CSAC Mailing Lists Update

Greetings again to all of our list subscribers as we continue getting 
things set up for the 1999-2000 season. There are a few things to note in 
this pre-season mailing. This is the second of what will hopefully be only
three broadcast e-mails to everyone.

First, our second annual on-line auction is still underway! A second batch
of items is now posted, these will all close Dec 7 or so. There is a 
prominent link from our home page as well as the top of each major section
page. Or go directly to the auction (which is hosted by i-world.net) at

http://www.i-world.net/csac/auction/

Second, a contribution will be required for this service as it was last
year. This will become effective for the season in a few weeks. Any amount
will enable you to use all of our lists as much as you want. The suggested
contribution of $10 will also allow you to order from the store with no
shipping for the entire season, through 9/2000. While there may be more
about this in the third update in a couple weeks we would like to point
out that these contributions support our work on the internet. They do not
go to the centers issueing the bulletins, which in most cases are
governement agencies and in all cases offer the bulletin itself for free.
The same bulletin sent to this list is available via telephone, our
website, and other websites for free. The contribution requirement for our
e-mail distribution was implemented last year and the maillist web page
has more info on why this was done.

Third, we would like to point out that our lists have run reliably and
securely for 4-5 years now. We received one comment lately that we
appeared to be making ur list available to others, which is not true and
has never been true. We asked why the person thought this might be true
and got no reply, so we don't know why anyone would suspect this. Our
lists are set up as private and it is not possible for people to request a
subscriber list. It is also impossible for people to be added without
their consent since an authentication message must be returned. Our
providers lists get bombed once in a while but ours bounce this stuff due 
to the secure configuration. (And PEAK does a mass removal from all lists
for any bombing anyway.)

We will probably send one more mailing to everyone in early December when
bulletins are being issued and things are really underway. The 
contribution requirement will not become effective until some time after
that last update. 

Aside from these pre-season matters we generally do not send
website/project updates to these lists. If you would like to receive
periodic (but not exactly regular :) updates on the site and the CSAC
please subscribe to the list csac-updates@csac.org  You can do this from
the top "text banner" of any of main section pages.

Thank your for your support of and participation in our work.