-mails, it is estimated that approximately 57 percent are spam e-mails and forwarded e-mails of topics deemed to be cute, inspirational, funny, or otherwise worthy of being sent to others in a person's circle of friends and acquaintances.

Now, however, e-mail traffic is rapidly consuming available Internet transmission space, to the point where experts now expect the current infrastructure to be overwhelmed within 16 to 24 months. This means that e-mails that now take only seconds to deliver could take up to four days, slower than actual physical mail.

While long-term solutions are still needed, we can all help in the short-term by limiting the number of non-vital e-mails that we forward to friends, relatives, coworkers, and acquaintances. If we completely eliminate all forwarded mass e-mail, we could conceivably keep the current e-mail system up and running for another four to six years while experts work on a more permanent fix.

Please send this to everyone you know, so we can save the e-mail system!